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{ "a_id": [ "clfbfg8" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "The early Boy Scout movement emerged hand in hand with patriotism in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. The Boy Scouts creator, Robert Baden-Powell, noted the general despair amongst soldiers during the Boer war in South Africa because of the significant number of casualties in the army. Upon his return to London, Baden-Powell was convinced that reforms in the education of youth were needed. He envisioned a stronger British empire, and one that could rely on physically and mentally strong men. He later wrote in his memoirs that: \n\n*“we had to remedy some of the shortcomings in [soldiers’] character and to fill in the omissions left in their education by developing in them the various attributes needed for making them reliable men. We had to inculcate a good many qualities not enunciated in text-books, such as individual pluck, intelligence, initiative, and spirit of adventure.”*\n\nBy 1917, there were 194,331 Boy Scouts in Great Britain and this number increased to 443,455 over the next twenty years.\n\n**Physical strength** became an early and important feature of the new Boy Scout association. The invasion scare of 1906 and the growing perceived military threat from Germany resulted in an evident shift from social issues to problems and concerns for Britain’s patriotism and citizenship. Physical fitness and good health became national goals. One guidebook maintained that *“to the boy Scout the importance of physical training is very great, for besides being very necessary for his well being, it is also the foundation of the object of that grand Brotherhood to which he belongs.\"*\n\nA strong rhetoric of **imperialism and British strength** over other peoples‘ can be found in Boy Scout guides. In Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell proclaims that “power at sea has enable us of late years to put a stop to the awful slave trade which used to go on the coast of Africa; it has enabled us to discover new lands for our Empire, and to bring civilization to savages in farthest corners of the world.” History was also rewritten to strengthen this idea. While talking about the Crusades, Baden-Powell asserts that “*scouts cannot do better than follow the example of your forefathers, the Knights, who made the tiny British nation into one of the best and greatest that the world has ever seen.*\" Most historiography on the crusades argues the contrary: economic reasons (knights acquiring land and riches) amongst others fostered the crusades.\n\nScouting evolved into a youth movement that offered a romantic program of outdoor adventures and activities to **remedy the division between classes** and the often disrupted and poor lifestyles caused by industrialization and urbanization. Many British sociologists in the early twentieth century, such as Brian Wilson and William Morrison, saw the increase in violence at the time as the result of the erosion of traditional authority and community control and by the development of adverse living conditions. The Boy Scout Movement acted as a movement in which these divisions could be severed, much like the armed forces in WWI and WWII. Point 4 of the Scout Law states that “A Scout is a Friend to All, and A Brother to Every Other Scout, no Matter to what Social Class the Other Belongs”. By breaking down social barriers, Boy Scouts facilitated the growth of ideas of fairness and parity amongst the British youth. Early on, the movement also established any kind of spiritual commitment (Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, etc.) as one of the cornerstones of the movement. A sense of reinforced uniform White racial identity was therefore maintained - one that crossed class and religious lines.\n\nWhen I researched this topic, I wasn't able to find numbers of Boy scouts who became soldiers - I don't know if any survey by the British Armed Forces was done on that subject. *One can only assume that there is a strong correlation*. In any event, the primary and secondary sources I looked at significantly convey the following: the early Boy Scout movement acted as a strong engine to reinforce the ideas of British strength, unity and patriotism.\n\nSources (Primary):\n\nAdams, Morley. *What a Scout Should Know* (London: Henry Frowde, 1915)\n\nLord Baden-Powell of Gillwell. *Lessons From the Varsity of Life* (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1933)\n \n_____. *Scouting for Boys* (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1937)\n\n_____. *The Wolf Cub’s Handbook.* Eight Edition. (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1931)\n\nSources (secondary):\n\nJacobson, Sven. *British and American Scouting and Guiding Terminology* (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 1985)\n\nJeal, Tim. *Baden-Powell* (London: Pimlico, 1991)\n\nMacDonald, Robert H. *Reproducing the Middle-class Boy: From Purity to Patriotism in the Boys’ Magazines*, 1892-1914. Journal of Contemporary History. Volume 24, No. 3 (July \t1989), pp. 519-539\n\nParsons, Timothy H. *Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial America* (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004)\n\nProctor, Tammy M.*(Uni)Forming Youth: Girl Guides and Boy Scouts in Britain, 1908-1939*. History Workshop Journal. No. 45 (Spring 1988), pp. 103-134\n\nPryke, Sam. *The Popularity of Nationalism in the Early British Boy Scout Movement*. Social History. Volume 23, No. 3 (October 1998), pp. 309-324\n\nReynolds, E. E. *The Scout Movement* (London: Oxford University Press, 1950)\n\nMary Aickin Rothschild. *To Scout or to Guide? The Girl Scout-Boy Scout Controversy, 1912-1941*. A Journal of Women Studies. Volume 6, No. 3 (Autumn 1981), pp. 115-121\n\nWarren, Allen. *Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the Scout Movement and Citizen Training in Britain, 1900-1920.* The English Historical Review. Volume 101, No. 399 (April 1986), pp. 376-398\n\nWilkinson, Paul. *English Youth Movements, 1908-1930.* Journal of Contemporary History. Volume 4, No. 2 (April 1969), p.3-23\n\nZweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina. *Building a British Superman: Physical Culture in Interwar Britain.* Journal of Contemporary History. Volume 41, No. 4 (October 2006), pp. 595-610 " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fc2j4sv" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The short answer is: we're not sure, but it's likely Thales came from a Phoenician family that migrated to Miletus. As far as I know, Herodotus is the earliest source we have that talks about Thales. And even this source is written about a hundred years after Thales had already died. So we have very little to base a clear answer to this question.\n\nNow for the more interesting long answer. First it must be mentioned that the Milesians in the time of Thales did not call or consider themselves first and foremost as 'Greek', they would call themselves Milesians first, and Ionians second. At the same time, the people we now call Phoenicians, also never called themselves that. Second, it's important to understand that ethnic categories such as Greek, Phoenician, Carian were in reality not as clear-cut as they seem. The area around Miletus was inhabited since the neolithic, thousands of years before there were Greeks or Phoenicians. Already during the Bronze Age and later Archaic Age, Miletus was a powerful regional city with a rich history. The people who lived there were probably a changing mixture of people we would now call Lydians, Myceneans, Minoans, Carians, Phoenicians, Greeks, ...\n\nSo how can we determine if someone was Greek or Phoenician (keeping in mind that these are categories of a later date and not used by the historical people we're talking about)?\n\nFirst off, language. Miletus was part of the Ionian League. This was a defensive/religious alliance between twelve independent city-states on the western coast of what is now Turkey. They (or at least the elites of these cities) spoke the Ionian dialect of Greek. But even between the cities of the Ionian League there were many differences in dialect. Ionian Greek was also spoken in Athens, and many Ionians had the notion that they were the descendants of Athenians that migrated across the Aegean Sea. But this idea is not to be taken too literal and mostly a result of Athenian expansion in the centuries after Thales. The Athenians tried to expand their power and a semi-legendary common origin was a successful way of making alliances.\n\nThat brings us to population and migrations. The Ionian migration into the region probably occurred around the 11th century BCE. These people presumably came mostly from Attica and Boeotia. The way in which they mingled and lived together with the existing populations is uncertain and most likely happened in different ways each time according to the circumstances. In other instances of Greek migrations we see that they could marry into the local families, they could live together on relatively equal footing, they could go to war and chase off or enslave the people, and everything in between. In whatever way it happened, in these twelve cities, the Greek culture became the dominant culture during the following centuries. \n\nMiletus, like the other city-states of the Ionian League, had a political organisation based on different tribes. It seems there were six tribes. Four of them would have their origin in Greece and two would be local. How large these groups were, or what differences in social standing they had is unfortunately not clearly known. Nevertheless, this shows us that, even though Milesians would later consider themselves Greek (or at least Ionian), their origins are very murky and any idea about ethnic heterogeneity was mostly an ideal not at all reflected in reality.\n\nAbout a century before the birth of Thales, Greek pottery entered a phase called the Orientalizing Period. During this time many cultural influences from the eastern mediterranean entered the Greek speaking communities. It is very likely that a major driving force of these cultural developments were traders and craftsmen who originated in the Phoenician city-states such as Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and had contacts with Greek cities and towns. At first, Phoenician traders would visit and conduct business in these towns (and Miletus was a very important crossroads of the mediterranean trade). Later, these traders would settle down and create small industries and trade hubs. There's no question these traders and craftsmen were at first looked at as foreigners, but they could amass considerable wealth and were probably at times able to secure citizenship and an important place in their new homes.\n\nSo where does that leave us with Thales? If we look at the language, Thales was Greek. For most Greeks, language was the first and most important thing that distinguishes Greeks from barbarians. Since Thales lived in a city dominated and inhabited mostly by people who spoke Ionian Greek, he would have spoken this language as well.\n\nThat Thales was of Phoenician origin, as Herodotus and others mention, is also possible. Lots of Phoenicians spread out across the mediterranean in the centuries before Thales. As traders and craftsmen, some of them were able to become quite rich and secure citizenship and prominent places in the societies they migrated to. That Thales is a descendent of Phoenician migrants is therefore perfectly imaginable.\n\nIn conclusion: was Thales Greek of Phoenician? The answer is most likely: both, with countless caveats about the complexity of ancient ethnicity and identity.\n\nMain sources:\n\nRoebuck, C. 'Tribal Organization in Ionia' (1961).\n\nGreaves, A. M. 'The Land of Ionia' (2010).\n\nAnd of course the Histories of Herodotus." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fdeyms8" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "This is a complex topic but I'll give it my best stab!\n\n > I thought the Iranian public had a very positive view of the U.S. at the time and this started off a chain of events that led the very hostile relationship we currently have\n\nFirstly, you're correct that the Iranian public had a relatively positive view of the US but I'd be careful of suggesting that the coup \"started off a chain of events that led the very hostile relationship we currently have\". This can present an overly inevitable view of history; people are quick to link the coup to the Islamic Revolution but do bear in mind that they're more than 25 years apart and plenty could have gone differently in that time.\n\nBut to get to your main question, the UK and US both have several important motivations which different historians give different weight. I will separate them roughly into economy, strategy, ideology.\n\n**Economy**\n\nIt is hard to overstate the value of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for Britain here; it is Britain's single largest overseas asset at a time where the country is trying to rebuild itself from World War 2. It is a vital source of dollars in a very literal sense given Britain's balance of payments woes at this time.\n\nBeyond this, they were not the only player that stood to gain economically from the coup. The US had been frustrated by Britain's restrictive control on Iranian oil which denied US oil companies market access; following the coup this arrangement was clearly unsustainable and US companies were able to enter the market much to their benefit.\n\n**Strategy**\n\nAs the British Empire was increasingly called into question, British strategists increasingly turned towards Africa and the Middle East as a solution to secure Britain's global position. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is not only a key resource: it's a key aspect of British strategic influence in the region (along with the Suez canal). For an easy example, just consider the importance of a secure oil supply through the major wars that had just passed.\n\nBritain's strategic position is also a concern for the US. The US and the UK have just come out of WW2 where they fought as allies. They didn't always see perfectly eye to eye, but nonetheless they had an important strategic relationship. This especially true as the Cold War Era commences and the US is increasingly concerned with the spread of communism.\n\n**Ideology**\n\nThe Iranian Oil Crisis is fascinating for the way which it highlights the balance between different ideological paradigms: imperialism, nationalism, and \"cold-war\"ism.\n\nYou've asked why the UK pursued the coup even though Iran was acting within its rights as an independent nation. This reflects a modern conception of nationalism -- and one which Iranian nationalists were quick to uphold -- but which wasn't necessarily that convincing to the British imperialist mindset. At least not when vital resources were on the line. \n\nFor the US, the ideological confrontation with the USSR -- and the possible spread of communism -- was a growing concern. Mosaddeq had wide popular support and something of a socialist platform. He also unfortunately also played to US fears of Iran falling to communism in an attempt to gain aid from the US; some later American sources further suggest that the British deliberately played on this fear to push the US into action. It's difficult to know exactly how much weight to give the fear of communism since naturally its a nicer justification for the Americans involved than oil-money. One thing that I would highlight here is the distinction between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Under Truman the US takes a generally reconciliatory approach with significant efforts towards a negotiated settlement. Eisenhower's administration (which is generally further into the paranoia of the Cold War) takes office and the coup follows shortly after. \n\nRegarding why the UK asked the US for help, on top of the close economic and strategic relationship above there is also an important practical factor: the UK's ability to orchestrate a coup is hampered after Mosaddeq expelled Britain's diplomatic mission in 1952 and working with the CIA helps them to overcome this obstacle.\n\n**Closing thoughts**\n\nFirstly, I have separated various factors out, but please don't read them in isolation. For example, Iran's strategic importance should *also* be read in terms of the post-war geopolitcal orientation towards Cold-War competition between the US and USSR, and the American desire to open the Iranian oil market has an ideological undercurrent as well as an economic rationale. \n\nLastly, I do want to re-iterate that this is a really fascinating question which remains debated in the historical community. Over-emphasising the \"fear of communism\" interpretation risks giving too much weight to post-hoc explanations given by Americans and arguably verges on apologia. (This is also complicated by the fact that detailed American sources were more readily available than others). At the same time, over-emphasising the \"it's all about money and power\" interpretation risks boiling complex ideological and personal factors down to simplistic realpolitik. An interesting questions to ask yourself as you delve into the topic is \"why does the US behave differently around the Suez crisis only three years later?\".\n\nMain sources:\n\nGasiorowski and Byrne (Ed.), *Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran* \nKatouzian, *Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran* \nLouis, *The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951* \nBill and Louis (Ed.), *Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil* \nGalpern, *Money, Oil, and Empire in the Middle East: Sterling And Postwar Imperialism, 1944–1971*\n\nFor more accessible reading, I recommend Gaziorowski, ['Coup d'etat of 1953'](_URL_0_) in the *Encyclopaedia Iranica* which is an incredible peer-reviewed online resource for Iranian history." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/coup-detat-1953" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5kzxvg", "c5l4jqv" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The association of Jesus with John is more or less universally accepted. There are a number of clues.\n\nFirst is the baptism. John offered baptism for the remission of sin, a fact that caused the last three evangelists apparent embarrassment. Matthew and Luke have John denigrate himself at the event. John goes a step farther and eliminated the baptism entirely. Why make it up if it causes problems?\n\nAgainst this view we should bear in mind that the earliest known recension, that of Mark, shows no such shame.\n\nThe second is that all four evangelists are careful to have John either implicitly (such as his emissaries from prison) or explicitly acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. This seems to indicate that such an endorsement was important to the early Christian movement.\n\nAdditionally, the idea of baptism for remission of sin is unattested in judaism prior to John. Both the capacity of immersion to serve in this way and the idea that such an act could be performed by a third party are novelties, shared by the Baptist and the Christian movement.", "So far as I know, one of the the most well-known versions of this theory comes from E. P. Sanders:\n\n > Two of the things which are most securely known about Jesus are the beginning and the outcome of his career, and these are also two illuminating facts. Jesus began his public work, as far as we have any information at all about it, in close connection with John the Baptist, probably as a disciple.\n\n[E. P. Sanders, *Jesus and Judaism* \\(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), 91.](_URL_1_)\n\nSanders is not the only scholar to hold this opinion, nor does every scholar in the field agree with Sanders. See [Max Aplin's Ph.D. dissertation, \"Was Jesus Ever a Disciple of John the Baptist? A Historical Study,\"](_URL_0_) pp. 39-42, for a list of scholars on all sides of the argument." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/5467/2/Aplin2011.pdf", "http://books.google.com/books?id=Ng9JaKKaeCIC&lpg=PP1&dq=e%20p%20sanders%20jesus%20and%20judaism&pg=PA91#v=onepage&q&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d35ngfh" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Much of the historical narrative that we have for the early Republic is dominated by the so-called struggle of the orders. This was sort of a civil rights campaign by the plebeians for equal rights. At this stage the patricians were a handful of established aristocratic families, and the plebeians were everyone else. At first, the patricians monopolised all the major political and religious offices, but the plebeians gradually won the right to hold these positions. One of the most important victories for the plebeian cause came in 367 BC, when a law was passed guaranteeing at least one plebeian consul; subsequently more and more offices were opened up to plebeians. (It should be noted that the literary sources we have for this period are much later, and are therefore open to question. But we don't have anything better to go on, so most historians tend to assume that the surviving narratives are based on a factual core even if many of the details are invented or distorted.)\n\nBy the late Republic, the patrician-plebeian distinction was largely redundant. There were still patrician families, but these were not synonymous with the office-holding nobility, as they had once been. Being a patrician could even be seen as a disadvantage: one patrician, the populist politician Publius Claudius Pulcher (wow, alliteration), had to be adopted into a plebeian family in order to stand for the office of tribune (he became Publius *Clodius* Pulcher in 59 BC as a result). In late Republican parlance, \"plebs\" became a more general term to refer to the common people, meaning anyone who didn't belong to the senatorial or equestrian classes, except in technical cases like that of Clodius." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdcn6s2" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This article might not quite fit the bill -- it's not specifically situated in an ancient period -- but it does do a good job of exploring the place of sharks in Hawaiian religion and culture.\n\nGoldberg-Hiller, Jonathan, and Noenoe K. Silva. “Sharks and Pigs: Animating Hawaiian Sovereignty against the Anthropological Machine.” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 2 (Spring 2011).\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmhtyiv" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Well, there is no clean cut explanation.\n\nHistorically the Duchy of Savoia (mainly centered in Piedmont, capital Turin), was the more expansionist Italian state from the late seventeenth century onward.\n\nThe dukes played an active role in all the European wars of the period, shifting their alliance between France and Austria, expanding their territory eastward toward Milan and acquiring Sicily and the title o King (Sicily was later exchanged with Sardinia).\n\nSo it was already their long time goal to acquire the duchy of Milan.\n\nThere were also other factors: it was the more independent minded Italian state, and also the more open to external influences; it certainly had the more advanced and powerful military at the time (not counting the Austrian garrisons). Milan was maybe a more advanced city, but as it was under Austrian rule (along with Lombardy and Veneto), it could not be a fulcrum for independence (there was a revolt in 1848 where the city expelled the Austrian garrison, but it was short lived, and anyway it immediately asked for military support from Piedmont).\n\nRegarding the other states the duchy of Parma, Modena and Tuscany were closely aligned with Austria; the Pope was not interested in territorial expansion, and this also limited any ambitions from the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily (who could not well invade the territory of the Pope).\n\nAt the time a complete takeover of Italy by Piedmont was not a given. There were many other hypothesis, like a federation of independent states, with the expulsion of the Austrians, the duke of Piedmont as the Military commander and the Pope as the president of the federation.\n\nAfter the war of 1859 actually there was no impetus for further expansion from the duke of Savoia, Vittorio Emanuele II; he had gained the duchy of Milan from the Austrians and modern Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany by plebiscite, and he was pretty satisfied. There were proposals for a federation of three states, north Italy under the Savoia in the north, the Pope in the center and the Bourbon in the south.\n\nBut then Garibaldi mounted its expedition and conquered the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily with an army of volunteers. At this point Piedmont intervened, as it had no wish for the potential establishment of a republic in the south, and the kingdom of Italy was formed.\n\nSo there was more than a factor in play:\n\n- the dynastic impetus of the Savoia to expand, playing the French and the Austrians one against the other\n\n- a strong desire of a large part of the elites of the various Italian states to expel the Austrians and to form some sort of united entity in Italy, with the awareness that only the Savoia had in practice the inclination and the capability to push for this same objective\n\n- the relative fragility of the governments of the other states once the protection of the status quo by the Austrians was removed" ] }

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[ "http://m.imgur.com/r/MapPorn/rmWSGZ3" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cbmk4i5" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "It's unlikely that they sung - that would not be conducive to rowing, which is physically tiring. It has been theorised that they may have hummed, which is less tiring, but there is no substantial proof of this. [A reconstructed trireme was tested using various means of synchronisation - humming was reportedly effective.](_URL_2_)\n\n[You may find this source useful, though I do not know how you might best access a full version of it](_URL_1_); 'The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship,\n By J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, N. B. Rankov'.\n\nEdit: See also [The Trireme](_URL_0_), by Prof Boris Rankov (Royal Holloway), also a rower." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.hoplites.org/HAmember/The%20Trireme%20by%20Boris%20Rankov.pdf", "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wVT71_6zLygC&pg=PA252&lpg=PA252&dq=ancient+greek+trireme+hum&source=bl&ots=dRkXO5vDJl&sig=M_9iIcAEi-ScqNfWmgzML5fZvJ4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vJEJUtvuKqmq7QaYiYGIAg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ancient%20greek%20trireme%20hum&f=false", "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/oarsmen-learn-the-secrets-of-ancient-greek-war-machine--almost-unbeatable-in-battle-the-triremes-still-had-flaws-david-keys-reports-1491983.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwpgnod" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "To cover the basics first, dyes before modern dyes were color fast and dry cleaning did exist. One of the most popular dyes still today is indigo. Interestingly it doesn't dissolve in water nor adhere to fabric, so how does this work? You need an alkaline solution such as lye, ammonia, or urine in order to dissolve the indigo. Once set into the fabric, water won't wash it out. Other dyes that are water soluble will still be color fast because of the process of using a mordant. The New Pocket Cyclopaedia of 1813 lists common mordants as \"sulphate of alumine, oxide of tin, oxide of iron in combination with acids, oxide of arsenic, tan, & c.\" It goes on to say that the most permanent dyes are cochineal and gum-lac (scarlets), indigo and woad (blue), dyers weed (yellow), and madder (coarse reds, purples, blacks). Mordant can be added before, during, or after the dying process depending on the chemistry needed. It does change the final dye color. Iron oxide mordants are notorious for their deterioration of textiles, and are the reason so many black garments survive in terrible shape if at all. Basically mordants help the dye to bond to the textile and keep it much more permanent. Silks and wools do incredibly well with this, linen less so and it's harder to get a dark color set into it for that reason.\n\nWhen it comes to cleaning you are very correct about not having to wash exterior pieces often (if at all). Undergarments were white for this reason, being able to be bleached and boiled to make them clean. Outer garments can sometimes be washed and submerged in water, but more often are spot cleaned based on the exterior dirt/stain. Dry cleaning by definition is simply cleaning with something other than water. For example, if you got a grease stain on silk (due to the carriage or dinner), it gets sprinkled with fullers earth, covered in paper, and a light amount of heat applied. This will draw out the stain (in modern day use baby powder to much the same effect). To remove any remaining rings you can wash the area with soap and water, washing it out with gin, and then washing it out with water. If the entire garment must be wetted to keep from getting water rings you'll wrap it up in a towel immediately to dry. Cook books often have recipes in back for laundering. And if you don't want to deal with it professional laundering can be had as well." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjfwwjq" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " > The more specific question is: what instances after 1945 are there of Western militaries attacking civilian targets with the explicit or implicit aim of coercing the civilian population?\n\nWell, for one, the Korean War which began in 1950 saw the US use B-29 bombers to bomb Pyongyang and other cities in North Korea. However, as I'll explain later, the deliberate targeting civilians already begun to fell away as a strategy.\n\n > The broader one is: how have we got from there to here? When did Western militaries accept and start teaching that this was unacceptable? What resistance has there been to the changes? \n\nStudies after WW2 were conducted about the effectiveness of strategic bombing. It found that the deliberate targeting on civilian centers wasn't all that effective in terms of breaking the civilian morale. Not only did strategic bombing of German cities day and night not end the war any sooner (the Soviets taking Berlin and the Allies closing in from the west prompted their surrender), but the Allies suffered their own forms of bombing (England during the Blitz) and instead found their citizens more resolute in defending their own homes.\n\nWhere strategic bombing did become more useful was when it was targeted at infrastructure and other assets that their military would use. Bridges, rail centers, transportation hubs, etc. You see this in Korea where B-29s started dropping radio bombs to target bridges/railways, and in Vietnam even our major bombing campaigns with strategic bombers like the B-52 (e.g. Operation Linebacker II) were targeted at ports, railways, supply depots, etc.\n\nAnd finally, beyond the fact that military studies finding deliberate targeting of civilian centers being less effective, there was the fact that warfare had changed.\n\nToday it takes a single B-52 with a crew of 5 to drop the same amount of bombs that 16 B-17s with 160 total crew members took from London to Berlin. And oh yeah, that B-52 took off from Louisiana.\n\nBecause of this, we employ far fewer bombers - which also makes each bomber significantly more valuable. Losing a B-52 much less a B-2 today would be extremely costly - instead, we employ our bombers completely differently. We found, during Vietnam, that bombers like the B-52 could be very vulnerable to surface to air missile systems.\n\nHence, in the post-Vietnam era, the USAF focused on fast bombers that either flew extremely high (like the XB-70) or low (like the B-1) and then on stealth aircraft (the F-117 and then of course the B-2). The B-52 has become more tailored to carrying long range cruise missiles as a stand-off missile platform (though it can carpet bomb as it used to as well).\n\nSo to answer your question: the studies done after WW2 and the lessons learned in Korea and Vietnam have changed military doctrine regarding aerial bombardment. Not only that, but changes in air defense and in bombing technology have more or less ended the days where bombers fly in massive formations to indiscriminately carpet bomb large areas.\n\n > How was the discord between this norm and the doctrines of nuclear war managed?\n\nNuclear war has been treated as a separate entity from strategic bombing really ever since the Soviet Union developed their own nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.\n\nThe idea of mutually assured destruction has more or less relegated nuclear weapons into two categories: tactical and strategic, with strategic being more aligned with the idea of wiping out an entire civilization.\n\nBoth sides drew up numerous use cases for nuclear weapons. Some believed that tactical exchanges against enemy armored formations would be acceptable - indeed, it was suggested that if the enemy used nuclear weapons strictly on military targets only, we'd respond in kind.\n\nThe whole idea that \"if one nuke goes off, we wipe them completely out\" is a misconception a lot of people have about nuclear weapons. All that stuff is way above public discourse for obvious reasons, but using nuclear weapons to wipe out an entire country's populace is not a frequent reason for the use of nuclear weapons." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cedzhhf" ], "score": [ 23 ], "text": [ "I would absolutely agree with the first part of his thesis: that Lenin was a brutal dictator and that the myth of Lenin being a good Bolshevik and Stalin being a bad Bolshevik is unsupported by evidence. Lenin clearly wanted to provoke a civil war in Russia, as documents uncovered since the opening of the Russian archives in 1991 have shown. This is because he knew that the Social Revolutionary and Menshevik forces in Russia would not support his violent overthrow of Alexander Kerensky's provisional government. Through both the Russian Civil War 1917-1921 and its accompanying Red Terror, Lenin clearly demonstrated the brutality and ruthlessness that characterized Stalin's regime. Lenin established his secret police, the Cheka, in December 1917, and formed the gulag prison camp system in the same month. Both of which were used to enact horrible terror and brutality on the Russian people. By 1923, over 500,000 people languished in gulag labor camps. In January 1918, Lenin had his Third Soviet Congress pass what was called the Loot the Looters Decree, whose intent was to annihilate Russia's middle and upper classes. Lenin also implemented his War Communism in 1918, an attempt to solve Russia's food crisis, but an attempt that ended in disaster and resulted in a horrible famine. Through all of this, it is clear that in many ways, Lenin displayed the same blindness to human suffering that Stalin did. From the Civil War and the Red Terror alone, I think one can reasonably claim that Lenin was indeed a ruthless and brutal dictator, just like Stalin. \n\nYet, I don't necessarily think that Lenin wanted Stalin to succeed him. I think one can claim that Stalin was in many ways a continuation of Lenin, as both used terror to achieve their goals. But Lenin was pragmatic, as his New Economic Policy of 1921 demonstrates. He was not completely blind to human suffering, as Stalin was. Not only that, but the postscript to Lenin's Testament of early 1923 shows that Lenin feared Stalin's place in the party because of Stalin's complete disregard for human suffering, such as the kind that Stalin displayed in the Georgian Affair of 1922. Not only that, but I think the relationship that Lenin and Trotsky had, especially through Trotsky's role as War Commissar in the Civil War, demonstrates that the two had a closer relationship that Stalin and Lenin.\n\nThus, to answer your first question, I think that to a major extent is the sympathetic image of Lenin incorrect. Lenin was clearly a brutal and ruthless dictator, who although pragmatic, was not afraid to use terror and civil war to accomplish his goals. And to answer your second point, I don't think that Lenin necessarily wanted Stalin to succeed him. Rather, he preferred Trotsky. Stalin's rule however does demonstrate that he in many ways continued what Lenin started. But I think that the poor relationship between Stalin and Lenin at the end of Lenin's life demonstrates that while Stalin did continue with the precedence that Lenin set, Lenin did not necessarily want this to occur.\n\nEven though Lenin did shift away from War Communism to NEP in the 1921, it's impossible to overlook the fact that Lenin was brutal and repressive and that the civil war and terror he used were very effective in guaranteeing his rule. Yet, I think this shift demonstrates Lenin's pragmatism, something that Stalin did not display. As such, I don't think that Lenin's late actions support the thesis that he wanted Stalin to succeed him.\n\nSources:\nA People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmj1z1r", "cmj9us1", "cmjgdfg", "cmjgtfx", "cmjhx93", "cmjk3py", "cmjkmof", "cmjlx3v" ], "score": [ 16, 8, 7, 11, 6, 6, 4, 5 ], "text": [ "Is today’s theme just an excuse for me to post a long winded ramble about my hobbies? Of course not.\n\nBut it’s time to talk about knitting and its fantastically understudied history. Knitting gets very little attention from “real” historians, its history and folklore was only passed orally for a long time, and today it is primarily discussed in pattern books, blogs, and forums. I know of a whopping TWO academic-ish history books about knitting. It’s a history you don’t think about unless you start doing it I think. \n\nI knit my share of junky modern stuff with fun-fur eyelash yarn and such, but I try to do some historic and vintage things because they make me feel a connection with women of the past that I really can’t get elsewhere, even from cooking historic recipes which I also like to do. (I suspect my foremothers would laugh at me feeling historical by making anything in my modern kitchen on my clean electric stove.) Knitting is kinda extra-historical because its largely unchanged from its murky invention, sure there are innovations, like the knitting machine, or those sweet rubber caps for the tips of needles so your stitches don’t slide off the ends, and the fun of superbulky yarns knit on needles [the size of Olive Garden breadsticks,](_URL_1_ ) but in the end hand-knitting is still just you making some fabric with 2 or more pointy sticks and some string. Just like people (especially women-people) did generations and generations before you. \n\nI’ll steal a quote from Franklin Habit who really sums up the appeal: \n\n > Whenever I work through an antique pattern, my thoughts inevitably turn to another knitter, long gone and utterly forgotten, who may have pursued the same course of knits and purls [...] Sometimes she’s an expectant mother puzzling over the Baby’s Hood, or a grandmother with a quiet afternoon turning out yet another Pence Jug. She may be called Ada or Isabel. She may live on the American frontier or in a London row house. She may be knitting under a tree, or beside a coal fire. She often, when confounded by the same vagueness in the pattern that confounds me, indulges in unladylike and possibly anachronistic vulgarities. (“Oh, @#$!% this @#%@^ nightcap,” said Aunt Ada.) ([source](_URL_0_), I’ve been meaning to make the Mrs. Roosevelt Mittens for like 5 years now.) \n\nAnother reason I am drawn to knitting is because [it was a skilled cottage industry for a lot of centuries, especially for Scottish women,](_URL_2_) who would be the bulk of my ancestors. Scotland in particular was known for socks and lacework. Knitting was a source of money people who otherwise couldn’t do any useful labor - it doesn’t require a lot of investment in materials (you just need needles and yarn), nor does it require physical strength, it could be done by people otherwise unemployable like the elderly or infirm, or just farming-people in winter. Another reason knitting is so lovely is because it’s a social or asocial activity as you see fit. You can knit in a group, you can knit with a friend, you can knit on the couch with your husband, or you can knit all by yourself. Many of the women who had to knit for money or to keep their family clothed [did that shit on the go](_URL_5_) between other work. \n\nMy favorite type of knitting is lace knitting, my goal is to someday make a Shetland lace [“wedding ring” shawl](_URL_6_), which is the pinnacle of a lace knitter’s art. But for the meantime I stick to simpler lacework. Like most knitters, I have a habit of buying yarn that I think looks really cool in the skein, getting it home, forgetting about it, and years later discovering some butt ugly yarn in my closet and then desperately trying to think of something to use it up on. [Here is my yarn of the moment](_URL_3_), a bulky weight dark purple mohair with a sparkle running through it, which I know must have seemed awesome at the time but now strikes me as compelling evidence that I have truly awful taste and should not be allowed to dress myself. It’s also itchy, and I had 8 goddamned skeins of this to somehow make into something acceptable. I decided on a lace wrap (as wraps/shawls don’t get too close to your body so the itchy wouldn’t be too bad). Mohair yarns’ fuzzy halo kinda “muffles” the visual impact of lace patterns, so I wanted a bolder, simpler lace that would still be visible through the eye-stunning fug of a sparkly mohair. I settled on [Old Shale Stitch,](_URL_7_) which is an old Shetland lace pattern. It’s actually really “Shell Stitch” because it looks like seashells but the early knitting pattern collectors didn’t speak Highland brogue so it got put down in the books as Shale. It’s the traditional edging on [hap shawls](_URL_8_) which are big wool shawls that would be everyday wear, so I thought I’d make my wrap something of an homage to those. It’s also an “unbalanced” lace (that doesn’t stay square as you knit up), so I thought the way it pulled itself into ripples was also kinda neat. \n\nSo, my husband was unexpectedly in the hospital for a few days 2 weeks ago, and when I rushed home after he was admitted I had a few minutes to gather some overnight stuff and then just anything to distract me, and I grabbed: a gay romance novel, a Tupperware container full of soynuts (I don’t remember what the thinking was on this one), and my knitting. And boy did that damn knitting just about save my life. I did not have 2 brains cells to rub together long enough to do any sort of reading so the book got left in my bag the entire time, but I think I knitted about 5 skeins in 48 hours. “I’m sorry about all the mohair!” I said to the cleaning staff as I shredded like a dog blowing coat, compulsively knitting in the guest chair. But that repetitive, productive movement of knitting gave me a comforting connection to countless women before me who had no doubt sat at many besides waiting to see what would become of their loved ones. Husbands have always gotten sick. Illness has always been fearful. And women have always worked through it. (And after all this I forgot to take a picture of the final product last night, I'll see if I can update with a photo when I get home.) \n\nAnyway he’s fine. After Christmas is done I think I’m going to make good on my threats and finally make him a historic [Scottish-pattern gansey](_URL_4_) and force him to wear it. \n\nAnyway, if you’d like to read about the history of knitting, here are the two books: \n\n* *A History of Hand Knitting* by Richard Rutt, from 1987 and EXTREMELY British \n\n* *Knitting by the Fireside and on the Hillside: A History of the Shetland Hand Knitting Industry c.1600-1950* by Linda G. Fryer, from 1994 and not so terribly British ", "Sorry this is a tad lazy, but I've written on Chinese immigrant prostitution a few times in the past on /r/askhistorians, so I'm going patch together my previous posts on the topic. Excuse the lack of context, these were all answers to distinct questions that were not 100% about prostitution.\n\n > One type of Chinese slavery that did occur with more frequency, even after the passage of the 13th amendment, was the sexual slavery of Chinese prostitutes. As with anything, the individual quality of life for these prostitutes varied, but was of course abysmal. They were often beaten, abused, etc. The prostitutes came from China (typically southern, Cantonese-speaking provinces like Guangdong). They were usually lured over--either with trickery or outright kidnapping, made to sign a pretty malicious contract, and worked for somewhere around 3-5 years, during which time they were completely the property of the brothel owner, or \"pimp\" to use the modern-day terminology.\n > I am not aware of any black prostitutes in California at this time (though I'm sure they existed), so I can't speak to that. I can tell you that Chinese prostitutes had a better time within the Chinese community than white prostitutes had in the white community. The Chinese prostitutes were usually prostitutes due to family necessity--their homes in China couldn't take care of them, the family needed money, etc. The Californian Chinese community knew this, and thus treated the Chinese prostitutes not as \"dirty whores\" the way some white prostitutes were looked at, but instead as disadvantaged women, trying to do what was right for the family.\n\n.\n\n > In the earlier days of Chinatown, the Chinese quarter had a significant seedy underbelly, which had things like opium dens. One of the businesses more frequently attended by whites were the brothels. Rumors that Chinese vaginas were shaped differently than American ones led to the popularity of the \"ten-cent lookee\"--providing a cheap sexual outlet for young white laborers, sailors, et al.\n\n.\n\n > Because of the under-the-table nature of prostitution, as well as Chinese presence in general, it's hard to estimate how many women served a prostitutes. If we look at the numbers and err on the side of more prostitution, we can get a figure as high as 85% for the peak percentage of women serving as prostitutes (this number is specific to San Francisco). This percentage declined over time, as more women came and started taking the roles of housewives or even laborers and wage-earners.