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{ "a_id": [ "ct2zbrc" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This also involves the Carson City federal mint in Nevada (drawing on the famed Comstock Lode), established in 1869. These mints purchased bullion, either directly from major mines or from banks, which purchased bullion from the market (including from smaller producers). Although the mints were capable of refining the bullion, they often acquired precious metal that required nothing or little more than assay work to make certain the bullion met the purity standard required for a US coin. The rest is a matter of transforming ingots into round blanks, which is merely an industrial process involving heat, rollers, and cutting followed by the actual stamping of the mint press." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cokl66w" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Your question is unanswerable because its central premise is flawed. \n\nWith Genesis, the change is easily explained - Peter Gabriel left as bandleader, Phil Collins took over. Phil Collins has a different style and sensibility, so naturally their work reflected that. \n\nRush released their first record in 1974, so to say that they \"sold out\" around 1975 is pretty ridiculous; what else do you have to compare it to? And in what universe is that material more radio friendly? As the 70's wore on, their songs became longer and longer and incorporated more and more synthesized elements and odd time signatures. \n\nFor Camel, you get an orchestral concept album in 1975, which again goes against your conceit. And their material became more jazz-influenced, which in the late 70s isn't exactly a big seller. You might as well say that Steely Dan was getting more commercial with Aja, or that Joni Mitchell was getting more commercial with The Hissing of Summer Lawns. \n\nIf you could provide more examples we could possibly answer your question, but as it stands your question is based on a flawed premise. As bands go on, they tend to get better at what they do and often have access to better technology due to bigger budgets and improved recording technology; oftentimes this can give the illusion of \"more commercial\" when compared to earlier work, when it really just means \"played better, recorded better, in better facilities\". Most of the time, though, \"My favorite band sold out!\" translates to \"I liked the way they sounded before.\" " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctexvwr" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "In the north, the Irish and then the Norse settled the Faeroes before the Norse jumped off to Iceland, Greenland, and (briefly) the coast of North America. \n\nIn the south, the Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanches, who were present on the islands around 1000 BC and were originally from North Africa. (Although about half of the current Canarian population's DNA is Guanche, the culture and language have been largely extinct for centuries.)\n\nThe Guanches were reliant on stone tools when encountered by the Portuguese in the 15th century. They lacked metals and had no remaining tradition of navigation; the Canaries have strong currents and trade winds, so smaller vessels would have been death traps. As a result, the Guanches never expanded west or north into the rest of the islands in that region (Cape Verde, the Azores, Madeira, collectively known as \"Macaronesia\"); they were uninhabited when the Portuguese explored them, although there was some evidence of Roman and Viking exploration on Madeira." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "duvhx9q", "duvix4r" ], "score": [ 32, 7 ], "text": [ "One of the most thoughtful recent scholars on this subject was the late Bo Almqvist (1931-2013) - a Swedish folklorist who was the director of the Irish Department of Folklore at University College, Dublin. His \"Viking Ale: Studies on Folklore Contacts between the Northern and the Western Worlds\", edited by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Séamas Ó Catháin (Aberystwyth: Boethius, 1991) is an excellent collection of articles, many of which address what you are asking. Here is a quote that helps frame this discussion:\n\n > [The Norwegian folklorist Reidar Christiansen] has pointed to a series of close parallels between certain Scandinavian and Scottish-Gaelic and Irish legends, and has introduced the term North Sea legends. It is not easy to account satisfactorily for these similarities. It may be that some of the motifs and legends are part of a common stock, but there can be little doubt either that the Norse and Gaelic speaking communities influenced one another, and that certain types and sub-types spread in either direction.\n\nWhat is true of folklore is equally true of art and various other cultural motifs. We cannot speak of something like Newgrange without acknowledging that it is pre-Celtic, but the point is well taken - what seems to be elements of common cultural inheritance also seem to pre-date both the Celts and the Scandinavians - as we understand them. The question remains - why do these similarities exist? Diffusion through various periods of contact seems like an obvious answer, but aspects of shared cultural elements seem too deep to be accounted for strictly through diffusion. \n\nI address this to a certain extent in my forthcoming, [\"The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation\"](_URL_0_). The following is an excerpt - before the copyeditor makes me seem far smarter than I am (so apologies for any clunky language!):\n\n > Almqvist addresses a question in British studies, looking to those who conclude that Anglo-Saxons invaders gave as much as they took, creating a hybridised society. Almqvist applied this to assist in his life-long study of the interaction of Celtic and Scandinavian folklore. In his essay, ‘Scandinavian and Celtic Folklore Contacts in the Earldom of Orkney’, he attempts to determine which traditions were borrowed and which may represent common inheritance. It is no mean task, but Almqvist writes with authority, having spent decades pondering the question, reading sources in multiple languages to consider possible origins of parallel texts. \n\n > Cornwall presented a similar situation since it encountered not only Anglo-Saxons but also Scandinavians. Cornwall cannot be regarded as the ‘Venice of the North’, as Almqvist characterises the medieval earldom of Orkney; nevertheless, the Cornish nation was also something of a crossroad. While it resisted medieval Anglo-Saxon advances, Cornwall was not as secluded as the hinterland of Wales or north-western, mountainous Caledonia. One would expect that the Cornish had their own oral tradition before the many forces of history had their way. Regardless of how factors affecting lives and culture played out, the folklore of Cornwall certainly exhibits the same common inheritance that Almqvist suggests ‘is part of the explanation of the unity that exists today among the peoples of the British Isles.’\n\nWhat can be said about similarities throughout Britain and Ireland, can be extended effortlessly, also, to Scandinavia and Iceland. In otherwords, yours is an excellent question, and many have pondered the answer(s) with various degrees of success.\n", "To clarify, I don't just mean 'Celts' and 'Norse/Nords', I mean any and all peoples from Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia. \n\nPrehistoric peoples, Gaelic peoples, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, etc. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.exeterpress.co.uk/en/Book/1068/The-Folklore-of-Cornwall.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cze07cu", "cze1xua", "cze32br", "cze5zfr", "cze6gfq", "czej265" ], "score": [ 548, 507, 25, 21, 149, 11 ], "text": [ "There has been one case of plagiarism, several jokes, and a number of contentless posts offered up as \"answers\" to the OP's question.\n\nThis is AskHistorians. We ask that your answers be in-depth, comprehensive, and such that an historian might give. You should also be able to back your post with proper sources if requested. If you cannot provide an answer that meets our requirements, please refrain from posting. We prefer no answer to speculation, educated guesswork, jokes or memes.\n\nThank you.", "Historically, the Jewish mob is probably the closest to what you're looking for. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Arnold Rothstein, all mainly known for their connection to early Italian mafia outfits but they were in somewhat ethnic jewish gangs in their own right. There's a problem of differentiation because they generally were connected to Italian mob outfits, and the larger scale criminal endeavors were joint endeavors. Similar to nowadays with the Mexican mafia using central American gangs for certain jobs. Early American crime wasn't based on drug trafficking and before prohibition was primarily centered around gambling (gambling parlors as well as local lottery pools) and paying for protection. Meyer Lansky in his early years was well known for his gambling parlor, specifically it was known to be less likely to be rigged (he relied on more modern understanding of odds) and Rothstein was famously believed to have rigged the world series. \n\nAnother group of famous ethnic gangs are the collection of tong and triad found in San Francisco's Barbary coast/Chinatown. It's tricky to discuss because membership wasn't as regimented, a member of one tong could be a member of up to around 6. This made gang conflicts much trickier. Now in San Francisco (and portland) the main criminal organizations were focused on roughly the same as the Italian and jewish, but with a much weaker focus on sports betting. Opium smuggling/parlors and prostitution were very much a point of wealth. Particularly women were essentially treated as a commodity, around 1880s-1910s (the exact time escapes me) the Chinese male to female ratio was often close to 20:1 due to immigration policies of the day against the Chinese (Chinese exclusion act and the geary act) . This led to a pretty large black market for Chinese women, often a woman could be held as a sorta bank note between rival tong during war/deals. There were severe ramifications of a Chinese man bedding a white woman, even a prostitute, due to the craze of the yellow peril. \n\nSources: \n\nHerbert Astbury's the Barbary coast. \n\n_URL_0_ - a collection of archival news articles. \n\nHatchet men: the story of the tong wars by Richard dillon\n\nNOTE: I'm not a historian so I can't tell you whether the sources are considered_good_ sources by the historian community. But they seemed generally well researched in my amateur view. I believe Hatchet men is primarily sourced from historic police files (and all the biases contained within). I used them to write a screenplay a couple years ago about a turn of the century gang war. \n", "Can I expand the original question to ask about Polish syndicates? \n\nI know there were Poles and Polish-Americans who clashed with Al Capone (like [Hymie Weiss](_URL_0_)), but I don't know if there was any kind of organization, or if they just happened to grow up in the same neighborhoods as other gangsters. ", "There was the French connection, which sold heroin on the US market. Heroin was smuggled from Turkey to the US through the French port Marseille, where they operated. I don't know if it's a satisfactory answer as the leaders themselves operated from France (they were from Corsica by the way) but that is the only recognized French crime organization known to have operated in the US. ", "The reason traditional organized crime groups tend to be from certain ethnic backgrounds (Irish, Italian, Russian, Jewish) is because these groups comprised of immigrants who were considered outsiders from mainstream American society (i.e. \"non-white\") during the time when most of them immigrated (1800's). The immigrants tended to be poor and lived in slums, most notably in New York City.