\n\nExcuse me for offering such a dismal portion of \"women's work\"!", "While my post won't compare to Caffarelli's, my favorite time to study in history was WWII, and place would be Germany, the United States, and Great Britain. Most of us know how the role of Women changed in the United States and Great Britain with women moving into the jobs held by men because the men were all off fighting the war, as well as the women working industrial jobs due to the huge demand for heavy industrial products thanks to the war, but the change of roles in Nazi Germany for women is quite different, and very interesting. In Nazi Germany, women actually went away from the workforce and back to being housewives, a change rarely seen during wartime. Hitler saw no purpose or reason for women to work, and their main job was to take care of the house and MOST importantly, produce children. That is, only if they were of Aryan descent. Women deemed \"unpure\" that wouldn't be necessarily prosecuted under Nazi rule (so not jews, gypsys, etc.) but still deemed second class citizens because they were not of Aryan blood would sometimes undergo forced sterilization. To enforce this, all marriages had to be approved by local government officials, and if a member of the SS was seeking a bride, they potential bride had to undergo a very extensive background check to ensure they were \"worthy\" to marry and have children with Hitler's elite Aryan soldiers. This whole obsession over large families and motherhood started because in the 1920s Germany had the lowest birthrate in Europe, and this was viewed as a problem by Hitler because he thought a high birthrate meant a better chance at victory, not to mention he wanted future Aryans to continue conquest and to settle in what he envisioned as \"the thousand year Reich\" The Nazis declared mothers day a holiday and started giving gold cross awards to elderly mothers with lots of children. Although the award itself was not valuable and held little meaning, it was viewed as a prestigious honor and encouraged women to have children. This along with extensive state propaganda, and a plenitude of financial benefits to young women deemed worthy to have children made the German birthrate take off from it's extremely low point in the 1920s and early 30s. There was a sort of cult of motherhood in place, and it was very desirable and encouraged to have a large family. In fact, the term family was reserved for couples with four or more children. While this may seem off topic since the topic of this thread was Women's work and I discussed the birthrate and motherhood in Nazi Germany, it's really not as that WAS women's jobs in Nazi Germany. It was accepted that women and their fertility belonged to the state, and they owed it to the nation to have a large family. (If they met the standards of course). ", "OMG, so I recently got a book about propaganda posters during the Cultural Revolution in China, and in it, there's a section about women as subjects, called \"women hold up half the sky\". I'M SO EXCITED TO TALK ABOUT WOMEN IN MY AREA OF HISTORY OMG YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY.\n\n(I know, I was really informal and rather unbecoming in my tone, but I've been excited to write this post all day, or at least since I saw this thread at eight this morning. Please forgive me for the informality of the preceding paragraph. I'll try to contain my excitement a bit.)\n\n\"Women hold up half the sky\" was a propaganda slogan that came into prominence during the Cultural Revolution in China. This was yet another way in which women's roles had been changed, continuing a tradition of redefining a women's place stemming from discussions on how to make China a stronger country in the 19th century.\n\nSome background. Women and their role in society has been a part of national debate and intellectual discussion since the late 19th century. Their status was linked to the country's prosperity and health (of sorts). Intellectuals came to believe that the Chinese woman, with her bound feet and her restrictions encoded in Confucian ideology, was a sign of China's backward nature. As such, it was believed that reforming or revolutionizing her status would lead to a stronger, more modernized China. Reforms included abolishing the concubine system, banning the practice of foot binding, educating women, free choice marriage instead of the arranged marriage system, the right to divorce, and encouraging women to take part in the political -- and outer -- sphere. Most of these early reform efforts were led by men, although some women did take part (both on the Nationalist side and the Communist side).\n\n(I'm getting rather off topic, but if you're curious about this topic, I highly recommend the book *Engendering the Chinese Revolution, Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s* by Christina Kelley Gilmartin. The focus is on the Communist Party's gender politics, but there's a chapter in there that does discuss how the Communists and Nationalists worked together to advance women's rights during the First United Front of the 1920s.)\n\nAnyways, so the Communists come into power, brought about various reforms such as the Marriage Law of the 1950s and the land reforms (which allowed women to own land), etc etc etc. Now we get to the topic of this post: propaganda posters!\n\nThe Cultural Revolution had new goals for women, new roles. Women were being encouraged to take on traditionally masculine professions, to stop wearing feminine dress, and to otherwise help build a better Communist nation. For a woman to act more masculine is to lead revolution; being concerned with things like beauty and fashion were seen as bourgeoisie and otherwise *bad*. Because of this, many of the women depicted in these posters have short hair and are dressed in clothes that don't emphasize curves or the feminine form. Furthermore, attention wasn't being drawn to her because she was a woman, but because she was accomplishing tasks that would further state goals and lead to revolution and another new China. Whether she was working in the capacity of an agricultural worker, a student, an air force pilot, an electrical worker, a chemist, or more, she was furthering revolution. It didn't matter what her sex was; what mattered was whether she could do these jobs. And as these propaganda posters show, the Chinese Communist Party believed that she *could*. She held up half the sky, remember?\n\nThis time period saw the introduction of the Iron Girl, a woman who was able to take on jobs in heavy industry, construction, and agriculture alongside men. She was able to do the same work that the men did, and she did it well. She was the epitome of what an ideal woman should be during this time period: more masculine, equal in status alongside men, and holding her half of the sky. These Iron Girls were the subject of many propaganda posters, serving as a prominent symbol of the Chinese Communist Party's gender ideology during this period.\n\nHowever, when the Cultural Revolution came to an end, the Iron Girl served as a symbol on what was wrong with Party ideology prior to economic reforms. Femininity became an important trait again, with publications emphasizing that men and women were inherently different from one another. Instead of being held up to the standards of men, people during the 1980s believed that a new standard should be made for women to live up to, in order to account for this \"inherent difference\" between the sexes. (See: *Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s* by Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter, which discusses this topic at length).\n\n[For the curious, here's a small sample of posters from the time period (with apologizes in advance for using an iPod camera instead of setting up my scanner/printer).](_URL_0_) ", "Once again I'll deal with some hockey history. This is about Marguerite Norris, the first woman to have her name engraved on the Stanley Cup.\n\nNorris' father was James Norris, Sr. Through a series of questionable business dealings that aren't relevant here, he had control of three of the six teams in the NHL when he died in 1952. To sort this out, his sons had to relinquish control over his initial, and favourite, team, the Detroit Red Wings. James' 24-year-old daughter Marguerite was named president of the team. Ostensibly this was done so the brothers, James, Jr. and Bruce, could exert control over the Red Wings; she was just supposed to be a figurehead.\n\nHowever that didn't work, and she took her job seriously, while ignoring her brothers. Already a strong team (they won the Stanley Cup in 1950 and 1952), the Red Wings won the Cup again in 1954 and 1955.\n\nBy this time the Norris brothers, and the GM of the Red Wings, Jack Adams, had had enough of a woman running the team, and worked to oust her. James, Jr., or Jimmy as he was known, sold his share of the Red Wings to Bruce in exchange for shares in the Chicago Black Hawks. This gave Bruce enough leverage in the Red Wings to appoint himself president of the team, demoting Marguerite to Vice-President, a largely meaningless role. With the Norris' still controlling three of the teams (and they would until the mid-1960s), the NHL was sometimes referred to as the \"Norris House League,\" and not in a positive manner (not that it helped; except for 1961, no Norris-controlled team would win the Cup again).\n\nMarguerite kept on with the team until 1957, when an abortive attempt by several players, including key members of the Red Wings, to form a players' union fell through. She opposed Bruce's reaction, which was to trade the offending players away, and resigned shortly after. Detroit would then endure decades of poor play and humiliation, and not win the Stanley Cup again until 1997 (the Norris family sold the team in the early 1980s).", "Well, I had done a little prepping for questions about the role of women in the Spanish Civil War, and then no one asked about it in the AMA! So while it doesn't 100 percent fit, here is a bit I had already done a rough write-up of.\n\nViews on gender roles between the Nationalists and Loyalists were quite stark in their differences. Spain had been way behind the rest of the west in terms of women's rights, but the rise of the Republic in 1931 set the country on a crash course of liberalization - one of the major criticism of the Popular Front from the right prior to the war. By the mid-30s, Spain was at the forefront of women's liberation!\n\nIn the case of the Loyalists, progressive attitudes saw women not only being encouraged to work outside the home in in formerly male dominated jobs such as factories, but in some factions (especially the Anarchist CNT-FAI), women fought side by side with men in the militias as they battled the Nationalists. This would become less common however with the consolidation of forces under PCE (Communist) control later in the war.\n\nWhile the Nationalists did encourage women to contribute to the war effort as well, it was much more constrained within framework of traditional domesticity. The Auxilio Social, for instance, was a humanitarian arm of the Falange’s “Seccion Femenina”, and provided nursing and relief work for both soldiers and civilians in Nationalist controlled areas. Such work was only for young, unmarried women, and leaders made clear that a woman’s most important role remained in the home with her family.\n\nWith the defeat of the Loyalists, what changes had happened were quickly reversed. Women were back to being seen as mothers and wives, and lost the equality that they had briefly enjoyed. Spain would again fall behind the rest of the west - only women who were heads of households would be allowed to vote until the 1970s.", "Well I'll shoot. Women had huge networks of seed exchange as part of the settlement of the west. Women would be all alone on these absurdly isolated farms and one of the ways they would keep materially in touch was exchanging seeds for various crops, vegetables, decorative plants, and flowers! It would be an incredibly difficult project, but someday when tenure is assured and/or I have tons of time, I'd love to travel the country digging through archives to compile a history of women's seed networks across the spreading US through the 19th to twentieth century!\nsighhhhh . . . . . . ", "So this is one of my favorite stories. It's about a woman named Barira, who was a slave in Arabia in the early 600s. Her example became an important legal precedent for early Islamic scholars. The first scholar to organize stories about Muhammad into a collection of precedents for use by jurists (the *Sahih al-Bukhari*, c.840s) included the story of [Barira](_URL_0_) in 33 different places, suggesting just how important he thought it was.\n\n > Aisha said:\n\n > \tBarira had come to her seek help with her emancipation contract. She had to pay five ounces (of gold) in five yearly installments. Aisha said to her, “Do you think that if I pay the whole sum at once, your masters will sell you to me? If so, then I will free you and your *wala’* (loyalty) will be for me.” Barira went to her masters and told them about the offer. They said that they would not agree to it unless her *wala’* would be for them.\n\n > \tAisha continued: I went to God’s Messenger and told him about it. God’s Messenger said to her, “Buy Barira and manumit her. The *wala’* will be for the liberator.” God’s Messenger then got up and said, “What about those people who stipulate conditions that are not present in God’s laws? If anybody stipulates a condition which is not in God’s laws, then what he stipulates is invalid. God’s conditions are the truth and are more solid.”\n\nThis story doesn't tell us much about Barira's day-to-day work. Other stories about the life and sayings of Muhammad make it clear that some slave women worked as cooks, fortunetellers, household managers, prostitutes, shepherds, tanners, and wet nurses. Not all this work was licit, but Barira's example shows that slave women could engage in these or other types of work to earn their own money, and eventually to buy their freedom.\n\nWhat I think is even more interesting about this story is the opportunities taken by both Barira and Aisha (one of Muhammad's wives). Barira, a slave woman, negotiates and enters into a contract with her masters (i.e. she's partially owned by several different people). Aisha herself has access to what seems to be a substantial sum of money. Between the two of them, they negotiate not only for Barira's freedom, but they also establish who will receive Barira's *wala’*. This is an important relationship, similar to the patron/client relationships of antiquity, and it guarantees that Barira will still have someone obligated to provide for her once she's free. In return Aisha will receive a client obligated to support her, including providing food, hospitality, and requested services. And the hadith ends with Muhammad standing on a pulpit, affirming that these two women had the right to enter into such an agreement, purchasing Barira for manumission and clientage, even on the false condition that her *wala’* will go to her previous owners.\n\nSo although the story of Barira doesn't tell us about the particular labor that women were doing, it does tell us a bit about their legal personhood, their abilities to enter into contracts, and their abilities to accumulate and discharge wealth. Altogether, I think it's a very surprising precedent for what women should be able to do, set by none other than a slave woman laboring at the birth of Islam." ] }

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[ "http://www.worldcat.org/title/never-done-a-history-of-american-housework/oclc/7976057", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/trivia" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dv7gtrv" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Jousting armour typically had excellent neck and forearm protection. As you note, it would be very dangerous to not have it.\n\nOne example of one of Henry's jousting armours:\n\n_URL_4_\n\nI believe this is the armour he wore for jousting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold tournament.\n\nJousting armours could be field armours (i.e., armours intended for battle) with extra pieces of armour to provide more protection. On example of such additional protection is this *grandguard*:\n\n_URL_2_\n\nwhich was made for this armour:\n\n_URL_5_\n\n(among the 89 photos of this armour on that page, you will see some with this reinforcing piece, and other additional pieces, in place). The grandguard provides additional protection for the left shoulder and neck. The armour it is made for already has excellent neck protection. With this, it has even more excellent neck protection. The real-life Henry VIII would not have put up with the armour in the TV series!\n\nJousting helmets could also be made specially for jousting. For example,\n\n_URL_1_\n\nand\n\n_URL_0_\n\n(this type is often called a \"frog-mouth helm\").\n\nHenry VIII took his combat sports very seriously, and could afford the best in available armour, and his armours show this. Two further examples of this are this armour:\n\n_URL_6_\n\nand his \"spacesuit\" armour:\n\n_URL_3_\n\nwhich is remarkable for its thorough coverage of the insides of joints (which are often unprotected, or protected by mail \"voiders\" in field armours).\n\nEven with that superb protection, jousting was still dangerous. Henry VIII suffered a serious accident in a joust in 1536 when his horse fell on him, resulting in a leg injury and possibly a brain injury. The possible connection between the accident and his later tyranny has been discussed in various documentaries and web articles, but as discussed earlier, here, by u/rbaltimore in r/AskHistorians/comments/4i4e1w/was_henry_viiis_jousting_accident_in_1536_really/ and also elsewhere (e.g., Suzannah Lipscomb, *1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII*, Lion, 2009, who points out that Henry was on the way to tyranny already), it doesn't seem likely. An earlier accident, in 1524, where he was hit in his helmet while his visor was up, has also been blamed (see Lipscomb)." ] }

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[ [ "https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-36557.html", "https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-17505.html", "https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-41076.html", "https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-19.html", "http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/images/HenryVIIIarmor02.jpg", "https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-11384.html", "https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-20.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cka5url" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I think /r/tipofmytongue might be a better place for this." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctc40mw", "ctc814s" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "The conquest of Italy started off well in 536 with the quick taking over of Sicily and then Naples after some resistance. Once Belisarius reached Rome however things slowed down. He entered the city unopposed but there were significant challenges in holding they city. Food first of all there was the issue of feeding the poplulation and secondly the wall circuit of Rome was enormous and the city itself had no gates. There was a one year siege of the city (537-538) which was successfully repelled.\n\nBelisarius eventually conquered most of Italy by 540 including Ravenna the capital.\n\nSo the initial conquest was only 4 years long but holding the gains would prove difficult and wars would last two decades. See this wikipedia article on the Gothic wars for more in depth information:(_URL_0_)\n\nCompared to the conquest of Africa where the Vandals had only two fortified cities (Hippo and Carthage), the Goths left the walls of the Italian cities intact and thus had more strongholds to retreat to and retaliate from.\n\nThe Goths also had allies such as Franks and Persians who would distract the empire and force resources elsewhere.\n\nLastly there is the problem of Justinian not trusting his generals' loyalties and splitting up armies in between them. The generals did not always cooperate either and at one point many just holed up in their own cities with their treasure and individually knocked out. [There is a fun little reference to this in computer science known as the byzantine general problem ](_URL_1_)\n\nLuckily we have great sources primary on this era thanks to Procopius's *Wars* and *Secret History* and his being present with the armies.", "I would put most of the blame on Belisarius. Justinian's decree would have given North Italy (Po Valley?) to the Goths, which would have acted as a buffer state. The Empire would have acquired the rest of Italy at a point when the costs of operations was light. But Belisarius' disobedience of Justinian and treachery to the Goths galvanised resistance. Collins also point out that it's also possible Belisarius was going to accept the Western Emperorship but could not get support from his army, half of the officer of which did not trust him.* Procopius blames Justinian's jealousy of course, but considering a renew Persian War was looming and Belisarius was ordered to take over the Persian front and reinforce it with his Gothic captives, jealousy or not it was an incredibly sound decision.\n\nThe Goths elected Baduila (Procopius calls him Totila) a far more competent leader than the previous two Belisarius faced (the first one, Theodehad, it seems had be wholly incompetent), who went on the offensive with the empire distracted in the East. Belisarius returned to Italy later, but without adequate forces or the divergent campaigns of his first conquest due to the eastern needs, empire suffering from plague and economic down turn, and/or Justinian's jealousy and not trusting Belisarius anymore.\n\n**Early Medieval Europe* by Roger Collins." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_War_(535%E2%80%93554)#Fall_of_Sicily_and_Dalmatia_to_the_Byzantines", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance#Origin" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d3ez2po", "d3ffzpi" ], "score": [ 49, 2 ], "text": [ "Great question!\n\nThe answer to this will depend firstly on when in the way you're asking about, and secondly on what scale you grade an army's capabilities on. \n\nAt the start of the war, the Continental Army was, by almost every standard, terrible. The army that amassed outside Boston and later fought around New York City had poor officers, little discipline, uncertain supplies, and a patchwork of enlistment contracts that made its size unpredictable at best and doomed to extinction at worst. While the army won at Bunker Hill, that was more a testament to Gage making the wrong decision (a frontal assault), then lacking the manpower to launch a flank attack. Around New York, the Continentals were repeatedly outfought bad outmaneuvered by the British and Hessian armies, even in the wooded and broken terrain that was supposed to favor American troops. In one of the war's most catastrophic defeats, poor command and control of the army led to a force of 3,000 Americans staying in Fort Washington well after the position should have been abandoned. A Hessian assault force captured this garrison, and and an even more valuable cache of supplies, in one afternoon with minimal casualties. \n\nEven in the early years of the war, the Continental Army showed signs of promise. Knox's transport of 200 cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston during the winter of 75-76 was a master stroke that effectively created the army's artillery branch in one go. Patriot troops captured Montreal and nearly seized Quebec in a daring and difficult winter campaign. Individual units fought well during the New York campaign, and American troops consistently demonstrated the ability to rapidly build large fieldworks. Washington's winter campaign in 76-77 saw a hardened core of veteran survivors of the Battles of New York surprise and out-maneuver well-commanded British forces in Southern New Jersey, doing permanent harm to the British war effort by making them look unable to hold territory the conquered or to defend the loyalists who publicly opposed the rebellion. Continentals stalled and swarmed a British attack towards Albany in the Battles of Saratoga, while Americans managed to make fighting retreat d at the Brandywine and Germantown I that fall of 77. \n\nBetween 1778 and the end of the war in 1783, the Continental army got more technically proficient as it professionalized. The Continentals fought the best units of the British Army to a draw on the open field at Monmouth, made successful night attacks at Stoney Point and Yorktown's Redoubt #10, and demonstrated incredible resiliency in the \"fight, get beat, get up and fight again\" chase across the Carolinians. At Yorktown, the Americans laid an exceptionally smooth formal, conventional siege, arguably the defining trait of military craft in the 18th century. \n\nWhy, then, do I still have reservations about calling the Continental Army good? First and foremost, their performance was inconsistent. Gates bungled the Battle of Camden in catastrophic fashion. While Morgan and Greene did led Cornwallis on an epic chased across the Carolinians, they could not stop him from invading Virginia, freeing thousands of slaves, and nearly capturing Thomas Jefferson as he fled off his plantation. \n\nMost importantly, the Continental Army grew increasingly mutinous in the latter half of the war. Between 1780 and 1783, the Pennsylvania Line mutinied twice abs the New Jersey line once in situations that stretched for days and resulted in some loss of life. Connecticut troops rioted in their camps at Morristown and West Point. The officers of the army gave some support to a plan by one of Gates' aides to march on Congress if they weren't guaranteed pensions. \n\nIn short, if I were drafting an army for a fantasy league of 18th century empires, I would not take the Continental Army. Their greatest victories involved either surviving defeat or substantial French assistance. They frequently seethed with discontent, as mutiny never seemed far away for both Continental soldiers and their officers. \n\n**Sources**\n\nMartin and Lender, *A Respectable Army*\n\nFischer, *Washington's Crossing*\n\nNiemeyer, *America Goes to War*", "Follow up: Why was it said that the Civil War armies made a miserable show compared to European armies? I thought the Civil war is considered one of the first \"modern\" wars." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e8cx328", "e8dc0b8" ], "score": [ 2, 22 ], "text": [ "Related question, how and when did the practice of vegetarianism and similar diets go from being associated mostly with religious asceticism to being a non-denominational choice based on animal rights? Basically, if ancient arguments for vegetarianism were that it was unclean or sinful, how did that turn into the modern argument that animals should be respected as sentient creatures?", "Although there are some of the probably older traditions around the world (like ancient Indian jainism, which advocated a path of non-violence towards all living beings, animals and humans alike) I'll limit my answer to ancient Greek philosophy – field of my academical interest.\n\nWe'll start with Pythagoras (Samos, c. 570 – c. 495 BC), presocratic philosopher who, same as Socrates, didn't write down his thoughts, but had a faithful bunch of students and followers to whom we own his historical record. Dicaearchus (Aristotle's pupil) wrote how Pythagoras': „most universally celebrated opinions, however, were that the soul is immortal; then that it migrates into other sorts of living creature \\[...\\]“\n\nNow in this, his doctrine of the transmigration of souls (*metempsychosis*), lies bio-ethical stance on killing animals. For one more example of the metempsychosis doctrine we can observe quote from Empedocles (c. 490 – c. 430 BC): „For already have I once been a boy, and a girl, and a bush, and a fish that jumps from the sea as it swims.“ \n\nThe important part of this doctrine is that it *proclaims personal survival of bodily death.* By Xenophanes' writing considering this context, Pythagoras even recognized the dog as one of his late friends. Now, if I held this opinion, we can see how easy it would be for me to defend non killing and farming animals – how can I eat a chicken, if there's possibility that that chicken was my mother?\n\nBoth Empedocles and Pythagoras were vegeterians. By Empedocles' surviving fragments, which are concerned with „not killing living creatures“, we learn that we are enjoined to abstain from „harsh-sounding bloodshed“, to avoid sacrifice and moreover, we must not eat meat, beans or bay leaves. As explained, the sheep you slaughter and eat was once a man, and once, perhaps, your son or your father. That said, to avoid patricide and filicide you must avoid all bloodshed. \n\nPythagorean school was an interesting mix of philosophy and mysticism, with an unique set of rules, such as not taking roads which public uses (out of fear of being defiled by the inpure, as Aristotle explains), dietary restrictions, vows of silence for new initiates, etc., and I encourage you to read further on this funky crew.\n\nFor now and to conclude, let's jump few centuries forward to confront Empedocles and Pythagoras with Aristotle. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) assigned to men and animals the faculty of sentience (capacity to suffer), but which gives men a title to moral consideration. That means animals don't have rationality or moral qualities which could match ones that we find in humans. He argued how plants are created for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of men. What he did is establish some sort of hierarchy, taxonomical categorization - *scala naturae* (or Great Chain of Being) and at the top of that chain are masters who are gifted with rationality – men.\n\nAs we can see, Aristotle's position that humans and animals create two opposite moral circles, one rational and one non-rational is directly clashed with Pythagoras' and Empedocles' stance. To further this ancient debate, Aristotle's pupils, Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC) argued also for vegeterianism, as he tried to explain how animals can feel same as men do and thus killing them is morally wrong. These are the beginnings of the ethical debate of killing animals in Western philosophy, and further thinkers followed in next centuries – Seneca, Plutarch, Plotinus and Porphyry, to name ancient Roman ones, for example.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Sources:**\n\n & #x200B;\n\nJonathan Barnes, *The Presocratic Philosophers*, Routledge, 1979.\n\nTerence Irwin, *The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study*, Oxford, 2007.\n\n*Historia Animālium*, Aristotle\n\nRobert Audi, *The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy*, Cambridge, 1999." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "djt4q2u" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "[This question came up about a year ago](_URL_0_), although it's a good question that can certainly merit more discussion.\n\nFor Italy, the short answer is, \"When Napoleon crowned himself King of Italy.\" Prior to then the concept of an Italian language and culture was solely the purview of a small intellectual elite, who would have nonetheless identified more with their local identity more so than a common one spanning the whole peninsula. " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/47f42y/what_did_italy_and_germany_mean_before_the/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnpvxr4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The IJN used several ships captured from the British, Dutch and Americans as convoy escorts. These weren't captured in the traditional sense - they were never boarded. Instead, they were scuttled in port by their former owners when capture of the port seemed likely. The Japanese would later salvage them, and press them into service against their former owners. \n\nThe RN lost two ships in this way. HMS Thracian was on station at Hong Kong in December 1941. She remained at Hong Kong to provide fire support to the garrison, while the remainder of her squadron left for Singapore. She was scuttled after being heavily damaged by Japanese aircraft. She would be refloated in July 1942, and operated as patrol boat PB-101. She was recaptured in Yokosuka in 1945, and scrapped in 1946. The river gunboat HMS Moth would also be captured at Hong Kong, and operated on inland waterways in Japanese-occupied China. \n\nThe USN lost six ships in this way. USS Stewart, a Clemson class destroyer, fled the Philippines, and operated with ABDA forces in Indonesia. Heavily damaged after the Battle of the Bandung Strait, she was put into a floating drydock in Surabaya. She was not repaired before Java fell, and the drydock was scuttled with her inside. She was raised in 1943, and put back into service as PB-102. She would also be recaptured at the end of the war, and sunk as a target in 1946. The minesweeper USS Finch, fleet tug USS Genesse and Philippine customs vessel Arayat would be captured in Manila in various states of repair. They would enter Japanese service as PB-103, PB-107 and PB-105 respectively. Two gunboats, the USS Wake and USS Luzon were also captured, and put into service as the gunboats Tatara and Karatsu. Tatara fulfilled a similar role to the ex-HMS Moth, while Karatsu operated in the Philippines. PB-107 was destroyed by American carrier aircraft in Manila Bay at the start of November 1944, while PB-105 would be sunk by PT boats at the end of the month while escorting a convoy near Leyte. USS Finch would be sunk by aircraft from TF-38 while escorting a convoy off Vietnam in January 1945. Four Dutch ships were also captured, including one destroyer and three patrol boats. Another ship, the minesweeper Regulus, would be captured while under construction.\n\nWhile purpose built warships were repurposed, in some cases merchant ships could be reused. The first escort carrier was built by the RN on the hull of a merchant ship captured from the Germans. The banana carrier Hannover was captured in the Caribbean in 1939. She was operated by the Merchant Navy until January 1941, when she was selected to become an escort carrier. She was the first to enter service, being commissioned in June 1941. She was renamed HMS Audacity in service. Audacity would operate with the RN for 6 months, escorting convoys to Gibraltar. Her fighters claimed 7 German aircraft before she was sunk escorting convoy HG76 by U-751.\n\nSources:\nTabulated Records of Movement for the Japanese Navy, available at [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) - look under the sections for escorts and gunboats.\n\nThe Fleet Air Arm Handbook 1939-1945, David Wragg, 2003, Sutton Publishing." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.combinedfleet.com/kaigun.htm", "combinedfleet.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "en6czra" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "I'll try to answer your question, sorry if it doesn't satisfy you.\n\nFirst, despite its name (and what was believed to be by Arab and Turkish nationalist historiography), there was no general \"Arab Revolt\" against the Ottoman Empire. Firstly, Husayn, the leader of the revolt, was not an Arab nationalist, and he did not adopt the ideology of Arabism. He was an ambitious dynast who used his Islamic status as a *sharif* and the *amir* of Mecca in an attempt to acquire a hereditary kingdom or principality for his family. He even stated that his objective was to free the caliph from the \"atheistic\" clutches of the CUP regime rather than overthrowing him. Second, Although clandestine support for the revolt existed in some parts of Syria, Husayn’s call failed to generate any organized or widespread response in the Arabic-speaking provinces. Many Arab public figures even accused Husayn of being a traitor and condemned his actions as dividing the Ottoman-Islamic Empire at a time when unity was crucial. Rather than a popular uprising against the Ottoman Empire, the Arab Revolt was a more narrowly based enterprise relying on tribal levies from Arabia and dominated by the Hashemite family. Huge subversion among Arabs in the Ottoman army as had been expected by the British Arab Bureau never materialized, even after Sharif Hussein’s revolt in 1916. No Arab units of the Ottoman army came over to Hussein, and from British intelligence memorandum, many Arab soldiers continued to demonstrate loyalty not only to Islam but also to the Ottoman government. Except for a few thousand tribesmen, most Arabs remained loyal to the empire during the traumatic events of the times\n\nIn my knowledge, the Arab mobilization during the First World War was less researched, and the fragmentary evidence we have doesn't help. However, using a general calculation, the Ottoman armed forces would have comprised by 47% Turks and Anatolian Muslims, 37% Arabs, 8% Ottoman Greeks, 7% Armenians and 1% Jews. The motivation for the Arabs to join the Ottoman army varied.\n\nSome enthusiastically joined, motivated with nationalist fervour or *jihad* propaganda. In Damascus, the population was opposed to Great Britain, Russia and France while the Muslim population of Palestine held anti-British feelings as well. With the onset of the war, propaganda and rumours filled the town that the army intended to invade Egypt and free it from the British rule. The propaganda succeeded in winning the wholehearted support of the Arab Muslims and soldiers, a few weeks before the expedition the enthusiasm and excitement of the people reached a ‘fever pitch’ in Jaffa. Parades and celebrations of all kinds in anticipation of the triumphal March into Egypt were taking place and the enmity against the Entente states was at the centre of the propaganda. Even Arabs that made bitter remarks against Germany for not helping the Ottomans during the war against Italy soon underwent a change and they came to realize that the Ottomans had taken up arms against Russia and that Russia was considered first and foremost the arch-enemy. Reports on German victories also had a powerful effect on them. Similar propaganda was directed at the soldiers who would invade Egypt since many of the Arab soldiers were not acquainted with the disciplined character of military life. To increase their enthusiasm, Cemal Pasha, the theater commander used both jihad propaganda and the argument that the Egyptians were ready to revolt against British rule. He had many Arab scholars preach to the Arab soldiers before and during the first attack against Egypt. These military employees strolled through the camps and delivered vehement speeches. Their orations were so influential among the common Arab soldiers that some had fits of hysteria due to the excited preaching.\n\nOn the other hand, some were also forcefully mobilized with no other choice. These forced conscripts had almost no option but to join the army. The alternative was often death by starvation. Moreover, the conscripts, isolated in their camp life, developed a critical distance from the normative ethics of their original communities when they moved to the margins of major cities like Alexandria and Cairo. Families also mourned the loss of their sons, who were the backbone of the family. They dodged conscription with hiding in villages, prepared hiding places in the houses, fields, caves, with Bedouin families or in other out-of-the way places. When apprehended, suspected draft evaders were usually convicted by military court and often sentenced to flogging. Many also mutilated themselves to avoid draft, but since the ultimate consequence of capture was often military service, applying effective deterrent measures was nearly impossible. Many also avoided draft by moving to Mecca and Medina, as the the cities were exempted from mobilization. Evidently, the number of young pilgrims to Mecca spiked during recruitment. For the less pious, two popular options for circumventing military service remained substitution (sending a personal replacement) and payment of forty to fifty liras, which get increasingly higher as the war progressed. For the non-Muslims, changing nationalities, fleeing abroad, or paying the individual exemption fee was the common course to avoid draft\n\n**Sources:**\n\n*A History of the Modern Middle East 6th Edition* by William Cleveland and Martin Burton\n\n*The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War* by Mehmet Beşikçi\n\n*A Land of Aching Hearts* by Leila Tarawi Faraz" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5h0cuj", "d5h5f3y" ], "score": [ 9, 55 ], "text": [ "Hi, can you specify which region/culture you're asking about? That will greatly assist anyone contemplating answering here. Thanks! ", "The average woods-living family would not have been quite as isolated as the family in that movie. Remember that they were explicitly ostracized and thus unable to associate with society. But the average family would have had plenty of opportunities to meet new people. \n\nWhile you did specify time and place, the answer is going to be much the same for any traditional, rural, Christian community. For the record, my specialty is in Italian society of the same period. \n\nFirst, obviously, is church. Every Sunday, at least, they would have made the trip to the nearest one. There they would have gotten to know the other children who lived nearby and probably had their first flirtations.\n\nThen there are dozens of holidays and festivals, both Christian and secular (i.e. Harvest, May Day), that would have brought families from the countryside down to the village centers. As opposed to church, these visits would have given young people the chance to run around and socialize with their peers with minimal adult supervision. \n\nFinally, depending on your father's profession, you might accompany him to town on market days or business trips. This way you would meet his associates, friends, or business partners and possibly their children. If you don't manage to find someone on your own, there is a good chance your future spouse will be selected from this pool. \n\nAs for marriage, if you are a teenage girl around the age of the film's protagonist you generally have two options: you meet a boy and get your father's approval, or your parents set you up with someone and you approve or disapprove. Despite the common conception that the father's word was law, many parents would have been willing to consider their daughters' opinions. This is especially true in the lower classes, where the stakes of marriage were not as high. That is, while the daughter of a duke or rich merchant may have been basically sold off to forge family alliances, a farmer or fur trapper would have wanted little more than a son in law who was well-raised, polite, and had a promising job, or a daughter-in-law who was attractive, healthy, and well-mannered (i.e. obedient--hate to say it, but that's how people thought back then). Research has found that in the Early Modern Era, love marriages were much more common among the poor than the rich." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbmif0t" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Depends how you look at the War of the Roses. In terms of the most distantly related successor, Henry VII was the third cousin once removed of Richard III. However, this took place in the Wars of the Roses when there were often several competing claims, and Henry claimed that Richard was never the rightful king in the first place (though Henry was still only the second cousin of the man he claimed was his rightful predecessor - Henry VI).\n\nScotland had a similar case in the late 13th/early 14th centuries where the main royal line collapsed and the Bruce and Balliol families (both of whom were only distantly related to the previous king) both claimed the throne and fought each other for it.\n\nIn the times of more clearly defined rules, Anne and George I were second cousins.\n\nIf you're looking for a case of a really large \"distance\" between monarchs, then look at France rather than Britain. Britain has a male-preference primogeniture succession law, which means that while men come first, women do count in the line of succession. France historically had what's called Salic Law, meaning only male ancestry counts. This means they've often had to go a longer way to pass on the crown. The biggest example of this was Henry IV, who was a *ninth* cousin once removed from his predecessor Henry III; their closest common male-line ancestor had died over 300 years before." ] }

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[ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUY6HGqYweQ&feature=c4-overview&list=UU2C_jShtL725hvbm1arSV9w" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "ccxx46z" ], "score": [ 112 ], "text": [ "No, not really.\n\nThe \"Feathered Serpent Cult\" is a name that archaeologists and iconographers have given to a pan-Mesoamerican explosion of imagery associated with Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan dating to the Epiclassic period (around the time of the Classic Maya collapse). It appears to be a larger religious movement associated with sacrifice, the ballgame, and the nobility. It's most prominent in Central Mexican sites like Tula and among the cultures of the Gulf Coast such as the Totonac city of El Tajin. Some time during the Early Postclassic a group of people from the Gulf Coast (Putun and Itza peoples, specifically) migrated into the Northern Yucatan and created a kind of hybridized culture with the Maya who were living there. At this time cities like Chichen Itza begin to show an increased focus on Kukulkan and ballgames in imagery.\n\nAlthough it's tempting to see the Feathered Serpent Cult as a kind of Mesoamerican *opus dei*, that's not really accurate. I'm not even sure the word \"cult\" is a fairly accurate descriptor. Feathered Serpent Tradition might be better. Here's Susan Toby Evans (2008:386) discussing this cultural shift:\n\n > Turning to the central Yucatan Peninsula, the motivations for the intrusion of Central Mexican stylistic motifs are more difficult to recover. Large-scale migration seems unlikely. Religious proselytization, in the form of an emphasis upon Central Mexican belief systems, may have been an important factor, but seems secondary to both military conquest and securing trade routes.\n\nThis had virtually nothing to do with the collapse of Classic Maya centers, except that it happened at about the same point in time. The Maya \"collapse\" was fairly localized. The densely populated southern lowlands had a major demographic collapse, but the Northen Yucatan (where the Feathered Serpent \"Cult\" took hold) was largely not affected other than in the loss of trading partners.\n\n* Evans, Susan Toby. 2008 *Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History* 2nd edition. Thames and Hudson." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqrconm" ], "score": [ 31 ], "text": [ "No, for most of the empire the nerds held the political power.\n\nSuccess in Roman politics depended upon education and connections. You had to know the right people, and you met them while attending elite schools that trained you in the rhetorical skills, philosophical knowledge, and deportment necessary to move in elite circles in the Greco-Roman world. This education - *paideia*, in Greek - started with memorization of Homer (or Vergil) and, if completed, was basically a graduate degree in literature and/or philosophy. It required significant expense and years of training to complete. But without it, it was hard to be taken seriously by the ruling elites.\n\nBy the third century, the army was playing a central role in selecting the emperor (in many cases, by deposing the sitting emperor), and it was possible for an uneducated military general to make his way to the top. But these new men struggled to win acceptance from the established senatorial aristocracy, and usually didn't live long before being assassinated and replaced. Education gave you connections and taught you how to get along with the rich and powerful; without it, it was difficult to maintain a powerful position in the heartland of the empire.\n\nOver time, this created something of a cultural divide between educated urban elites and the military families which rose to prominence on the empire's frontiers. Philip von Rummel has argued that many of the fifth-century texts complaining about 'barbarians' are actually talking about these Roman military men who gained power in the army on the frontiers, and whose lack of education earned them harsh criticism from the old, wealthy elites in Rome and other urban centers of power.\n\nIt was only with the division of the western empire into smaller kingdoms ruled by these military generals (in the fifth century) that the 'nerds' finally lost power to the less educated military strongmen.\n\nIf you want to read more, I'd recommend P. Brown, *Power and Persuasion* - a short and well-written book on the importance of education in Roman politics and power." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvvzb1n" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Game of Thrones is a work of fiction and should be treated as such. If you have a question about the historical accuracy of *historical fiction* (e.g. 'How accurate is the Sharpe series of books?' 'How accurate is Stanley Kubrick's portrayal of 18th century Ireland in 'Barry Lyndon'?') you are more than welcome to ask. :)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdihfcp", "cdj1ktb" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Yes, from what I gather after talking to my Hebrew teacher and my Grandfather there was a lot of tension (and there still is) between European Jews how see Israel as a European State in the Mid-east and the Jews from the Levant, North Africa and Persia who see Israel as a modern Middle Eastern state. It comes out in little petty ways like the European Jew would use Arabic curse words because it was a \"dirty\" language and because Hebrew has Curse words (for the record it does) and for the longest time the Israeli currency was named after the old Italian currency. In addition there were groups in Israel who were not happy about the Ethiopian Jews moving to Israel and some groups did not see them as real Jews. ", "Yes, and there still are such tensions today, very much so.\n\nThe European Ashkenazi Jews are generally the dominant group, somewhat sharing this with European Sephardi Jews. Indeed the sound of modern spoken Hebrew is mostly based on the Yiddish of the Ashkenazi of Eastern and Central Europe.\n\nThe Jews who came from the former Soviet Union since the 90's have formed their own community. I've heard a \"western\" Israeli tell that they are perceived not to be Jews at all, only saying they were to get citizenship. No doubt many Middle Eastern Jews are accused of the same thing.\n\nEducation is a prime battleground of this culture war. Many top schools are Ashkenazi, and in some cases flat out refuse to admit Middle-Eastern students. Rabbi Yosef, the leader of the main Sephardi party, Shas, said some years ago that Sephardi should not go to Ashkenazi schools, which would only turn them Ashkenazi!\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3911070,00.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cucbwi1", "cucd32p", "cuci380" ], "score": [ 5, 16, 11 ], "text": [ "I submitted [this question](_URL_1_) awhile ago and only got one reply. You can check it out while you are waiting for a better reply, as I would like one as well. \n\nAs a summary it was said it is unclear if there is a link between them, but the [etymology site](_URL_0_) linked in the reply gives some origins of the word.", "Follow up question: I often see other names refer to different areas, such as Albania (modern Albania, and Caucasian Albania) and Galicia (Easter Europe and Iberian), Is there a reason to name those areas with similar names?", "The Iberian peninsula was named by the Greeks for the Ebro river (Iberos): confusingly they also named the other Iberia, but that is thought to derive from its name in local Georgian-related languages. (And what about the two Georgias?) \n\nAlbania in the Balkans is named in the west for the Albanoi people who inhabited the region in Roman times: locals today call it Shqiperia, so they can't be blamed. The other Albania appears a total mystery, presumably another Greek rendition of a local name, now no longer known. \n\nGalicia in Spain is named for the ancient Gallaeci, cousins to the Gauls (who I'd thought were the source of the name); Galicia in Ukraine/Poland is named after the city of Halich, which may be named after Gauls. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Iberian", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ob6gh/is_there_any_link_between_caucasian_iberia_and/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d43aif7" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "No replies yet so I'll try to offer something.\n\nThere is a lot of uncertainty when exploring what-if scenarios. You can't be sure what may have happened without the efforts of the spies involved. The best example I can give of spies potentially contributing to the peaceful resolution of the Cold War might be the Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project. This may seem counter intuitive, but I'll try to make the case.\n\nCombined, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Greenglass provided Soviet intelligence with a wealth of valuable information from the Manhattan Project, which likely sped up the Soviet development of nuclear weapons significantly (although by how long is hard to say).\n\nThe foundations of the cold war were in place even before WWII had ended, but it was the period from 1946-1949 that really cemented the standoff and lead American policy makers to give up on cooperative engagement. Also during this time the US had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Despite this, the US did not yet have a large enough nuclear arsenal to be confident that it would be decisive in a war with the Soviet Union. It would not be long though before the US had amassed a huge arsenal. However, when the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, the US nuclear monopoly ended, as did any real risk of the US using its nuclear weapons to push the Soviets back.\n\nAlthough the two great powers came very close to the brink of Armageddon a few times, mutually assured destruction effectively made nukes useless in practice, and the stability of mutually assured destruction lasted throughout the remainder of the Cold War. The success of the Soviet spy efforts around the Manhattan Project brought that stability about faster, and there is no telling what could have happened in an alternative history where the US nuclear monopoly lasted another year or two.\n\nOf course, while the Soviet Union's shiny new nukes kept both powers at arm's length, by restraining the US nuclear threat, it also opened the door for conventional warfare. It wasn't long after that North Korea, with the blessing of Stalin, invaded the South." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbgtkkx", "cbh1kx8" ], "score": [ 15, 3 ], "text": [ "Not really, no. The only way the Germans could have scored a victory was to have Russia negotiate for peace after taking Moscow, which the Soviet regime had little intention of doing as it was a fight for the very survival of the Russian nation and Stalin did not want to appear so weak abroad. There was still a massive heavily populated country after Moscow, and the Germans would have had to move further and further East and taken cities like Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Ulfa, Kazan, Novosibirsk, and so on. Given that their supply lines were already at the breaking point before they reached Moscow, this was not an achievable objective, especially with American involvement in the war right around the corner. The entire thing was a fools errand.", "It isn't really about any one point but rather the German/Nazi attitude regarding the Soviet Union. Specifically, Hitler along with many senior officials and officers believed that the USSR was fundamentally weak, both militarily and politically. They they believed the USSR could be defeated in a short campaign, after which all resistance would crumble (not unlike what happened in France). The second part of that was the Nazi reluctance to ask the German people for necessary sacrifices. Women weren't really pressed into the labor force to the same extent that they were in the USSR and other countries. Factories often remained idle for a large chunk of the day. In short, Germany didn't mobilize the full resources of the state because they didn't believe that a \"total war\" was necessary. It was almost as if they started a war with one hand behind their back. \n\nThe Soviets, on the other hand, had the complete opposite approach. They mobilized every resource they had, both manpower and industry, and made a \"total war\" pretty much their goal. Thus, as the casualties of war took their toll, German units were often starved of reinforcements, equipment, fuel and so on. The Soviets, on the other hand, formed hundreds of new divisions to replace those they lost. Eventually the German attitude changed, but by then it was already too late. \n\nTL:DR, I think the biggest mistake that the Germans made wasn't a military one but one of their attitude - their underestimation of the USSR, its potential, and its determination to win. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxzu99p", "cy00khp", "cy0jnft" ], "score": [ 2076, 119, 21 ], "text": [ "It did! It's just more traditionally confined to the North.\n\nThere's not just one Chinese cuisine. Rice cultivation wasn't actually a part of the early Chinese diet at all. There's no word in Sinotibetan languages for rice that isn't a loan. In Tibetoburman they borrowed the vocabulary from Tai languages much later (e.g. \\**na*^1 for wet rice field), and in Chinese the common word for rice 米 is actually originally meaning \"millet\", not \"rice\", and was only later shifted in meaning to \"rice\". This was made easier by the fact that millets had largely been replaced in major parts of the Sinotibetan language family by wheats due to their heartiness in cold climates.^2,3\n\nHave a look at [this map](_URL_0_) showing where wheat is grown most. The areas of East Asia that are dark green are places where you're going to find breads. The Shandong Peninsula, all of Jiangsu province north of the Yangtze and a good chunk of Hebei. There's a folk etymology for 饅頭^4 * màntóu*, a popular steamed bread, that it's actually *Man[chu] tóu*, with *tóu* meaning \"head\", because it entered Chinese cuisine through non-Chinese Northern groups. Actually more people will tell you it was invented by Zhūgě Liàng.\n\nThis and other similar breads such as *bāozi* 包子, the stuffed version of *màntóu*, are popular throughout the region including Korea.\n\nThere's also *ròu jiā mó* 肉夾饃, which is another incredibly popular food in China and pretty much the best thing ever. These are roud breads which are not steamed but instead grilled on a hot plate, and then stuffed with spicy meat and cilantro. They're a notable food from Shǎnxī (Shaanxi) and have become quite popular throughout the Northwest as well as being readily available throughout the country.\n\nThere's also [spicy and non-spicy onion pancakes](_URL_1_) which are again cooked on a hot plate and regularly consumed as a snack. There are other similar pancake-like treats as well but some, such as the Shandong wrap (山東雜糧餅) are getting further away from what we might call bread.\n\nFinally in Taiwan there's a sort of steamed bread sandwich called *koah pau* 刈包. They're awesome but almost certainly a more recent thing in Taiwanese cuisine.\n\nAll of these are made with wheat flour, but grilling in a large oven wasn't always a possibility, and steaming/frying was always more common in Chinese cuisine anyway, so the breads that we have in the region tend to be more reliant on these ways of cooking.\n\nIn the end, the relative scarcity of wheat in the south and the ease of growing multiple rice varieties has lead to rice being seen as a more typical Chinese food, but in reality it was imported from cuisines of other, non-Chinese, groups.\n\n- - - \n\n1. Matisoff, James A (2003) *Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction. Univ of California Press.*\n\n2. Guedesa, Jade A d’Alpoim; Lub, Hongliang; Heinc, Anke M; Schmidt, Amanda H (2015) *Early Evidence for the Use of Wheat and Barley As Staple Crops on the Margins of the Tibetan Plateau.*\n\n3. Sagart, Laurent (2011) How Many Independent Rice Vocabularies in Asia. Rice, vol. 4, pp. 121–133.\n\n4. Note that food vocabulary varies considerably throughout Mandarin dialect areas. Mantou isn't always called mantou, and the word mantou doesn't always mean what I'm talking about here.\n\n(edited to expand a little bit more)", "As a lot of the commenters have pointed out, there's plenty of bread in the Chinese diet. \n\nPiggybacking on the subject of bread, modern loaves of bread require a lot of things. You need an oven which is pretty labor intensive to make. You also need fuel, a lot of it to achieve baking temperatures. For an average person across most of history, baking bread was a pretty laborious task. \n\nPorridge has always been a popular alternative across most cultures and time periods, as have dumplings and noodles because boiling requires a lot less energy (wood, coal, ect). In Mesoamerica, tamales were an easy way to bake bread wrapped up and placed over coals. Most cultures had some variant of a flatbread cooked over a griddle or a tandoor-style cooking device. \n\nOne commonly used solution to the baking problem was to centralize baking in a specific location, giving rise to the professional baker. The Roman dole initially came in the form of measured grain, but eventually a network of state-run bakeries began to churn out bread (stamped with a brand no less). \n\nSpeaking to China specifically, one major issue in Chinese cooking has always been access to cooking fuel. This can be seen in the tendency to cook things at a very high heat for a very short time in order to conserve fuel. Because of that, heating up an oven which requires lots of wood to burn, isn't a common feature in the Chinese cook's repertoire. \n\n", "So, up until about the 1930's there wasnt just one \"Chinese\" culture. (There still isn't, I know, you don't need to lecture me.) China is a huge and diverse area. Parts are tropical, parts are arctic, some wet, some arid, etc. Etc. The majority of the Chinese population has always lived in the south or east, in the wet areas and/or coast. \n\nRice grows very well in wet areas that get a lot of rain, and as a result, rice became a staple in Chinese and much of southern Asian culture. Wheat on the other hand, does not grow well in wet places. So it did not grow well in the more densely populated areas. However if you went north and/or west, avoiding the mountains and desert, there are great grasslands. Reasonable temperatures, but little rain. Ideal conditions for wheat. \n\nThese areas were less densly populated, but wheat was used in place of rice in these areas. However with the nationalist movement, and the idea of \"one china\" taking hold almost a century ago, what was \"Chinese\" was practically set in stone, which is why we think of rice as the Chinese staple, partially because it is, partially because of a unification effort." ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/WheatYield.png", "http://www.meishij.net/zuofa/baibianzaocanxianglajidanjuanbing.html" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmyf1pv" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "A Shays' Rebellion question! My favorite!\n\nThe primary weakness of the existing governmental structure that the rebellion exposed was the inability for the Massachusetts Governor to quickly raise the troops necessary to fight off the rebels.\n\nYou mention that the rebels were fairly easily dispersed once a formidable fighting force was created to opposed them. However, what you're missing is how long it took and the difficulty in creating that force. \n\nGovernor Bowdoin attempted to raise the state's militia after the rebels had begun shutting down courthouses across the state in August/September of 1786, but because the militia was made up of the same kinds of people rebelling, the local units refused to act. I did a fair amount of work on a transcript of a trial in Worcester that took place after the rebellion. There were many leaders of the local militias who were tried for aiding the rebels or participating in the rebellion themselves.\n\nIt is also important to conceive of the rebels as less akin to a dumb \"mob\" and rather think of the event as the rise of an entire oppressed socio-economic class. The latest work on the rebellion tells the story of a deeply shattered economic structure for the Western Massachusetts farmers that was inflamed by a strong power base in Boston. We have a merchant class in charge, and they were simply unwilling to govern for their whole state. This is the framework we should be using the understand the local militias and their reluctance to take up arms against their neighbors.\n\nAfter his own militia failed to act, Governor Bowdoin asked his neighboring states to help by using their militias, but he received no such help. So, lacking a federal army to ask for assistance (remember, we're still in the Articles of Confederation here), Bowdoin has to use the Bostonian merchant's deep pockets to cull together a last-minute force of mercenaries. This group is by General Benjamin Lincoln and eventually marches out in late January 1787. The rebellion is dispersed in early February.\n\nRebels are shutting down courts in August, and it's only until the following year that the state government is able to pull together a force to fight them.\n\nThe reason this reverberated across the nation was a result of this inability for Massachusetts to quickly put an end to the problem themselves (although they eventually did). The concern was that this kind of action could happen in any of the states, and the powerlessness of the states in the face of such an uprising was a troubling thought. The rebels got very close to raiding the federal arsenal in Springfield and had a control over much of the state's courthouses, effectively preventing the state government from functioning in the western 2/3 of the state.\n\nFederalists saw a strong, centralized national government as a way to prevent these kinds of flare ups in the future.\n\nIf you're interested in the macro-level economics of the time period and a even-keeled take on the rebellion, then David Szatmary's [\"Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection\"](_URL_0_) is the seminal work on the real underlying issues of the day. If you are looking for more narratives and individually-based description, then Leo Richards's [\"Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle\"](_URL_1_) is for you.\n\nThis topic is definitely one of my specialities, so I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have or clarify anything I've written above." ] }

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[ [ "http://amzn.com/0870234196", "http://amzn.com/0812218701" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccbhmof" ], "score": [ 52 ], "text": [ "Both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were concerned with healthcare and promoting health in general, for a couple reasons. Firstly, for reasons of natalism. Militarist-expansionist states need a growing population to make up for deaths in war and settle conquered territory, so both the Nazis and the Fascists were keen to promote population growth. \n\n > In 1925 the Italin Fascist regime created the Opera Nazionale Maternita ed Infanzia (ONMI), one of the many fascist organizations that survived into the post-war era. The ONMI combined social welfare with the realization of the regime's demographic aims. It sought to block abortion, to provide medical care and, if possible, involve the fathers of illegitimate children.\n\n > ... the fascists understood that the high infant death rate was a major and preventable depressant on population growth. The rate of infant mortality did decline, this being in part attributable to the policies of the regime but also the long-term rise in the standard of living and health care that had been initiated before fascism.\n\n-Alexander J. DeGrande, [*Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The Fascist Style of Rule*](_URL_0_), p. 79\n\nApart from natalism, the fascist powers also had an ideological interest in health, especially Nazi Germany. This was part of a larger fascist idealization of youth, athleticism, and action. In \"Germany Speaks\", a collection of essays attempting to improve Germany's image and explain fascist thought to the foreign public, the head of the National Socialist Welfare Organization says of health:\n\n > We have faith in the ancient saying that a sound mind and a healthy body are mutually inter-dependent. Our work, therefore, not only teaches our nation the importance of health, both morally and physically, but also enables every individual to obtain a proper idea of his responsibilities towards the nation and towards his family. \n\n > By developing all our intrinsic abilities we make up for our country's lack of valuable raw materials and for our inferior degree of economic and political power as compared with other countries. The more we contribute towards the establishment of fundamentally healthy conditions at home, the stronger and healthier will be the influence exercised by all our national manifestations, be it in the realms of economy or science, in our domestic and our foreign policy.\n\nThis hints at the way some Nazis considered health to be an almost metaphysical concept which could pervade every aspect of life. This was manifested in a variety of government policies and campaigns, from promoting physical education and athletics to anti-smoking campaigns and maternal/infant care campaigns.\n\nOf course, this glorification of health had its dark side in the demonization of disease and disability, which contributed greatly to the eugenics and euthanasia intiatives carried out in the name of public health. And we must not forget the racial dichotomies in Nazi thought which associated the Aryan with health and the Jew with disease, a common theme in antisemitic propaganda. \n\nEDIT: Removed some unnecessary verbiage from the second quote" ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=UB3S7g1p6UYC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=health#v=onepage&q=health&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8xfo29", "c8xhoiz" ], "score": [ 2, 5 ], "text": [ "You pretty much hit it on the head already. The tank was developed to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare, nothing morehere and t was certainly no desire to replace cavalry. In fact, on the Western Front, offensives were planned with cavalry to be used in conjunction with tanks. And they had to be, the tanks of the First World War were for the most part, slow and cumbersome and couldn't be relied upon to exploit a breakthrough should one occur. At Cambrai in 1917, cavalry was supposed to exploit the breakthrough made by the British tanks. The tanks successfully overcame the German defenses but poor planning meant the breakthrough was never realised and the Germans retook the ground. A better example is Amiens in 1918. Tanks, in conjunction with infantry successfully drove a hole through the German lines and achieved a breakthrough. With the mud and tortured landscape left behind and open country ahead, cavalry could actually play a the role it was always meant to play.\n\nMy point is that the tank was developed for no other reason than to overcome the hell of trench warfare. For evidence of this, look at the Eastern Front. Warfare was much more fluid and the front line moved often, with the absence of a stalemate, the development of weapons to overcome the types of problems seen in the west was also absent.", "Designs for tanks actually predate WW1. There were various designs floating around before the war. An Australian (Mole?) had submitted a design for a tank (obviously not called a tank) before WW1 to the British War Department. They told him there was no use for it. Some of these designers were paid royalties after WW1.\n\nHowever, as said, it took the stalemate of WW1 trench warfare for people to start looking around for something that would break it. \n\nOther things were tried first. Not official things, but things done by soldiers. Some took wheelbarrows and stuck, not sure how, steel plates on them and then would try and advance with it. Didn't work out so much. Some took steel plates and tried it with other already existing vehicles. None of these turned out to be very practical. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f1izhvs", "f1jsjif" ], "score": [ 133, 21 ], "text": [ "It is pretty much impossible to know for sure, because, like you said, they didn't have comprehensive population surveys, and we have no records about most people's lives. In particular, we have almost no records of people who couldn't write, because they didn't write anything. So even if we have loads of records of people who *did* write, it's very hard to tell how many *other* people there were who we don't know about it. It's a sampling bias problem that's very hard to deal with. \n\nBut we do have some indications from both Jews and Christians that it was at least popularly perceived that Jews were much more likely to be literate. For example, one twelfth-century Christian writer said: \n\n\"When Christians send their sons to school, they do not send them for the love of God but for lucrative reasons [...] But a Jew, even if he is poor, even if he has 10 sons, will send them all to school, not in order to obtain any benefit, as Christians do, but for the study of the law of God, and not only the sons but also his daughters.\"\n\nIt's hard to tell how literally to take this text. Did he really know that many poor Jews with educated daughters? Maybe. Did he know that Jews care about education and then try to use that to motivate his Christian readers to care more about education? Also maybe. \n\nWe also have a number of Jewish legal texts saying that everybody ought to learn to read so they can read the Torah and rabbinic texts, and that all Jewish communities should appoint someone to teach the young children how to read. But we don't know how much anyone listened to those legal texts. We have a large number of financial documents written by Jews in Hebrew, many of them in non-professional handwriting, which suggest that at least merchants and their clients could read and write and didn't need to hire scribes for everything like many Christians did. But it is very hard to tell how far down that really went in socio-economic classes, and it is very likely that very poor Jews were less likely to be able to read.", "**Short answer:**\n\nThere are all kinds of techniques for assessing the literacy of a historical population. There is, however, no \"average medieval person\" to compare Jews -- or anyone else-- to. The Middle Ages covers a great expanse of space and time, and literacy varies from place to place and from time to time in the nearly thousand years from the end of Antiquity to the Renaissance.\n\n**Discussion:**\n\n > Obviously there weren't any kinds of census on reading ability,\n\nNever underestimate the ingenuity of scholars in finding quantitative proxies. While there were no \"censuses of reading ability\" -- we have an enormous body of legal documents and financial, which often demonstrate whether a particular individual could sign his own name, a marker for the most basic literacy. This gives us a very nice time series for historical literacy, and can be further be broken down by gender and class (since early legal documents often mention individuals' occupations. So David Cressy (writing of early modern England, but the techniques can be applied wherever you have documents) is able to tell us, for example, that:\n\n > The social structure of illiteracy in the diocese of Norwich is clearly established by the study of depositions. Table I shows the percentage in various social categories who could not sign their names, and Table 2 shows the illiteracy of men in some of the most frequently encountered trades and crafts. Only the more common ranks and occupations have been included. Where samples are particularly small, of course, the figures should be treated with due caution. We may be 95 per cent confident that the true illiteracy of yeomen in East Anglia lay in the range 35 +/- 3 per cent but the illiteracy of, say, shoemakers should be more properly estimated as 58 +/- 11 per cent and bricklayers 88 +/- 13 per cent.\n\nThere's also an entire series of scholarly works, the *Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy* which attack the problem of evaluating medieval literacy in all sort of ingenious ways. And have to mention the important study by Buringh and Van Zanden \\[2009\\] -- they run the numbers on book and manuscript production from the 6th through the 18th centuries.\n\nSome of the easily assessed proxies include the numbers of books published, and topics. Books often give you an idea of who it was intended for, no reason to produce a book for someone who couldn't read it. Its often noted that the transition from a medieval manuscript culture, where book production was small and expensive, to a printed book economy where they're plentiful and cheap implies a great deal more literacy. Care has to be taken in estimating earlier literacy- when paper and other materials were expensive, inexpensive and often overlooked media, like wax tablets, were often used. Just because we don’t have paper doesn’t mean people weren’t reading and writing - and some of these other media don’t survive well.\n\nIn terms of religious associations with literacy, Jewish males were commonly literate for religious purposes, but the more useful comparison is with Protestantism. Catholicism didn't require religious literacy for the people (it did for the clergy), and so the rise of literacy in Europe is often associated with both the printing press and Protestantism. But that's too simple as a story-- the role of the Church in education changes during the middle ages, and in later years there's very much an expectation that they'll be fostering education-- looking at England, literacy is increasing significantly even before the Reformation\n\n > As was stipulated in the canons of the fourth Lateran Council, cathedral schools were expected to extend their facilities to any youths who desired instruction in Latin. Although the cathedral clerks alone justified the maintaining of a grammar school, training in Latin was not to be restricted to them. This is frequently expressed in the appointments of the masters: when Bishop Welton appoints Master John of Burdon in 1362 to conduct a grammar school in Carlisle, he lays down no conditions for admission: instruction in Latin is open to 'boys, adults and any others' wishing to learn\n\nSo when you ask \"were X more literate than average\" -- well just where do you get your \"average\"? A slave in Wales in 900 CE? Then yes. Or a Florentine merchant in Paris in 1400? Probably not. \"The average middle ages person\" -- ain't a thing.\n\n**Sources:**\n\nMiner, John Nelson. “Schools and Literacy in Later Medieval England.” *British Journal of Educational Studies*, vol. 11, no. 1, 1962, pp. 16–27.\n\nKaeuper, Richard W. “Two Early Lists of Literates in England: 1334, 1373.” *The English Historical Review*, vol. 99, no. 391, 1984, pp. 363–369.\n\nCressy, David. “Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530-1730.” *The Historical Journal*, vol. 20, no. 1, 1977, pp. 1–23\n\nBROWN, MICHELLE P. “THE ROLE OF THE WAX TABLET IN MEDIEVAL LITERACY: A RECONSIDERATION IN LIGHT OF A RECENT FIND FROM YORK.” *The British Library Journal*, vol. 20, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–16.\n\nBuringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. “Charting the ‘Rise of the West’: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.” *The Journal of Economic History*, vol. 69, no. 2, 2009, pp. 409–445." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "doywyeg" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "As a follow up, were there differences in mental or educational qualifications as well? \n\nI know from [this excellent answer](_URL_0_) by /u/the_howling_cow that the US military often rejected recruits for not meeting literacy qualifications. But I assume that the Soviets, Japanese and even Germans had lower literacy rates among their general population. Did they have looser standards about literacy, and if so, did that affect their performance or what type of tactics they could employ?" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/78motc/its_1944_im_a_young_american_man_i_just_found_out/dov2dk6/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "emx42o6" ], "score": [ 29 ], "text": [ "You can point to some widespread elements that contributed to the war. Social Darwinism, nationalism, militarism may have, to debatable degrees, made the leadership and population of Europe more accepting of the idea of a general conflict. There was likely also an lack of appreciation for the risk of a drawn out exhaustive conflict by some leaders and the general public. While there is some evidence (from quotes from Moltke and other military figures) for instance that the possibility for a long war wasn't totally disregarded, the more popular opinion was that a long war was impossible because no nation could afford it economically. This idea was put forward, perhaps most famously, in *The Great Illusion* by Norman Angell, and in the end I think that we'd have to agree he was largely right if only the actors in the drama had had the foresight to see.\n\nAt a lower level, though, each major player had their OWN specific reasons for accepting the war... things they wanted to get out of it.\n\nAustria-Hungary wanted to punish Serbia for a track record of supporting separatist agitation and terrorism. Austria also strongly (and correctly) suspected, and had some but not enough proof, that elements of the Serb government were actively involved with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Austria also saw an opportunity to strengthen their influence in the Balkan region which might have enabled them (in their own excessively optimistic minds) to build an extended economic zone.\n\nSerbian leaders knew that if they allowed a proper investigation, the Austrians would be able to justify overthrowing the Serb government and installing a puppet (because they knew they were busted). The only hope the Serb government had of retaining it's position was to fight it out and hope the Russians decided to help them and could beat the Austrians. \n\nRussia (who had no treaty with Serbia, so don't \"web of alliances\" this situation) had a desperate need to defend their last remaining proxy in the Balkans and to restore their credibility in the region. After having been seen as letting down the Serbs in 1908 by not contesting the formal annexation of Bosnia by Austria, seen (by previously preferred proxy Bulgaria) as betraying Bulgaria in 1912/1913 in favor of the Serbs during the Balkan Wars, and seen by the Serbs as not supporting them in 1913 when they tried to annex Albania, there was certainly a track record of diplomatic \"failure\" and \"weakness\" growing. The Russians also had long term goals to acquire Constantinople and the Turkish Straits, which were so important to their economy, and a general war could offer at least a restoration of their Balkan influence and possibly the possession of the straits (if the Ottomans joined the Central Powers and if Russia won, of course).\n\nGermany had this encirclement syndrome thing going on. They saw France building up for war with the new 3 year law, in theory leading to a 50% increase in peacetime army size and over time a similar increase in reserve manpower. They saw similar build ups in the Russian force, as well as vast improvements in Russia mobilization speeds that could nearly rival the Germans ability to deploy to the Polish front. Germany also knew that France had been unwilling to fight over Balkan issues in the past (1908, 1913) and that Russia had always backed down in the past. In the opinion of German leadership, if Russia didn't back down this time too then that meant France wanted a war. Germany probably overestimated the future military strength of France (there was a pretty good chance that the 3 year conscription law, which was very contentious when it was passed, wouldn't have lasted long) and definitely overestimated Russian military ability in 1914, but hindsight offers us these advantages.\n\nFrance worried that they would be at risk of losing the Russian alliance after not supporting Russia in 1908 and 1913 during those Balkan crises. France did not have to support Russia in 1914, yet they chose to do so for their own reasons. The record of diplomatic communication and activities of the French ambassador Paleologue show that French officials went so far as to encourage Russia to escalate the situation rather than attempt to calm the crisis. There were also many in France that longed to avenge the defeat of 1871 and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, but sometimes that influence gets overplayed. That sort of thinking did exist, however, in the public and in government.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo all the major players had reasons that, in June/July 1914, they thought were of strategic importance either politically, militarily, or both. They all had opportunities the step away from the war, but each decided the potential gains were worth the risks that war entailed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d03fhk9" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "The commander of the 18th NC, Major then Col John Barry retained hi s command till the end of the war and was both wounded and served as acting Brigadier General in the Overland Campaign. He died soon after the war and supposedly continuously expressed remorse.\n\nThe Brigade commander General James Lane was actually one of the young stars of Lee's Army. The youngest flag officer he on multiple occasions served as acting division commander and received multiple wounds. \n\nAfter the war he was recruited as the first Commandant of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, today known as Virginia Tech, and he also served a time as a professor at Auburn after being forced to leave VAMC.\n\nEDIT: Because I trusted a school to know the history of its own founders Lane was not the youngest in the entirety of the Army of Northern Virginia, but one of a handful to have been promoted before age 30, and was simply the youngest one left with Lee by the end, Ramseur having been killed and Hoke having joined Joe Johnston in the Carolinas. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fa9yg40", "faa3eck" ], "score": [ 10, 5 ], "text": [ " One of the biggest qualities North American furs had was a simple one: they were there to use in the first place. One of the largest sources of supply for European furs before 1492 was in northern Russia, flowing into Western Europe primarily via Novgorodian and later Russian traders through the Baltic. This region had been massively depleted by the 1500’s due to intense cultivation over a prolonged period, with the beaver in particular practically vanishing from Europe. \n\nThis factor was paired with an environmental phenomenon known as the Little Ice Age, which was a period of generally lower temperatures across the globe from around the 15th to the 19th centuries. I’m sure an environmental historian could speak more on this but the decline in temperature was certainly significant and had a broad historical impact: one the one hand, you could enjoy a winter fair on the frozen Thames, but if you were a Chinese peasant, famines caused by the temperature drop would (arguably) lead to the overthrow of your ruling dynasty by Jurchen tribes. Colder temperatures would undoubtedly cause an increase in desire for furs due to its excellent protective properties. In essence It was a classic low supply/high demand scenario that led to a boom in the transatlantic fur trade being as profitable as it was, with a relatively untapped source of supply sitting abundantly in North America.", "While agreeing with the above comment. There were several other factors in their favor e.g.\n\n* It a source for a number of Western European countries that had previously drawn on Eastern supplies. Which difficult and expensive including often via several intermediaries and often political complications. While the new American were just (though recognizing it often difficult) a sea voyage away and often from their own colonies. Which they were keen both to encourage and profit from.\n* 'Comparatively' numerous and little valued by the native peoples. Who also much sought European goods. They were notably easily obtained and cheaper than than Eastern furs. Giving them a usually clear undercutting commercial advantage. \n* Fashion, though difficult to grasp, not to be discounted. In this case the rise of the Beaver fur hat - for which Beaver fur made the best felt e.g. 1750 45% of British fur exports, worth £263,000 were of fur hats to Spain (these visible in Spanish paintings of the period)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cuyneim" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "No, they have absolutely no known direct contact. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccm3tsb", "ccm8ka0", "ccma0cf", "ccmekx0" ], "score": [ 8, 10, 5, 11 ], "text": [ "Add on question: I'm currently reading a book about the history of Communism, and the author talks about how Karl Marx and many other socialists drew inspiration from the Jacobins. But in describing the Jacobins, it seems they had many qualities that Fascists would value (being against conservatives and radicals, romanticizing service to the state). I've heard Fascism was heavily grounded in 19th century Romanticism, did they too draw inspiration from the French Revolution? ", "More supplemental questions: Did the Nazis produce a counter-history to that of the Marxists? How did they frame European history? Who were the fascist historians? What was the state of the historical profession in the Third Reich? What was their mission?", "I have studied the German government under the Nazi party pretty extensively, and after some digging in my own notes and through some of the sources I've used in the past, I truly cannot find a single specific reference to the French Revolution. There was a statement made by Gobbels, the *Reichsminister* for information, regarding revolution in France, but it did not go in depth or even refer to it by name. \n\nIn the absence of any information regarding the party's interpretation, it is logical to believe the party never took an official stance on it. I would, however, be interested to know if it was ever taught in German schools during the time period, and how it was portrayed if it was, but I don't have the resources to look into that, (though if anyone did I would be very interested). \n\nThinking about the way the Nazi party came to power, as well as events in the same general period of time in the geographic area, it is also safe to say that the less information the party allowed the people to know about successful reorganization of the social or political structure through violent revolution the easier it was for them to maintain control. ", "I haven't read much of it so far but \"Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture\" by David B Dennis seems to be the place to go for queries of this kind. It shows how the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter reappropriated figures of Western culture such as Socrates, Da Vince, Beethoven etc and placed them in the Aryan culture.\n\nEdit: Just had a look, one of the chapters is titled: \"Intolerance Toward Enlightenment\".\n\nThere are a few sections addressing the French Revolution: \n\nPg 142\n > The Volkischer Beobachter analysed the French Revolution as primarily a racial conflict between Latin underclasses and the \"Germanic\" French nobility.\n\n > The Volkischer Beobachter's reception of Beethoven centered on the composer's reactions to the Revolution in an effort to refute assertions that he experienced a case of \"revolutionary fever.\"\n\nPg 162-163\n > According to a 1927 article on \"racism in the French Revolution,\" ancestral differences played a much greater role in social and political revolutions than indicated in historical writings that \"didn't pay attention to racial questions.\" For instance, the English Civil War that led to the \"dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell\" was strongly marked by \"racial differences between the Anglo-Saxon majority and the French-Norman aristocracy that had conquered it in 1066.