\n\nSince these immigrants were considered outsiders, many of them tended to band together to illegally make money since it was hard for them to find work at a decent wage due to their ethnic background. New York City street gangs were primarily dominated by Jewish and Irish organized crime until the influx of immigrants from Southern Italy and Sicily from the 1880's onward. The immigrants from Southern Italy and Sicily were so used to thousands of years of oppression and poverty and tended to only trust people from their immediate family and people from their town. The early founders of the Bonanno Family in New York is a good example of this because they tended to be mostly from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily and didn't trust people who were from other parts of Sicily.\n\nAfter Italy unified in the 1860's much of Southern Italy and Sicily was left unguarded from police and the government for many years, which led to the creation and rise of the Mafia in the vacuum. The Mafia is unique because of how much family blood ties, culture, and distrust of government permeates throughout the culture. When the immigrants through Southern Italy and Sicily arrived in the US, they soon became the dominant criminal group. Where NYC had been controlled by the Irish and Jewish gangs the clannish nature and ruthlessness of the Italians soon led them to take over the majority of organized crime, so much so that the few remaining groups of non-Italian gangs were soon forced to either align with the Italians or have their rackets taken from them. \n\nAnother big reason for the strength of the Italian groups in the US is the members frequently brought in their sons into the Mafia to strengthen group loyalty, whereas it was a lot less common in Jewish groups to bring in family members. This is still very prominent in the current mafia groups in Sicily, Naples (known as The Camorra), and Calabria (known as the 'Ndràngheta). You'll see lots of intermarrying between mafia groups: Mafia sons marrying mafia daughters. Examples in the US: Joe Bonanno's son Bill was married to Thomas Lucchese's daughter. In fact, the Sicilians are notorious for first cousins marrying each other, Carlo Gambino's wife Catherine Castellano Gambino (Paul Castellano's sister) was reportedly his first cousin. All of these things strengthen the blood ties of the criminal family and increase loyalty.\n\n**As far as French, German, or Scandinavian crime groups:**\n\nThis depends on how you define \"organized crime.\" It's possible there's evidence of groups from these ethnic backgrounds committed crimes in unison, though whether they'd be considered organized crime depends on how loosely you'd define that term. There was evidence of white, anglo-saxons committing bootlegging during prohibition, complete with bribery of police officers and politicians, but there's not much else that I've found so far *[source: Ken Burns' Prohibition]*.\n\nYou're more likely to find evidence of non-Italians who were associates of the Italian Mafia in the US, as opposed to running their own gangs. Examples of this include: Frank Schweihs, aka \"The German\", in the Chicago Outfit or Joseph Watts with the Gambino Family in New York. Others outside the US include many French-Canadians in Montreal, Raynald Desjardins (French-Canadian) and his lieutenant Juan Fernandez (a Spaniard), being the most notorious. Both of these men worked with the Rizzuto Family, an Italian group in Montreal.\n\nPlease let me know if you'd like any more context or if you have any questions.\n\n*[More sources: \"The First Family\" by Mike Dash, \"Cosa Nostra\" by John Dickie, \"Five Families\" by Selwyn Raab, \"The Sixth Family\" by Adrian Humphreys, and \"Mafia Inc.\" by Andre Cedilot]*", "Swedish Fredrik Lundin built a crime syndicate in Chicago that was taken over later by Al Capone in the 1920s and was also a republican congressman.\n\n\nGustav Skogens (2011). \"Svensk styrde Chicago före Al Capone\". Allt om historia (1/2011): p.46–49" ] }

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[ [], [ "Foundsf.org" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymie_Weiss" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cutumm2", "cuu4hg8" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "You're asking kind of a lot of questions here. Typically classical music developed and changed with technology. \n\nTake Baroque instruments, for example. You have [Baroque Horns](_URL_0_) with no valves, so they can only play in a handful of keys, and can't play scales, chromatics, and so on, so what you write for them is very limited based on the ability of the instrument. Same with writing for a harpsichord. It can't play any dynamics, can't play sustained notes, and so on, so you are writing within the constraints of the instrument. \n\nAs for writing in the baroque era, there was no formal agreement on what constituted an orchestra, it was just however many musicians you happened to be able to afford. As such, the music in the baroque era was very flexible, by necessity. A part for flute could easily be played by oboe, or recorder, or likely even violin. Ornamentation was never written in because it would always be improvised by each individual player. \n\nAs for bass instruments, you had what is called a [Figured Bass](_URL_1_) or Basso Continuo wherein there was never a written bass part that you played note for note. You were given the chord numbers of what was going on in the piece, and whoever was playing the bass part would completely improvise bass line around that. Whether it was an organ, or a Viola de Gamba, or a harpsichord, or whatever you had on hand. \n\nThe music was extremely versatile and flexible, but it was more so due to necessity. \n\nAs you get into the classical era, the instruments keep developing, and all the winds gain the ability to play full chromatic scales, and the orchestras get larger, and the complement becomes more standard. So you lose the figured bass lines, and you see composers write pieces that are more complex for the newer, more versatile instruments. You also see pieces that are more fixed to their instrument - a flute concerto from the Classical era likely wouldn't ever be played on any other instrument, as it was written specifically for the flute. \n\nThen you get into the Romantic period, and the instruments keep getting better. At this time you also see much larger works, bigger orchestras, grander operas with massive casts, works for hundreds of players and singers. At this time the orchestra was getting larger, and composers must have assumed that this growth would continue, so you see works like the [Mahler's 8th Symphony](_URL_2_) known as the \"Symphony of a thousand\", written for double orchestra (plus lots of additional instruments that are not normally in an orchestra), 8 soloists, double choir, children's choir, 2 brass choirs, and full cathedral organ. It's an insane amount of people. (wicked fun to perform, though)\n\nSo, what would have happened if Mahler wrote this in 1702? First off, most of the instruments he was writing for existed in very primitive forms and wouldn't have been able to play a good chunk of the notes written for them. Some hadn't even been invented, like the [Celesta](_URL_3_). Next, you would have had to empty the entire country of musicians just to be able to find enough to play the piece (and somehow find the money to pay them). Then you're dealing with a style of music that no one had ever heard. It would be like playing Bob Marley or Tom Waits. No one would get it. \n\nMusic progresses, but not as quickly as we think. Tastes do change, but it's a gradual change where you add a few new elements to an already established, known, and popular formula. To take a totally unknown style and throw it into a different era, would likely scare and confuse the hell out of people. \n\nRite of Spring is an excellent example. A piece of music that went way beyond the boundaries of what audiences expected, and what was \"good taste\". As a result, there was a riot in which the police were called. The audiences of the 20th century weren't ready for a piece like that. ", " > Looking at the development of western classical music, could the Rite of Spring have been composed for an 18th century orchestra? \n\nThat kind of question doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like asking if a Mexican girl could just, out of nowhere, start reciting a Korean translation of Pushkin while building a microwave, in her room. In principle, her anatomy allows her to do that, but she would need the background, the knowledge and the tools to do all that (not to mention the motivation).\n\nIt doesn't make much sense to even ask that for a composer of the same period. Could Schoenberg compose the Rite of Spring? Even if we know Schoenberg's music and interests were completely different to that, it's just speculation that won't take us very far.\n\n18th century music has very little in common with The Rite of Spring...\n\n > What would Bach have done if the pianoforte had been developed earlier? \n\nAgain, speculation. Bach did know the early pianoforte. At first, it was a rather experimental instrument (and it was quite expensive). [This is probably the oldest surviving piano we have](_URL_0_) (the first ones came about 20 years before, when Bach was in his teens). It's not like Bach had any rush to switch because the harpsichord was serving him well. [He actually had two with gut strings](_URL_1_) (instead of the normal metal ones) by the time of his death. The man liked what he liked, and he was into rather conservative stuff. This Italian dude was making these instruments, so what? There was also this Frenchie suggesting a new way to think about music... Why should he pay attention to them? \n\n > How has amplification or recording affected classical music?\n\nYes, probably. We can compare our performances to others from the past. Music is no longer so ephemeral! We have a growing collection of performances, young musicians are exposed to way more performance ideas than in the past. Everybody can listen to orchestras and performers from all over the world, our taste is no longer based just in our local context.\n\nGuitar players play with orchestras more often because of amplification (\"for better or worse,\" some people would say). \n\n > Bonus question: are there overlooked technologies that are crucial to changes in music? The acoustics of cathedrals? New ways of making strings from catgut?