\" In similar ways, the war of the Third Estate against the nobility in the French Revolution correlated with the \"conflict between the Gallo-Roman majority of the French Volk and the originally mainly German class of nobles - among them, Montesqieu.\" Right away in the first battles of the Third Estate for equality of rights, \"racial thinking was used as a weapon, especially in the writings of the Abbe Sieyes, who had such a powerful influence on the path of the French Revolution.\" For the paper, it was no coincedence that Sieyes was a French southerner, coming from Frejus - an area where \"Germanness was of significance during the early Middle Ages, the overwhelmed by the superior numbers of Gallo-Romans.\" An excellent speaker, he was a \"typical Gallo-Roman Frenchman.\" And as cuch, he use \"racial concepts\" in his political advocacy. For instance, to explain why the \"nobility of the nation was foreign\" in What is the Third Estate? Sieyes \"first discussed its laziness, then its political and civil priviedges.\" Then he argued that the \"French Volk had lived in slavery - that is, enslaved by the aristocrats.\" \n\n > Sieyes:\n*...some will say, \"but conquest has upset all relationships and hereditary nobility now descends through the line of the conquerors.\"...The Third Estate will become noble again by becoming a conqueror in its own turn.*\n\n > While Sieyes usually proceeded \"completely ahistorically and puerly rationalistically,\" the Volkischer Beobachter interjected, here he tried to \"strengthen his argument for class war with reference to the racial foreignness of the nobility.\" Moreover, he also sought to draw a portion of the nobility over to the side of the Third Estate, stipulating that since the conquering of Gaul by the Germans \"a strong mixture between them and the Gallo-Romans had taken place.\" So, although the numerically superior Third Estate had to be considered the \"Fathers of the Nation,\" some nobles could be rehabilitated into the ranks of the Third Estate. Therefore, the paper argues, Sieyes' representation of the French aristocracy as a \"racially foreign class of conquerors\" led to \"root out and dissipation of the nobility from France.\" The \"battle against everything Germanic that had commenced in the Renaissance continued in the form of hatred toward everything German.\"\n\nHopefully you find that of some use!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cl9zwda" ], "score": [ 23 ], "text": [ "The short answer is no, but that would be a bit untruthful since I think what you mean is something else (if not, I apologize):\n\nOktoberfest is not a pan-German phenomenon, it isn't even a pan-Bavarian (whose culture seems to be often associated with Germany in General abroad) one. Oktoberfest is a Munich tradition, it originated in Munich as a celebration of the marriage between King (then crown-prince) Ludwig I. of Bavaria and princess Therese of Sachsen-Hildburghausen (a minor Ernestine duchy). The Theresienwiese, where Oktoberfest takes place, is named after her. \n\nSo you'd be hard pressed to find Oktoberfest celebrations held anywhere outside Munich in the FRG as well, especially in the North. There are copycat 'Oktoberfest' celebrations throughout Germany nowadays, but those piggyback on the popularity of the Munich event.\n\nNow, with that in mind, there are a lot of Volksfeste (literally 'people's festivals', usually a combination of beer or wine festivals, depending on local customs, and carnival) throughout Germany (more than 10.000 a year), and they have a long history going back to the Middle Ages. I'm not a mediaevist, so I'm not going to embarass myself talking about that stuff, but I'll point out that there is a current initiative to have the German Volksfeste accepted into the UNESCO world cultural heritage for the importance they hold in German culture, which tells you a lot about how important they are for many Germans and the communities where they are held. [Here](_URL_0_) is an English language article on the topic. There are many famous other 'Fests', like the Cannstadter Wasen in Stuttgart, the Hamburger Dom and so on. You'll find them even in small cities and villages, accordingly smaller in scale.\n\nThis means, of course, that they were also important for people in the GDR. The leaders of party and state also recognized the role they could play in pacifying and appeasing the population, by providing pleasures and distractions (often by also providing music or products that were not commonly available), while also recognizing the danger that masses of people under alcohol could pose should the mood turn against the system. Thus members of the security organs were usually present, even if attempts to ideologically take over these festivals to instrumentalize them for propaganda were not really successful on a grand scale. \n\nI don't know if there are any English language sources on this topic, but 'Die heile Welt der Diktatur: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1971-1989' by Stefan Wolle is a good source for everyday culture in the GDR.\n\nThis page has some pictures of Volksfeste/Jahrmärkte in the GDR and some of the attractions you might find there:\n\n_URL_2_\n\nHere's also a map (from 2010) showing the locations of copycat Oktoberfests throughout Germany:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThere you'll also see that, apart from the one in Berlin(West) 1949, this trend as a mass-phenomenon is a pretty new one, taking off really only after the fall of the GDR and in time-periods of which we do not speak here." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.welt.de/english-news/article2881232/Folk-Festivals-are-as-German-as-Goethe.html", "http://images.zeit.de/lebensart/2010-09/d-karte-37/d-karte-37-thickbox.jpg", "http://walzerbahn.de/volksfest-ddr.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8p44cm", "c8p57j2", "c8p6grf", "c8p7bib", "c8p7te6", "c8p8uul" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 5, 14, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Who is this Vitaria of which you speak? I studied a bit about the period you're talking about but I can't recall the name and Google searches give me nothing.\n\nIn any case, have you heard about the Valladolid debate? It was a debate by two Spanish theologians about the treatment of the native subjects of New Spain. One of those, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, basically claimed that the Indians were \"natural-born slaves\" incapable of self governance, and we were doing them a favor by bringing them Christianity. The same argument was used multiple times to justify colonial expansion at that time, like in the case of the Portuguese exploration of Africa and India. His opponent, Bartolomé de las Casas, is a very staunch protector of native rights, and you should look into both of these men's history for some illuminating facets of the treatment debate.", "They're not specifically Spanish theologians, but Spain and Portugal for a time did value authority from canon law developed by medieval and early modern ecclesiastical scholars. This was more relevant to the very earliest period of conquest, when Spain and Portugal were first establishing territories off the coast of Africa and in the Americas, and this kind of legitimization had roots in previous conflicts like the Crusades. A big influence in the medieval period was Pope Innocent IV who asserted that there existed papal authority over infidels and a responsibility for the spiritual welfare of all men. James Muldoon's *Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels* is a pretty detailed work on this if you're interested in that kind of background info. \n\nBy the late 15th century, which is a bit closer temporally to what you're talking about, there was some anxiety among Castilians about the legitimacy of the conquest and there was a pretty big difference in how the crown saw the process of conquest versus how it often ended up taking place. The crown was interested in control, which made spiritual responsibility a useful concept. An important development to know include the Requerimiento of 1512 which was what people like Las Casas were reacting to. \n", "I'm not sure about Spanish theologians, but I know the pope was none too amused. The church hierarchy, going all the way too the top was largely opposed to the abuses perpetrated in the new world. This is probably best exemplified by the 1537 papal encyclical [*Sublimus Dei,*](_URL_0_) \n\n > they [the natives] may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.", "People in this thread are kind of dancing around it, but the Carlos I of Spain appealed to the pope for religious justification of conquests in the New World. The previous wars Spain had fought against the Muslims were justified by the Catholic faith because the Muslims were \"heretics\" who had heard the \"Word of God\" and rejected it. There was a considerable moral ambiguity as to whether violence could be brought against people who had never before heard of Christianity. \n\nPope Paul III responded by issuing a papal bull called *Intra Arcana* which ruled that yes, violence could be used against pagans if the goal was to convert them to Christianity. This, combined with the earlier [Treaty of Tordesillas](_URL_0_) effectively gave the Spanish and Portuguese free reign to conquer any native people they encountered with the full backing of the church, so long as the \"official\" goal was to convert them to Christianity.\n\nOriginally they used this as an excuse to enslave the native peoples, (see whitesock's post on the Valladolid debate). But the pope eventually ruled in 1531 (Sublimus Dei) that the American Indians were indeed human and could not be enslaved. The Spanish found ways to get around it by *virtually* enslaving them through the encomienda and later hacienda systems.", "The entire last chapter of [The Age of Reconnaissance](_URL_0_) deals with this subject. Its a classic, you should be able to find it in a larger/academic library. \n", "Francisco de Vitoria was, like many of his contemporaries, very disturbed about the treatment of the natives. His *De Indis* is his attempt to determine whether or not the massacres and plundering were right or wrong. It's important to note here that his works were published based on lecture notes by his students ten years after his death.\n\nThe reason why it was OK in the first place was because the Indians fell into a loophole where they were not protected by any formal or informal law: 1) they were not Spanish subjects, therefore not protected by Spanish civil law, and 2) they were heretics, and so not protected by Christian laws for the protection of innocents.\n\n*De Indis* analyzes arguments that were being made to justify the confiscation of land and horrendous treatment. They all boiled down to that they were heretical, guilty of mortal sin, unsound of mind, not rightful owners to begin with, and that they'd be better off conquered (from Aristotle) and Vitoria showed that each were groundless. He concludes in section II, 16, that \"the aboriginies undoubtedly had true dominion over public and private matters, just like Christians.\" Over in section II, 1, 2, and 6, he insists that Spain had no right to wage war against the Indians and that neither the Emperor (Charles V, both Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain at the time) nor the Pope could authorize the war.\n\nHe goes on to label some protected classes of innocents that must not be attacked in war: women, children, farmers, foreign travelers, clerics and religious persons, and the whole rest of the peaceable population. And this includes foreigners. He says in *De Indis* Section III, 13, \"A prince has no greater authority over foreigners than his owb subjects. But he may not draw his sword against his own subjects unless they have done some wrong. Therefore, not against foreign citizens.\"\n\nHere are some keywords you can search for for looking for: *jus in bello* (\"justice in war,\" as in how to conduct fighting a war), *jus ad bellum* (just war, or when it is just to go into a war). Some sources from which Vitoria expanded on: Gratian of Bologna, St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, and St. Ambrose. Also, Francisco Suarez picked up writing about just war immediately after Vitoria died. There are a lot of histories out there about the history of the laws of war. I would especially recommend seeking out books by Michael Howard.\n\nSources: Paul Christopher's *The Ethics of War & Peace* and \"Just and Unjust Wars\" by Telford Taylor." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Reconnaissance-Exploration-Settlement/dp/0520042352/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362359683&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=the+age+of+reconissance" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4m9zjq" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "If you've been playing Shogun, I imagine you're looking for a military history. Sadly, I'm not aware of any authoritative military histories of the sengoku era. \n\nIf you're interested in the time period in general, Berry's [*The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto*](_URL_0_) is an excellent cultural history of the time, explaining what was going on with the rest of society while the Daimyo were fighting." ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Culture_of_Civil_War_in_Kyoto.html?id=z6wudj2tvwUC" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f5sjdu4" ], "score": [ 1755 ], "text": [ "Adapted from an earlier [answer](_URL_0_):\n\n You can poke around the internet and easily find graphs that claim that the average Soviet citizen had a higher caloric intake than the average American until the Soviet intake plummeted in 1991.\n\nThese generally come from FAO data, but an [examination](_URL_1_) of a number of different sources will show a spread of estimates.\n\nA major takeaway is that the two big datasets available to international researchers on Soviet nutrition are through the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the US Department of Agriculture, as well as some official Soviet sources, such as Goskomstat and Torgovlya SSSR. A huge problem with the data sets available is that it's very much comparing yabloki to oranges. A lot of the official data is for Food Balances (food produced, plus food imported, minus food exported), which is not the same thing as food consumed by households. For one thing, such a data set will not capture the massive wastage issues in Soviet food production and transportation, and will erroneously capture Soviet food production that was actually used for livestock rather than human consumption. The Soviet data furthermore is in kilograms and not calories.\n\nSo most researchers have had to adjust the data to some degree. It's worth pointing out that Robert Allen (in his From Farm to Factory), when adjusting the data, comes to results that roughly match the FAO data.\n\nIgor Birman, who was a Soviet economist who emigrated to the US in 1974, attempted to compare the two countries' nutrition in Personal Consumption in the USSR and the USA (1981). Birman considered the FAO data (and similar results produced by the CIA at the time) to be too high for reasons noted above, and found that, while Soviet diets were adequate (ie, in general the average person wasn't malnurished), caloric intake was slightly below US average intake, and if anything should be higher, because of a colder Soviet climate and a younger and more physically active population.\n\nBirman also criticized the CIA's attempt to compare diets. He noted that the Soviet diet was much higher in bread and potatoes than the American diet, and higher in fish consumption, but much lower in meat and fruits. The average Soviet consumed more dairy than the average American, but this was mostly cheese (usually tvorog), as opposed to fresh milk. Some of these products, such as bread, were often considered superior to the American versions, especially by emigres (anecdote: this is true), but others, such as meat, were considered inferior. Soviet citizens also tended to spend a much larger proportion of their income on food purchases compared to Americans. Interestingly, much of the meat and dairy supply available to Soviet citizens came from private production by farmers, rather than from collective or state farms.\n\nBirman notes that there were significant inequalities in what was available in major cities such as Leningrad and Moscow and more provincial ones, as well as what was available to party members versus nonparty members, and that certain foods (say, pineapples or avocadoes) that one could find in US supermarkets were simply unavailable to anyone. Soviet citizens also often consumed fresh products much more based on seasonality. And I should note that Birman doesn't hold back in his criticisms of the US either: he notes that rural and urban poverty in the US has real malnutrition issues, and that just because US supermarkets have choices doesn't mean that everyone has the ability to exercise that choice.\n\nSo in summary: there are data sets that show the average Soviet citizen's caloric intake as higher than the average Americans. Some historians, notably Robert Allen, consider these more or less accurate, but all the data sets need adjustments in order to be compared to US figures. With that said, even when Soviet citizens were eating adequately, they were eating a very different diet from that of Americans, one that would, for example, include eating larger amounts of potatoes every day." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/akd6is/were_soviet_citizens_really_better_fed_than/", "https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-food/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crqxiu4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It was Parliament that had tried to tax them, in their view unjustly. The Declaratory Act had declared that Parliament could pass any Act it saw fit in regards to America. This idea of unlimited parliamentary sovereignty was anathema to Americans. They were concerned above all to ensure that their Constitution safeguarded liberty and this could not be done if the legislative body could pass any law it saw fit by a simple majority.\n\nAlso, the fact that the Upper House of Parliament was composed of hereditary legislators struck the Founding Fathers as absurd. As the [Federalist No. 63](_URL_0_) stated:\n\n > But if anything could silence the jealousies on this subject, it ought to be the British example. The Senate there instead of being elected for a term of six years, and of being unconfined to particular families or fortunes, is an hereditary assembly of opulent nobles. The House of Representatives, instead of being elected for two years, and by the whole body of the people, is elected for seven years, and, in very great proportion, by a very small proportion of the people. Here, unquestionably, ought to be seen in full display the aristocratic usurpations and tyranny which are at some future period to be exemplified in the United States. Unfortunately, however, for the anti-federal argument, the British history informs us that this hereditary assembly has not been able to defend itself against the continual encroachments of the House of Representatives; and that it no sooner lost the support of the monarch, than it was actually crushed by the weight of the popular branch." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa63.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0it9xf", "d0j1jar", "d0j6ugt" ], "score": [ 123, 26, 12 ], "text": [ "Collecting exotic plants of all kinds was quite a popular pastime for the landed gentry and aristocracy of 18th century England. By this I mean that people were devoting a great deal of time and energy to bringing back prized specimens to grow and cultivate in Britain. Such was the benefit of Britannia's increasing global reach. As you might imagine this was quite an expensive enterprise. Bringing both live plants and seeds from the Caribbean, South and Central America, Australia, and India required a great deal of effort. Live plants need sunlight, soil, and fresh water (something lacking on the open sea) while seeds need to be kept safe from insects and rats as well as requiring proper storage. A gardener named James Lee (1715-1795) wrote a meticulous guide on the subject of proper seed management whilst in transit. \n\nWith all this in mind, being able to get one's hands on some exotic specimen from a far flung corner of the earth and cultivating it on one's pleasant British estate was a great way to show off one's means. Pineapples were very much a part of this, as were other exotic fruits like mangoes and oranges. These were the best for displaying wealth as such things require a greenhouse in order to flourish. If you had pineapples then you were telling the world that you had the wealth to obtain and cultivate them. Some people went to absurd lengths to articulate this. The Earl of Dunmore's 1761 [greenhouse](_URL_0_) is a good example of this. \n\nFurthermore, pineapples were in high demand not only from aristocrats but from mariners as well. James Cook and others realized that pineapples were a great source of vitamins and could fend off scurvy. Pineapple patches could be found in harbors around the world in order to supply a good diet to sailors. This boosted demand and therefore the exclusivity.\n\nIn terms of cost I haven't anything on the specific price of pineapples but I can offer some insight on the money people spent on exotic flora. In Feb 1821 a visitor to the Duke of Marlborough's Whiteknights Park recorded that the Duke had sunk 40-50 000 pounds into his plant collection and was 10 000 in debt. That's an extreme example but it gives you an idea.\n\nSources: Chilean Trees and Shrubs: A History of Introduction to the British Isles by William Charles Noble, Hidden Britain by Tom Quinn, Foods that Changed History by Christopher Cumo, Daily Life in 18th-century England by Kristin Olsen ", "Just as a side note to \"why not strawberries\", they're not really exotic or exclusive fruit - they grow wild in forests, and cultivated varieties are very easy to grow without greenhouses all over Europe, even in the far north (in Norway, the best strawberries are considered to come from Trøndelag, which is just about 300 km shy of the Arctic circle). ", "Just to clarify, British currency was, and is, the pound. The Euro was introduced to some member states of the European Union a few years ago." ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dunmore_pineapple.jpg" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c79gcsu", "c79jtch", "c79k1xv", "c79k2v5", "c79lja8" ], "score": [ 13, 5, 16, 8, 8 ], "text": [ "[Crambo](_URL_0_) and [Whist](_URL_1_) were common upper class entertainments that aren't very well known today. ", "Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI were apparently rather fond of backgammon. They played it while they were imprisoned and the account of the death of the Princesse de Lamballe states they were playing when Marie-Antoinette's favourite's head was being waved around outside their window.", "In 14th century Japan, a poetic game called linked-verse *renga* came into prominence among poets at court. I'm sure most people are generally familiar with haiku, a poetic form consisting of 5-7-5 morae (syllables). One of the oldest forms of Japanese poetry is called waka, which is 5-7-5-7-7. Poets developed a game called renga (which grew into more of an art form as time passed) from waka. \n\nHow renga worked is a group of poets would get together (often 3) and would take turns composing links for a poem. The first poet would write a 5-7-5 section. The second poet would then compose a 7-7 section. The third poet would then write another 5-7-5 section, and so on. The most common length was eventually standardized as 100 links, although 30 and 50 were also common. However, the goal was not to make a unified poem with a consistent theme or story. There was an assigned topic that each link had to vaguely connect to, but the poem was no meant to be a fluid piece. Rather, each adjacent pair of links were to fit together as an individual poem. The first and second links were one poem, the second and third links formed one poem, and so on, each connected by a close or distant link of theme or word choice. The poets aimed at making the best connects between the pairs, often using clever wordplay.\n\nNow where renga really becomes interesting is the incredibly extensive and complex rules that developed over time, such to the extent that a book today that covers all the rules would be several hundred pages in length. The topics of the poetic links had specified lengths. For example, with the most common topics of seasons, spring and autumn themes could last no more than five links in a row, whereas summer and winter could only be three links long. The moon had to be mentioned in specific lines. Eventually, almost every important poetic word (chrysanthemum, willow, shrine, hut, etc) had a specific maximum mentions per renga. At the gatherings where the renga were composed, there would often be a judge who knew the rules particularly well to officiate the game.\n\nHaiku eventually developed from the hokku, which is the opening link of a renga, consisting of 5-7-5.\n\nThe Poets at Minase by Sogi, Socho, and Shohaku is probably the most famous example of renga. It first five links are as follows (translation by Steven Carter in *Traditional Japanese Literature*):\n\n\n Some snow still remains\n as mist moves low on the slopes\n toward evening.\n\n Flowing water, far away--\n and a plum-scented village.\n\n Wind off the river\n blows through a clump of willows--\n and spring appears.\n\n A boat being poled along,\n sounding clear at the break of dawn.\n\n Still there, somewhere:\n the moon off behind the mist\n traversing the night.", "The Klan played baseball in the 1920s. [Here](_URL_0_) is an interesting example of one such game. As Ken Burns rightfully notes, everyone had a team in the 1920s, and the Klan appears to be no different. The reasons for why the Klan played baseball are left to speculation. My own educated guess is that the Klan viewed themselves as the pinnacle of American identity, and baseball, with its mythic roots in the Civil War, was an American game, so the Klan played baseball. I am currently working on what I hope to be an article about the Klan and baseball. ", "The [Game of Twenty Squares](_URL_2_), which was a kind of predecessor to modern backgammon, was invented just before 2600 BCE and is still played today. A cuneiform tablet from 177 BCE provides an overview of the rules that are likely to be very similar to, if not exactly the same as, the game's original rules set, but sometime during the early Christian Era the game either evolved or inspired the game of Game of 12 Lines, which was a similar, intermediary game that would later become backgammon. Additionally, thanks to the discovery of that 2nd century BCE tablet, the game was reborn in the 20th century and is played in [numerous places](_URL_0_) all over the world today.\n\nThe game seems to have enjoyed wide popularity over thousands of years, and rough, [ad-hoc boards](_URL_1_) have been found in Iraq, Syria, and even Egypt.\n\nWe don't have any more information about who played it or if it was esteemed or just casual entertainment, unfortunately." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crambo", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whist" ], [], [], [ "http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2012/05/26/monrovian-baseball" ], [ "http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1602/the-royal-game-of-ur", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bm-royalgame.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Game_of_Ur" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cp05ozn", "cp0f1b2" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Here is some pics\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_", "You might have more luck in /r/whatisthisthing. That sub is dedicated to answering these kinds of questions. Still, please report back here if you get an answer. :)" ] }

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[ [ "http://i.imgur.com/3oVZPlH.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/XWXBTKm.jpg" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cn8aqyp", "cn8bmh5" ], "score": [ 2, 8 ], "text": [ "I've never heard anything about genocide by Romans, do you have a source for that because it sounds interesting.", "They certainly had a mentality of ''might is right'' that led to brutally cruel things. I forget the exact quote, but Caesar wrote something along the lines of ''the victor is allowed to do whatever he likes to the defeated'', which gives you an idea as to how they generally thought. \n\nMass infanticide is not something I ever came across whilst studying my masters degree in ancient history - although you could potentially argue that they allowed their client king Herod to do something along these lines, depending on the accuracy of the events depicted in the New Testament. Genocide is perhaps a more difficult topic, as the Romans certainly eradicated cultures and civilisations in their conquest of the Mediterranean, Carthage perhaps being the most infamous example of this. However, enslavement was far more profitable than simple execution, which leads me on to the war rape you mention. Prior to Augustus' reforms in the late 1stC BCE, Roman soldiers received the majority of their pay from looting cities and being awarded farmland on retirement - this led to loyalty to popular generals who gave them these over the state. Therefore, on taking cities the raping and pillaging was usually widespread. I remember a site in Spain destroyed in a Roman siege (I forget which one, maybe Numantia) where a skeleton was excavated that had several spears inserted up every orifice going. Sieges were awful, but hardly typical events of life in the Roman Empire. The reliefs on Trajan's Column also depict plenty of awful scenes found in being defeated by Rome.\n\nThat being said, daily life in the Mediterranean was, by and large, at its most peaceful and prosperous until the modern era once the Empire was settled and stablised in the first and second centuries. The brutality that we hear about was usually extremely rare and acted as a deterrant. Basically, if you rebelled against Rome, they'd put you down with a hell of a lot of force to make an example of you (see the Jewish Revolt or Mithridates VI of Pontus, for examples), but by and large they certainly did not rule with an iron fist. Punishments such as crucifixion were definitely cruel, as were public executions in the arena, yet considering the Romans introduced organised law and prosecutions in many regions they can therefore perhaps be considered as advanced for the time. \n\nFor anyone interested, Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire is a thought-provoking (and controversial) look at how Rome operated, written by a non-expert. If I remember correctly Luttwak was an American diplomat during the Cold War. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dg40d4h" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Stitching patterns into fabric (embroidery) was something that both lower and higher class members of society participated in. this was considered more of a women's activity, however, and I don't recall any accounts of men (outside of tailors) doing this for leisure." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4rvz8y", "c4rwbtn", "c4rxbps", "c4rxqfu", "c4s105x", "c4s2fte", "c4s5nhv" ], "score": [ 17, 2, 12, 19, 15, 6, 7 ], "text": [ "Not a Far East expert, but I know at least the Japanese did build and use military castles. Look at the famous [Osaka Castle](_URL_0_) for example.\n\nAlso - siege warfare was an important doctrine in medieval China. [Wikipedia](_URL_1_) refers to Chinese fortresses along with walled cities. \n\nHow do you differentiate walled city vs castle? Constantinople was a city rather than a castle, but look at those Theodosian walls...", "PS - if you want a fun read set in medieval Japan just as the Europeans arrive, check out James Clavell's *Shogun*. It is \"based on a true story\" and the names are altered, but it is a nice, casual way to get some basic background.\n\nEdit: **t-o-k-u-m-e-i** weighed in an expert opinion to say that *Shogun* is even more fictitious than I had understood it to be.", "used to take my lunch breaks at Osaka Castle Park. Read the Lord of the Rings trilogy there....\n\nFirst, I think if you saw these castles up close, you'd change your point of view about them not being well suited for defense.\n\nBut, yes, the Japanese, in my experience, do/did place greater emphasis on aesthetics and harmony in nearly eveything. Perhaps this is what you are thinking about?\n\n\nCampare a katana and a braodsword. The armor of a Crusader vs a Samurai. Tea vs beer. Silk vs wool.\n\n\nFinally, while there, I learned that, when Osaka castle was being built, each local lord/was responsible for supplying the stones. Naturally a competition broke out as to who could bring the biggest stone.\n\nAs a result, some of the stones I saw there were easily the size of a city bus.\n\nBut As far as I know, earthquakes were a real reason for keeping the castles squat by comparison.", "I think part of the question here might be a the distinction between a palace (non-military) and a fort. European castles often combine the two into castles, but China seems to have kept the two concepts separate. [Palaces](_URL_0_) are more about projecting soft power through opulence and cultural symbolism. Forts, like [Jiayuguan](_URL_1_) look pretty militarily imposing to me.\n\nI don't know the real answer, but arguably the distinction might stem from China's long history of Dynasties that were more or less stable internally (until they fell) with \"barbarian\" enemies outside of the empire's borders. Thus, they might have perceived a need to militarize the borders, but not the capitals.\n\nJapan had military castles, like other people have mentioned. The thinking behind their architecture, as others have mentioned, is a point of debate.\n\nI know Korea had palaces, but I don't know of any forts, although I assume there must have been some. ", "In China instead of building castles they built city walls. There are some famous fortresses in Europe like this - for example the city of Avila in Spain. Pretty much every major Chinese city was like this. If you want to look at a picture, look at Xi'an or Nanjing. Originally, the Great Wall was just a linking of individual city walls into bigger units.\n\nAt least in China, I think a lot of it has to do with how China is organized. The Chinese governmental system itself essentially lasted many thousands of years up until the communist revolution. Yes, they were conquered, and yes they had many dynasties and the country split apart many times, but essentially what was happening is that a new group would put themselves at the head of an already existing governmental system.\n\nThis contrasts with Europe, where people or families were important. In Europe, you would secure important people in a castle. In China, the person wasn't important - their job was. \n\nThe easiest way to take their job? Conquer cities, especially their capital, and tell everyone that you are their new boss. \nThus, city walls. \n\nChina also has always had a huge population and their armies were similarly huge. Castles would simply be too small to play a part in wars within China itself. Since the goal was to go to the city and take control of the government, castles would have just been sidestepped. \n\nThat said, there were lots of forts along the border. These were used less as defensive points than as landmarks, trading posts, and bases for more mobile units to leave from.", "You need to change your perception from \"castles\" to \"fortifications\".\n\nOnce you do that, you realise Asia has had an extremely large amount of fortifications.\n\nThere in one in Korea called the Hwaseong:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nSeong is Korean for fortress. During the Imjin War, when Japan invaded Korea, many sanseong-dil, or mountain forts, proved very effective when resisting the Japanese:\n\n_URL_0_", "I think an important point that's been missed here is that the rise of the castle in Europe came about largely as a result of the rapid devolution of authority following the viking raids and general breakdown of larger-scale organization around 1000 AD.\n\nAt least in France, where most of what we think of as European castles are, authority devolved to ever smaller polities ruled by ever-lower lords until such a time as it reached a point where the man responsible for defending you was actually close enough to do it when the vikings started pouring off of the ships. \n\nThese smaller rulers regularly quarreled, raided, and warred, even within nominal kingdoms, and thus needed places to house their peoples' livestock, grain, and families if need be in order to protect them from rivals. However, due to the low level of urbanization in Western Europe, walled cities were less of an option than in the East (both of Europe and Eurasia). As a result, they built motte-and-bailey forts on hilltops, and then gradually merged that concept with the concept of the lords manor, until they developed the modern castle.\n\nIn most of Asia, authority never really devolved to that degree, at least not for long, and thus no individual rulers needed to build individual manor-fortifications. Japan had the closest situation to that of Europe, and its castles most closely resemble Europe's. However, they were designed for a different style of warfare focusing less on forcing the enemy to use seige equipment to batter down walls, and more on using troops to fight delaying actions on successive levels.\n\nEdit: Also, I just graduated with my BA in history (along with an employable major), focusing on Early Modern Europe. Is that enough qualification I should ask for a tag?" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Castle", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_warfare#Chinese_and_Mongols" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_palace", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiayuguan_(pass\\)" ], [], [ "http://www.samuelhawley.com/imjinarticle2.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwaseong_Fortress" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyqg55o" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Primary and middle-school students have Chinese history and World history classes.\nUntil recently, high-school students chose either an Arts or Science-based curriculum, with the Arts students continuing studying history, but I believe this has recently been made more flexible.\nStudents also study Politics, which includes some history of course.\nIn terms of the way it's taught, it's not particularly different from other countries in style, if slightly traditional (large amounts of rote-learning of dates, though there has in recent years been a big move towards analysis and critical thinking compared to the past; though it should be said that critical thinking about modern Chinese history is discouraged).\nThey don't really study things through a Marxist historiographical style anymore than other countries do. So class is mentioned a bit, as it would be in the West, for example the Landlords of the nationalist period, but when studying ancient China, it's a more traditional historiography of Emperors, philosophers, etc.\nThe big thing I think would be noteable to a western audience is the narrative that's pushed in modern Chinese history. Since 1989, there has been a big push of the narrative of \"national humiliation\" at the hands of western powers and Japan from the 19th century onwards. Prior to that, the narrative was more about the weakness and backwardness of the Qing government. The Cultural Revolution is barely taught, and the Tiananmen Square protests are hidden completely.\n\nI will say that Feminist historiography is studied a little at higher levels (probably about the same as in the west), but I don't believe post-Colonialism is popular. \n\nI should say that I'm semi-familiar with the way non-History majors are taught in University (because I teach English, and they have to do a semester of History), but I'm not familiar with the way History majors are taught. However, generally speaking I am genuinely shocked with how little knowledge of Marxist thought students have; these days, it's all Deng Xiaoping theory. I've never heard Chinese students, when discussing history, refer to class as a lense through which to understand it. It's generally a narrative of great men and women, and competing powers.\n\nNow, I've really been addressing your sub-question about primary and secondary students here. I have no specific knowledge of which types of historiography are popular amongst Chinese historians." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ct10l29", "ct10o8x", "ct13j8m", "ct13vc2", "ct18m9l", "ct1949f", "ct1n9tk", "ct1non1" ], "score": [ 21, 10, 5, 7, 5, 7, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Personally? Absolutely! When you realise the sheer, absurd depth of your field, and then realise there are untold thousands of other fields just like yours, where people could study for decades and still not know everything? You definitely feel stupid, but it's an awe-inspiring thing too. As a field, perhaps the greatest gift that studying history gives you is that of common sense. You can't ever be a specialist on every field, but you can learn to navigate a lot of the pitfalls that turn up in popular history, even in areas that you never move into in-depth.\n\nHistory is a strange, fascinating, and overall *massive* field. No one historian can ever hope to know everything they'll need to in their field. For me, with a relatively niche topic, there are still areas I run into all the time where I simply don't have all the answers - and it's like that for most people. History is a complicated, interlocked study - and something that happens outside my area of knowledge can, and most definitely will, influence something I'm more specialised in. \n\nThere are two fantastic things about /r/Askhistorians in this regard. Firstly, there are thousands of curious, knowledgeable, passionate people here who can teach and learn from each-other. None of us will have all the answers, but specialists from different fields can work together to produce a larger picture than any one person could. Secondly, this sub encourages us to look at what we *do* know in fascinating ways sometimes. It's great not just for widening your knowledge, but encouraging you to re-examine what you've already learned from new angles!\n\n", "Absolutely. I could give you an off the cuff presentation on the October Revolution and the subsequent transition into the Russian Civil War with ease; but ask me a question about Rome or Gaul or just about anything pre-1300's and I'm looking down at my feet and kicking rocks.\n\nI just kinda be blunt about it if someone asks me a question IRL. I vaguely know some of it, but there's also the fact that I find that the Roman era pretty boring.", "I'm all for Classical Antiquity, but I barely know fuck all about anything after the 1300s AD. My knowledge just drops. I wish it wasnt like that, but after that it just stops interesting me. I feel like I SHOULD know more about it, but I just dont.", "I've met quite a few people with History Master's or PhD degrees who focused on international/global history, but came to the unfortunate realization down the road that they \"had studied everyone's history but their own.\" ", "Yes. I've been getting in the Early Republican America, and it's both a huge topic, and one that is neglected in most non-specialist literature (What Hath God Wrought and presidential biography aside). Moreover, women's history and African-American history is central to understanding the time period, and has only been studied for a few decades by the 'mainstream' of historians, and even then is often dealt with as a separate field.\n\nSpeaking to my flair, everything we know about European armour and weapons is shaped by survival bias. So little is left, so we have to extrapolate from artistic depictions (which gets into art history as we have to figure out when artists were being deliberately anachronistic!), written accounts that use imprecise period terms and the very, very few surviving pieces that we have. You can do a full survey of multiple museum collections and only cover a fraction of what existed historically, and it's not even a representative sample (non-Italian, non-German armour from the 15th century doesn't survive much).", "Oh god do I ever. My specialization is in military equipment, battle literature, and mythology, but that puts me in a fairly small subgroup; the literature guys and linguists can run circles around me in a lot of parts of Old Norse.\n\nThat said, though, when I get the chance to inform people about stuff that's *in* my field, it's a hell of a rush.", "I do feel it, but I do not feel burdened by it. It is asking too much for any individual to understand all of *any* field, and historians are no different. Human knowledge doesn't work that way. It isn't, in the end, about what one person knows. It's about the collected knowledge and work of everyone working on these topics. In that sense, historical knowledge isn't a \"thing\" but rather a *process*. Rather than being burdened by this fact, I think it is - to put it frankly - really cool to be a part of that process, even if just a tiny part.\n", "The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. There really is no shame in that, it's actually what keeps me interested. I don't feel burdened by it though. Studying history is more about studying patterns and analyzing problems than it is about remembering every single event. Part of my skillset is the fact that I can easily find relevant academic articles, evaluate them, understand them and then place them within the bigger picture. Even if you would manage to be fairly well-versed in nearly all historical fields, after a few hundred years of studying and several aneurysms, you'd still know little about kindred disciplines like anthropologhy, sociology or economics. All which are just as essential to understanding history.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f3hqovb" ], "score": [ 516 ], "text": [ "There's a great deal of misinformation that keeps appearing and disappearing on this thread.