\n\nArchitectural acoustics is a topic most musicians are not familiar with, but it has been discussed both in musicology and acoustics. Instrument makers (working on very old instruments) have started working on new techniques and designs in the last decades. Now that they can make functional \"historical\" instruments, they have tried to make some experiments. I don't know if there are new techniques to make gut strings.\n\nI am not that much into organology to say \"yes, there are some overlooked things and I am researching them.\" However, people doing historical research find and/or propose the darndest things." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.aswltd.com/egghorn.jpg", "http://www.wmich.edu/mus-gened/mus170/170notes/170prepweek5W_files/image002.png", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSYEOLwVfU8", "http://www.britannica.com/art/celesta" ], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2WdjyKQ57A", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woh8UHdjl1M" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "db0azxu" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Quite a lot. Indeed, most large cities in the Mediterranean world got that way because they were able to exceed the production limitations of their surrounding hinterland by importing food. Few cities, even in the most productive regions, could sustain a particularly large population from their local area alone. Even smaller cities had difficulty sustaining themselves. Athens, while a decently large Classical city-state, was not particularly large compared to contemporary cities in the east or later cities in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. With a population of probably only a few hundred thousand, and only something like 20,000 adult citizen males (estimates vary wildly, and I'm hardly on top of them) in the 5th Century Athens was absolutely dwarfed by the likes of Rome, Alexandria, Roman Carthage, or Antioch. But even the Athenians were forced to depend heavily on imported grain, receiving hundreds of thousands of μέδιμνοι. Much of this import was during the Peloponnesian War, when the city was cut off from its hinterland, but the Attic countryside could not supply the city during normal periods without imported aid in any case. \n\nFurthermore, grain import was crucial to protect cities from famine. Prior to the Green Revolution farming was a much more risky ordeal. Even a slight dip in a region's temporary productivity might have devastating effects for cities that were packed full of inhabitants. The already strained food supply of large cities in antiquity could completely snap in the face of a poor harvest. Famine was a big fucking deal, and grain import helped provide a buffer against that sort of thing. Grain import allowed excess grain to be easily stockpiled, and it also ensured a steady supply of food even when the local countryside could not produce, even if that hinterland was in fact capable of providing for the city. \n\nOf course the most notable example of a city that survived on the grain trade is Rome itself. With at least a million inhabitants by some time in the 1st Century, B.C. the city was totally unable to be provisioned by the local Latin countryside, and when the grain trade broke down in late antiquity the city's population dwindled rapidly. Imports from Campania and fertile Apulia (for real, go to Apulia some day, it's just wheat farms as far as the eye can see) were originally enough, but soon the city was demanding more grain than could be reasonably supplied for cheap. That's another thing, cost. A city of any reasonable size *might* be able to provision itself via overland routes, but it was too expensive to do so. It cost vastly less to haul grain by sea from Sicily and Africa, which were more productive in any case, than overland from Apulia or Campania. The acquisition of provinces allowed the city to provision itself at previously unthinkable levels, with the population rising in tandem. The Roman grain import, obtained largely through provincial grain taxes, was absolutely enormous. Sicily paid 3 million *modii* of grain a year, a tenth of its total production--more could be purchased if there was need, as was the case in 73 when nearly 4 million more *modii* were purchased to offset famine. According to Josephus the province of Africa alone supplied the city for eight months per year. Pseudo-Aurelius Victor reports that Egypt under Augustus supplied the city with a whopping 20 million *modii* of grain per year. The overseas grain trade was so crucial to the city that threatening it was tantamount to putting the city under siege. When the Cilicians disrupted the grain trade from Sicily and Africa the Romans were forced to grant Pompey an extraordinary magistracy to clear them out--Cicero reports that the day that Pompey's magistracy was enacted grain prices plummeted as traders began to become more assured of the survival of their cargo. \n\nMuch the same could be said about other large cities. Constantinople had to import most of its grain from Egypt in late antiquity. Alexandria also could not rely on its local hinterland, collecting grain taxes from throughout Egypt and almost certainly importing a significant amount as well. A smaller city might not need to import its grain, but once we start talking about real metropoleis the story becomes very different very quickly" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9yhqf0" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The traditional narrative is that it was just that, a large scale population exchange with the Romano-British being killed, dying of plague and being driven West by the Anglo-Saxons, later becoming the Welsh and Cornish. The remaining small population of Romano-British in what became England and Lowland Scotland, merged into the Anglo-Saxon majority and soon began speaking the English language. The old Brythonic language and any Vulgar Latin that had developed were soon eradicated.\n\nThis viewpoint is supported by the historical sources we have available, place name studies - Brythonic influenced names are rare in England and tend to occur the most in regions close to Wales and Cornwall, for instance 'coombe' in Devon which is the cognate of 'cwm' in Welsh and the River Avon, which is a corruption of 'Afon' - Welsh for river. Another piece of evidence is vague records of plague in Britain in the 6th century. It's also supported in the English language itself, which shows very little Brythonic influence anywhere, I'd be surprised if I've even used one Brythonic word in this entire post aside from when quoting.\n\nIt's important to note that nowhere else in the former Roman Empire did the language of the Germanic invaders supplant the native languages, in England it replaces both Brythonic and the Vulgar Latin there. Something major had to have happened for this to occur, as it breaks the pattern of every other Roman province.\n\nThe alternative viewpoint is a little less defined. It's become vogue amongst some historians in the past 20/30 years to downplay the extent of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The new ideas suggest that the Anglo-Saxon migration was much smaller, the Romano-British remained where they were and a hybrid population developed. However the population was politically dominated by the Anglo-Saxons (some suggest an apartheid-like system) and thus English was adopted. This idea is a bit troublesome in my opinion, as in history up until the modern day, very rarely did a minority impose their language upon the majority aside from in religious environments. When a minority language was imposed such as Latin, it ended up heavily corrupted by the original language, thus Vulgar Latin and eventually the Romance Languages. English shows no evidence of this language merging (sorry, I don't know the linguistic term) until the Norman Invasion, which is an example of language evolution similar to. Nearly every instance of language interaction has either the majority language killing the minority, the two co-existing together or a hybrid language being formed. Under this theory the Romano-British would have had to have spontaneously given up Brythonic and spoke Old English, because there's little evidence of Brythonic in Old English to suggest a slow transition over centuries. For this to have been true it would be like the Gauls suddenly speaking Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin/French never developing.\n\nSupporters of this theory tend to point towards genetic surveys done recently such as Oppenheimer's which suggests that the population of Britain has changed little since the Ice Age, but they're somewhat unproven, as other surveys such as the Wellcome Trust/Oxford University's 'Face of Britain' survey have given results that back up the tradition 'Germanic domination' model. Furthermore this argument doesn't explain why the historical evidence and place name evidence is so heavily in favour of the traditional narrative.\n\nSo essentially, you can believe the historical narrative of 'German dominance', a Romano-British population collapse and that the English people are primarily a Germanic people speaking their German language; or you can believe the 'Elite Adoption' model, where the Anglo-Saxon invasions were small and the English people emerged as mixture of the Anglo-Saxons and Romano-British and the English language was adopted wholesale because of the political power of the Anglo-Saxons. A definitive answer is unknown, although you'll probably be able to tell my position from this post." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fkc0e8q", "fkc3goc", "fkcgl0r" ], "score": [ 369, 61, 11 ], "text": [ "#**Summary**\n\nPossible reasons for a decentralized and fragmented HRE\n\n1. Structural causes\n - Elective monarchy and papal coronation\n - No single \"capital city\"\n - Harder taxation and recruitment?\n2. Religious and political causes\n - Augsburg and Westphalia led to confessional stalemate\n - Religious fragmentation triggered foreign interference against the emperor\n - The threat of Habsburg encirclement motivated this interference\n - The threat of imperial encroachment over princes' rights motivated the princes to search foreign allies\n3. Other factors\n - Dynastic luck?\n - Geographical causes? May have a role but it's not very convincing for me.\n - Failed reform attempts in the beginning (Maximilian I), lack of motivation near the end\n\n#**Background**\n\nIn the Medieval period, the power of rulers over their subjects was very limited. It is in the early modern period that this started to change visibly, with complex political, economic and legal developments. These are dynamic historical processes and as such, a centralized France and a decentralized Holy Roman Empire (HRE) were not inevitable, and identifying their causes is difficult and usually controversial.\n\nHere I will attempt to explain the reasons why the Holy Roman Empire was not centralized and unified, by mainly focusing on the period between 1450 and 1806. As the main differences in centralization between the empire and France and England arose in this period, I believe this focus will be largely sufficient. This has the benefit of simplifying dynastic issues in the HRE, as Habsburgs were nearly always in power in this period, but it also disregards possible paths to centralization under Hohenstaufens, Luxembourgs etc, so it won't be the whole picture.