\n\nYes, the Romans were aware of the Triumvirate, and of the agreement between Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus popularly called the \"first\" Triumvirate. In reality, there was only one Triumvirate, that of Octavian, Lepidus, and Antony. This was a legally-defined collegiate magistracy, which though extraordinary nevertheless had a legally defined tenure of office, which was renewed several times between its creation and its eventual expiration prior to Actium. There was nothing to hide as far as the Triumvirate went, as it was a public office.\n\nCaesar, Pompey, and Crassus were known to be working together pretty much from the moment it happened. They did not make any great attempt to conceal their cooperation, and openly extended hands to others as well. In a letter to Atticus (Att. 2.3) Cicero mentions that towards the end of December 60, between Caesar's election to the consulship of 59 and his assumption of the office, Caesar sent Balbus to him to offer him a partnership among the dynasts, specifically saying that he would value Cicero's advice as equal to Pompey's, and that he would reconcile Pompey and Crassus. Cicero has some difficulty turning down the offer, since he was following 63 very closely tied to Pompey and, as he says, hoped to resolve the quarrels with his senatorial enemies that had been hovering over him since his consulship, but ultimately he tells Atticus that he can't do it. In April of 59, early into Caesar's consulship and before Cicero started speaking out against him towards the end of the year, Cicero says to Atticus that he doesn't envy Crassus at all for his alignment with Caesar (things were not going well for the dynasts in mid-spring), and apparently Cicero was the original choice for the third dynast. \n\nThe dynasts also appeared publicly. If there were any who still weren't aware of their alignment to each other, when the agrarian bill to settle Capua was promulgated relatively early in 59 there could be no doubt. Not only was it strongly in all three men's interest, but in a contio prior to the bill's promulgation Caesar invited Pompey and Crassus to the rostra in order to say whether they supported the measure or not. They did, and apparently made some sort of threatening overture: App. B.C. 2.10 seems to suggest that they encouraged the people to show up to the vote carrying daggers, and Plut. Caes. 14.3-4 says that Pompey threatened to use military force to get the bill, which would settle his soldiers, passed. Bibulus was also invited to a contio, and foolishly accepted--Morstein-Marx has shown that though invitations to contiones were frequently extended to rivals, they were almost never accepted, because as is the case with Bibulus a rival speaking at a contio typically was a target for the crowd's ire, not a legitimate speaker. Yet another indication would have been Pompey's marriage of Caesar's daughter. In May 59, only one month after poking fun at Crassus for siding with the dynasts Cicero has this to say (Att. 2.9):\n\n > etenim si fuit invidiosa senatus potentia, cum ea non ad populum sed ad tris homines immoderatos redacta sit, quid iam censes fore? proinde isti licet faciant quos volent consules, tribunos pl., denique etiam Vatini strumam sacerdoti dibaphoi vestiant...\n\n > > Now indeed, if the power of the senate was so hateful, what then do you think ought to be when it has passed over not to the people but to three unrestrained men? So let them make whomever they wish consuls and tribunes, and let them even dress up Vatinius' tumor with a priest's twice-dyed purple\n\nThis is the first surviving written reference to a \"rule of three,\" though App. B.C. 2.9 tells us that Varro published a book or pamphlet called the Tricaranus, or \"three-headed monster.\"\n\nBy 56, however, the dynasts' relationship was weakening, since they had gotten what they had wanted and no longer had much need for each other (therefore Suetonius refers to the triumvirate as a \"societas,\" which is not quite a coitio, though Caesar was accused of forming one with L. Lucceius, which was staved off according to Suetonius by Cato's rampant bribery). However, with Cicero returned from exile and Pompey's power over the senate in Caesar's absence significantly weakened, the dynasts reopened their relations at the so-called Conference at Luca in 56. The \"renewal\" of the triumvirate, if an unofficial agreement can really have official renewal, was a public event. The dynasts got together at Luca in Cisalpine Gaul, and agreed that Caesar should continue prosecuting the war in Gaul and that Crassus and Pompey should share the consulship of 55. With the dynasts at Luca were so many magistrates, promagistrates, and senators that according to Plut. Caes. 21.5 there were 120 lictors at the conference and over 200 senators. App. B.C. 2.17 repeats these figures. An earlier meeting between Crassus and Caesar had already taken place at Ravenna, says Cic. Fam. 1.9. In the same letter Cicero tells us that he himself was in negotiation with the dynasts through Pompey and his brother. Cicero had attempted to drive a wedge between Caesar and Pompey while ostensibly trying to restore the regular function of the state (or more concretely, as Tatum very persuasively argues, trying to get the dynasts to agree formally that Clodius' tribunate was invalid) by reopening the question, settled two years earlier, of what to do about the commission to settle the ager Campanus. When Pompey visited Caesar at Luca Caesar did not like what Cicero had had to say, so Pompey spoke to Cicero's brother Quintus, one of Caesar's legates in Gaul. Cicero says that Quintus reported that Pompey told him:\n\n > nisi cum Marco fratre diligenter egeris, dependendum tibi est, quod mihi pro illo spopondisti\n\n > > Unless you urge your brother Marcus on carefully (i.e. make him shut up), what you promised me on his behalf you'll have to pay.\n\nQuintus had, while heading out to Gaul, tacitly guaranteed his brother's cooperation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgb4y37" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The allies suffered major supply problems after the invasion of Normandy and after breaking through into France and the low countries. This wasn't necessarily a problem with production so much as getting it to the necessary places. The rapid breakout that was operation Cobra stretched allied supply lines to the breaking point and motivated them to capture an intact port from which they could more easily resupply. They finally succeeded in capturing Antwerp (one of Europe's best ports) in late 1944 and after a campaign by the Canadians in the winter of 1944 which cleared out the last resistance in the area around the Antwerp, the port could begin taking in large amounts of supply. To give an idea of the supply needs of the allied armies in 1944. Take into account the allies need 700 tons of supplies a day for all their forces, the Germans needed only 200 tons a day. \n\nThe major setback would probably be the battle of the bulge, due to the allies being overstretched and Omar Bradley not appreciating the seriousness of the attack, the attack made significant progress, It ultimately failed but that's the closest the allies really came to a large sclae setback. \n\nThere was also Market Graden, which was a mass airborne assault intended to secure access into Germany over the Lower Rhine. This assault was also a massive failure. \n\n\nSources you may want to read.\n\nJohn Keegan's the Second World War \n\nThird Reich Series Richard Evans\n\nA World At Arms Gerhard Weinberg\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dw58zk5" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Hopefully someone will see and be able to respond to your question shortly, but in the meantime, you may find this earlier discussion helpful:\n\n[Was Elizabeth Báthory framed?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54qebz/was_elizabeth_b%C3%A1thory_framed/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cq6ddja", "cq7kodg" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It's a question of resource availability. Japan had less natural sources of iron and other suitable metals, meaning that what they had was used to make weapons. It's a contributing reason that swords were so tied to nobility in Japan: they were incredibly expensive and precious.\n\nBecause of this Japanese armour was made from other materials like wood, leather, cloth and lacquer. These materials are not as malleable as metals, but beyond that there wouldn't have been as much need for tight, gapless armour. Europe warfare developed successively to make use if more and more armour penetration. Longbow volleys, pikes and the like. Knights meeting each other in a melee would grab their stilettos or morningstars rather than their swords. In Japan there wasn't such an arms race to penetrate or bash armour, so in a melee situation something to stop a sword slash was sufficient. If your opponent had a spear they'd be able to get through your armour regardless since metal armour was simply out of the question.\n\nThis is of course a wide generalization of an entire culture and their long history, and things varied in different eras, but this is the overall general difference.", "They were lightly armoured underneath, such as shin guards, greaves, and sleeves. These adapted as time progressed and fighting style changed, but the actual type of component remained in use throughout. These pieces would generally fall under lamellar armour, a [large number of small metal plates/scales laced together](_URL_0_), or scale armour, many small metal plates sewn onto a backing of cloth. \n\nThere are also theories surrounding the need for an all-weather type armour, where it could stay comfortable in both the hot summers and cold winters while also maintaining minimal rust during humid periods. Materials and general construction techniques could also come into play, where the ability to craft armours from the poorer quality iron sand of Japan coupled with the need to mass produce armours as more recruits were needed in the Sengoku period could also cause the samurai to favour lighter armour. Another idea is that they had more gaps to provide easier movement and better flexibility when riding and managing a bow.\n\nIt's also interesting to note the exact idea these armours were made in respect to. European armour was developed with the increasing need to provide full body protection, which lead to the need to create heavier, full-coverage plate. Weapons then changed as well, with heavy weapons such as maces, war hammers, halberds, morning stars, and the like - these were used due to the fact that the force of the blow from any one of those weapons would be more than sufficient to cause damage and crush the armour, rather than pierce it. In contrast, Japan has little to no evidence of mass use of those weapons, as the armour was lighter.\n\nSources:\n\n* *Arms and Armor of the Samurai - The History of Weaponry in Ancient Japan* - Bottomley, I.\n\n* *The Samurai - A Military History* - Turnbull, S." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cctw59p" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Wars of aggressions are internationally outlawed. From the charter of the United Nations, Article 2, §4:\n\n > All Members shall refrain (…) from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (…)\n\nThis is the original purpose of the United Nations, described in Article 1 as \n\n > To maintain international peace and security\n\nand\n\n > To develop friendly relations among nations \n\nThis, of course, is motivated by the gruesome lessons of the two world wars.\n\nThere have been many wars in the sixty years, and some wars of Aggression, but none have been labelled by the aggressor as such. The United Nations Security council can and does authorize war against aggressors, such as in the Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait, thus breaking international law, and the UN authorized an invasion of Iraq consequently.\n\nWord of warning: Don't discuss wars after the First Gulf war, this subreddit has a policy against discussing events of the last twenty years.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c696yub" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Ok first things first we need to define our field a bit. The Anglo-Saxons were not by any strict definition 'feudal'. \"Feudalism' as an economic/political system only properly appears in England under the Normans after the conquest in 1066. So I'm going to give you sources that point towards that.\n\n* Joseph Strayer's [Feudalism](_URL_2_) is a nifty little (47 pages of analysis) book with a great selection of primary documents at the end. The caveat, it is nearly 60 years old and so it is rather simplistic and out of date. That being said the documents are still very much primary and may be of help.\n\n* Robert Bartlett's [England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings](_URL_1_) is a very *not* small book. It is, however, exaustive and up-to-date and so might prove helpful. It has chapters on everything from the actual political landscape to Lordship and Government, Warfare and even Faeiries.\n\n* *English Historical Documents* is a series of works which combine numerous primary sources. Volume 2 is probably the best place to look.\n\n* The [Internet Medieval Sourcebook](_URL_0_) also has a wide variety of primary documents worth looking at which don't even require a trip to the library!\n\nI hope that is helpful. One last thing to remember about 'feudalism'. It is not a clean system and it is not a neat pyramid. It is a constant struggle for privilege and power. Kings want to get as much as they can from their vassals (service, payments, etc.) while giving up as few privileges/rights (land, support, protection) as they can. The same is true for the Vassals.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/sbook1n.asp", "http://www.amazon.com/England-Norman-Angevin-1075-1225-History/dp/0199251010/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347846138&sr=1-1&keywords=england+under+the+norman+and+angevin+kings", "http://www.amazon.com/Feudalism-Anvil-Series-The/dp/0882758101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347846016&sr=8-1&keywords=feudalism+strayer" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckvegqu" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "**Moundbuilders**\n\n* [The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America](_URL_12_)\n* [Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction](_URL_7_)\n* [The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors: Bioarchaeological Documentation and Cultural Understanding](_URL_1_)\n* [Ohio Hopewell Community Organization](_URL_14_)\n* [Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence, and Symbolic Landscapes](_URL_4_)\n* [Recreating Hopewell](_URL_10_)\n\n**Shawnee**\n\n* [Shawnee: The ceremonialism of a native Indian tribe and its cultural background](_URL_2_)\n* [The Shawnees and the War for America](_URL_5_)\n* [The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870](_URL_11_)\n* [A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815](_URL_13_;)\n* [The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America](_URL_8_)\n\n**Miami**\n\n* [The Miami Indians](_URL_0_)\n* [The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654-1994](_URL_6_)\n* [The Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1615-1760](_URL_9_)\n\n**All Three**\n\n* [Handbook of North American Indians, vol 15](_URL_3_)\n\n**C.C. Trowbridge**\n\nIf you check the sources for the Shawnee and Miami books, you'll see the name C.C. Trowbridge come up. His *Shawnese Traditions* and *Meeār̄meear Traditions* are frequently cited, but hard to come by these days. They're worth checking out if you can managed to track them down; if not, you'll get most of main details for the works that cite them." ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=zOKgGQeETn4C", "http://books.google.com/books?id=7DNLDlbQXaYC", "http://books.google.com/books?id=qJY0AAAAMAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=PHXIeG6JyKEC", "http://books.google.com/books?id=OrLuQQAACAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=dvOTo_bwmEUC", "http://books.google.com/books?id=z7wEAAAACAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=1erz0jDvE6oC", "http://books.google.com/books?id=qIsqAgAAQBAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=GCuuMkbLgs4C", "http://books.google.com/books?id=mBiFQgAACAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=mSDE_qnN2BEC", "http://books.google.com/books?id=-5VZHAAACAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=eGFrAAAAMAAJ&amp", "http://books.google.com/books?id=CqyKPJAk7YIC" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjypma7" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "A lot of 18th century literature talks about money and how much a person had \"settled\" on them per year. Jane Austen and similar writers focused on this a lot. Jane's characters always knew how much every person made and how much they could expect to have if they married that person. \n\n\nI am not sure how accurately that translated into real life though. Or how much it happened in the middle and lower classes, since most literature focused on the richer classes." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckf3yuq" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Speed limits are older than the \"horseless carriage\" itself; the Locomotive Act of 1861 in the UK limited steam-powered \"road locomotives\" (train engines designed to travel on roads instead of tracks) to a maximum speed of 10 mph. In 1865 the speed limit was lowered to 4 mph and a requirement was added for a man carrying a red flag to walk at least 60 yards in front of the vehicle to warn others of its passage. In 1896, following the development of the modern automobile concept, the red flag requirement was dropped and the speed limit was amended to 8 to 16 mph at the local authority's discretion.\n\nTwo examples of roads I'm aware of which previously did not have speed limits, but on which they were introduced:\n\nSpeed limits were introduced on the UK's M1 motorway after racing driver Jack Sears tested an AC Cobra coupe at 185 mph on it in 1964, instigating a moral panic that led to the implementation of a \"temporary\" 70 mph speed limit in 1965, made permanent in 1970.\n\nNumerical speed limits in Montana were implemented [in 1998](_URL_0_) after a man charged with speeding successfully argued before the state supreme court that the state's restriction to \"reasonable and proper\" speeds was unconstitutionally vague." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/25/us/montana-s-speed-limit-of-mph-is-overturned-as-too-vague.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c87uzt9" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Just drawing off the top of my own head here before a proper answer comes in, England always had a strong navy after the middle ages, henry viii leaving the catholic church made England pretty significant and then holding off the Spanish armada was no mean feat. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ehxuz0n", "ehyormw", "ehyuyrp", "ehz6igs" ], "score": [ 287, 7, 31, 142 ], "text": [ "as a side question, are they pieces of dress uniforms that actually do tend to be updated from this diversion point or are they pretty much unchanged?", "Many countries began fighting World War 1 with colorful uniforms typical of the one's you described. [Here] (_URL_0_) is an example of the change in French military uniforms from the beginning to the end of the war. \n\nIn a large formation with elaborate plans that required different units to move around in the Napoleonic and prior eras, observers and general officers needed the different pieces of their tactical puzzle to be easily discernable from afar. This necessity also built up the unit cultures over time, an important part of military esprit de corps which you see celebrated in the photo you linked.\n\nIn his history work, The First World War, John Keegan describes this process of change. According to him, uniforms started much like they had been at the time of the Franco-Prussian war with soft caps and often elaborate regalia (by modern standards). I imagine you don't need to have read his book to imagine what heavy shelling and trench warfare did to men in soft-caps and old bright uniforms--they were clearly not suitable for conditions in hindsight. \n\n[Here] (_URL_1_) is a large NSFW gallery of primary source documents, i.e. photos taken of some archealogical digs in Europe and some old phtos from multiple points throughout the war. Notice the uniform when the year is available. By the end, you might start to be able to make an educated guess on the year just by the uniforms and head coverings in the photo. \n\nTactically, while the fighting through no-mans land did involve some old time Battle Drill 1-A (everyone charge at the enemy, screaming with your bayonette out), for the most part, company and batallion sized maneuvers were replaced by squad sized maneuvers. This meant you had small groups of 4-10 maneuvering carefully through terrain to lay barbed wire, harrass a certain part of the enemy position and conduct small raids. For this type of activity, uniforms that blended in, were tidy (no giant coattails and feathers sticking up) and allowed you to move through difficult terrain were needed. \n\nBut that French image is merely a useful tool to show that if a single point in time must be chosen for your question, World War One is that time. The British, for example, had uniforms from the time of the Boer War that very much resembled their World War 1 uniforms, at least compared to the colorful French ones. That's because the Brits in South Africa were some of the first Europeans to see what facing modern weaponry and guerilla tactics required from uniforms. (Tactically, maybe they could, should have learned a bit more.) \n\nIf I'm not mistaken (searching for the section from Keegan, will update if I can find citation) even the English started the war with soft caps. The Boar War pith helmet was not steel and either way, was part of the hot-weather uniform, not their temperate weather uniform. \n\n*John Keegan's work (ISBN 13: 978-0375700453) is excellent and the best I have read on the early part of the war. \n\n[This] (_URL_2_) documentary series is also fantastic if you're not a bookish type. ", "/u/bacarruda has [a very interesting comment on dress uniforms](_URL_0_). It doesn't fully answer your question, but does add some background to it. ", "Good question! \n\n > It's my understanding that these were, previously, merely just... The uniforms, and at some point the 'field' and 'ceremonial' uniforms began to diverge. \n\nBroadly-speaking, in modern militaries, there are a few types of uniforms that soldiers wear during the time in service. \n\n* Utility uniform or fatigues: Usually camouflaged, this is what soldiers wear in combat or when on deployment. It's also what most soldiers wear day-to-day basis while on post. \n* PT uniform: Since dedicated physical training for soldiers became a more common practice in the early 20th century, armies began to issue a workout uniform. \n* Service uniform: Basically military versions of the business suit and business casual wear. Worn in similar circumstances. Soldier who work in places like the Pentagon often wear service uniforms on a daily basis. \n* Dress uniform: There are varying forms of this, including mess dress, which is a sort of military tuxedo and worn in similar circumstances. Some armies also have a dressier version of the service uniform.\n* Ceremonial uniform: These are usually only worn by full-time ceremonial units (e.g. the Fife and -Drum Corps of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment, which wears Revolutionary War-style uniforms) or by units with a ceremonial function (ex. the Guards regiments of the Household Division in the United Kingdom). These uniforms are often styled after 19th-century uniforms and they aren't worn by non-ceremonial units. \n\nToday, the distinctions between these uniforms is very clear. In the past, the lines were a bit blurrier. Dressier uniforms and everyday uniforms looked much more similar than they do now. \n\nStill, even during the 18th century and the first part of the 19th century, there was still some distinction between parade dress and what soldiers would actually wear on campaign or in camp. In other words, \"field\" and \"ceremonial\" uniforms have always been different, its just that the differences were once a bit smaller. \n\nSoldiers often had multiple uniforms for multiple different occasions. Consider [these Silesian soldiers](_URL_1_) from the Prussian army during the Napoleonic Wars, taken from Peter Hofschröer's *Prussian Line Infantry 1792–1815.* \n\nI'll use them to illustrate my points, but I'll try to speak as broadly as I can about uniform practices in this period. \n\n* The man on the left is wearing the simple **camp dress** soldiers generally wore while doing chores in the barracks or in camp. In this case, he's wearing a forage cap and jacket, both common items of camp dress worn by ordinary soldiers from most European nations in this period. \n* The soldier in the center is wearing the **campaign dress** soldiers would actually wear in combat and on the march. In cold weather, he'd wear a greatcoat, as shown. Underneath that would be his regular uniform, usually a wool coat, shirt, and trousers. Also note the oilskin shako cover he's wearing. Wearing a protective cover over your headgear was common practice on campaign in the early 1800s -- see this [French shako cover](_URL_0_) from the Napoleonic Wars. The yellow coat facings indicate he is from a Silesian regiment. \n* The soldier on the right is wearing **parade dress** \\-- generally speaking, parade dress could use elements of the campaign dress (for example, he's wearing the same shako he'd wear on campaign, just without the cover). Of course, the parade uniform also added different elements like boots, a different coat, etc. In some cases, elite units like grenadiers might also wear a bearskin or a miter cap on parade, etc. Plumes, feathers, and other ornamentation are also worn -- they'd be packed away or left behind while soldiers were on campaign. \n\nYou can see a more direct comparison between [these Prussian grenadiers from 1806](_URL_5_). The man on the left is wearing parade dress, while the man in the center has on his campaign dress. Note that the headgear and the coat are the same, but the footwear and trousers are quite different. \n\nThere's a similar trend in officers' uniforms. [These officers of the Foot Guards](_URL_2_) show off some of the differences. \n\n* The officer on the left is wearing the **undress** uniform. This is what officers would wear day-to-day around the barracks or in garrison. \n* The officer in the center is wearing the **service uniform**. In the Napoleonic period, it's what officers (and men, for that matter) would actually wear while serving on campaign. As a note: nowadays, \"service dress\" uniforms are essentially the military equivalent of a business suit, so they aren't worn in combat.\n\n**So how did we get to where we are today?** \n\nWe have soldiers fighting in Afghanistan wearing camouflaged fatigues, officer in the Pentagon wearing the military version of the suit and tie, and Grenadier Guards outside Buckingham Palace wearing bearskins and red coats. \n\nWell, there are a few things to look at.\n\n1. What soldiers wear in combat or while working. \n2. What soldiers wear on parade and for other more formal occasions.\n3. What soldiers wear while \"walking out\" from their posts or working at headquarters. \n4. What ceremonial units wear. \n\nIn the early 1800s, the uniforms for all these situations were often very similar. As we've seen from the Prussian examples, soldiers often on parade and on campaign wore uniforms of a very similar style. In some cases, they wore the same thing on parade and on campaign, just with minor variations, like the addition of plumes or new trousers.\n\nNow, here's the major change: from the late 1800s and to the mid 1900s, soldiers start wearing increasingly-different uniforms for these different occasions. WWI and WWII really accelerate this process. There isn't really one instant of change, but rather its a period of transition that takes place over several decades. **This gets to the WHEN of your question.** \n\nThe uniforms that soldiers wear in combat and while in garrison get a lot simpler for a variety of reasons. **This gets to the WHY of your question.** \n\n* Industrial warfare and mass-mobilization meant uniforms got simpler and simpler. Armies had to cloth millions and million of men, so issuing everyone with elaborate uniforms wasn't feasible, even with more industrialized clothing production. During WWI, for example, soldiers tended to get one style of uniform. On parade, you wore your service dress uniform. In battle, you wore your service dress uniform. Even in WWII, when soldiers might get a dress uniform for parades and fatigues for combat, the uniforms were pretty simple. \n* The Open Order Revolution of the mid- to late-1800s meant soldiers fought less and less in packed lines and more and more in loose formations. Individual mobility and camouflage became increasingly important, so campaigning uniforms became plainer, simpler, and less-restrictive. The bright blues, reds, and other colors disappear (except for the French, who keep their red trousers until 1915!) and they are replaced with more muted colors like khaki and *feldgrau.* \n* Civilian fashions became simpler and less-elaborate. The business suit and the lounge suit become popular for men around the turn of the century. Military service uniforms adopted similar cuts, especially for officer's uniforms. \n\nYou can see the resulting evolution of battlefield uniforms for the [U.S. Marine Corps](_URL_4_) and the [U.S. Army](_URL_3_)." ] }

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[ "https://i.redd.it/h3wf19k5rfk21.jpg" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cxwkdbq", "cxwmkg4", "cxxi3et" ], "score": [ 46, 795, 14 ], "text": [ "Could you be a little more specific with your question? Its not clear to me where, how, and why the 50's are being romanticized. There's a lot of dystopian views of the 50's in media - for example, lots of eerie post apocalyptic games and TV shows frequently have a 50's backdrop. Some famous examples include the Fallout series of video games. The concept of Mad Men, another dystopian TV show, also has its roots in the 50's advertising culture on Madison Avenue. So I would be interested in hearing where the 50's are being romanticized, because that may inform the answer.", "I'm not an expert on the 1950s, however, I'll take a stab at your question. To start, I think your question is framed in a dangerous way that could lead to a rather skewed representation of American history, and history in general. Describing a time period as a \"good time to live\", *except* (and this is a big modifier) for all the racial and gender based oppression is a scary way to look at America. The largely white communities ([\"little boxes on the hillside\"](_URL_4_)) which began to proliferate in the 1950s did not exist in isolation, they were dependent on a wide variety of factors in nearby cities and towns, and, in communities all across the nation, that were not so racially homogeneous. Looking at the life of the \"American white male\" in a vacuum is akin to celebrating the golden age of the Portuguese or achievements of the American south, while ignoring the significant role slavery had in the success of both. It skews the reality of the situation and, perhaps, also creates some of the romanticism (conservatives or similar types yearning for a \"whiter\", greater America) you mentioned. With this in mind, I'll still do my best to answer the question as asked. \n\nAlthough there were significant opportunities in the 1950s for white males, and other groups, these opportunities often required significant sacrifices or adjustments of one kind or another. The most obvious is the readjustment of returning veterans to civilian society, although the myriad benefits of the GI bill (largely restricted to whites) softened the blow to an extent. This bill allowed veterans to gain a academic or technical education and find a foothold a foothold in a changed society. The government also insured a certain number of mortgages for veterans, making home ownership far more accessible. As such, an overarching theme of the period was an emphasis on settling down, buying a nice, little home and raising a family in a safe (middle-class white), suburban environment. Removed from the terrors of the battlefield, this was an attractive prospect to many. However, societal critics like Sloan Wilson ([*The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit*](_URL_5_) )or William H. Whyte ([*The Organization Man*](_URL_1_)) decried the exchange of individual creativity for conformity, an empty suburban life and the all-powerful dollar. Other contemporary writers, such as the \"Beat generation\" and particularly Jack Kerouac, described the existence of \" a hidden America\", far removed from the technicolor glare of newly resurgent television- and ad-men. While shows like Mad Men have done a passable replication of the corporate culture in the 1950s, few have captured the spirit of the Beat generation and the grimy but vibrant spaces where they made their existences, for better or worse. \n\n In the higher reaches of Washington, [McCarthyism](_URL_2_) reached a fever pitch, eventually spilling out into American communities and encouraging suspicion of \"the communist other\", whoever that may be (ethnic characters, professors, artists, etc. [some examples](_URL_0_)). Lives, careers were ruined, all in the name of some sort of perverted form of statism. That communists had played a significant role in [defending the rights of African-Americans](_URL_3_) for the past half-century did them no favors. So, while there was great advancement and achievements in business, science, and technology for America and Americans, problems were still endemic in society, not least of all with the aforementioned racial-, poverty, and gender-related problems not discussed here. I'll leave it up to you as to whether the 1950s were necessarily a good time to live (my opinion: probably as good as any other) but, at the very least, I hope this acts as a intro of sorts to the time period and, perhaps, to a slightly fuller version of history. ", "I've been mulling on whether or not to attempt to answer this question and I think I'll take a stab at it.\n\nUltimately this very question highlights several core problems in the study of history. One is the sources problem, or the streetlamp problem. Being that it's always tempting to be drawn into studying what is available, and not being as conscious of the limitations of those sources as one should. This is a problem in all of science but history has it worse than most because often it's inordinately difficult to acquire other sources. And this isn't just a problem of \"the victors write the history\", it's much worse than that, it's a matter of only literate people writing history about the things that matter to them. There are great swaths of time where the only records we have from a few sources are a few myths, names of kings, and accounting documents, because that's what people felt important enough to write down. Much of more recent history tends to focus on the lives of the elite, since they led the most notable lives (at least by the standards of the time), were the most literate, the most able to dedicate time to writing, and so forth.\n\nBeyond that there's the preservation problem. History is a bit like a relay race, and if anyone along the way drops the baton for any reason, perhaps even intentionally, then those sources can become lost to future generations (namely, us). Worse yet, there is the potential for distortion and bias along the way either through selective filtering of which sources are carried forward or through editing or retelling. Looking at the past is thus a matter of looking through a long series of lenses, each applying its own distortions, some of which may be difficult to perceive. And then there's the matter of viewpoint, which colors not only the preservation and promulgation of sources and narratives but also how we in the present approach history. Often times people approach history with a preconceived notion of what they expect or want to find, sometimes people look at the history of a particular period with a desire to prove some aspect of it was a certain way, for example.\n\nSo all of that is the burden here *in addition to* the difficult problem of defining what a \"good time to live overall\" even means, per se. Of necessity any answer would have to be more or less subjective. That said, let me put forward some bits and pieces to \"paint a picture\", though it's not going to be any less influenced by all of the issues outlined above.\n\nFirstly, what was it like growing up? The school system had a disciplinarian bent, corporal punishment was common, both at home and in the class room. Bullying was common, as were regular fist fights in school. It was an environment that punished non-conformity. It was an environment that didn't appreciate diversity of any sort, not just of gender, race, or sexual orientation, but also of interests, passions, belief systems, intellectual pursuits, ideologies, etc. You could easily be ostracized for having musical interests outside of the mainstream, or for liking books outside the mainstream. And god help you if you decided you no longer believed in the religion your parents held or your family held a religion that was extremely uncommon in the area where you lived.\n\nIt was also an era where there was no appreciation for issues of learning disabilities, different ways of learning, the existence of ADHD, depression, bipolar, etc. If you needed to learn in a different way than the rest of the class you were out of luck. You would either be left behind or left to fend for yourself, resulting perhaps in becoming disaffected with the educational establishment (perhaps dropping out of school before finishing, which was extremely common) or being stuck on a remedial track. Also, other \"disorders\" such as autism were not well understood and were horribly stigmatized by society at large. Being significantly different from the norm was practically a death sentence. Consider, for example, the story of the sister of president John F. Kennedy, Rosemary. Due to poor care during the birth process she was born with an intellectual disability, in her early 20s she was given a lobotomy to make her more placid. There are numerous similar stories of tragedy for folks with autism, schizophrenia, bipolar, or other \"difficult\" mental disorders from that era. Many of them were treated poorly in mental institutions that were no better than prisons, most treatment concentrated on making them easier to control with little concern for their well-being, they had very little ability to re-enter society and they were typically ostracized by their communities and even their own families.\n\nThere were also very intense expectations on young boys to live up to the masculine ideal. Boys who loved books more than sports, boys who were awkward, shy, anxious, etc. were frequently (though not universally) mentally, emotionally, and physically abused by their parents. Meanwhile, it was not the innocent, crime-free era that many romanticized portrayals make it out to be. Sexual abuse, incest, and rape (by adults or by peers) was common though generally unreported because children and teens were often treated as second class citizens.\n\nSecondly, what was it like for adults? Like any era there was the good and the bad, I'm tending to focus on the bad here to highlight the issue of romanticization. One issue not to be missed is the draft. In the 1950s specifically around 1.5 million men were drafted in the US, many of them would serve in the Korean war. Tens of thousands of American men were killed, even more were wounded, and vastly more were forced to experience the horrors of war and had to live with those memories for the rest of their lives. In an era where war was glorified, \"weakness\" or sensitiveness in men was vilified, and PTSD was not widely appreciated or well-treated this left a lot of war-ravaged lives.\n\nA lot of smaller towns in that era were very insular and protective of their communities, to an almost paranoid degree. As a traveler making their way around the country if you were a stranger in a town and you were \"different\" in some way (say, with long hair) then there was a good chance the local police would hassle you and make it clear you weren't welcome. And again, it was not a crime free utopia, as homicide and violent crime rates were actually fairly similar to today.\n\nAnyway, I could go on, but this is probably enough. In short, no, it was not a period that was universally excellent even for straight white men.\n\n(I'll try to add some references tomorrow when I get a chance.)" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/the-red-menace-a-striking-gallery-of-anti-communist-propaganda.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Organization_Man", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Party_USA_and_African_Americans", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlSpc87Jfr0", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Gray_Flannel_Suit" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d700ie3" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "There are a couple ways to talk about this topic. One is a straightforward survey, such that is is possible, of what I guess I'd call clock density. I'm not sure such a precise study exists, but we do know that in the 14th and 15th centuries mechanical clocks started to be more present in Europe. Certainly by the 18th century they were becoming far more common, but I really don't have any idea how I'd measure how many people could find a clock within 5 minutes of their home.\n\nThe other way to approach this question is at what point in history did *measuring time precisely* start to be something the average person either did or had to care about. This is an interesting question and is largely tied to economic life. There is some good work on this topic. It's a topic that has interested historians since at least the 1960s, which has a lot to do with the rise of interest in social history.\n\nE.P Thompson's work is probably the standard on this topic and is definitely a classic. His article \"Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism\" published in *Past & Present* No. 38 (Dec. 1967) 56-97. Thompson contrasts a notion of time that revolves around time-of-day dependent work with the more rigidly scheduled work of industrial capitalism as it arose in the 19th century. Thompson calls this \"task-orientation\" and he says it has 3 key features:\n\n > \"First, there is a sense that it is more humanely comprehensible than timed labor. The peasant or laborer appears to attend upon what is observed necessity. Second, a community in which task-orientation is common appears to show least demarcation between \"work\" and \"life.\" Social intercourse and labor are intermingled - the working-day lengthens and contracts according to the task - and there is no great tension between work and 'passing the time of day.' Third, to men accustomed to labor timed by the clock, this attitude appears wasteful and lacking in urgency.\" (60)\n\nOf course, there is a relationship between \"labor timed by the clock\" and the actually presence of clocks in peoples' lives is relevant here, but the relevant location there is not the clock at home, but rather the clock at work. This is due to another observation that Thompson makes: \"Those who are employed experience a distinction between their employer's time and and their 'own' time. And the employer must use the time of his labour, and see it is not wasted: not that task but the value of time when reduced to money is dominant.\" (61). With that relationship in mind, clocks dominated and structured time in the context of early industrial capitalism precisely because of the needs of employers hiring laborers in a capitalist system. Insofar as time spent at home was less \"valuable\" when reduced to money, clocks were less relevant even when present. Thompson admits the difficulty in tracking the spread and prevalence of clocks, but notes that their spread did increase not just incidentally alongside labor under industrial capitalism. Clocks were needed to enforce labor-discipline and Thompson argues that this was not merely an artifact of a particular historical moment but actually changed peoples' relationship to time. \"In all these ways\" he argues \"by the division of labor; the supervision of labor; fines; bells and clocks; money incentives; preachings and schoolings; the suppression of fairs and sports - new labor habits were formed and a new time-discipline was imposed.\" (90).\n\nNotice here that Thompson argues that new *habits* were formed. This transcended the imposition of employers and bosses and actually changed the way people habitually related to time. Consider how you yourself consider time - it is not merely the presence of clocks that makes pay attention to it. Indeed, you might even feel apprehensive when you're not near a clock, watch, cellphone or the like because you don't know what time it is. You might feel this even when you have no particular reason to need to know the time right at that moment. \n\nOf course, this is all very classic Marxian analysis for which Thompson is known and is a great example of why historical theory helps shape analysis for people who are interested in that kind of thing. According to Thompson have the material, economic conditions of life influence society, culture and habits in the population. This kind of historical materialism is central to Marxian analysis and this is a case where that theory really shows its worth. Perhaps in what appears a bit too on-the-nose, in light of my comments, Thompson ends the article thus:\n\n > For there is no such thing as economic growth which is not, at the same time, growth or change of a culture; and the growth of social consciousness, like the growth of a poet's mind, can never, in the last analysis, be planned.\" (97)\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctk3o15", "ctk5551", "ctk9lue", "ctkkx69" ], "score": [ 9, 4, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Here are some precedents you may find interesting:\n\nIn the 12th century, legends began to promulgate throughout Christian Europe of a figure named \"Prestor John\", rumored to be the ruler of a rich and powerful kingdom in \"the East\" (at first, legend places him somewhere in India -- specifically the Three Indies -- but over time, his location would shift to various other favored exotic places which reappear in the Medieval imagination, such as Ethiopia). \n\nAround 1165, a forged letter began to circulate Europe, purportedly from Prestor John himself. The crux of the letter centered around the fact that a remnant Nestorian Christian kingdom was holding out in the East, at the head of which was this Prestor John, and that he wished to vanquish the enemies of Christ. This was VERY popular in Europe at the time, the more recent Crusades not having gone well, and the letter with its surrounding legend \"went viral\" over the continent. Pope Alexander III attempted to make contact. Marco Polo discusses him in depth.\n\nIn 1862, Mark Twain fabricated a story wherein he claimed a petrified man had been discovered preserved in the side of a cliff. The story caused a sensation, and the small town where this petrified man was supposedly located was flooded with inquiries. Twain had reported in great detail the exact positions of limbs:\n\n > “the right thumb rested against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported the chin, the fore-finger pressed the inner corner of the left eye, drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart.”\n\nA careful reading would have revealed that this unearthed man was literally \"thumbing his nose\" at his credulous readers.\n\nMark Twain was a bit of a \"troll\" in his day: he would also fabricate the story of the Empire City Massacre, wherein a man, losing everything in a bad investment, committed a murder/suicide on his wife and seven children. Twain wrote the piece in protest of contemporary bad business practices. \n\nIn June, 1899, newspapers across the US ran a story about American businessmen vying with one another for the right to tear down the Great Wall of China for the purpose of using its stone to build roads. However, this turned out to be a hoax, perpetrated by four Denver newspapermen who had deadlines due and no stories to fill them. The story caught on, and in days even the New York Times succumbed to the hoax, running this headline: \"WILL CHINA'S WALL COME DOWN?\" As various newspapers across the country picked up the story, the occasional embellishment would find its way in. In the end, this hoax would spawn a daughter-hoax: that of news of the Great Wall Hoax made its way to China and wound up being responsible for a popular uprising that would be known as the Boxer Rebellion. \n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "An early and enormous example is the bat men of the moon hoax perpetrated by the New York Sun in August 1835. In a series of six articles written by Richard Locke, the New York Sun saw a dramatic increase in its circulation. These articles decribed a large telescope, which used a new scientific principal. It also described the large cities and curious bat men that lived on the moon. The intention was not to frighten the people of New York with an imminent attack from the moon. More than half of the readers of the New York Sun did not believe the story anyway. After just six instalments of this series, the New York Sun revealed it was a hoax, yet it continued to maintain its increased circulation. \nSource: \"The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists and Lunar Man-bats in Nineteenth Century New York City.\" by Matthew Goodman (2008) ", "Is it even true that the entire nation was hoaxed? Wasn't the panic itself exaggerated by the press?", "Add to these the Piltdown man, the fake pre-historic man found in England (it was carved stone), the fake diaries of Adolf Hitler and the fake biography of Howard Hughes--all of which were believed by a fairly large number of people." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=I57PTFyjyqgC&pg=PA110&dq=great+wall+of+china+hoax+1899&hl=en&sa=X&ei=h639UrnhEs2TkQWKsYGgBQ#v=onepage&q=great%20wall%20of%20china%20hoax%201899&f=false" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dqnkdwm", "dqp2phq" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Just to clarify, are you asking why an army would allow people purchase commissions, or why someone would bother paying money for an officer's commission?", "While previous questions don't address the precise points you are asking here is a previous archived question with answers including a link to a detailed study of the benefits both to the individual Officer and to the Crown of the British system\n\n_URL_1_\n\nand another, similar question, here\n\n_URL_0_\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1vp8bb/how_accurate_is_the_cliche_of_useless_aristocrats/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hnrbx/what_were_the_effects_of_the_purchasable/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cad78fj", "cad7k3o", "cad8xnz" ], "score": [ 7, 8, 25 ], "text": [ "I can't speak to much of this, but I doubt they had a concept of zero. If we're talking about the Viking Age here, that's centuries before Fibonacci and the introduction of Hindu mathematics. Vikings *were* sea traders, but sea traders in Europe were fairly mathematically illiterate before Fibonacci and *Di Minor Guisa*, his simplified educational text intended for merchants and such.\n\nThere were some English monks who wrote some texts, mostly of word problems not too far off from the Hindu-Arabic sort, but that's about as close as you could get, I think.\n\nI can dig up my old History of Math book, if you'd like.", "Looking at some cutouts and designs of ships, I see that they implemented alot of mathematical concepts in their engineering. They use [catenerial](_URL_1_) concavities for their [longship hulls](_URL_0_) and employed rudimentary geometry in their rigging, as seen by the symmetries in the forward and aft lines. They had at least some idea of hydrodynamics, as evidenced by their production and usage of a hydrofoil on the Godstak ship, this used to offset the drag created by the steerboard. Of course all of this is inductive thinking and as such it should be taken with a grain of salt. It is very possible that those members of the Viking Age arrived at these constructs through a process of trial and error, rather than a solid implementation of scientific pursuit.", "This is a bit of a problematic question, because these theoretical issues are not typically captured in writing of the time period (which is more concerned with narratives and events). We only have the material evidence to go on (the archaeology), and for that it is hard to determine, as noted, what is derived from 'trial and error' (or what I would call craftsman's experience), and what from deliberate theoretical planning. As Norse shipbuilding is very traditional (designs hardly change over centuries, there is very little experimenting), I suspect tradition is the primary source of technologically advanced designs, rather than deep theoretical insight. And yes, this includes the incorporation of things like geometry and hydrofoils.\n\nThis changes at the rule of Harald Bluetooth, Denmark in the 970s. Particularly the Trelleborg fortresses seem to have been built according to a fixed plan, rather than the ad-hoc forts that are common before that time. It even incorporates a standard length measure (120 meters and variations of it), which also recurs in both aristocratic land measures and, particularly, the monument at Jelling. Numbers (particularly fractures, such as fifths) here play a very important role in the setup of the complex, but the whole 'breaking of tradition' aspect of Harald's monumentality to me is even more evidence that such systematic application of number systems was not in place before that time.\n\nThere are some standard weights found at the marketplace at Hedeby, though, but these point to little more than 'counting', and are not evidence of a mathematical system.\n\nFinally, I could refer you to [this website](_URL_0_); the Viking Answer Lady here provides an excellent overview of numbers on runestones and inscriptions (I am not aware of any such overview from scientific literature)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.sjolander.com/viking/plans/vikingship1.gif", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary" ], [ "http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/numeric-reckoning.shtml" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdi04rx", "cdirgdl" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Does your assignment require you to use primary written sources? \n\nOur knowledge of the Celts comes mainly from Greek and Roman writers, from myth and legends ostensibly based on oral traditions and from archaeological evidence. \n\nIf you are permitted to rely heavily on using secondary and tertiary written sources and archaeology you should be okay, but if your assignment marking scheme is focused on your use of primary sources I would not tackle this at this juncture. It feels to me like a post-grad topic rather than an undergrad topic. \n\nHaving said that - if you have the freedom to tackle things from an indirect angle you can sink your teeth in to understanding how historians have interpreted the opaque Celtic world through indirect evidence. I would start by asking for pointers on evidence of battle scenes and warfare over at r/archaeology. A big picture approach runs the risk of getting you bogged down so I'd try to either narrow down to a particular region and period or to look at the development and spread of a particular weapon or tactic. \n", "The problem with writing about Gallic or Brythonic warfare is that unless you base it solely on archaeology, you're going to have to use Roman/Greek sources, and if you don't, your secondary sources are going to be based off of them anyway. Celtic speakers never wrote much about themselves until the early medieval era so your literary sources will be almost non-existent. I don't think there's much harm in using sources like Polybius and Caesar and then extrapolating their descriptions of Gallic or Brythonic warfare to how these people fought amongst themselves.\n\nThis excerpt from Polybius' [*Histories*](_URL_1_) is a wonderful description of a battle between Gauls and Romans, especially its capture of Gallic pre-battle intimidation tactics. Blowing loads of horns and shouting war-cries before a charge seems to have been a fixture of Celtic warfare and was continued up until the end of the medieval era in Ireland. \n\nCaesar's *Commentaries* are another great source because it's actually a first hand account of his wars in Gaul and Britain. It deals with more strategic issues but also has good narrative descriptions of things like Gallic fortifications and the use of chariots in Britain.\n\nYou'll want to look into the Halstatt and later La Tene military aristocracies who were at the core of Gallic society to fully understand Gallic, Brytonic or Goedelic warfare. Your sources for this will mostly be archaeological, and [*Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State*](_URL_0_) has a pretty good rundown on the origins of the warrior aristocracy and its motivations." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Celtic-Chiefdom-State-Prehistoric-Archaeology/dp/0521585791", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/2*.html#28.3" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dds1qll" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Really there's nothing stopping him from being both. He did have significant navigation/cartographical skills, sailing thousands of miles that he had no maps for. \n\nThat said he was an English sailor under the British Navy at the start of British imperialism. His voyages were basically commissioned to see if Australia existed and to see if there was an opportunity for new outposts for the Empire. He named landings and places he surveyed and we continue to use those over the Indigenous names. \n\nAlso he did try to kidnap a Hawaiian chief, which got him killed. So not the best guy. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f54dlgj" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "You might find interesting the following previous answers:\n\n* [Why does the story of Rhodesia attract so many racists?](_URL_2_) answered by /u/swarthmoreburke\n\n* [What was Rhodesia's end game during the Bush War?](_URL_1_) answered by /u/profrhodes\n\n* [The Rhodesian bush war is heavily romanticised by certain groups - was this true at the time?](_URL_0_) answered by /u/profrhodes\n\n* [How developed were the white areas of Rhodesia?](_URL_3_) answered by /u/profrhodes" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ez6dz/the_rhodesian_bush_war_is_heavily_romanticised_by/dq94ta9/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3lshmp/what_was_white_rhodesias_endgame_during_the_bush/cv95cce/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b9j69x/why_does_the_story_of_rhodesia_attract_so_many/ek63ywm/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7sefqh/how_developed_were_the_white_areas_of_rhodesia/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fgguo2h" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Yes, very much. One example that comes to mind is the \"military-technical revolution\" of the late 1970s and 1980s. Soviet military leaders during the Reagan years in particular were fairly spooked by Western advances in precision weapons, reconnaissance methods, and other technologies which we would now call 'C4ISTAR,' ISR, or some combination thereof: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Recon. In plain English: all the technologies and methods used to detect a target, see exactly what and where it is, and tell someone to shoot it before it moves. In modern Western defense circles this is now called the *sensor-shooter system* or *network*. The Soviets (and now the Russians) describe this integration as the *reconnaissance-strike* or *reconnaissance-destruction complex.* In the 1980s, the United States began working on this concept under the general heading Assault Breaker. The Assault Breaker program as a whole was designed to combine airborne radars (E-8 JSTARS, Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System), computerized command posts, long-range guided missiles (ATACMS, Army Tactical Missile System), and advanced artillery systems like guided anti-tank cluster munitions (DPICM, Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition). Assault Breaker was designed to find and destroy Soviet formations \"in the depths,\" that is, far behind the front lines. The Soviets assessed Assault Breaker, and generic recce-strike systems like it, as *comparably destructive to tactical nuclear weapons*. They weren't entirely *wrong*, either, in many observers' analysis: precision-strike weapons like ATACMS would have been used on targets like armor concentrations, supply depots, second echelon and reserve forces, command posts, and so on, which previously would have been prime targets for small nukes. However, the Soviets undertook serious efforts to counter this program, probably disproportionate to how effective Assault Breaker as a whole turned out to be. JSTARS, ATACMS, and DPICM all turned into complete products, but lots of the other systems were either delayed or nonfunctional, such as the Brilliant Anti-Tank munition.\n\nEDIT: [Here is a concept sketch of the Assault Breaker network](_URL_2_), as a visual aid.\n\nFor further reading:\n\nDavid Glantz, *The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver: Spearhead of the Offensive*, particularly the first two chapters.\n\nVan Atta et al, \"[Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs](_URL_0_),\" Ch. IV\n\nLarry A. Brisky (1990) \"The reconnaissance destruction complex: A Soviet operational response to Airland Battle,\" *The Journal of Soviet Military Studies*, 3:2, 296-306, DOI: 10.1080/13518049008429985\n\nMilan Vega,[\"Recce-Strike Complexes in Soviet Theory and Practice,\"](_URL_1_) Soviet Army Studies Office, 1990.\n\nViktor Reznichenko, Тактика (*Taktika - Tactics*), Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984. (Recommend MJ Orr's translation for RMA Sandhurst's Soviet Studies Research Centre if Russian isn't your strong suite.)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235114019_Transformation_and_Transition_DARPA's_Role_in_Fostering_an_Emerging_Revolution_in_Military_Affairs_Volume_2-_Detailed_Assessments", "https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a231900.pdf", "https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Atta/publication/235114019/figure/fig6/AS:651202069016578@1532270080306/4-The-Assault-Breaker-Concept-of-Operations.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckvgech", "ckvphle" ], "score": [ 3, 6 ], "text": [ "I'm sorry I don't have the answer to your particular and interesting question, but perhaps you might be interested in this slightly relevant tidbit.\n \nIt was George Kennan, a diplomat stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow at the time, who in 1947 put together an analysis of US-Soviet relationship in terms of foreign policy, the *Sources of Soviet Conduct*. He predicted potential high instability on the side of the Soviets, and that there would be no friendship, only rivalry, between the two nations as their ideological and economic systems were simply incompatible. He also predicted that if the U.S kept constant pressure on the USSR, it might force it to adapt and change, perhaps eventually turn into something more approachable. \n \nConsequently, a large extent of U.S. foreign policy towards the USSR was predicated on the assumption that it should be contained, denied the opportunity to spread, and constantly faced with frustration, and it will eventually lead to its collapse. Again, this was as early as 1947.\n\n \n\n > \"It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, Messianic movement -- and particularly not that of the Kremlin -- can face frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one way or another to the logic of that state of affairs.\"\n \n\n-- George Kennan, Sources of Soviet Conduct, 1947\n\n", " > Reviewing the history of international relations in the modern era, which might be considered to extend from the middle of the seventeenth century to the present, I find it hard to think of any event more strange and startling, and at first glance more inexplicable, than the sudden and total disintegration and disappearance from the international scene, primarily in the years 1987 through 1991, of the great power known successively as the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. –George Kennan, 1995\n\nThe collapse of the USSR blindsided many of the foreign policy experts, diplomats, and Kremlinologists in 1991. For example, Paul Kennedy’s 1988 bestseller *The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers* asserted that while Soviet decline was palpable and visible, a collapse was highly unlikely. Kennedy toyed with notions of a Soviet retreat into its own ethnic base in the end of his section on Soviet power, but discounted such a possibility as ahistorical given that all historical precedents of a retreat only came after defeat in a great power war. Kennedy’s myopia is instructive given that many commentators in this period tended to treat both *glasnost* and *perestroika* as evidence of reform and as ushering in a new period of Soviet history not unlike the post-Stalin Thaw. What blinded many public intellectuals was what they only later came to see later: Gorbachev’s reformism were a symptoms of the failures of the late Soviet system. \n\nThe crux of the matter is that the conventional wisdom of 1989-1991 did not seriously entertain the thought that the Soviet elite would voluntarily disestablish its own power base, the Soviet state. Although the Communist Party was no longer had as many barriers to its membership as in earlier Soviet periods, belonging to the Party still was the major glue within the state and administrative apparatuses of the USSR. To democratize the Soviet political system would be to end this monopoly on power. Again, historical precedents made this option seem very unlikely. The 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown led many commentators to believe that the Communist systems were predicated upon force if put to the wall. In a 22 December 1990 *New York Times* editorial, Richard Pipes incorrectly maintained that Gorbachev had sided with Communist hardliners within the military and KGB:\n\n > The right-wingers -- that is, the generals, the K.G.B. establishment and the nomenklatura of the party -- are moving into a position of authority and forcing Gorbachev to choose, and he has chosen to go with them. If they win, we will see great restrictions on freedom in the Soviet Union and deterioration in foreign relations, combined with increased military activity. The Soviets will put impediments in the way of concluding and implementing various arms-reduction agreements. The Soviet military budget is likely to increase rather than diminish. *Perestroika* has been finished for some time. Perestroika has achieved its goal, which is to dismantle a totalitarian regime, but it failed in putting anything in its place.\n\nThe collapse of the Warsaw Pact states bolstered this pessimism about the Soviet leadership’s commitment to continued reform and democratization. Again, the conventional wisdom held that the Kremlin had seen what happened when there was too lax of an attitude towards open displays of dissidents. The Baltic states’ votes for independence created less confidence that the Soviet government could manage democratic reforms. The *Wall Street Journal* ran an editorial “Tiananmen in Vilnius” in 27 March 1990 which asserted wither Gorbachev will crackdown or face the destruction of the Soviet state. The use of Soviet special forces in Lithuania in January 1991, which resulted in 13 deaths, seemed to confirm this suspicion. Even the conciliatory attitudes towards Gorbachev were predicated on the common logic that there was a limit to Soviet democratization its leadership would not pass. The *New York Times*’s 8 April 1990 editorial “Lithuania Is Not Tiananmen Square” emphasized that:\n\n > Mr. Gorbachev may or may not be willing to go along with Lithuanian independence at some point. It is obvious that whatever his inner feelings, he has no choice but to oppose Lithuania's unilateral declaration of independence. No Soviet leader's power could survive the destruction of the Soviet empire at this time. But he is a far better bet to allow independence, in time, than any of the Russian nationalists, generals and secret police who probably would succeed him.\n\nRunning throughout many of these editorials is the notion that in some form, the Soviet state would continue, either as a federation or under a Deng-like repression mixed with free-market reforms. The third option, dissolution, was invoked only as the *least* likely alternative that would happen only if the Soviet leadership did not act.\n\nAfter the collapse of the USSR, it became a common trope among some Kremlinologists and Soviet specialists to play the “historians should never predict the future” card. However, there also was a subset of public intellectuals that would retroactively claim an acute foresight, especially those on who fell under the rubric of conservative opposition to the Soviet system, such as Pipes. While there is some truth to this claim, their predictions of the bankruptcy of the Soviet system are there in their writings, it misses the forest for the trees. Rereading the conservative analyses of the Soviet Union, two major elements stick out. One, the Soviet state is militarily far more powerful than it was in reality. Secondly, the conservative critiques presuppose that the USSR’s leadership was far more ideologically united and were bound together by a belief in Communist dictatorship. Both suppositions are pretty far off the mark of Soviet reality; although its military was vast, it was not a pliant instrument and was riven with its own institutional conflicts, and the Soviet leadership was far less cohesive in this period. To acknowledge these prescient insights into Soviet collapse, one has to ignore the statements of shrill pessimism that surround them. \n\nThe long and the short of it is most public intellectuals did not really appreciate the Soviet Union was collapsing and only recognized so after its dissolution was a fact. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9m0rx9" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Howdy!\n\nThe first census of the United States that attempted to count slaves precisely was the 1850 census. The census wanted the name, age, sex, and color of each person (among other things), which would have us to find the name of slaves in each household. For thirty years before that, there were just numbers. However, a counter-amendment scrubbed that, and only age, sex, and color of each slave was mandated.\n\nNow, there was no system! Long before the United States became a country there were slaves with different surnames from their masters or former masters. Post-Civil War some would choose Lincoln or Freedman, or other educated sounding names. However, the easiest route was the former master's last name, which lead to that becoming the most common option.\n\nIf you didn't choose a surname and were forced to write one down, they would often write the surname of your last master. This was especially true for the Army.\n\nI wish I had a reputable source and not a blog to give to you, but my information comes primarily from institutions and museums in and around the Deep South, especially in Louisiana. In addition, [this](_URL_0_) is a very good source book, albeit expensive unless you buy used." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/African-American-Genealogical-Sourcebook-Genealogy/dp/0810392267" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cf7e4pc", "cf7fmke", "cf7grka", "cf7hvwn" ], "score": [ 42, 3, 9, 3 ], "text": [ "I think the success is an impression. Because of China's myriads of historical peasant rebellions, only two can be called successful - the Red Turbans who overthrew the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and established the Ming Dynasty, and the communist revolution which established the PRC (and even that one, you can argue either way because the PRC did not start as a peasant based organisation, it just became that way when the shift in communist support happened after the White Terror).\n\nThe other famous peasant based rebellions - the Yellow Turbans, the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, the Chen Sheng rebellion at the end of the Qin Dynasty...did not eventuate in stable dynasties.\n\nAs for why they're so present, I don't know of established historical theories so I'll let others take a shot at it first. I'm trying to formulate an argument about how the difference between mandate of heaven vs. divine rights of kings may affect this. \n\n\n\nedit: okay I've come back and am forced to conclude that the mandate of heaven system and relative meritocracy of feudal China vs. medieval Europe *must* have a role. Particularly, the mandate of heaven is a system which means that the Emperor rules by the will of heaven but this will is not eternal and can be withdrawn. This is usually tied up in the Confucianist system of morality where the personal virtue of the Emperor/his predecessors affected the mandate of Heaven. \n\nSo basically things like natural disasters, hardships etc. are a sign that the mandate of heaven for the dynasty has been withdrawn, and uprisings can in the eyes of rebels be justified that way. The Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian records that the anti-Qin rebels found a fish with a message in its gut saying that the Qin Dynasty must be overthrown. Records of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou also records the Yellow Turban rebels claiming portents etc. for the end of the Han Dynasty, and these claims/rebellions generally coincide in times of hardship/misrule. So this fallibility of the Imperial clan is one factor which leads to rebellions being seen as okay.\n\nThe second factor then is that starting from the Eastern Han Dynasty there really wasn't that much in China in the way of nobility - ie. princes, dukes, barons and what have you. There were wealthy land owning families, scholar families (the gentry), merchant families etc. but really you couldn't call them feudal nobility like you could with the European aristocracy. So with this kind of semi-meritocratic society there is no need as there is in Europe to find alternative monarchs based on bloodlines and claims etc. Of course it generally *helped* if you could claim you were from a better family. eg. in the Three Kingdoms era the three competing dynasties had their founders descend respectively - from the adopted son of a eunuch (not something very respectable), basically a commoner (who had ties to the royal family like a century ago) and from a merchant (again, not very respectable).", "It could have been related to the \"equal field system\" that was set in place as a tax system. Land was distributed equally to cultivators (males who were able to farm), who paid taxes in labor and grain. However, because the scholar/elite class were exempted from paying taxes, yet were able to gain greater amounts of land through \"grants\" from the emperor, they levied this heavy tax weight back onto the peasant class. The system was thus unequal, times get hard, and the peasant class would rebel. \n\nAnyway, this is the theory I remember from my Chinese history class. Might not be 100% correct but I am sure it is along these lines. I double checked this theory from the source below. \n\nSource: Craig, Albert M.. \"The T'ang Dynasty.\" The heritage of Chinese civilization. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2001. 58-59. Print.", "Impression is one of them. The unification of China goes all the way back to the time of the Roman Republic. That's a lot of history compared to the relatively short history of modern European nation-states, which makes for a lot more opportunities for successful peasant rebellions.\n\nAlso, in the post Roman world, Europe was far more fragmented compared to China. Whereas China maintained a relatively unified culture, government, language, etc., Europe was splintered into many different feudal states with varying cultures, language, and government. \n\nKeep in mind that China has historically encompassed an area the size of Europe and a population to match as well. A peasant rebellion in 800AD in say, Normandy, may not be much of an concern beyond the Duke of Normandy and may have little influence on a county in Burgundy which at the time would have shared a different kingdom entirely. However, in that same time, a peasant rebellion in Hubei could ignite one in Hunan and spread across China who were all under the rule of the same Emperor.", "Supplementary question here, how are peasant rebellions represented in Chinese literature and popular media historically speaking?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e678e1d", "e691i96" ], "score": [ 43, 4 ], "text": [ "You’re confused. The two planes you listed with names are British. The British have retained the name only system (e.g. the Eurofighter Typhoon).\n\n Meanwhile the US Army air corps/air Force has used a type-number designation since after the First World War (e.g. the F-16, B-52). The letters stand for the type of aircraft it is f - fighter, b-bomber. \nIn addition to the type-number designation US planes also have a name (the F-16 is the “fighting falcon”, the B-52 is the “stratofortress”). ", "As noted, the British (Spitfire, Hurricane) and American (F-16) air forces have different aircraft designation systems. If you're interested in the reverse of the question, \"When did (British) aircraft names go from alphanumeric codes to nouns?\", the answer is 1918.\n\nDuring the First World War manufacturers all had their own naming schemes with a variety of letters and numbers representing different elements. To pick a few examples - the Handley-Page Type O, Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 (its eighth \"Reconnaissance Experimental\" type), Airco DH.9 (the ninth type Geoffrey de Havilland had designed for the company), Avro 504 (not the 504th Avro design, the series started with the Avro 500 for some reason), Vickers F.B.5 (\"Fighting Biplane\") etc. Many acquired unofficial nicknames like \"Harry Tate\", \"Nine Ack\" and \"Gunbus\"; Sopwith types in particular seemed to lack an official alphanumeric designation so were known as e.g. the Tabloid, Pup and most famously Camel (from the \"hump\" in front of its cockpit).\n\nIn 1918, with the formation of the Royal Air Force, the Air Ministry decided to standardise naming as the designer/manufacturer followed by a nickname. The nicknames were to follow a pattern, such as zoological names for fighters (with certain exceptions, e.g. birds of prey were already used by Rolls-Royce engines), geographical names for bombers, and at first initial letters were assigned based on manufacturer. This was fine for the firm of Vickers naming bombers geographically starting with \"Vi\" such as the Vimy and Virginia, but the firm of Boulton & Paul obviously struggled with zoological names starting with \"Bo\" - their first fighter design was the Boulton & Paul Bobolink. The naming system therefore evolved over the 1920s and 30s to be more practical (removing manufacturer-specific initials; alliteration would continue to be a theme, but not a rule), and inspiring. Being confronted with a Bobolink would hardly be a terrifying experience (except for a field of grain), the zoological names for fighters were dropped in favour of names \"indicating speed, activity or aggressiveness\" - the Gloster Grebe and Gamecock were succeeded by the Gauntlet and Gladiator. That's how the Spitfire and Hurricane got their names.\n\nOver in the US the Army Air Service adopted the Mission Letter(s) - Number scheme, which also evolved over the 1920s and 30s to the familiar system in place for the Second World War - B (Bomber), C (Cargo), P (Pursuit, or fighter) etc. resulting in the the B-17, C-47, P-51 and such. The Navy had their own alphanumeric scheme that incorporated a letter for the manufacturer - the F4F was the fourth Fighter type built by Grumman (who got the manufacturer letter 'F'), the SBD was the first Scout Bomber built by Douglas. US aircraft also had common names, often bestowed by the manufacturer - B-17 Flying Fortress, F4F Wildcat etc., and of course aircraft tended to acquired a variety of unofficial nicknames from their operators (often less than flattering). \n\nThe Second World War resulted in an interesting overlap (and sometimes collision) between the systems with large numbers of US-built aircraft in RAF service, ordered before the war and later supplied via lend-lease. The RAF used their standard naming scheme with an appropriately American twist, so bombers got US town names (Douglas Boston, Martin Maryland and Baltimore, Consolidated Catalina). The aircraft that would become the P-51 was first ordered by the British, and their name for it (Mustang) would stick in the US as well. Where aircraft had established names they were generally retained; the B-17 and B-24 in RAF service were the Fortress and Liberator respectively, despite not being geographical, the P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt appropriately indicated \"speed, activity or aggressiveness\" anyway. Most aircraft ended up with the same name in both air forces; it was briefly suggested that the Bell P-39 should be named Caribou in RAF service, but this was swifly dropped in favour of the manufacturer's Airacobra. US carrier aircraft were initially named along British lines, seabirds for fighters and fish for torpedo bombers - the F4F Wildcat became the Grumman Martlet, the TBF Avenger was the Grumman Tarpon, but in 1944 the American names were adopted instead. A few aircraft retained different names; the Curtiss P-36 Hawk and P-40 Warhawk were slightly tweaked to Mohawk for the former, Tomahawk and Kittyhawk for the latter in the UK, and the C-47 Skytrain, the military version of the DC-3, became the Douglas Dakota." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpa90q7" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Historically, the practice of child sacrifice is attested by Greek historian Plutarch, and Carthaginian Christian historian Tertullian, and Orosius, Philo, and Diodorus Siculus. Some scholars contend that these records are exaggerated remembrances and propaganda by the Romans against their arch-nemesis.\n\nHowever, archaeologically, there is a vast graveyard of cremated human remains, mostly infants and children. It is referred to as the \"Tophet\", after the word for such a thing found in the Hebrew Bible. Some scholars have contended that it wasn't a religious ritual, but rather a graveyard for infants and children who died of natural causes. This is the official view of Tunisia, the modern country where Carthage is located (mostly because it's not exactly savory to be host to a massive child sacrifice cult site). However, I believe the archaeological evidence points to ritual child sacrifice. There are an estimated 20,000 urns filled with cremated child remains in the Carthage tophet alone, and there are a couple other Tophet-like sites in other Phoenician/Canaanite cities around the Mediterranean.\n\nThe remains do include some small animals, and the argument goes that if the animals were sacrificed, then it is logical that the children were too. There is also a correlation between the rate of cremated children and the well-being of the city. When the city is in dire straits from war or natural disaster, the rate of cremated children in the Tophet skyrockets.\n\nAnother argument from Patricia Smith is that the infant bones are from children aged two months, which is not usual for infant mortality as previously reported, indicating sacrifice. The original round of skeletal analyses were very contradictory, and the original scholar who performed them (Schwartz) has contradicted himself and his own results several times, and has not produced a consistent aging of the cremated children, despite making several attempts to do so. His efforts were so inconsistent, the directors of the excavation actually removed him from the project and brought in other scholars. Despite this, he continues to publish studies on the Tophet. Personally, given that I know most of the scholars involved, I would not trust Schwartz's work on the Tophet, but rather would look to Pat Smith and Sherry Fox for much better analysis. The most recent work (done by Sherry Fox and Patricia Smith) has indicated that the children were healthy at the time of death, and of an age when infant mortality is not usual. The fact that so many children are of the same age at death, when this age is not associated with infant mortality indicates a purpose behind the deaths and cremations. There are just too many children, over a long period of time, all of a similar age (and not fetuses, but children who have survived the first few months), all bearing no skeletal signs of deformity or disease or injury that would have indicated death from some other method. This coupled with the historical accounts of child sacrifice are the evidence.\n\nWhy did they sacrifice children? Notice I mentioned before that the rate of child sacrifice is inversely proportional to the wellbeing of the city. Great distress requires great sacrifice, according to Carthaginian religion. When your city is in extreme peril, and you need to get the god's attention, you make a sacrifice. For them, the greatest possible sacrifice was a child. It was not undertaken lightly, but was the most visceral, last-ditch effort to call to their god for help.\n\nIt's a controversial and divided subject, to be sure. But the majority of scholars who have worked on it who are unaffiliated with the country of Tunisia are of the opinion that child sacrifice took place. The major opponents to this have not done particularly exemplary work on the subject. I have heard lectures by the major excavators of the site, and they would agree. Unfortunately, due to the sensitive nature, some of this is unpublished or in the process of publication. Most of the published research is by Schwartz, who was removed from the project by the directors for producing inconsistent results with age distribution of the remains, and generally poor scholarship, but he took his data with him and continues to publish, for better or worse.\n\nSome sources:\n\n Paolo Xella, Josephine Quinn, Valentina Melchiorri and Peter van Dommelen (2013). Cemetery or sacrifice? Infant burials at the Carthage Tophet. Antiquity, 87, pp 1199-1207. \n\nPatricia Smith, Lawrence E. Stager, Joseph A. Greene and Gal Avishai. Age estimations attest to infant sacrifice at the Carthage Tophet. Archaeology. Volume: 87 Number: 338 Page: 1191–1199. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvetl1u", "cvevsza", "cvew0le", "cvf2r2c", "cvf3qvk", "cvf88vr" ], "score": [ 498, 20, 36, 137, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "You're making the assumption that Wahabism is widely spread across the middle east. It is not, and it never was. It has always been a Saudi phenomenon, and even then not all Saudi citizens are Wahabists. The movement was founded in the Nejd region of Saudi Arabia; Bahrain (eastern Arabia) is Shiite and the Hedjaz was Hanafi for a very long time under the Ottoman empire. Wahabism has always been intristicly tied to the Saudi royal family since the movement's inception, it was never a populist ideology. ", "I think OP is assuming that Wahhabism is spread all over the Middle East and that is what people from other parts of the world think of when they think of human rights violations in that part of the world.\n\n_URL_0_ Check out the Wiki for a bunch of threads that might be closer to what you want to know", "You ask a pretty broad question, and as /u/Blaze86420 notes, a somewhat inaccurate one. The answer is pretty much \"it depends\". For example, the Nasrid dynasty in Spain could be seen as pretty liberal, as well as the Cordoba Caliphate, while the Almoravids adhered to a much stricter interpretation of Islam. The Ottoman empire was relatively religiously tolerant, although certain Ottoman rulers like Mehmed II voiced their desire to eradicate Christianity. Sources by Hungarian slaves in the Ottoman Empire talk about how repressed women were (not much different to modern Saudi Arabia), while other European sources say that women were relatively free and even discussed how the Ottoman treatment of women was progressive.\n\nAlso, the word \"liberal\" is a bit of a misleading word. When I say these countries are \"liberal,\" they certainly aren't the modern US or UK, but rather I'm comparing them to medieval contemporaries in Europe and the Middle East.", "If I am assuming correctly, what you want to know is how socially liberal parts of the Middle East were in the 20th century, which is much easier to answer. Like other posters have stated, Wahabism is a Saudi creation and had not spread much beyond its borders. However, religious adherence among Muslims in the Middle East was affected in several ways in the 20th century.\n\nThe first issue that needs to be covered is the size of the peasantry in the Middle East. Before WWII, the peasantry comprised almost 90% of the population in most nations in the region. For example, in Egypt, the effendi, the middle class, were only about 10% of the population, the landowners were 1-2%, and the peasantry were the rest. As is seen across the world, less well off people are usually more conservative; as was the case with the peasantry. They were usually strict adherents to whatever beliefs they held (Orthodox, Copt, Islam, Judaism, etc). \n\nHowever, the rising middle class of this time had been educated in Europe (depending on the country in either France or England). The returning educated middle class undertook several reforms throughout the region. Starting in literature and art, the middle class wanted to liberalize the culture before the government. Educated literati throughout the region began publishing novels and, most importantly, newspapers. The goal was to rile up the peasantry and utilize them to affect change in the country, which worked. In Egypt, the peasantry were given greater educational opportunities and were becoming more dissenting with colonial rule. After an incident in the Nile Delta that resulted in the deaths of several Egyptians, the movement to release Egypt from British colonial rule succeeded. This put the middle class firmly in charge, though they were offset by the King and the British. \n\nWhile the case example is Egypt, similar circumstances happened in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, etc. With the middle class in charge, the countries social climate drastically changed. Ideas of nationalism, pan-arabism, and others brought with them liberalized reforms that created better working conditions, less religious law, public welfare, education, etc. They were copying the European models from the 19th century and translating them for the Middle East. This was the general trend. \n\nBy the time of the Gamel Abd-el Nasser (1940s & 50s), Egypt and much of the Middle East had a larger middle class with a more educated population and liberal societies. Religious dress was not as popular in the cities, jazz had taken hold as a form of anti-imperialist music, universities were opening up across the region, and a general sense of liberalism and modernization had taken root. \n\nHowever, it wasn't until 1956 that nationalism, the driving force of liberalization in the Middle East up to this point, exploded. The Suez Canal Crisis proved that Britain and France no longer had the pull to dominate in the Middle East, thus Nasser was considered a hero of the Arab people and the third-world. With this new status, Nasser's, basically Egypt's middle class, reforms took hold throughout the region. Public education raised literacy rates, thus allowing for a larger middle class, burgeoning economies, modernization, etc. The hijab was not seen in cities as often as it was 50 years before. People began to secularize for the most part everywhere, following the Turkish/French form of state-sponsored secularism. In Turkey, Ataturk had declared religion to be a private affair and not having a place in the governance of the state. However, where Ataturk differed from most places was how he imposed secularism. To accomplish his goals, Ataturk created a ministry to deal with religion that tightly regulated it and forced it to remain within the home rather than the school or the public forum. \n\nNot much changed between then and 1979. However, it is essential to understand that, for many Arabs, Nasser's dream had failed. Thus, the idea of Pan-arabism was gone and the leading anti-imperialist dissenter was gone. A hole needed to be filled. In 1979, it was, when the Ayatollah with his own forces along with Marxist forces rose up and ousted the Shah. In a quick turn-around, the Ayatollah then ousted the Marxists as well, leaving Iran as an authoritarian theocracy. This served as a beacon for many people who were in tough times in the Middle East and had lost their hero, Nasser. Iran fulfilled this role to a certain extant. While people did not see Iran as a fellow in a cultural sense (Iran was persian, not Arab), they had successfully ousted the foreign powers that were controlling them. \n\nAfter 1979, many nations in the Middle East experienced an Islamic revival with a more conservative understanding of it. Turkey found itself with large populations of people dissenting against Ankara for its incredibly secular structure; people wanted more places of worship and less restrictions, but Ankara was less than willing. The same happened in the Egypt and Jordan where the Muslim Brotherhood gained a multitude of followers after the Iranian Revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood soon became a huge threat to national security in Egypt until Mubarak began to negotiate with them. The trend was clear. More people were following a more conservative form of Islam and were upset that their countries' governing structures were not allowing it due to their harsh forms of secularism. More people began attending religious schools rather than secular ones (especially among the poor), people began to don religious dress once again, and Islamic traditions were more strictly followed.