\n\n#**Structural causes**\nThe first difference of HRE that comes to mind is that emperorship is elective instead of inherited like in England and France. Beginning from the Golden Bull of 1356, seven (later increased to eight) electors voted on the next emperor. Therefore the emperor had to spend political capital and money in order to secure the succession to the title. Even in the Habsburg era, there were many contested elections which got in the way of centralization.\n\nIn addition to this succession issue, emperors had to worry about the papal coronation as well. From the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 until the coronation of Charles V in 1530, nearly all emperors were crowned by the pope. Again, the emperor had to spend resources: the trip to Italy was often dangerous, incurring military and logistical costs, and the pope didn't always consent to the coronation easily.\n\nThe elective nature of the HRE also had another effect hindering centralization. There was no fixed \"capital city\", but every emperor used his own seat of power. Even though Habsburg domination led to this city being either Vienna or Prague, the Reichstag was held in different places (such as Regensburg, Nürnberg, Augsburg, Worms etc.) and the political organization of the empire never had a center like Paris and London were.\n\nNeither Holy Roman Emperors nor kings of France and England could extract resources from their subjects at will. However, emperors' attempts at taxation, recruitment and reform were often blocked by the Reichstag. Maximilian I's attempt at Reichsreform is a good example, it succeeded in some legal reforms, but centralization is mainly about resource extraction, and at this point, it failed. The new tax, *Gemeiner Pfennig* was met with massive resistance and it could never be collected properly and was soon abolished. Admittedly, I don't know enough of English and French assemblies to compare them with the Reichstag, so I will leave this comparison to others.\n\n#**Religious Conflict and Foreign Interference**\nThe reformation began in the empire, and there it had a very strong decentralizing effect. The conversion of many princes to Lutheranism and Calvinism brought them in conflict with the Catholic emperor, and being weak on their own, the Protestant princes formed large networks of alliances -or leagues- against him. These leagues attracted foreign support: France intervened in the Schmalkaldic War of 1546, and with the resulting Peace of Augsburg the Lutherans gained the guarantee that they can follow their religious practices in their own lands ([an old post of mine explains this in detail](_URL_0_)). Augsburg was successful in preventing another religious war for 63 years, but recatholization efforts, increasing tensions and the exemption of Calvinists from the treaty resulted in another, bigger conflict, the Thirty Years' War ([another old post] (_URL_1_)).\n\n#**Sources and Reading List**\nNormally I use page numbers with my sources as well, but this time I didn't have much time so I will list the names without them. For page numbers, you can check the two posts on Augsburg and 30YW (linked above in text) which have more detailed bibliographies. \n\n* *Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire* by Peter H. Wilson\n* *The Thirty Years' War*, edited by Geoffrey Parker\n* *Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy* by Brendan Simms", "***Not a historian but ill give you the best explanation i can as a long standing enthusiast.***\n\nThe most influential reason would be circumstance. England and France, although having similar roots to the HRE, and from a similar time, were in different positions domestically.\n\n# ENGLAND:\n\nEngland was beginning to form into what is considered \"England\" in the 800's with the loose subjugation of the kingdoms of; Essex, Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia, under the dominant kingdoms; Wessex and Mercia. They struggled for dominance until Alfred the Great laid a foundation for Wessex to stay the predominant power for the coming century. (Although this can be subjective, Alfred the Great is commonly considered \"The First King of England\"). Their loose unification eventually grew to a single unified government under the temporary gains of King Æthelstan, the great grandson of Alfred. In his reign (927-939) he had consolidated control of most the previously Dane-occupied lands in Great Britian; North Umbria, York, and Scotland. To simplify the rest, the predominance of \"English rule\" came under the reign of William The Conquer, who claimed the throne and invaded England in 1066. His reign set England on a path to being where it is today, conquering lands even further into Scotland, and parts of Ireland.\n\nThe takeaway: The Danes, eventually, and with constant pressure for hundreds of years, united the Anglo-Saxons under a single crown. The tales of the savagery of Danish rule meant that the less influential kingdoms would rather willingly or begrudgingly join their Anglo-Saxon brothers, than be forcefully subjugated by the Danes. This was only later magnified, by the Norman rule after 1066.\n\n*Addendum: This does* ***not*** *mean there wasn't infighting. The kingdoms of England still did squabble and fight all out wars, best example would be Mercia & Wessex's long standing rivalry.*\n\n# FRANCE:\n\nFrance can be harder to explain, they've been the dominant power of French region (Western Europe) since the fall of Rome. The first accepted \"King of the Franks\" was Clovis I, he, under Roman rule ascended to the \"King of Salien Franks\". Eventually gaining independence of Rome, he continued to rule and expand the realm of the Franks until 511. The Kingdom he founded came to be Francia. After the division of Francia in 843, West Francia was ruled by the son of Louis the Pious, and grandson of Charlemagne; Charles the Bald. He would be the dominant of the 3 inheritors of Francia during his reign, and later come to rule the Rhineland, all of Northern Italy, and Northeast Iberia.\n\nMuch of Frances history from the 8th century to 10th century was dominated by Danish conflict. Danes had been pillaging across Frances coast and rivers, settling in Normandy before the official recognition and creation of The Duchy of Normandy in 911 when the French king Charles III officially ceded Norman controlled lands to their leader Rollo. The Normans later became the ruling class in England. From the already mentioned, Invasion of 1066, til 1204, Normandy was controlled by the English crown. After the Danes power began to peter across Europe, Frances struggle with the Normans evolved to a struggle with the English as a whole, which escalated until the 100 Years' War.\n\nThe takeaway: French culture, since the fall of Rome, has remained independent of its Germanic brother. France and its predecessors consolidated control swiftly in its early years, and for the vast majority of its history, stuck to a single royal bloodline, The House De Capet. House De Capet ruled France from the 10th century to the French Revolution. (House De Valois, House De Bourbon, and House of York are its 3 most well known branches). Through constant external pressure, first from the Danish, and later from the English; the French as a culture had to constantly come together to resist outside rule.\n\n# The HRE:\n\nFocusing specifically on when \"The Holy Roman Empire\" as a term came about, the HRE didn't technically become what its popularly known as today, until the 13th century. Before then, there was the conception that an Emperor ruled certain per-ordained lands, but generally speaking it was not the same HRE we know of today. It was still considered East Francia (or several other names). From the 13th century on, most the HRE's conflicts were not external until the Napoleonic Wars. A vast majority of its conflicts were infighting between different states, later exemplified by the religious wars that began in the 16th century after the reformation.\n\nThe takeaway: The Germanic cultures never had the need to unite under one flag, one family, or one culture. Generally speaking there weren't many constant or overbearing external threats from the 10th century to the 19th century. Even if their were, from the fall of Rome til the 12-13th century, they were generally regarded as a single nation, made up of several large powerful kingdoms which usually did, yes, answer to an emperor. If anything they had reasons to not unite, centuries of infighting left bitter rivalries and grudges between states. The only thing to overcome these differences were very similar to what united the French, or English hundreds of years prior; a serious external threat, otherwise known as the Napoleonic wars, and the Franco-Prussian war.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Closing Statement:**\n\nIt was rather common for large nations to be comprised of several small states all owing allegiance to a government. The government couldn't always control those states, or protect them, so all of Europe was rather fragmented in the medieval ages, not just East Francia/The HRE. A good way to reformat the question would be:\n\n\"How did the HRE stay decentralized through the Early Modern Period.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: Some grammatical errors, and fixing phraseology.", "Well, this is not an easy question, but I would like to put some light.\n\nIn fact, France was never well centralized until Henry IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV. This was because France was the most populated Kingdom in Europe (around 15-20 millions in XV-XVI century), and controlling so much people was very difficult in such times. The French monarchy tried to centralize the power multiple times, but there were ruined almost every time (100 years war, the Religious Wars, etc.).\n\nOther reason that made France a kingdom that was very difficult to control was the feudal and legal system. The Northern part was dominated by the germanic law, while the southern was by the roman law, creating a huge difference between both parts, and if we add to this the apanage system to maintain the rest of the royal children content (spoiler: it didn't work very well), we have a perfect formula for a very strong nobility, and a weak king.\n\nThis was reversed by the mentioned kings, that changed the king-vassal system by the state system, the establishment of intendants (to keep under control the regional nobility), using the tribunals in their favor, establishing of regional parliaments, etc.\n\nIn the case of England (which I wouldn't say is a centralized country), the centralization efforts started after the War of The Two Roses, because the Tudor dynasty was in a very difficult position, without any legitimacy. This dynasty unsuccessfully tried to control the Parliament (the heart of the representation system), but when Herny VIII passed the Supremacy Act, things changed.