\n\nNow there is a lot more factors that feed into this, but the 1979 revolution played a huge role in the development of religion place in today's Middle East.\n\nEDIT: Just as a note, after 1979, the Middle East didn't regress. It continued to progress in all sectors of society, but there was an increasingly conservative trend in many countries except a few.", "I think a better question would be: How liberal Saudi(Arabia) was before the Wahabist movement?", "So, the \"classical liberal\" position is a system guaranteeing individual rights (you can see how the non-radical left in America is traditionally called \"[social] liberals\" and the pro-business right in much of the rest of the world is called \"[economic] liberals\" despite very different positions today). Today, we think of progressive political movements spreading democracy around the world--that's our metric of political rights. However, in the 19th and early 20th century the measure was much more about constitutional rights rather than voting.\n\nBefore World War 1 in the Middle East, there were two big constitutional movements corresponding to the two big empires. The Constitutional Movement in the Ottoman Empire first achieved success in 1876, though tragically the [First Constitutional Period](_URL_3_) only lasted until 1878, when the Empire returned to absolutism. Nader Sohrabi (convincingly) argues that the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) gave a big kick in the pants to constitutionalist movements around the world. Here, for maybe the first time, we see a modern, non-European state decisively defeat a modern, European state. Political liberals pointed out that Japan had a constitution and the modern system worked well, and Russia had no constitution and was incredibly backwards. This helped lead, Sohrabi argues, to a \"wave\" of constitutionalism.\n\nTwo of the most important parts of this wave were in the Ottoman Empire and the Qajar (Iranian) Empire. In 1905, protests broke out in Iran that eventually worked up into the Iranian Constitutional movement. The 1906 constitution, I believe, held until the end of the Qajar Empire in 1925 (when Reza Shah took over in a British-assisted coup). Similarly, the Young Turk movement ended Ottoman absolutism. Almost immediately after coming to power, they restored the 1876 constitution and ushered in the [Second Constitutional Period](_URL_0_) which also lasted until the end of the Empire.\n\nBoth the regimes that came after the Empires were politically High Modernist, prizing things like women's rights, secularism, secular education, industrialization, etc. Many of the regimes that took over the colonized parts of the former Ottoman Empire (both the post-War 1 mandates, and the parts of North Africa colonized by the French) once they became fully independent, generally in the 50's and 60's. Tunisia, Egypt, Syria in particular seem to have followed this high modernist models. These were \"socially liberal\", but were generally not politically liberal. Most have had interruptions of political rights and free and fair elections, but in different proportions. Turkey has had the best record, having elections consistently since 1950 but military interruptions in 1960, 1971, 1980, and sort of 1997. Egypt likely has had the worst record (in terms of elections). Iran has obviously had a period of free elections, a period where foreign powers helped reimpose a monarchy, and the post-1979 period of elections-with-theocratic-rule. Most of the free and semi-free regimes generally tolerated social freedom in the cities (if not political dissent) but meddled less with the socially conservative countryside (which made up the majority of the population). Generally, the social conservatism that existed in these societies, especially pre- the 1979 Islamic Revolution (several other regimes, from Sadat to Saddam to democratic movements in Turkey have tried to use politicized Islam to increase their legitimacy), was society-driven, rather than state-driven. Leaders like Bourguiba in Tunisia, Atatürk in Turkey, and Nasser in Egypt tried to lead their countries into a socially progressive if not politically free \"secular modernity\" (Bourguiba famously would eat on television during the Ramadan fast). Part of their legitimacy was due to thinks like pushing women's rights. In those countries, the state was really pushing what we associate with social liberalism (but, again, not necessarily political liberalism) on to their populations (the populations *generally* responded well to this; again, more in the cities than the countryside).\n\nWahhabism is associated with the Saudi States (the current Saudi Arabia is actually the *third* Saudi state). Saudi Arabia, and the Arabia peninsula generally, has none of the \"core countries\"' traditions of political liberalism or social liberalism. Saudi Arabia is today one of the very few countries that doesn't have a constitution. Wahhabism, or even Salafism, have limited influence outside of the Arabian Peninsula. Movements calling for a theocratic, Qom-like *Vali-ye faqih*-style political order is similarly not particularly prominent in the Shi'a world outside of Iran.\n\nSo if we mean the Middle East as a whole, Wahhabism isn't very influential and political liberalism has a long history. There is, however, a long and mixed history of social and political liberalism, particularly in the cities. This started to change in some places in the 1970's and 80's, often in response to Islam-influenced movements (all the major movements in Palestine were left-nationalist until the 1980's, for example; electoral Islamist parties started in the 70's and became important only in the 80's in Turkey; the Muslim Brotherhood started really leading social change in the 1970's in Egypt, though they're a much older movement, etc.). These movements are not necessarily illiberal, and in fact most studies have found that Islamist movements are increasingly liberal (see for example, [Kurtzman and Naqvi](_URL_4_), or [Tezcür](_URL_1_)). If we mean the Arabian peninsula where Wahhabi-style Salafism is influential, there isn't a significant history of political or social liberalism. You might be interested in the article \"[No Saudi Spring](_URL_2_)\", which does deal with both recent events and the general structure of political life in Saudi Arabia." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/middle_east" ], [], [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Constitutional_Era", "http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/tezmus", "http://bostonreview.net/madawi-al-rasheed-arab-spring-saudi-arabia", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Constitutional_Era", "http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles-files/gratis/Kurzman-21-2.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cf26bcj", "cf2ezad" ], "score": [ 13, 2 ], "text": [ "I wouldn't call it common, as there's only a handful of well documented cases in the literature and much of the other evidence for its prevalence is anecdotal, but I'll mention it because it's wonderfully weird... \n\nFrom the 15th to the 17th century in Europe wealthy and educated people were struck with [glass delusion](_URL_1_) the belief that one is literally made of glass, or another fragile material such as porcelain, and therefore that one is at risk of shattering. \n\nThe most famous case was that of Princess Alexandra of Bavaria, who purportedly believed she had swallowed a glass Piano as a child and so insisted on walking through doorways sideways so as not to get stuck. Her case and the history of the delusion is discussed in this Stuff You Missed in History Class [Podcast](_URL_0_) \n\nAs discussed in the episode whether this was a genuine Phobia is a contested point - it was described as a 'scholars malady' that is to say a condition that people tended to self diagnose with after they heard that someone they regard as prestigious had it. \n\n", "while not entirely a phobia since I would think that it implies an irrational fear, the fear of being buried alive, which still happens nowadays albeit rarely, was pretty much in vogue in the 19th century. \nIt got to a point where people would actually install bells that would be above their graves and connected through a tube in their coffins so, where they to woke up, they could ring it and thus be rescued. \n_URL_0_\n\nIn Japan victims of Fugu would lay next to their coffins for 3 days out of fear they where actually paralyzed not really dead, so this was done to avoid cremating them alive. \n\nIn One Hundred Years of Solitude, based largely on Colombian folklore, one of the main characters asks to be decapitated before being buried out of the same fear. " ] }

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[ [ "http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/symhc/2013-04-24-symhc-glass-piano.mp3", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_delusion" ], [ "http://australianmuseum.net.au/Safety-coffins" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvz73nt", "cvz7qbm", "cvza5gg", "cvzew7m", "cvzib12", "cvzn757" ], "score": [ 54, 9, 17, 6, 14, 2 ], "text": [ "Depends on when and where. Pre-20th century, after-all, covers over 2500 years. While I've not read anything explicitly stating it, it seems to me command style changed with the size of the army and battlefields.\n\nIn Classical Greece, commanders could basically only lay out a battle plan before it starts. Once all the sub-commanders have their orders and the battle starts, there's nearly no control whatsoever. This is due to the fact that the general fought as a hoplite on the front lines. So it was very hard for him to know what's going on and issue new orders. The best he can do is guide his own detachment according to the pre-set plans. With battlefields being relatively small in size and usually no reserves to speak of, it didn't really matter that much I suppose.\n\nJust prior to Alexander, generals on horseback began to appear in Greece. But they still very much fought on the front with the cavalry. So they had more control and could respond better to situations around the battlefield and far more quickly. Alexander at Gaugamela is a well known example, but I like Pelopidas responding to battlefield situations at Cynocephelae even better.\n\nThe successor states probably eventually adopted having the commander and his bodyguard cavalry sit in reserve, so he's busy commanding instead of busy fighting. And this way he knew where to send the reserves because watching from slightly behind the lines. If the successor states didn't do it, certainly by the Roman Empires that's what was done.\n\nIt's not all that linear though. For example at Hastings long after the fall of the Western Empire when armies were smaller again, Harold was on foot in line with his housecarls, similar to the hoplite style, with no control over what his brothers did with their contingents. William on the other side fought with his Norman cavalry (though I'm not sure if he was in reserve or not, it seems he was pretty active). He had to take off his helmet to show everyone he was still alive at a point in the battle, and led a few attacks.\n\nThere are other variations too. Supposedly Mongols like to set up their commands on a hilltop instead of with the army and issue orders with horns, drums, flags, signal arrows, etc (forgot which book I read that in, was it *Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World*?) Similarly, by late Sengoku the Japanese prefer to place the commanding general and his personal troops on a hilltop slightly behind the fighting where he can see what's going on and issue command to move forward. And on the other side of the world this was also done in European battles such as Naseby, as both King Charles and Fairfax were slightly behind the battle on top of ridges, though Charles apparently didn't commit until it was too late, so ended up not committing at all.\n\nBy the 19th century (at the latest) army sizes and battlefield had grown so large that it was very difficult (or impossible) for the commanding general to see the entire battlefield. So a lot of time the general have to act on reports of aides and messengers. Since messages travelled at the speed of a horse, and you aren't seeing it with your own eyes, it could get pretty confusing. See examples in this thread.", "Bear in mind that it would be much easier to control your forces pre-gunpowder era than later, and with smaller army sizes. A battlefield with cannon and musket fire echoing across it would be much harder to communicate with, say, horns or drums, in comparison to if these horns were used in a pre-gunpowder era battle. Similarly, with smaller army sizes, you'd have less of a problem conveying messages from one side to the other, and overall you'd be able to keep an eye on the entire unfolding. In terms of \"real time control\", you also have to account for the delay between messengers getting messages across, where they could be delayed by opposing forces, or simply due to the time taken to traverse the field on horse or by foot. A basic battle plan would be in place but, as all battles go, would probably be modified as it progressed - you'd have a rough formation idea at the beginning, as well as certain rules for engagement/retreat, however it also relied on the best judgement of the commanding officer (who would relay his commands down through the hierarchy) or, if he wasn't available, the next person down, and so on.", "An interesting case study in the real-time control of the battlefield is the famous Charge of the Light Brigade. \n\nThe British commander was Lord Raglan, who was standing on top of a hill and able to see the whole battlefield. In front of him, at one end of a long valley was his brigade of Light Cavalry. At the other end of the valley was a well-defended enemy Russian artillery battery. \n\nBehind Lord Raglan one of the Russians' other artillery batteries was in retreat. Raglan wanted to order the Light Cavalry Brigade to chase after them and seize their artillery. With no radio, he had to send a runner with a note which read *Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.*. This was accompanied with a verbal order to attack immediately. \n\nNow there was a crucial mistake would not have occurred with modern technology. The Light Brigade only had knowledge of one Russian artillery unit, the well-defended one at the other end of the valley they were standing in. The Brigade set off down the valley. The runner suddenly realised the mistake, and chased after them to redirect them, but was shot down by the Russians. There was no mechanism to contact the unit and call them back. The Brigade did successfully and bravely seize the artillery but were surrounded and taken out by other Russian units. \n\nLucan, the commander of the cavalry, later claimed that he had asked the runner which guns were being referred to and the runner had unhelpfully swept his arm across the whole battlefield, where only those at the end of the valley were visible.", "There is a lot to this question, and answers will vary considerably depending on the era and the army. In the Napoleonic era, generals had their ADCs on horseback, typically in a \"string\" taking turns making runs out to relay orders to individual units. Aides were typically very trusted appointees who were part of the General's \"military family\" or retinue and very often a son or son-in-law, so in some respects they were expected to know very intimately what a general was thinking. They were often entrusted with scouting missions-- for instance, a Corps commander would send a staff colonel off with a fighting patrol of a squadron or two of light cavalry to take prisoners and see what he could stir up. On a lower level, a brigade commander could put his ADC, a captain, in charge of a light company and two grenadier companies from one of his regiments and have them overrun a troublesome artillery battery. Both these examples come from Col. H.C.B. Rogers, \"Napoleon's Army\" (1982), which has a rare couple of case studies of Napoleonic battles on a small scale. The memoirs of Baron Marbot also contain a lot of info about the role of an aide and light cavalry officer. The system relied on the skill and initiative of subordinates as well as the ability of a senior officer such as a army or corps commander to assume direct control over a developing situation. It helped that armies were relatively small and fought in small areas compared with 20th century armies. As Napoleonic armies swelled ever larger with masses of conscripts, and the best of the generals were killed off one by one, command and control grew more difficult and the tactics devolved into bludgeoning contests like Borodino or Wagram. For a details of how a battle plan could get entirely too elaborate for green troops and inexperienced officers to follow, \"the War of 1812 in the Old Northwest\" by Alec Gilpin (or most other accounts of that conflict) have plenty of examples. One case in particular is the Battle of the Rapids which occurred during the siege of Fort Meigs on May 5, 1813. I could write a detailed account but the basic details are available in plenty of sources in print or online. It illustrates perfectly what could happen when a commander lost command and control during a battle taking place over a wide, wooded area--and General Harrison was a professional soldier who had been schooled as an ADC for General Anthony Wayne fighting over the very same area. Basically, once a situation was developed it came down to the initiative of field officers to react or rally their units. Militia officers and their men weren't necessarily bad troops, but they had to be kept close in hand or risk disaster. Generals could affect a situation if they were able to gallop into the midst of a battle and rally or coordinate troops, but they ran the risk of getting shot, which frequently changed the game if their subordinate was not as energetic or skilled as they.", "My are is First World War and just before, which isn't *technically* within the scope of your answer, but I'll go ahead and answer anyways because I think you might find the answer helpful.\n\nFirst, let's pick apart your question a little bit, because I think that in doing so, we can start to see some of the ways in which battle and the concept of \"a battle\" had changed and was still changing by 1914. How much real time control a commander involves two things, in my estimation: a) the ability to get accurate information regarding the course of battle at any given moment and b) his ability to relay to combat forces his commands. The fulfillment of one of these conditions does not necessarily mean the second is automatically fulfilled. On the other hand, both are closely related and often rely on the same technologies, or lack thereof.\n\nMoving on, some people in the thread have mentioned that the answer depends, based on what period we're talking about. This is obviously true, but it also depends hugely on what level of army organization you're looking at. /u/ParallelPain answered with regards to a Classical Greek battle, where you could theoretically watch the entire battle from a high enough vantage point. One of the biggest trends in nineteenth century military history is the expansion of armies with mass conscription and states with the organizational and material wealth necessary for fielding armies of millions. By the outbreak of the First World War, we've got not only regiments (the basic unit of infantry armed strength), but also divisions (which unite infantry strength with artillery and cavalry force, as well as logistical support), but also corps, armies, and even army fronts comprising two or more armies.\n\nThis also forces us to acknowledge that by the 20th century and the First World War, even the concept of a \"battle\" has to be looked at and played with a little bit. Going back to Greece, a battle might last a few hours. Skipping over quite a few centuries of military history, by Gettysburg we have a three day battle. But these are still unquestionably 'battles.' By 1914, we see weeklong engagements like Tannenberg, the Marne and Komarow. These single 'battles' are titanic when compared to single-day infantry clashes in Classical Greece. In fact, these 'battles' may be more accurately described as a vast network of smaller battles all being fought with regards to a single operational objective, e.g. \"capturing X town.\" Then we have Verdun and (moving forward) things like Stalingrad, which challenge the conception of a 'battle' as a unit of analysis even further. \n\nAll this was a very roundabout way of saying that commanders at different levels are going to have different means for a) observation and b) control based on the number of men (and cavalry detachments, artillery batteries, and supply columns) they're commanding and the geographical and temporal scope of the 'battle' they're overseeing.\n\nI focus on the Austro-Hungarian Army, so we'll use them as an example. Each turn of the century army had its institutional peculiarities, but *roughly*, this should suffice in general. I'd love for people more knowledgeable about specific armies to chime in and provide some context. \n\nNow for the actual answer. Let's start at the top. The truth is, radio and telephone communication at the outbreak of the First World War were nascent technologies and their application to ground combat was still being figured out. But with the larger units of organization - armies, corps, divisions and even regiments - the telephone and telegraph were being used quite well by the Austrian Army. In 1914, each division had its own signals detachment, armed with a portable telegraph set and several kilometers of telegraph/telephone wire that could be unrolled and laid at the will of the commanding officer. Communications travelling from division commands up to corps and army headquarters were quite regular. The Austrian Army meticulously (by necessity) recorded a lot of information on each telegraph: when the message was sent, where it was sent from, which command was sending it and to whom, but also when it was received, when it was read, by whom it was read and to whom it was passed along. These messages varied in the level of detail, but the most common message was a \"Disposition\" and sought to give the corps or army headquarters where the division and its constituent regiments were located and what they were doing. For example, a telegraph I have a facsimile of from the Vienna War Archives reads, \"have arrived in the Cossack barracks [in the town of Zamosc]... and captured assorted war material, including a munitions wagon, 2 portable kitchens, as well as 2 guns on the road towards Lubelskie.\" This was sent from a divisional commander to his corps commander and is typical of the type of communication being sent up the chain. As you can see, this message and others like it leave a lot to be desired. Telegrams were also being sent down the chain of command, with corps commanders telling divisional commanders where their neighboring units were, how their mission objectives were progressing and whether enemy activity had been reported in their sectors. These telegrams were essentially aimed at giving commanders an idea of where forces were on the battlefield and what they were doing. Divisional and corps commanders also relied on hand-drawn dispositional sketches showing where units were with regards to certain objectives and landmarks. What these sketches made up for in detail that telegrams couldn't convey, they lacked in speed. Maps had to be ridden (by bicycle, horse or car) to the pertinent headquarters. This could take anywhere from ten minutes to several hours depending on the state of roads, how well the area was known to the different commands, and the combat and traffic situation of those roads.\n\nThis has all so far been about how commanders got information on where their troops were. As you can see, it would take a powerful intellect with massive amounts of training to put together a cogent picture of what was going on. In engagements which were lasting several days to a week, the time constraint was, as with all combat, very important, but commanders could usually get a telegraph message from a subordinate within an hour, from the moment the subordinate decided to send the message to the moment a transcribed message was handed to the superior officer. This, combined with illustrated disposition maps and the spoken word of messengers, was no Blue Force Tracker, but it worked reasonably well.\n\nAs for sending commands and trying to affect the flow of battle, commanders relied on the same sorts of technologies. Written commands were transferred via telegraph to subordinates in the same way dispositions were reported going the other direction. For example, one telegram I have from II Korps to 13th Division command tells that commander: \"both infantry brigades, the artillery brigade and artillery HQ are to immediately assume a disposition on the northern egress road from Zamosc and to establish connections with 25th Infantry Division.\" Like reports being sent up the ladder, commands being sent down the ladder could be expected to be read by the pertinent subordinates within an hour.\n\nThe telegraph I chose helps me segue into the next issue, that is, sub-divisional commands and reporting. By 1918, individual regiments would be armed with telegraph units and plugged into the communications network, but in 1914, all communications at the sub-division level (regiment and battalion) were done on paper or by messenger. The Vienna War Archives is literally full of these tiny bits of paper, about three inches by five inches, with written dispatches on them. The blank dispatch cards were printed en masse in perforated card books so that the officers using them could save time by plugging in the information into pre-printed spaces. In typical Habsburg bureaucratic function, there are spaces for every bit of pertinent information: sender, receiver, time sent, date sent, area sent from, etc. Speaking to the paramountcy of the horse and rider to sub-divisional command is the spot on the dispatch card where the writer is asked to circle one of the following: \"trot\" \"gallop\" or \"trot and gallop.\" These messages took significantly longer to relay, depending on the geographical proximity of the sender and receiver and the intensity of combat in the area. Of course, many messengers went missing, were captured or killed and many messages never received, often resulting in lives lost. Hand-drawn maps were also very important at the sub-divisional level, especially as a means by which regimental commanders showed divisional commanders where their units were located.\n\nFinally, at the very nitty gritty level of sub-regimental command, what we would consider \"combat\", flags, written notes and messengers had to be used. Since radios wouldn't become standard until the Second World War, battalion commanders had to rely largely on flag signalling and messengers to get their commands into the hands of lieutenants. At the beginning of the war, each platoon (60 men or so) had a 3-man signalling section: a patrol leader, an observer and a signaller. The signaller had two flags and used these to relay observations and reports up the chain. At the company-level, the Austrian Army experimented with field telephones even at the beginning of the war, but they were not standard, especially in the context of highly limited financial resources prior to the First World War. These telephones were operated using Morse code and were carried along with about a mile of telephone wire.\n\nSources:\n\nLucas, J.S. *Austro-Hungarian Infantry, 1914-1918.* Almark Publications, 1973.\n\nVienna War Archives, independent research", "In the Franco-Prussian War the command and control system relied more on the independence of low level commanders on the battlefield, with von Moltke the Elder organizing the larger scale plans of battle. \nThe idea was von Moltke could command the strategic movements of the armies, but allow the lower commanders who fully understood the ground situation to make the tactical decisions." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dcdvy50" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I think this is an incredibly complex question, and really one that has gained added depth the further we have gone from the events as more has been learned.\n\nIn particular I want to focus on two areas, the reporting of pre US intervention newspapers from Cuba, and the reaction to the loss of the Maine.\n\nMen working on behalf of Hearst and Pulitzer in particular could be shameless at times in their reporting, such as relating how brutal Spanish police violated the privacy of a young American woman's bedroom and ordered her stripped in the hunt for smuggled messages and money for the rebels. But conversely the war against the Cuban rebels DID take some brutal turns, and for almost a century American interests had been eyeing Cuba while there was a feeling of at least basic support for a local uprising against a backwards colonial holdout. \n\nAnd eyeing it all with both some general support, but also an eye on the bottom line Hearst in response to reports of cooling tensions was quoted as saying to one of his men in Cuba. \n\n > \"You provide me with the photographs, and I'll provide you with the war\"\n\nHowever most evidence suggests this was apocryphal, while Hearst expected a Cuban victory and supported it, the paper was not actively engaged yet in supporting a US participation, nor were tensions particularly cooling at the time. The rebellion was still actively being fought. _URL_1_ \n\nHowever an actual declaration of war in support of the rebels was far from on the table, McKinley was still uninterested in military action, but sought to appease both business interests and Cuban supporters by negotiating with Spain for reforms to bring peace, however that went nowhere in the end. However Spain did recall its Governor General from Havana who had been a good deal harsher than his predecessor, but this then enflamed loyal Cubans as a sign of wavering support and led to agitation in the capital. \n\nIn response the US Consul in Havana, Fitzhugh Lee(nephew of Robert E. Lee and a former CSA cavalry officer), called for a warship to help protect US citizens and property, and thus arrived the USS Maine. 3 weeks into her stay at about 9:30 PM an explosion completely destroyed the battleship and killed 3/4 of her crew. In March a naval inquiry reached the conclusion that the Maine had been sunk by the explosion of a mine. For the weeks following the sinking Hearst and Pullitzer's papers had been demanding blood, while Pulitzer supposedly thought it ridiculous that Spain would try to mine a US warship the fact was the Maine was now sitting in the harbor mud, and Spain was the obvious culprit. Calls for concessions did little to dampen tempers and the blood of the public. While many in government too thought war was the only answer, such as Senator henry Cabot Lodge, and his confidant, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt. Thus with enough support in Congress and a penned in Executive, with a public calling for blood a month after the end of the Maine inquiry, with the caveat that the US would not annex Cuba thanks to the Teller Amendment, in late April the Congress passed a bill authorizing military force by the President to liberate Cuba and war followed a few days later. \n\nThe key here is of course the sinking of the Maine, and calls to \"Remember the Maine\" were echoed around the nation. In years since though there has been a good deal of examination into what actually sank the ship. Most notably was an investigation in the mid 70's by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover was a no nonsense, damn near authoritarian, who was almost singlehandedly responsible for the creation and state of the modern nuclear navy even today. And his interest was peaked by the possibility, discounted at the time that a coal fire was responsible for setting of Maine's forward magazine.\n\nHe came to a conclusion that thanks to the use of more dangerous Bituminous Coal over Anthracite, combined with atmospheric conditions, and insufficient inspection and ventilation, were at least as likely as a mine. Bit coal has a dangerous tendency to self combust compared to Anthracite which could have produced the fire of sufficient heat to set off the magazine next door. In particular they noted a similar event in the USS New York shortly before the Maine's explosion where the same brand of coal that had sat for 2 weeks began to burn just 3 hours after being checked. The Maine went up 12 hours post inspection and the coal had been in that bunker for nearly 3 months! \n\nThe report that was prepared for Rickover: _URL_0_\n\nSo while modern scholarship has come around to an accident though it is not unanimous, and a few voices raised the suggestion at the time, the reporting of the papers holding Spain to account for the loss were not out of step with what the US government concluded themselves had happened, just with more gusto.\n\nI should recommend as another fine overview on the period and the coming together of many different interests as a good first reading on the topic: *The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898* by Evan Thomas. \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.steelnavy.org/history/items/show/149", "http://fs2.american.edu/wjc/www/wjc3/notlikely.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3z5li3", "c3z6p9o", "c3z9rar", "c3zcls8" ], "score": [ 13, 7, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "You're talking about whether states had the same sense of external sovereignty as we do today, and the answer is generally no. The modern idea of noninterference in another state's affairs, at least in Europe, was only cemented in 1648 after the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years' War. Before this, the Church as well as the Holy Roman Emperor had a lot of say in the administration of their demesne and fiefdoms. After this, the HRE and the church declined, allowing each nation to continue.\n\nSo back in, say, the Roman times, there were tons of colonies. It's way out of my area of expertise though, but I can assure you that Britain, modern day Eastern Europe, into Syria and North Africa were all colonized because the Romans didn't see those barbarians as on par with them. \n\nChina preferred the system of tributaries and suzerainty in its dealings with neighboring nations, so basically economic dominance leading to cultural dominance, especially in modern day Korea, Mongolia, into Central Asia on one side and Ryukyu on the other. The cultural dominance part definitely extended into Japan and Vietnam as well. For them, this was almost on par with colonialism, because China historically weren't really conquest-oriented. They did, however, have major campaigns against the Xiongnu (who may or may not be the ancestors of the Huns today), the Yuezhe, the Scythians, the Parthans, and a whole lot of folks, but I don't think they exactly treated them like states... more like nomadic peoples who are on their territories, that's all.\n\n ", "The early Romans copied the Greek city-state method of when over populated, take excess population and ship them off to settle a colony. This was not the same as colonization as we think of it in British-Empire-in-America terms as this colony would be completely independent of their home city/country. They would acknowledge one was their parent state and have friendly relations/trade, but the parent state wouldn't feel obligated to protect, aid, nurture, etc their 'child'. \n\nThe later Romans used colonies as a method of helping to spread roman values, trade, and influence around, especially to control or repopulate boarder areas. These colonies were mostly filled with retired soldiers and other citizens. The colonies would be within the empire. Augustus settled approximately 150,000 retired soldiers in this way during his life, at his own expense. The colonies were approximately 2-3k in population, and some died out with the decline of the empire, but others survive to this day. These colonies were similar to other roman institutions in many ways - laid out in strict grid pattern (similar to military encampments), each had the same government structure which replicated Rome (annually elected officials, same positions and duties if not same titles as their equivalents in Rome). These towns would/could/might eventually have all of the structures you would find in other large cities, the forum, temples, theaters and/or amphitheaters, etc. They were located near water and in the valley floors (unlike in previous times where in say, Gaul, vast majority of settlements were hillforts for defensive purposes). \n\nI'm not sure if this was the \"turning point\" for colonies as I don't know anything about colonization during the middle ages, as if it existed in any form, I haven't heard of it. \n\nsource: History of Rome class I'm currently in ", "I would like to simply point out that the notion of a \"nation-state\" did not exist back in the times that you might be referring to. In the words of one of my professors, \"God did not create the world and say, Let there be nation-states!\"\n", "Hoo boy. This is a topic that I think is way more complicated than you know. Greek and Phoenician colonies, at least were fairly simple in purpose: They were large trading posts. Some of these, like Syracuse, morphed into large cities--after the Peloponnesian Wars and perhaps even before Syracuse was the largest and most powerful Greek city-state anywhere. Carthage, of course, became a very powerful empire in its own right. There doesn't seem to have been a \"cultural\" program, although the effect of Greek colonies on surrounding areas is a very interesting and very complicated topic that I could go into in depth if anyone wants me to.\n\nRoman colonies were much more complicated. To be sure, there were Roman colonies that were purely commercial--there are even a few in India. I don't mean to downplay them, because they are also quite complex and interesting--for example, there are a few Republican colonies found in France that were populated almost exclusively by slaves. The reasoning is that it is much easier for slaves to be intermediaries because they were not legally distinct from their owners, and so could conduct business deals on their owners' behalf. Sorry, didn't mean to get sidetracked.\n\nAnyway, as far as I can tell, you are wondering if Roman colonies had a civilizing mission. This is a very complicated topic that is still very much debated, but my answer is **no**. The Roman Empire did employ a rhetoric of \"civilizing the barbarians\" but there is very little evidence that this was anything more than just rhetoric. Provinces entered into the Roman way of life at their own pace, and heavy Imperial investment into the provinces is more or less undetectable until Hadrian, by which time all the provinces were more or less thoroughly Romanized. To be sure, the emperors did donate to building projects--think Baalbek--but that didn't really affect their character. Again, think Baalbek, which was very distinct from a Greco-Roman temple in form and function.\n\nSo what was the nature of the colonies? I, for one, would love to know that. Unfortunately, we don't really have good evidence for this. It is possible that colonies like Gloucester were populated by Romans who were transplanted from overcrowded cities. Or, conversely, it could have simply been an administrative designation with no real indication of its makeup (London was largely non-British, at least at the beginning, but was never a colony). Or it could be a mix of the two--founded by ex-legionaries and \"settlers\" but mostly populated by rural migrants. I favor the latter interpretation, but there is no way to know. A very interesting test case is Corinth, which was redounded as a military colony by Julius Caesar. However, it becomes a basically \"Greek\" city with a few generations.\n\nRepublican colonies are a different matter. Unfortunately, that is outside my specialty, although I will only caution against trusting Livy completely on this.\n\nI can't really give a clear answer, but that is because there is none." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e0y8thr" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The emperor Honorius abolished man vs man gladitorial games in AD 404. There were some animal games (venationes) in 503, and in 508 the place suffered earthquake damage. Rome's population had plummeted by about two thirds over the previous century and although there were idle rich about, these spectacles were not cheap to put on. The last recorded was in celebration of the consulship of Anicius Maximus in 523. The Ostrogothic ruler of Italy Theodoric the Great (illegitimate some of Alaric the Goth) gave his permission, but also made it clear that [he didn't think much of the games](_URL_3_) as an occupation for respectable men. If there were others after that, we have no record.\n\nWhich left the structure, an impressive pile of second hand building material. First to go were the bronze clamps used to secure blocks, much as abandoned buildings today get stripped of copper piping. the probable culprit is Totila, who[ sacked the city in 545](_URL_1_). (Obviously the building didn't fall because of the metal being taken out, but the architects who built the thing had a large budget, so why not err on the side of safety?) Rome's population plummeted, those who remained preferred to gather by the river (no more aqueducts, and toting water is tiresome). The Colosseum went into decline, unnerving to the locals who thought it a bit creepy.\n\nBy the ninth century things in Rome were looking up again. We have evidence of people turning some of the interior space into living quarters and animal stables, and the center into a market. It must have made a nice little neighborhood, if you didn't mind the trek to the river to get water, or if you could afford the water carriers who would do it for you for a price.\n\nAlas, 1084, Robert Guiscard comes to sack the city (see [here](_URL_0_) for more), leaving in his wake a city broken down into zones controlled by various powerful families and their bully boys (think gang turf rivalry). The Colosseum fell under control of the Frangipane family. With one brief interruption (rebelling citizens, tired of the baronial families, threw the lot of them out for the period of 1144-1159 and tried to restore an ancient Republic) that family held it until the Anabali family wrested the building from them at the end of the 12th century. They in turn had to give it over to the church in 1312.\n\nAnother serious earthquake in 1349 more or less put it out of commission for shelter. Instead it became a quarry for building material, a great source of profit for the Benedictines who held the lease hold of the place. The area continued in that role for the next hundred years; much of St Peters started life at the Colosseum.\n\nYou can see [woodcuts ](_URL_2_)of the building dating from the fifteenth and sixteen century. Much of what you see today is restoration. Serious restoration.\n\n(I used to live about a mile from it, and have always taken an interest in the place.)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.jstor.org/stable/20060637?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents", "https://books.google.com/books?id=LiJljEXvwAoC&pg=PA160&dq=totila+siege+of+rome&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mbuIUo2jFo6ihgf-n4HYBQ&ved=0CGUQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=totila%20siege%20of%20rome&f=false", "http://www.abroadintheyard.com/wp-content/uploads/Map-of-medieval-Rome-depicting-the-Colosseum.jpg", "https://books.google.com/books?id=aymsvxyyOhoC&pg=PA291&dq=Theodoric,++Anicius+Maximus&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwichO74yuDbAhVo3IMKHaH9DKoQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=Theodoric%2C%20%20Anicius%20Maximus&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dhe7nml" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "To answer the question in depth we first have to look at the circumstances of the charter. After William II. Rufus died on August 2nd of 1100, Henry hurried first to Winchester - to secure the royal treasure - and then to Westminster, where he was crowned king on August 5th, despite only a handful of nobles being present and both archbishops of the kingdom unavailable. This haste was necessary though because Henry's oldest brother, Robert Curthose, also had a very good claim to the throne of England, even though during this time he was still on his way back from the first crusade.\n\nSo, either on the day of his coronation or a few days after (there is no consensus on this, but for this question it can be ignored) Henry issued the charter, which was largely based on the threefold coronation oath common at the time, and had it distributed in the kingdom. It's not entirely sure if the initative to the charter came from Henry himself or if Henry was pressed by the nobles, as many of the points in the charter discussed the relation between king and nobles, especially the status of heirs and widows. In any case the charter can be seen as a token to secure Henry's reign which wasn't very stable in its first years. The charter was confirmed again by Henry when his brother Robert set sail in 1101 to gain the english throne which he laid claim on. In the end Robert could be paid off by Henry and the first rough part of his reign laid behind him.\n\nSo, why is this important? The monarchs following Henry simply had more support in the nobility than Henry had in his first years. Stephen, at least in the beginning of his reign in England, had the support of the nobles while Mathilda and Geoffrey of Anjou were busy in Normandy until 1144. In 1154 Henry II could wait six whole weeks between the death of Stephen and his own coronation because he didn't have to fear anyone taking the throne in the meantime. And Richard even had the support of the french king Philipp August, even though that friendship broke apart quite soon.\n\nDespite this I wouldn't say that the charter was forgotten. Stephen and Henry issued coronation charters themselves, and the charter of liberties was nothing else before it became the charter of liberties (the name was applied later on). Both of them even referenced the coronation charter of Henry I, even though their charters weren't as long as Henrys. Henry II basically wrote *I give you all the good laws that my grandfather Henry gave*. So while the contents may have been ignored or simply not enforced, a tradition of distributing the oral coronation oath in written form seems to have taken hold in England. Henry II was later on even confronted by Thomas Becket who explicitly referred to Henry II's coronation charter.\n\nThe charter then got new gravitas when Stephen Langton used it as a blueprint for Magna Carta. This may have been caused by a rising interest in justice and law. J. C. Holt, Magna Carta, 3rd ed., Cambridge 2015, p. 25, writes on this:\n > [...] there were many copies of Henry I's Charter in circulation in the early years of the thirteenth century, and [...] they were studied intensively – which is what has always been apparent from the chroniclers, inaccurate though some of the details of their accounts have been judged to be.\n\nThis may be the cause why the charter comes up again more than a century later. In the events preceeding Magna Carta the charter of liberties came in handy for the barons and especially Stephen Langton.\n\nI hope this answers your question at least partly. Feel free to ask further. I have to admit though that my strong side at the moment is the time of Henry I and not really the time of Magna Carta.\n\nHere is some further reading.\n\nOn the Charter of Liberties:\n\nTeunis, Henry B., The coronation charter of 1100: a postponement of decision. What did not happen in Henry I's reign, in: Journal of Medieval History 4/1 (1978), pp. 135–144.\n\nDalton, Paul, The Accession of King Henry I. August 1100, in: Viator 43/2 (2012), pp. 79–109.\n\nOn Henry I in general still:\n\nHollister, Charles Warren, Henry I (Yale English Monarchs), New Haven 2001.\n\nOn Magna Carta:\n\nHolt, J. C., Magna Carta, 3rd ed., Cambridge 2015.\n\nCarpenter, David, Magna Carta, London 2015.\n\nedit: English is not my mother tongue, so please be kind." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck80tz9" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The Arthurian stories have been retold and recycled for centuries (if not over a thousand years - it depends on how we date the Welsh Arthurian stories). Thus they have amalgamated into a mish-mash of features. Any tatoo or image of Excalibur will not be historical but only representative of one particular tradition or one particular story (*Le Morte Darthur* is by no means archetypal in its treatment of the Arthurian story).\n\nUltimately you might want to ask yourself what kind of Arthur you want depicted. The Post-Roman Arthur, the knightly Arthur, a modern Arthur. They're all equally valid and equally flawed. Accuracy is an illusion in this kind of endeavour.\n\n1) Excalibur\n\nI had a look at Kenneth Hodges's *Forging Chivalric Communities* because I remembered he noted something odd about Excalibur. Apparently there are two of them in *Le Morte*. The first is taken from the stone, the second is bartered away from the Lady of the Lake:\n\n > The first Excalibur, the sword in the stone, appears after a consultation of Merlin and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it appears outside of the church instead of on the high altar and Arthur draws it one his own, alone, without receiving it from the bishops. After it breaks, he receives a new one, not by purchasing it from the church, but by bartering for it with the Lady of the Lake. Finally, after Morgan steals the sword, he reclaims it in combat with the assistance of Nyneve.The multiple providers of the sword reflect the multiple sources of authority: personal prowess, supernatural worthiness,women’s good will.\n\n > Hodges, K., *Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's* Le Morte Darthur, (Basingstoke, 2005), p.36. \n\nOf the second Excalibur, the scabbard is more important than the sword in Malory's *Le Morte Darthur*: \n\n > Sir, said Merlin, look ye keep well the scabbard of Excalibur, for ye shall lose no blood while ye have the scabbard upon you, though ye have as many wounds upon you as ye may have. So after, for great trust, Arthur betook the scabbard to Morgan le Fay his sister, and she loved another knight better than her husband King Uriens or King Arthur, and she would have had Arthur her brother slain, and therefore she let make another scabbard like it by enchantment, and gave the scabbard Excalibur to her love; and the knight's name was called Accolon, that after had near slain King Arthur.\n\n > [Source](_URL_1_), Ch. XI.\n\n2) Seats: Virtues\n\nNo, they are not. You may be mixing this up with the 'Perilous Seat' which would only be sat by the most virtuous and worshipful of Arthur's knights. This was, of course, Galahad. \n\nI haven't investigated (and honestly have no desire to!) how many knights constituted the Round Table, so I offer [this](_URL_0_) with the warning that it might be wrong. At any rate, there are a few too many to fit on a hilt.\n\n3) Inscription\n\nLike I've said, it doesn't really matter. Find one, pick one, and be happy with it. Neither of those phrases appear in Malory's *Le Morte Darthur* verbatim but if you scrawl through the source I've provided you might be able to find one." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/arthur/malorys_knights.html", "http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1251/1251-h/1251-h.htm#link2HCH0025" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqvpy11" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "You may want to look into ripping DVDs of classic german art films? \n\nedit: HA! I found it!\n\n I present to you, \"[Berlin: Symphony of a Great City](_URL_0_)\". It's basically just a sort of documentary of a generic day in Weimar-era Berlin (with some pro-socialist/communist imagery thrown in for good measure.) \n\nBut you want to know the best part? It's in the public domain and you can download it right now. Resoution kind of sucks, but it at least gives you a place to start?\n\nEdit 2: Something I should probably warn you about: this isn't an easy film to watch. It has almost no plot, no real characters, and this version does not include the score that is supposed to accompany the film.\n\nThat said, it's not just a collection of \"stuff happening.\" When Berlin was filmed, the idea of a montage--creating meaning by juxtoposing two scenes together--was very new, and the filmmakers use it quite a bit. The classic example is when a bunch of men going to work are juxtaposed with cattle." ] }

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[ [ "https://archive.org/details/BerlinSymphonyofaGreatCity" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eczbw40" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "In “The Middle East Under Rome,” Maurice Sartre discusses the concept of lingua-franca in the Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Although all high ranking Roman officials were asked to learn Latin, the majority of the known-world spoke Greek due to the Hellenization that occurred during the conquest of Alexander the Great and the Seleucid-Ptolemy war. So high ranking officials spoke Greek and Latin." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "co5sc8u" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The atrocious conduct of the Red Army following their conquest of Eastern Europe and East Germany was largely influenced by their blatant abuse of alcohol. In fact the NKVD allegedly reported back to Moscow complaining that 'mass poisoning from captured alcohol is taking place in occupied Germany' as it was seriously limiting their combat capabilities. Additionally, \"It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic courage to attack women\". They were often so drunk they could not finish rapes, and in some cases used the bottle which caused devastating injuries (Antony Beevor, *Berlin*, 2007).\n\n\nIt should also be noted, compared to the other armies of World War Two, the Red Army's excessive drinking was linked to Russian culture:\n\n\n > [i]t was not the amount that Soviet soldiers drank that proved so disastrous for women - in comparion, for example to how much American soldiers drank - but rather the way they drank. As scholars of Russian drinking habits have repeatedly noted, Russians drink in binges, reaching a stage of intense intoxication over a period of several days, and they are quite sober before the next binge. The availability and high quality of alcohol available in Germany did not help the situation. One SDP informant recorded a hard and fast rule for dealing with Soviet troops: 'So long as he [the Russian soldier] is sober, one has almost nothing to fear Only under the influence of alcohol and also when several are drunk do the excesses begin' (Norman Naimark, *The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949*, 1995).\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "euwm8eo" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I would like to point out a quick note that things can get messy with terminology: as it was a ‘civil’ conflict at first, terms like ‘partisan group’ comes to mind. Then, after independence, anachronistic requisites would have it be that they were at war; I’d check out the letters between Germaine and Howe(authorized peace commissioner) to get a better idea of how the ‘rebels were viewed AT THAT TIME, both by the government and military of Britain. \n\nTerrorism is in many ways a very modern concept, even if the ideas behind it are old. Its a hard term to match to 18th century ideals, where rebellion and Nationalism was fomenting all across the world. \n\nWe can stretch it, especially with the Boston Tea Party; the patriots would tar and feather loyalists, which is certainly a ‘fear’ tactic. But at no point did the British consider them to be anything more than ‘rebels’ - again, check correspondence between parliament and colonial military government, and between the king. They thought of them as upstarts, a few scruffly backwoods rebels out to seize power for themselves. \n\nAs for the patriots? They saw their actions as justified(as did many in Britain). While their techniques could be brutal - vandalizing Tory homes, ostracizing families who didn’t support the cause, aforementioned tar and feather - they had a specific goal in mind: freedom. Today, ‘terrorist groups’ and ‘freedom fighters’ are often mixed in as one. Furthermore, in some sense, terrorism has been enabled by the proliferation of a globalized world. Terrorists know and exploit that. So it’s really difficult to ascribe a term so laden with modern connotation to something from the 18th century, though it’s not impossible to see the similarities." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "csdjhor" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Not to any greater a degree than in other regions of Europe. The church in England, in all its guises, has possessed national character, expressed through saints' lives, relics, and architecture. In terms of a church hierarchy the Pope was the official ruler of the English church right up until Henry VIII said he wasn't. That's not to say, however, that there weren't struggles over power and authority between church and state. The murder of Thomas Beckett, for instance (allegedly on the orders or wishes of Henry II) resulted in a struggle between Henry and Pope Alexander III which resulted in Henry II doing public penance -- a humiliating act for a king. Despite the pope's official role as head of the church, there was plenty of contention over who got to wield the real authority throughout the middle ages. This was not unique to England by any means. Henry IV (of the Holy Roman Empire) also interfered in church governance, claiming the right to invest bishops and abbots. His penance was at least as humiliating as Henry II's -- he had to walk barefoot through the snow in a hair shirt. \n\nI'm not sure what scholar you're referring to in your question, but the separate foundation of England in the early middle ages strikes me as revisionist as well. The standard narrative of the christianization of Britain begins with Pope Gregory the Great sending missionaries to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. Gregory's orders were to not destroy the pagan holy sites but instead to sanctify them. Now we know that there were Christians in Britain before Gregory sent his missionaries. St. Patrick, for instance, was the son and grandson of a deacon and a priest in England around the early 5th century. But Gregory's mission, along with the arrival of Irish missionaries in the 6th century, began the process of converting the kings and leaders. \n\nIf one were to argue that the English church was founded independently, I'm hard-pressed to understand where and when the missionaries would have arrived. Again, not knowing which scholars you're referring to, I'm only guessing, but perhaps they would argue that the process of christianization happened under the Romans? That's true to an extent. Christianity did trickle into Roman Britain through merchants, soldiers, etc. But saying that there were Christians in Britain is very different from saying that a Church was founded, and that may be where the confusion arose.\n\nOne more thing with regard specifically to doctrine: the Pelagian heresy, which emphasizes human free will rather than original sin, started with the British monk Pelagius around the same time as Patrick. Not an auspicious claim to fame. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dtbzkfg" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "tl;dr - Almost nothing changed in Montgomery's situation, he continued in command of the 21st Army Group which included most (all?) of the Commonwealth combat divisions, and several US units, until the end of the war.\n\nFor a while since the invasion of Normandy Montgomery had been pressing for Eisenhower to appoint a single commander for the ground troops in NW Europe. Naturally his intent that this commander would be himself. Remember that Montgomery was the ground forces commander for Operation Overlord, having command over Bradley and US 1st Army, until the command structure was changed in July 1944. He also wanted all the allies effort focused on a single push into Germany. Again his intent was he would command this push. Eisenhower resisted these suggestions, not least because the US was already providing the bulk of the armed forces in Europe, but found it difficult to argue against Montgomery's charisma and experience.\n\nFollowing Market Garden, Montgomery continued to argue for a single commander and a single push but the over-worked Eisenhower was now determined to stick to the plan of advancing on multiple fronts. The relationship between the two became further strained and Montgomery wrote an ill-advised letter to Eisenhower which almost cost him his job in October. Eisenhower was forced to give Montgomery a direct order to open him the port of Antwerp to shipping in order to relieve the Allies logistics problems. \n\nWhen the Germans launched their winter offensive (The Battle of the Bulge) on December 16th 1944 they quickly drove a wedge between the US 1st and 9th Armies on the north side of the bulge and the rest of the US 12th Army (see 1 below). Bradley's HQ was south of the Bulge and in order to simplify communications control of those Armies was temporarily transferred to Montgomery. Following the reduction of the pocket control was returned to Bradley, but the US commanders did not appreciate the interference and liked even less Montgomery's implication to the press that he alone had saved the Americans.\n\nHowever, Montgomery's reputation in the UK was such that it was pretty much unaffected by the failure of Market Garden. After the war he commanded the British forces occupying Northern Germany, which became the British Army Of the Rhine (BAOR), was appointed as Chief of the Imperial General Staff and also served as Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO.\n\nSome other points:\n\n1. Montgomery was just one of three ground forces commanders under Eisenhower from August 1944 to the end of the war in Europe. The other two were Bradley, commanding the 12th US Army Group and Gen Jacob Devers, commanding the 6th Army Group^*. Patton commanded the 3rd US Army under Bradley (mostly).\n\n2. Although Market Garden failed to achieve its ultimate goal of seizing the Arnhem bridge, the ground that was taken during the operation was crucial as a jumping off point when the offensive resumed in early 1945.\n\n3. Patton would not have been appointed to command the 21st Army Group which, as noted, was largely composed of Commonwealth troops. Such a move would have been politically impossible.\n\nprinciple source : Rick Atkinson, *The Guns at Last Light*\n\n^* Devers command responsibilities were very complex and fluid and well outside the scope of this question." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "efkxh0l" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It is difficult to prove a negative, but from my experience the answer is 'basically no, unless you count output on this subreddit.' While academic consensus on the Opium War has swung decisively in the revisionist direction, most online articles continue to exaggerate the impact of the war and fail to cover the Chinese side in any significant depth. Going back to the paper medium, there are a couple of recent books intended for a wide audience – Julia Lovell's *The Opium War* and Stephen Platt's *Imperial Twilight* especially – which should be relatively accessible and not prohibitively expensive. If, however, you are insistent on the content being free and online, my answers on Opium War topics can be found [here](_URL_0_) and my rebuttal to Extra Credits' Opium War video series [here](_URL_1_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/enclavedmicrostate#wiki_opium_wars_and_opium_in_china", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/enclavedmicrostate#wiki_saturday_showcases" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dutsho2" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Hi! You might be interested in [this post](_URL_0_) I wrote recently about the Persian army numbers you find in sources like Herodotos and Xenophon. In short, these numbers are not reliable historic facts, but estimates that were meant to look plausible enough not to undermine Greek authors' credibility. They probably reflect the Greeks' (pretty ill-informed) estimates of the full manpower potential of the Persian empire, not the size of actual field armies. We are fairly certain that the numbers we get (such as Xerxes' army of 2.6 million in 480 BC, or Artaxerxes II's 1.2 million men at Kounaxa in 401 BC) are impossibly large; the logistical challenges would be far too great.\n\nThat said, it's certain that the Persians would have been able to field larger armies than their Greek enemies; modern scholars' estimates for their largest armies tend to range between 60,000 and 150,000. These numbers are entirely plausible given the vast manpower reserves of the Achaemenid Persian empire. This was the largest empire that had ever existed. It covered some of the world's most densely populated areas, such as Egypt, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia. Even if they required each of their satrapies (administrative districts) to supply only a modest number of men, their royal armies would soon reach a vast total. To these levies and locally raised mercenaries the Persians would add their own standing forces: the king's royal bodyguard of 10,000 infantry, and the Persian cavalry raised from estates across the empire.\n\nThe logistical challenges of fielding such forces were immense. Every man and horse needed food and drink; food and equipment needed to be carried either by humans or by pack animals, each of which needed food and drink as well. Armies tended to march with large throngs of merchants, craftsmen, engineers, cooks, guides, servants, entertainers and sex workers in tow. The Persian king travelled with an enormous entourage of courtiers, councillors, concubines and companions. Moving all these people required careful organisation and a tremendous amount of resources. It was practically impossible for an army to carry its own supplies for more than a few days' marching.\n\nHerodotos describes the two ways in which the Persians solved these problems. The first was to \"call ahead\", so to speak, and order the assembly of supply dumps along the route where the army was to march. In friendly territory this was easily done using local food and fodder surplus. It was more than the Greeks themselves ever managed in logistical terms, though, and provoked some admiration in the Greek historian. Greek practice was typically to rely on local markets, and the Spartan king Agesilaos was praised for the simple expedient of having such markets arranged in advance to ensure a supply of food would be available for his men to buy.\n\nThe second solution was simply to requisition supplies from the territories the Persians were moving through. Herodotos reports a Persian practice, also attested elsewhere, to subject these territories to a special tax called the King's Dinner. This meant in theory that a particular city or region would have the honour of setting up a banquet for the king, but in practice that the area's food stores would be used up to feed and entertain the Persian army and allow the king to engage in royal generosity towards his loyal followers. Herodotos tells us that the island of Thasos was made to supply the King's Dinner at a cost of 400 silver talents (about 8,000 years' worth of wages for a skilled worker). Where no supply dumps were set up, then, the Great King simply solved his logistical problems by squeezing his subjects for everything they had." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7lkmwo/did_ancient_people_knew_their_quoted_numbers_of/drn48gt/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4swmkx", "c4sxhgn" ], "score": [ 6, 7 ], "text": [ "In *The Common Law* Oliver Wendell Holmes looks at similarities between Roman and common law but I can't remember if he establishes that any common law doctrines were derived from, as oppose to merely resemble, Roman doctrines.", "Louisiana has a system of civil law, unlike the common law in the rest of the United States. It's codes are derived from French and Spanish law as opposed to English law." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dnv1o0i" ], "score": [ 241 ], "text": [ "I've basically covered this on a podcast, so let me start with that.\n\nYour answer is in this episode:\n_URL_0_\n\nThat show was actually about the region south of Dithmarschen. But the cause of their freedom was the same:\n\nIt's swampy and tough economics there. There were NOT actually independent on paper. They were under the Bremen Archbishop, for example. But since that was tough to enforce, and the people so poor that they were all basically egalitarian and helped each other -- no nobility formed. Just like in East Frisia.\n\nAdded to that, it was a buffer state between Denmark and the German empire. So, just weak jurisdiction to begin with. Far away and usually not worth the trouble.\n\nThe Franks (Charlemagne) just gave up on the region after holding it for 20 years.\n\nTechnically there were under Hamburg (church-wise) ..but probably barely even knew that (in the 11the century control was just nominal on paper, really).\n\nWhat you are referring to is the same that happened in other remote, coastal areas. They eventually founded a \"Bauernrepublik\" or Farmers (Peasant's) Republik. Meaning they elected 48 judges to run things.... which... just like in East Frisia, eventually started to come from fewer and fewer families, and the judges dynastic families became the de facto nobility.\n\nThe local \"militia\" were good at fighting in the Watt. They could even just open the dikes and flood the enemy.\n\nDon't underestimate the border factor though.. Even in the 19th century they were still kinda part of the Danish crown, and part of Bismark's Prussia, until wars were fought. But just the fact that they weren't clearly and directly ruled gave them a lot of freedom. Only 1866 was it really, finally, officially part of Germany (Schlesswig Holstein Prussia).\n\nSorry about the lack of sources. I can update this later.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.acast.com/historyofgermany/026-frisianfreedom" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e3y8q0r" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "I've asked a few questions about Cathars on this sub, and it seems that a lot of historians question whether the Cathars even existed at all. \nYou might want to look at this answer about Cathars from u/sunagainstgold\n\n_URL_0_\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49rn50/how_did_catharism_start_develop_and_become_so/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctwpmd0" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ " > I know some of the bloodiest combat happened after formations broke\n\nThe bloodiest combat would happen after the formation of *one side* broke, and almost all of the blood would come from them.\n\n > but were there rules to how you fought with the enemy, i.e. one-on-one.\n\nDon't do it because it's stupid and suicidal?\n\nThe most basic, fundamental rule that governs battles before the gunpowder era (and it's mostly true of later eras too) is that if you have two friends around you and the guy you are facing doesn't, he is going to die and you are going to live. Because of this, almost everything about fighting is about how to ensure that you can maintain the safety of a formation.\n\nHollywood movies often show battles as first having organized lines which then break down into a disorganized general melee. This is completely wrong, and would never happen. The moment your line fails, you don't continue fighting the enemy, you either do everything in your power to rally our friends and form a new line, or you flee the field. Because your enemy is certainly going to try to rebuild his line, and the moment they succeed, they will completely roll over you.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d9pxz1e", "d9pzakh", "d9qfqnn", "d9qvgvj", "d9r1g9c" ], "score": [ 46, 22, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Italian Fascism was a hybrid ideology in practice: it drew elements from socialism (state interventions in economy, an emphasis on welfare policies like public housing schemes, state sanctioned free time activities), liberalism (a tendency to favor industrial and financial interests), totalitarian measures (heavy handed propaganda, total elimination of academic freedom, widespread delation, violent opposition to dissenters) \"old school\" nationalism/traditionalism (militarism, close ties with the Catholic Church, obsequious - if insincere - deference to the monarchy). \n\nThis was just a result of the complex web of political counterweights Mussolini had to move in as a politician. He had many feet in one shoe, having to appease the King, the Pope, the Catholic working masses, the wealthy, the army. \n\nHitler, on the other hand, had a very tense relationship with the religious establishment. He did, however, rule a nation where antisemitism was relatively widespread and historically present - maybe not the raving, all-encompassing hate for Jews he and his cronies adopted, but prevalent enough. \n\nItalians were never that antisemitic, culturally, so Mussolini's platform reflected that.\n\n", "I wouldn't say that racism wasn't inherent to Fascism. In fact I would assert the opposite. \n\nOne of the main breaking points in the racial theory (if you can call it that) between the Fascist ideology and the Nazi ideology was due to the Nordic centrist view point. Mussolini and the Fascists rejected this idea as it taught that the Mediterranean people were on a lower rung of society from the 'more pure' Nordics. This ideology was actually devisive within Italy itself, as it divided the more 'Nordic' north from the more 'Latin' south. Instead, the Fascists preached a more pan-Italian nationalism: the Italians were better, and more pure as a race, *because they were Italian.* The Italians themselves were placed on a higher rung than other Mediterranean people because they were they 'only ones' that had united themselves behind a national identity (which was conveniently the one preached by the PNF). The Fascists concocted lists detailing the people in lands to be conquered in terms of value. \n\nIt was thus the duty of the Italian people to spread (through the *spazio vitale* program) their culture to the lands which had once been that of the Roman empire. \n\nNow, Mussolini's own views on not just racism but antisemitism varied wildely throughout his life (much like the majority of his opinions). He is on record giving speeches espousing for the need for an increase in the birthrate of 'Aryans and Mediterraneans' in the early 1920s. This would inform one of Fascisms great disasters of the 'Battle of the Births' in which the Fascists attempted to raise the birthrate of the Italian people but ultimately caused it to plummet. He would also espouse beliefs echoing jewish-banking conspiracies throughout much of Fascism's rise to power while keeping a jewish mistress - Margherita Sarfatti - whom has been called the Jewish Mother of Fascism. Sarfatti also played a heavy role in Fascist Party propaganda and was Mussolini's chief biographer in the 1920s. Ultimately, Fascism would remain clear of encoded antisemitism until 1938. \n\nMussolini would also at times decree that there wasn't such a thing as race, and that it was entirely a mental construct. Once again, this was usually used in connection to the belief that the Italians had formed themselves and thus were the strongest out of the Mediterranean people. \n\n**Reading:** Davide Rodogno, *Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War*; David Kertzer, *The Pope and Mussolini*; Bosworth, *Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship*", " > However, the fascism present in Mussolini's Italy and, briefly, Dollfus' Italy was apparently quite different. \n\nEngelbert Dollfuß established his dictatorship in 1933 and was assassinated by the Nazis 1934. After that Kurt Schuschnigg took over and lead the regime till 1938 (Anschluß) - so it's more Schuschnigg's Austria than Dollfuß' Austria. (ofc Dollfuß was the one who did the coup in 1933, so I suppose you may call it Dollfuß' Austria, too.)\n\n > Racism is apparently not inherent to fascism. I believe that Mussolini rejected Nazi racialism, at least before Italy and Germany became allies. Before this alliance, Italy and Austria seemed to fear or disprove of Nazi fascism. Why was this?\n\nI can't say much about Italy, but the Austrian Government disproved the Nazis because they were opponents. Until May 1933 the NSDAP was a legal party in Austria - of course they didn't cease to exist when Dollfuß' regime prohibited the party. They killed Dollfuß in 1934 and tried to take over the country, making Dollfuß a martyr who died in a \"war\" against Hitler. It's no big surprise that the regime didn't like the Nazis.\n\nBesides that: Dollfuß' and Schuschnigg's party was the Christlichsoziale Partei ([Christian Social Party](_URL_1_)). \"Christian\" wasn't just a name, they clearly identified themselves as Christian or even Catholic. Like Mussolini they had strong ties with the church (one of their former chancellors even was a Catholic [prelate](_URL_0_)). Hitler otoh didn't like the Catholic church very much. Dollfuß' and Schuschnigg's regime was conservative — they even rehabilitated the Habsburg family, let them return to Austria, returned parts of their confiscated goods and built good connections to Otto Habsburg-Lothringen (the son of the last Austrian emperor and former crown prince).", "I'll leave Italy to /u/sunshinebag and /u/Klesk_vs_Xaero but start off with something that unites the historically fascist movements in their ideology: As a political movement in the context of its time, Fascism understood itself as the viable alternative to both Democracy and Socialism in solving the political and economic problems of its time, especially the class conflict. Rejecting both liberal democracy and socialism aimed at communist utopia, it saw itself as the \"third way\" to unite the nation and lead its people to greatness, mostly through a policy of uniting the classes in the service of the nation, of violently suppressing political dissent, building or at least attempting to build a mass movement, and an ideological emphasize on practice rather than theory, though this is even more present in Nazism than other forms of Fascism.\n\nAustrofascism was ideologically very much inspired by the Katholiche Soziallehre (Catholic Social Tenet or Social Teaching), meaning that they perceived the way to transcend social class conflict during their rule through the establishment of Catholic inspired Corporate State. This meant that instead of class conflict being waged in the form of unions vs. employers or similar, they sought to organize society along the lines of Stände, i.e. your profession, where all members of one profession no matter on which side they stood in class conflict where organized together in order to transcend class conflict in national and catholic way. Austrofascism has been rightly called a form of clerical fascism in this sense.\n\nNazism on the other hand attempted the same in principle but based on a racial and national rather than religious basis. For the Nazis class conflict was something their imaginary Jewish opponent had introduced and used against the German race and thus only a racially homogeneous German nation could transcend it for the benefit of all Aryans.\n\nAustrofascism saw itself in a more \"restauration\" tradition than the especially the early Nazis who embraced a revolutionary rhetoric. This also becomes apparent in the different practices of Antisemitism. While it is obvious that the Nazis wanted Jews to disappear from German society as a whole through a variety of ways, the Austrofascists did embrace discrimination of Jews but along the lines of them being relegated to their \"place\" in society, meaning that they e.g. enacted quotas that Jews were only supposed to be represented in certain professions in line with their percentage of the total population. The Austrofascists' utopia was a Catholic and restorative nation where everyone knew and only acted accordingly to their \"place\". They imagined their state as the restorer of the \"natural\", i.e. willed by the Catholic God, state of things on earth, which in their interpretation meant that e.g. farmers were more valuable than others, a strong emphasize on \"traditional\" professions and so on and so forth.\n\nWhile this restarautive aspect did ideologically include the restoration of the Habsburg Empire on some level, Austrofascism lacked the sort of expansionist agenda seen by Italian or German fascism. In terms of foreign policy, the main goal of the Austrofascist state was to remain independent of Nazi Germany – a plan that didn't really work as we know now.\n\nSo, in short, in Austria fascism we see a restorative ideology strongly influenced by political catholicism while the Nazis took a very different path ideologically.", "There are many ways to approach this question. First, though, some distinctions must be made. \n\nItalian Fascism lasted for over twenty years and, during this period – while we can agree that it went solidifying into a more defined character during the 1930s – it changed. The early years Fascism (pre Matteotti murder and Acerbo law) was different from Fascism in the late 1920s and again different from Fascism after the Lateranensi Pacts, which furthermore evolved towards the end of the 1930s with the alliance with Germany.\nThis evolution originated from both internal and external influences.\n\nUnfortunately, as I commented in other circumstances, I find it extremely hard to define Fascism – if not in a very broad sense – without limiting to some subset of its features; which offers very little to a comparison with National socialism, given that the same evolution and complexity – if maybe less marked – exists for the Nazi Regime. I fear therefore that any answer I can attempt will be unsatisfying.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nYet I have been summoned; and thus I will anyway try to point out some things that may add to the discussion.\n\n\nTo avoid repeating it everywhere: my knowledge of National socialism is essentially based on Kershaw's biography of Hitler. The following will include no doubt some major oversimplifications and – likely – mistakes. But I can't try to make a comparison without speaking of Germany too. If you feel like I am wrong about something, it may very well be so.\n\nI also spoke a bit about Italian foreign policy – this is a brief, brief summary of the parts that are relevant to the question. It does not provide a general overview of foreign policy during Fascism.\n\nAlso, I ignore many points of contact between the two regimes and make passing reference to others. They existed but I try to stay focused on the question. In any case, some of these points of contact are more relevant than the distinctions that end up being made about them, so... \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nFascism lasted for a long period of time without the immediate perspective of a war – and we may argue, up to 1939, with reasonable expectations not to be involved in a major European conflict. This is not true for National Socialism, which increasingly acted within this perspective.\nThis is not to say that Mussolini and the Italian Military did not consider the possibility of a war between European nations; but this was framed in a more conventional foreign policy set up. While on the other hand, it is my understanding that most of the economical and social policies of the National socialists were shaped by the idea of an impending decisive conflict.\n\nThis affected the extent and the rapidity of the transformation of economy – and society to a lesser extent – in a totalitarian sense. A process slower and less definitive in the Italian case.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nFascism had indeed to develop a regime of forced co-operation with two major powers within Italy: the Church and the King. Throughout the twenty years history of the Fascist Regime, these relations were marked by periods of agreement and periods of conflict, with the major conflict involving the figure of Pope Pius XI. \nOn a purely ideological perspective, these relations tempered some of the most extreme tendencies within Fascism and – at the same time – while confining them on the fringe side of politics, they prevented an abrupt resolution. The internal opposition to Mussolini did not end in bloodbaths but in a slow, gradual, marginalization where the Duce carefully severed his opponent's ties to the actual power, while often leaving him with an aura of prestige among local minorities. While the rise and fall of prominent Nazis also proceeded from the Fuhrer, it was often more dramatic and perhaps less craftily orchestrated.\nOn a practical side: the institutions of the Church and the King's bureaucracy, both administrative and military, were able to survive – to a certain extent and not without a struggle (see for example the events surrounding the *Azione Cattolica*)– as parallel, competing ways of power, whose presence was essential to the possibility of “replacing” Mussolini with Badoglio. The comparative absence of these structures within Germany – where the institutions of the Republic had been quite effectively erased – may have contributed to the difficulties in developing an alternative to Hitler's power.\n\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\n\nThe issue of racism... \n\nI need a short premise to this point. It is often complex to define the core elements of a form of government, where effort must be taken to determine whether these elements are injected into the country by the Regime or rather filtered through the country into the Regime. Many of the characters of Fascism – and legitimate ones to be fair, all worth mentioning – are not original to Fascism; they come from a complex, composite tradition which drew back to the period from late XIX century and the immediate post-war: Nationalism, Trade-Unionism, Pan-Culturalism, Expansionism, Neo-aristocracysm, Trencherism, etc. These elements all took their part in defining the unifying myth of the Anti-Liberal opposition: the New State.\n\nIt is not surprising that a Regime heavily shaped by Mussolini, who had very little personal commitment to great ideals as guides but a hefty reliance on them as tools, would have made use of all these myths, weighting more or less on each one during the different phases of its existence.\n\n\nNow, to my understanding, the italian society was in the years building up to Fascism, realistically speaking, racist. We may argue that it was not a malicious racism, advocating violent actions or depicting other races as enemies, but it was the condescending, paternalistic racism that other countries had previously experienced during their history. It was the kind of racism that allowed comic strips depicting the italian colonists civilizing the African people by “impregnating their women” to be perceived as funny and not disturbing. \nIn this context there is no doubt that the italian society was pervaded by a latent racism, as far as our modern understanding goes. This racism filtered through Fascism and became a part of it. \nI would argue though that it was not a core element of it. It was a part of the italian society that con not be taken apart from the regime, to easily tell where one ends and the other one begins.\n\nWhat was on the other hand legitimately different from the National Socialist Regime, was the fact that italian racism had not – with the exception of fringe cultural elements – the character of an irreducible natural struggle. The context of social, national, class struggle was, within Italy, mostly historical and the idea of history as a sequence of unavoidable clashes was not framed in a racial context; which to my understanding marks another difference from the National Socialist case.\n\nFurthermore the racial issue did not extend as much into antisemitism, given the limited number of Jews living in Italy and their deep integration within italian society. There were some antisemitic instances, but even these were mostly framed in a religious context and not a racial one." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3ip2nd" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "They suffered heavy casualties *but* that's relative to the losses incurred by a winning side. The thing with ancient and medieval battles is that the majority of losses in a battle were suffered by losers when they routed - the winners could cut them down as they fled. The actual losses on the winners side (losses suffered from the actual hand-to-hand fighting) tended to be low, a fraction of the losers.\n\n\nSo take Herodotus' accounts of Persians being driven on by whips and dying by the score on the end of Greek spears with a massive boulder of salt. There's a lot of Greek tropes present and modern scholars don't believe this is what happened. So the Persians did suffer heavily for a battle that they still won, not Pyrrhic levels but significant. \n\n\nAlso ignore the visuals you usually see of ancient/medieval combat where two sides just smash into each other in a confused melee. We don't know how combat worked but we know it wasn't like that. The current model has the two sides fighting hard for a few minutes then pulling back a safe distance to catch their breath and psych themselves up for the next bout. Rinse and repeat. If the Greeks could rotate their forces (and presumably the Persians with their large army could do the same) they'd keep their forces fresh. Losses in this phase would be low as most would be fighting defensively (e.g. trying not to be hit more than trying to score a hit). Only the most motivated badass/hardcore soldiers would have the nerve to 100% commit to offensive fighting. \n\n\nLastly remember that it was a combined Greek army that fought at Thermopylae and that they rotated contingents so all the Greeks present fought at some time. The final stand was by the Spartans **and** the Thespians. Supposedly the Thebans were also forced to stay behind but surrendered immediately - not sure how accurate that part was, Athens and Thebes did have a rivalry. Furthermore the Helots (Spartan serfs who were traditionally treated atrociously) who accompanied the Spartiates almost certainly died alongside them. " ] }

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