\n\nWith a renewed church and faith that was made for the crown, the figure of the king was strengthen. This was used by Isabelle I, James I and Charles I to go further, and used the mercantilism, propaganda, religious minorities repression, sale of titles and the continuous campaigns in Ireland and Scotland to avoid the Parliament.\n\nBut, at the end, when the kings of England tried to establish a truly absolute monarchy, the failed and a series of uprisings and a civil war made it become a parliamentary monarchy.\n\nBut the case of the HRE is different, because the Empire never was politically unified after the Otons, and was divided in a plethora of counties, duchies, margraviates, free cities, a few kingdoms and an archducated. The first problem was that the HRE was an elective monarchy, which made the power of the Emperor, in the start, weaker than the other two examples.\n\nBut it must be said that Maximilian I made a very good job at strengthening the Emperor figure (and the Habsburg dynasty at the same time). In fact, there was an option of an unified Empire under the figure Charles V, even of an Universal Monarchy, but it was ruined by the Reformation.\n\nAnd the Reformation is a key point in the history of the Empire, because the confessional matter was enough to divide the Empire in two factions, factions than periodically involved in wars that weakened the Empire until it became practically irrelevant for the political matters of Europe (making it only interesting for the germans and french powers), until it was finally destroyed by Napoleon.\n\nI would like to give a more in-depth explanation to this, but ekinda pointed out some interesting things. Anyways, I hope that my answer pleases you and can be useful.\n\nPD: sorry about my english, not my first language" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7nfder/why_was_the_peace_of_augsburg_and_the_principle/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awfa78/how_much_did_dynastic_politics_serve_to/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dgubd4k" ], "score": [ 22 ], "text": [ "I haven't played the game, but this sounds a lot like the fate of the Knights Templar. \n\nBefore I go into this story, let's make one thing clear: There is no evidence of organized Satanic ritual activity on any scale. I assume there are small groups of iconoclasts who paint themselves as faux \"Satanists,\" and at various times in history people who practiced pagan religion were called \"Satanists.\" But in the sense that you mean... No, it didn't happen.\n\nHere's what *did* happen:\n\nDuring the Crusades there existed a number of \"Militant Orders\" which were groups of crusading knights who lived a quasi-monastic lifestyle. The knights organized themselves in a manner similar to monks living in a monastery, and devoted themselves to both war and religious practice. One of the most prominent of these was the Knights Templar. The Templars were a powerful and wealthy order of knights whose influence waxed and waned throughout the Crusades, but by the end of it they were pretty well off, to say the least. Some go so far as to credit them with the invention of modern banking.\n\nThe King of France (Phillip IV, the Fair) wanted to get his hands on some of this wealth, and the easiest mechanism by which he could do this was to have the Knights tried as heretics. In 1307 he put forth a list of charges that included such things as: worshipping various Satanic beings and idols, taboo sexual practices, and performing certain acts that disgraced Christian symbols. The concept that they were a secret Satanist cult gave him the political and legal justification to abolish the order, execute the knights, and steal their stuff. It is virtually certain that these charges were fabricated.\n\nIt's all a rather fascinating (and tragic) story. These accusations and other invented stories about the Templars have led to them becoming something of a pop culture trope. Rumors of Templar mysticism or cults flourish in conspiracy theories or speculative writing, and you can see the influence of this in media such as \"The DaVinci Code\" and \"Assassin's Creed\" video games.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d55ogwx" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Frustratingly, we don't know. Everything we know about shields in this period comes from archaeological sites (we don't have any contemporary art showing shield faces), and the fronts of shield, along with any decoration they may have displayed, have never survived.\n\nWe do know from archaeological excavations that shields were always covered with leather (probably rawhide), and in one case ([Tranmer House](_URL_1_)) this leather was covered in some sort of preparatory layer for paint (maybe gesso); but, the painting didn't survive. Many shields had metal appliqués (like Sutton Hoo, often less fancy), and some had a pair of large flat circular rivets whose functional purpose isn't clear (so, possibly another form of metallic decoration). But what, if anyting, would have been painted onto their faces is unknown.\n\nIn many cases, shields were buried to display their faces toward assembled mourners, and several graves at Mucking had shield boards (noe visible only as a dark soil stain) buried in the grave eithout their metal bosses. To me, that implies that shield faces *were* decorated: you wanted guests at the funeral to see the shield face and know who your family's friends were by recognizing the design(s) painted on it (even if you wanted to keep and recycle the still useful iron components).\n\nWe do have a record of late Roman shield designs, the [Notitia Dignitatum](_URL_2_). It's very possible that some of these designs would have continued to be used in Britain after 410. One might also wonder whether some of the circular motifs on Style 1 jewelry were also used to decorate shields, but that's just speculation with no hard evidence to support it.\n\nIf you want to read further, see [Dickinson and Harke's book on early Anglo-Saxon shields](_URL_0_), available free on Harke's _URL_3_ page." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.academia.edu/477692/Early_Anglo-Saxon_shields_Archaeologia_Monograph_110_._London_Society_of_Antiquaries_of_London_1992", "https://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/BMTRB_5_Bullock_et_al.pdf", "http://lukeuedasarson.com/NotitiaPatterns.html", "academia.edu" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg5t2bz", "cg6bgki" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Quick answer: Support from Iran via Syria and stong social presence. More detail:\n\n* Hezbollah military men get trained in Iran. They also get weapons from Iran through Syria. Lots of weapon and artillery. They know the country and the villages and the inner streets so they are very well positioned to fight off any attack. \n\n* Hezbollah men will fight to the death because it is a cause they are born and raised to believe in, unlike regular soldiers. Plus if they die, other than the prestige, they become martyrs and their wives and children are taken care of financially by the party. \n\n* In addition, they created themselves as champions of the Shia sect. Shia in Lebanon were the underdog and completely neglected by the government,they had virtually no representation. So Hizbollah provided them with a voice, not to mention all the charity and rebuilding work, so Hizbollah had a major popular base.\n \n* Hizbollah's leader, Nasrallah, is a seriously intelligent and charismatic man, he has a large appeal in the country even among some of the Christians.", "- The first thing is that Hezbollah emerged essentially in fertile ground. Lebanon had been experiencing civil conflict for a while before Hezbollah appeared on the scene, so they weren't just some random guys getting together, they could draw on a degree of experience.\n\n- Reinforcing this, Hezbollah received training in Iran and from cadres from the Islamic Republican Guard Corps, which is to this day well regarded for its skill for irregular warfare etc. As a side note, a question I wouldn't mind being answered is just how the IRGC got to be so good at its job. AFAIK it didn't really have an Iranian pre-cursor, and while it might have picked up some knowledge from what remained of SAVAK etc. this would seem strange at the IRGC was set up essentially as a counter to the 'old regime' (specifically the army), which would make their precursor being the Shah's secret police seem odd. Anyhow, I digress.\n\n- Part of it was also an evolutionary pressure thing - Hezbollah had to be good to survive. It emerged in an area under Israeli occupation, and to add to the pressure it found itself in conflict with other Lebanese paramilitary groups like Amal (another Shia group) in the War of the Camps. It might be notable that Hezbollah sided with the PLO in that conflict - perhaps Hezbollah received assistance (training, funding etc.) early in the piece from Palestinian militant groups?\n\n- In terms of finance, Hezbollah was receiving support from Iran, Syria, Lebanon's large Shia population and also the Lebanese diaspora. And no, it isn't just drug money. Hezbollah's economic portfolio is pretty diverse and not all of it is illegal either, they have their own [construction companies](_URL_0_) for example.\n\nAs to how it got to be stronger than the Lebanese army, part of that isn't why Hezbollah is strong, and more about why the Lebanese army was weak. The army had been deliberately kept weak by Lebanese governments for fear it would be used by one ethnic group or another to seize power or whatever. Then with the onset of civil war and successive invasions, occupations etc. the army was hurt badly. Even if the government had had a change of heart and wanted to build up the military, this would have been difficult, since the economic base of Lebanon had been badly hurt by the civil war and occupation. So post occupation, you find an army still trying to find its feet while Hezbollah is now 'free', a leaner and meaner force that wasn't necessarily short of heavy weaponry due to its foreign backers.\n\n*Editted for typos... I hope I got them all this time" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cq2zp8e" ], "score": [ 35 ], "text": [ "Honestly, not really. Even in the earliest gospel (Mark), after women enter Jesus' tomb, an angel says\n\n > \"Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. *He has been raised; he is not here*.\"\n\nAnd the earliest sources that we have -- the epistles of Paul -- are permeated with references to Jesus' resurrection.\n\nThe only thing that's been hypothesized is that the earliest Christians originally did not believe that Jesus underwent *bodily* resurrection, and that they instead believed that his body really did remain dead (wherever it had ended up), and that it was just his spirit that was \"exalted to heaven.\" But, again, this was just hypothetical, and doesn't enjoy wide scholarly support; and the only texts that we have are insistent on resurrection." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cc403zb" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "This question is made for /u/w2red and /u/Algernon_Asimov but I can answer for one union in particular... \n\nThe North Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) founded in the Northern Territory in around 1911.. Their history is covered in this doctoral thesis by Bernie Brian\n_URL_0_\n\nTo quote from there:\n > For the most part the union movement was not interested in the plight of Aboriginal workers except for when they competed with ‘white’ union members for jobs. The only exception to this was when members of the Communist Party were leading the union in the period immediately after the Second World War.\n\nThis however puts it a little mildly, the AWU clashed frequently with the administration of the NT, with several rounds of strikes, and eventually succeeded in getting the administrator (Gilruth) removed in what is now known as the Darwin Rebellion, this also led to the Territory getting direct representation in federal parliament...\n\nOne of the many issues they clashed on, was that Gilruth was employing Chinese and Aboriginal labour in state hotels, and occasionally paying equal wages to them, which outraged the AWU. As Brian puts it:\n > many members of the NAWU and its predecessors were aggressive proponents of the racist white Australia policy and callously disregarded the plight of Aboriginal workers.\n\nOther social relations in Darwin at the time in most sources are were typified as\n\n > a leading member of the Communist Party, remembers the \nmain past-time in Darwin as drinking, gambling and ‘chasing gins’ (slang term for \nAboriginal women).\n\nThis changes post-war, and Jack McGuinness was head of the union for a while, did quite a lot for indigenous rights, as did many other unions Australia wide..." ] }

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[ [ "http://espace.cdu.edu.au/eserv/cdu:6353/Thesis_CDU_6353_Brian_B.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dpnba4c", "dpnghm0" ], "score": [ 172, 735 ], "text": [ "Follow up question.\n\nWasn't the only way to \"confirm\" a kill to collect the dog tags? I highly doubt that snipers collected dog tags, especially when their targets would usually be surrounded by soldiers?\n\nEdit: had a little dig around online and found that some snipers in WW2 would claim a hit (bullet hitting target) as a kill. When in reality it could be non-fatal. This must surely mess up the numbers right? ", " > Why do so many military historians take the numbers for granted?\n\nSo the question is... do they? Now, to be sure, *popular histories* like those kinds of numbers. Take for instance the aforementioned Simo's profile on \"[_URL_1_](_URL_0_)\", which, as an aside, also manages to only go 2 for 3 of actual photos of the man, the third being a common misattribution, but while his exploits might be the main fact your average internet denizen knows in regards to the Winter War, a quick check of several books on the Winter War which I'd consider to be at least a decent level in their approach turned up only one which makes mention of him, and presents a cautious approach to his 'kill count'. Gordon F. Sander states \"the reported number would eventually rise to as high as 505\", which reads as doubly hedged, in my opinion, and in any case the larger point is that you just generally won't find more serious histories caring too much about *individual* snipers. It falls into the coverage of popular histories, which, when checking, for instance, \"The Winter War 1939-40\" from Osprey Publishing, not only makes a number of mentions of the man throughout, but even credits him with 542 *confirmed* kills, which is doubly an error, since that includes his (likely inflated) confirmed number plus unconfirmed! So anyways, my point here is that while you might read uncritical acceptance of these numbers from Simo, I would venture - admittedly not taking a *super* in-depth survey of the literature - that this is more common with works which are less academic in their approach.\n\nNow, as to the broader topic at hand, I'm going to briefly touch on why, yes, you shouldn't trust these numbers! I'll focus specifically on the Soviets, simply because it is both the angle I'm best suited to handle, and also the cult of 'Sniperism' was far and away most developed there during World War II, and I don't think it is a stretch to say the Soviet snipers of WWII were the most singularly notable collection of the 20th century. In simplest terms, the Soviets were crazy for snipers. Even before the war, they put a good deal of effort into training and deploying them, and they, as you allude to, saw great value in them as propaganda tools. For those familiar with the film \"Enemy at the Gates\" it is a fairly loose dramatization of one of the most famous from the war, Vasily Zaitsev, and while it plays quite loose with the facts, in all fairness, much of the source material it draws upon does as well. The sniper duel with \"Major Konings\" which forms a central part of the film is taken right from Zaitsev's memoirs, yet any attempts to actually corroborate the account has been met with failure. \n\nThis is only a single example, but endemic of the entire propaganda machine which operated around the cult of the Sniper in the Soviet Union. With numerous 'sniper heroes' lauded and credited with kills of several hundred, I would again question the premise of the question though, at least when approaching those improbable heights allegedly achieved by figures like Zaitsev of Pavlichenko. From my own readings - popular and academic - I find that it is more common than not that those who discuss 'Sniperism' include the caveat that these numbers need to be approached for what they are, propaganda, or at the very least present them as less than certain even if dispensing with a paragraph on their speciousness. Certainly there is little doubt that they are *generally* reflective of the success of those individuals, but few accept that they are specifically reflective of an accurate accounting of confirmed kills. There really isn't any way to ascertain the true numbers, as those records were simply not left behind, and the snipers themselves at the very least bowed to the needs of the state and went along with the 'official tallies', even if they knew the real numbers. And of course, they *did* likely had a fair idea of that number, going about tallying their confirmed (A confirmed kill, according to Zaitsev's memoirs, required the signature of a witness on the report, but doesn't seem to have required physical confirmation) and unconfirmed kills and reporting them, but it just wasn't for public consumption, or posterity. Interestingly, the Soviets on at least one occasion inflated *German* kill counts too. It is alleged that Pavlichenko recovered documents off a sniper following a duel that she bested him in, which showed over 400 confirmed kills - but all against British and French early in the war. There is no corroboration beyond the Soviet's claim though, almost certainly intended to inflate the prowess of their own sniper.\n\nI think it is also important to add one small caveat there as well, namely that you don't see it thus suggested that these snipers simply *weren't good*. Those who found themselves at the forefront of Soviet propaganda - \"She has killed 309 Fascists, what have you done?\" - most certainly were talented and accomplished marksmen and -women, and their successes were inflated, but there is no reason whatsoever to believe they were created out of thin air. Certainly German accounts, especially of urban combat in areas like Stalingrad, recalled the threat fearfully. But the short of it is, you are absolutely on the money to suspect that \"*it seems to me that inflating these numbers was something people would do for propaganda services*\", as there is no doubt that, at least in the case of the Soviet sniper movement, this was very much the case.\n\nNow, as for other countries, I can't speak too much to, say, how reliable American kill counts are regarded (in WWII or otherwise), so I'll leave that to others, but for the Soviets, hopefully this provides you a bit more information to confirm your existing gut feelings on the matter.\n\nSources consulted (by which I mean, in some cases, literally just checking to see what phrase is used to describe sniper kill counts):\n\n* The Sniper at War by Mike Haskew\n* Notes of a Russian Sniper by Vassili Zaitsev\n* Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War by Roger D. Marwick\n* The Stalingrad Cauldron by Frank Ellis\n* Victory at Stalingrad by Geoffrey Roberts\n* Winter Storm: The Battle for Stalingrad and the Operation to Rescue 6th Army by Hans Wijers\n\n* The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland by Robert Edwards\n* The Winter War 1939-40 by Vesa Nenye & Peter Munter & Toni Wirtanen\n* War of the White Death: Finland Against the Soviet Union 1939-1940 by Bair Irincheev\n* The Soviet Invasion of Finland: 1939-1940 by Carl van Dyke\n* The Hundred Day Winter War: Finland's Gallant Stand Against the Soviet Army by Gordon F. Sander\n* A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40 by William R. Trotter\n* Finland and World War II: 1939-1944 by John H. Wourinen" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hayha.html", "Badassoftheweek.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7lgb9k", "c7ln4co" ], "score": [ 13, 3 ], "text": [ "Teddy Roosevelt, Hoover, Truman and Carter were the only US presidents not to play golf since McKinley, who introduced it to the White House. [Source](_URL_1_)\n\n[FDR considered himself a golfer even though he was physically unable to play.](_URL_0_) I'll leave it up to you whether or not to include him in the list.", "IIRC Kennedy was a 2 handicap (very good) can't speak as to the worst (I've heard Obama is shit from people that played with him)" ] }

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[ [ "http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1156523/index.htm", "http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/when-presidents-play-golf/240645/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cw6xmuf" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_1_):\nOur users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_0_). \nYou can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35pkem/askhistorians_homework_question_policy_rehash/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_homework" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dfzmwyz" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "I would like to preface this post by saying that I am not an economist and nor do I specialize in economic history. I am, however, somewhat acquainted with the economic development of Iceland as well as the historiography of this phenemenon due to being an Icelandic historian.\n\nIt is true that Iceland endured some economic hardships during the 1980s. This includes both catch failures for cod and capelin as well as massive inflation. Indeed, inflation rose to heights of more than 100% during 1983 and consistently stayed above 50% from 1980 to 1983. Government responded by devaluing the currency multiple times in a bid to boost the exports of the main economic sector - the fishing industry. Obviously, such measures were incredibly unpopular with the average worker whose purchasing power simultaneously decreased. This period of economic development can best be described as a time of monetary policy failures. Price levels fluctuated wildly and inflation was a chronic ill. The króna declined by almost 600% against the US dollar from 1980 to 1986.\n\nThis was followed by a short time of economic expansion from 1985 to 1988. This was mostly due to an increase in fishing catches as well as a boost in exports. However, this economic prosperity proved to be shortlived as fishing catches (mainly cod) failed again in 1988. During the late 1980s the Icelandic economy can best be described as stagnant. Although inflation fell, unemployment rose at the same time and Iceland's competitive position in the global economy detoriorated. In 1990, however, the cornerstone towards economic stability is sometimes said to have been laid when government managed to strike a tripartite deal with employers as well as labour unions. This deal is generally referred to as 'The National Agreement' (Þjóðarsáttin) and is considered a notable economic achievement for a few reasons. Firstly, the vicious cycle of wage increases followed by price level increases (and inflation) was ended. The labour unions agreed to relatively modest wage increases over the next few years in exchange for more stable price levels - which was made possible thanks to a fixed exchange rate of the króna. Secondly, this is one of the few instances in Icelandic history where collective bargaining of the government and labour movement was possible. Historically speaking, this inability to strike collective bargains has mainly been explained in terms of a very left-wing labour movement in conjunction with mainly right-wing goverments. In 1988, however, a left-wing government had been formed which facilitated this deal. Lastly, the National Accord of 1990 is generally seen as a prerequisite to the economic changes that Iceland underwent during the 1990s. These changes include economic liberalization, privatization of state-owned banks and utility companies as well as Iceland's membership of the EEA which was approved in 1992. Taxes were lowered and a period of economic prosperity began. However, these changes are also seen by many as a major cause of the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis wherein the entire financial system of Iceland collapsed spectacularly.\n\nI would also like to add that although Iceland struggled economically during the 1980s it can hardly be classified as a poor country. Indeed, if we look at indicators such as GDP per capita we can see that Iceland was on par, if not ahead, of most Western European states during this time. For instance, Iceland's GDP per capita was $12,057 in 1984, compared with West Germany's $9,277 and France's $9,432. It is important to state that Iceland's economy is extremely volatile and most recessions are deeper and more frequent than in other European states. This is due to a number of factors. Firstly, because of the small size of the Icelandic economy as well as its unvaried nature and heavy emphasis on fish exports. Secondly, there are natural factors to consider, such as the weather and natural disasters (like volcanic eruptions and perhaps even avalanches). Thirdly and lastly, we can name the very pro-cylical economic and monetary policies of successive Icelandic governments which generally excerbated these crises with massive devaluations of the currency. Iceland can thus truly be called an economy of instability.\n\n**Sources:**\n\nÁrni H. Kristjánsson. *Þjóðarsáttin 1990: Forsagan og goðsögnin*. BA-thesis. University of Iceland, 2008.\n\nGuðmundur Jónsson and Magnús S. Magnússon, ed. *Icelandic historical statistics*. Reykjavík: Statistics Iceland, 1997.\n\nPalle S. Andersen and and Már Guðmundsson. *Inflation and Disinflation in Iceland*. Reykjavík: Central Bank of Iceland, 1998.\n\nSigurður Snævarr. *Haglýsing Íslands*. Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1993.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfeckdy", "cfez7po", "cfg1ak3" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "[Proquest Historical Newspapers](_URL_0_) has the Guardian and the Observer. If you are member of a uni, library or other institution with a subscription, it's free.", "Try some of [these](_URL_0_). (One of the rare moments in which answering with a Wikipedia link on this subreddit is justified.)", "The British Archives has some online newspaper collections.\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_" ] }

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[ [ "http://search.proquest.com/news" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_online_newspaper_archives#United_Kingdom" ], [ "http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/newspapers.htm", "http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/default.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dp6uo9j" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "You might want to post this in /r/academicbiblical as well. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cybhsvs", "cyblq4k", "cybm6b8", "cybnkv1", "cybspgh" ], "score": [ 101, 104, 11, 23, 2 ], "text": [ "Oh yes. When I first read your question I thought of enameled armor but some poking around turned up [this wonderful article from The Met](_URL_0_). Depending on the fantasy story, I doubt armor was *quite* as colorful (at least anything that wasn't gold, silver, or bronze, but as the article details there were many techniques to add color) but it could get extremely elaborate and could have color. ", "There was a style that became popular in 16th century Germany referred to as \"black and white\" armor. Decorative patterns were created by selectively polishing certain areas. [Here's a good example.](_URL_1_) As you might expect, the higher one's status, the fancier of a pattern one could afford. [This](_URL_0_), by contrast, is a relatively \"budget\" example.", "A slightly-off topic, but cool example that you can find mentioned is in David Parrott's *The Business of War* (at least where I encountered it first) are the Landsknecht of the early modern Europe period in Germany. They were known to be particularly colorful in terms of dress both in and out of battle. Many old representations of them show them in very ostentatious, bright and what we today might consider to be gaudy dress. Their dress was very distinctive for their time, with feathers, hats, etc., that would tell anyone and everyone of their profession at a glance. Not quite the question you asked, but I figured I'd turn you onto other kinds of military dress. ", "[Here's](_URL_0_) a helmet from about 1500 that has a monster face painted on the visor. It's also unusual as it's an example of relatively low-quality 'munition' armour, as opposed to the higher quality examples that usually survive. I also came across [this](_URL_1_) album on imgur that contains a couple of examples of painted sallets (along with some modern reproductions).", "In *The Armourer and His Craft*, ffoulke describes armour covered with velvet - not like a slipcover, but a permanent surface. Boiled linseed oil, like oil paint, could be tinted before being used as water-proofing." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dect/hd_dect.htm" ], [ "http://i.imgur.com/6ZhyYS9.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/NCE2Y29.jpg" ], [], [ "http://www.wallacecollection.org/whatson/treasure/102", "http://imgur.com/a/dFqh2" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cza2kdu", "czacrly", "czagedt" ], "score": [ 8, 4, 6 ], "text": [ " > Do any other places on earth do this?\n\nThere's one example in Germany: Bremen, Bremen. Bremen (the city) is part of Bremen (the state), together with another city called Bremerhaven (roughly translates to *Port of Bremen*). This is the only example in Germany, for Hamburg and Berlin, there is no distinction between the state and the city.", "In North America (New) Plymouth and Providence had earlier shared the name between town and wider territory, though both later merged with neighbouring colonies. \n\nIt's also in accordance with a long British tradition in naming counties - Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and of course Yorkshire, or the County of York, a style still common in 19th-century official usage and surviving into the 20th. Only Durham survives without the \"-shire\", as County Durham. \n\nIn France the practice may be older, though as in England (Sussex, Berkshire, Cornwall) other counties didn't carry city names. But of course it's far older, as in a recent discussion of [Athens](_URL_0_). ", "The Dutch were originally in control of the city of New Amsterdam, which was part of the larger province of New Amsterdam. When the British took over in 1664, they renamed both the city and the province after James, the Duke of York (later King James II); for a short time, from July 1673 to November 1674, the Dutch recaptured and occupied New York, renaming it New Orange, but it was given back to the British when the Third Anglo-Dutch War ended and the name reverted back to New York. Until 1898, when the city was unified into the five boroughs, New York City exclusively referred to Manhattan, which is reflected in the address of New York, New York. The outer boroughs use their respective names, although the residents of Queens often put one of five neighborhood names instead (they are Long Island City, Flushing, Jamaica, Floral Park and Far Rockaway; which neighborhood residents choose depends on their zip code). " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/41ig16/what_was_the_peak_population_of_classical_athens/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "djf3xwd" ], "score": [ 21 ], "text": [ "Because of a little something called the Sahara Desert. The only real routes of expansion into Africa were along the southern Moroccan coast (which was desolate, sparsely inhabited all the way up to the late 18th century, when the Moroccan government began to encourage irrigation projects there) and via the Nile Valley. However, the rough terrain and relative poverty of the Sudanese and Ethiopian highlands meant that it was not really worth challenging the Kushite and Axumite lords of the upper Nile region for control. Then a far more economical policy was to maintain a web of buffer vassal states to hold off the more powerful kings in the southeast.\n\nIn other words, both the paths into Africa were impractical to use for any sizeable party in ancient times, much less a host of men, animals, and camp followers the size and scope of several Roman legions. The regions were, for lack of a better term, nigh on unconquerable in ancient conditions. Even a thousand years later, the Ottoman Empire found it extremely difficult to extend its rule south of the Wadi Halfa, and by then the introduction of the camel had led to the establishment of proper roads due to the trade explosion. \n\nThough the lack of true oceangoing ships prevented any Roman colonisation of the West Coast of Africa, in theory it would have been possible for them to preempt the Arab colonisation of Eastern Africa even with galleys, establishing tradeposts around the Horn of Africa. However, the only really suitable port, Baranis on the Red Sea (Berenice Troglodytica)... Simply put, it did not have any trees, at least not of sufficient size and tensile strength to build proper vessels. It functioned as an emporium for the Red Sea trade, but could not construct vessels of its own. In other words, for a Roman living in Alexandria to set up a trade post e.g. near Zanzibar, he would first have to travel down the Nile with hundreds of settlers, cross the desert mountains filled with Tuaregs, Berbers, and probably bandits, to get to Baranis, and there *buy* enough ships to take his entire party and supplies on a practically blind four-month journey into uncharted waters. Once there, he would have to find a trade goods worth exporting all the way back to Baranis, then set up and fortify his colony while establishing farmland and regular trade routes with Baranis, all the while probably fending off hostile natives... It was simply not worth it, when spices and ivory could be obtained far more cheaply from Indian, Arab and Ethiopian merchants.\n\nIf you want a more detailed answer, I can recommend some books and articles." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cb45eu3" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I use sociology, LGBT studies, queer theory, gender studies, and even dance studies in my work. In my case it is largely out of necessity, as there are no true histories of the AIDS crisis and still fairly few about gay and lesbian history. Other disciplines can offer a different perspective when you are dealing with a well-researched area of history, and are sometimes your only recourse when dealing with a less known area. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca43nsp" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I'll have to make this brief as I'm about to go out (but I can explain (a lot!) more, if necessary).\n\nTo answer those three questions in a go, let's establish the 17th century coffee-house in general (funnily enough, I have a chapter more or less dedicated to this in my PhD):\n\nDuring the latter half of the seventeenth century, coffee-houses were becoming increasingly popular, across a fairly diverse social scale. For the fairly inexpensive price of a dish of coffee (about a penny, according to John Spurr - see ref below), an individual got the opportunity to see whatever published paper the coffeehouse subscribed to (most likely the *London Gazette* thoughout the 1670s until licensing lapsed in '79), as well as whatever manuscript newsletters were available.\n\nThe discussion, therefore, often concerned a composite of foreign and domestic news, which is a pretty significant thing - Jurgen Habermas and others (more recently, Mark Knights, John Sommerville, Steve Pincus) have even seen this as the birth of 'public opinion' - that is, a shared and widespread perception of 'current events', inspired by a communal experience - in this case, news reception and mutual interpretation. \n\nIt's precisely this reason why official authorities tended to severely mistrust coffeehouses (See John Sommerville's 'The News Revolution in England'). A place where the ordinary folk could get together and discuss the actions of their superiors? Never!\n\nSir Roger L'Estrange (Surveyor of the Press to 1679) perhaps best summed up the official view in the mid-1660s:\n\n'[Coffee-house News] makes the Multitude too Familiar with the Actions and Counsels of their Superiours; too Pragmatical and Censorious, and gives them, not only an Itch, but a kind of Colourable Right, and License, to be Meddling with the Government.' (this is from his *Intelligencer* in the early 1660s)\n\nSo mistrusted were the businesses, in fact, that in the 1670s, there was a brief period where all coffeehouses were actually barred from trading in London, to which the government relented very shortly after. There was quite an outcry! \n\nMuch work has been done on this recently - Steve Pincus' article 'Coffeehouse politicians does create' is very good, as is Sommerville's work noted above. For more info, these are good places to start (Sommerville's especially).\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e9tfo6r" ], "score": [ 68 ], "text": [ "I apologize that I mostly know about Coptic and Berber but I will try to demonstrate why this question is hard to answer and then introduce a recent theory into this particular subject. First, I would like to point out that when talking about \"Berber\" or \"the Berber\" one is actually talking about quite a diverse group of people and languages, some of which are not around today and some which still exist. I will reference \"the Berber\" in as general terms as I can but understand there are exceptions and differences among them. Additionally, there is not as much research on the Arabs and the Berbers in context with linguistic shift as there is for Coptic and Persian.\n\nOne is tempted to believe that conversion to Islam would inherently coincide with adoption of Arabic but those two factors actually don't share as close of a link as you would expect. Coptic Christians were using Arabic in their own Bibles as early as the 10th century^(2) They continued to be Christian and speak Arabic for the next century and to a lesser extent thereafter. Coptic Christian scholars eventually complained that Christians couldn't speak their own language in the 11th century^(3) Many Berbers converted to Islam quickly and revolted against the Arabs as early as 749 under their own form of Khawarij Sufrism yet their languages proved more resilient than Coptic over time (likely in great part due to the formation of the Almoravid dynasty)^(4) . Many early Muslim scholars would be angry with me for calling many Berbers of the Middle Ages \"Muslim\" since they often practiced syncretic forms of the religion but it's still a strong point in demonstrating separation between the religion and the Arabic language. Meanwhile, Persia (correction, see comment: Main Persian speaking area) became Islamisized quicker than either of those locations (early 8th century, there is some controversy to this, though) and yet the Persians managed to hold onto their language^(5). These cases demonstrate that conversion to Islam is a tricky factor in determining the cause of local languages *extinction* in comparison with one another.\n\nOne is also tempted to believe that the level of Arab migration an area received would influence the vitality of local languages. Indeed, the decline of the Coptic language in the 10th and 11th centuries coincided with increased Arab immigration yet it also coincided with a shrinking Coptic population, decreased heretic oppression, and an expanding economy under the Fatimids^(6 7). I will also concede that the Berber languages in North Africa do not seem to have declined so greatly until that area received higher migration but I also want to point out that Persia actually received more Arab migration in its earlier years than Egypt^(1)\n\nLanguage replacement and language adoption are two different things. After all, bilingual societies exist around the globe and Coptic itself persisted under centuries of Greek rule when Greek became a dominant language in Egypt. Why do some societies exist bilingually and others not, though? Many factors come into play when considering language shift. Recently, scholars by the names of Reza Ghafar Samar and Tej K. Bhatia have released a study proposing that surface level structural similarity between two languages greatly influences the development of a bilingual society or a monolingual society where one language overcomes another. In a recent article released last year the two scholars attempted to explain why Arabic overcame Coptic while Persian persisted by comparing the structural similarities of the two languages^(5). They worked off the premise that when two languags come into contact they demonstrate \"borrowing\" (the wholesale importation of individual words or phrases from one language into another, often with target language influence) or \"code switching\" (switching between languages completely.) They argue that the more structurally similar two languages are the more likely speakers of one language who most often encounter both are to participate in code switching instead of just borrowing. They demonstrate that Arabic and Coptic share many similarities that Persian does not and therefore Coptic speakers would have participated in code switching moreoften than just borrowing. They argue that code switching contributed to language extinction and that this phenomenon can even be seen in surviving Coptic texts.\n\n**Therefore, Persian persisted into today in great part to its lack of structural similarity with Arabic.** That also explains its abundant borrowing.\n\nMany more details exist in their article and I encourage you to read it since they obviously explain it better than I can. I hold a small amount of skepticism towards their article, though, because I do not believe they properly delineated MSA from historical dialectal Arabic found in Persia vs. Egypt. Additionally they make no mention of Berber vs. Arabic.\n\nAdditionally I would like to mention looking into the Shu'ubiyya movement and the pro-Persian practices of the Abbasids but I will let those better versed in Persian history expand on those .\n\n1. Abdul-Husain Zarrinkub**The Arab conquest of Iran and its aftermath** R.N. Frye (Ed.) (2007), pp. 1-57\n2. Mullen, Alex, and James, *Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds*, 68.\n3. Cotton, Hannah. *From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East*. Cambridge University Press, 2012, 426.\n4. Abun-Nasr, Jamil M, *A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, 39.*\n5. Predictability of language death: Structural compatibility and language contact Reza, Ghafar Samarab, Tej K. Bhatiac\n\nPredictability of language death: Structural compatibility and language contact [RezaGhafar Samarab](_URL_2_!)[Tej K.Bhatiac](_URL_2_!)\n\n6. Sullivan, Shaun. \"Coptic Conversion and the Islamization of Egypt.\" *Mamluk Studies* *Review* 10, no. 2 (2006): 6579. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_).\n\n7. Parker, Kenneth S. \"Coptic Language and Identity in Ayyūbid Egypt1.\" *Al-Masāq* 25, no. 2 (2013): 222 39. doi:10.1080/09503110.2013.799953." ] }

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[ [ "http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/MSR_X-2_2006OSullivan.pdf", "http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/MSR\\_X-2\\_2006OSullivan.pdf", "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000117300670#" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch60bov" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Alfred the Great was extremely popular. He established a model of kingship in England that was built upon by his successors, and copied by later conquerors. Alfred established fantastical roots both for his kingship, and for the Anglo-Saxon people, tying them together with Christianity as glue in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He rallied all the petty kings in England under his own West Saxon aegis, and became the first king of the English. He began a campaign of literacy and literary production to bring England back to the glory days of 8th century scholarship, when England led the world in learning. He and his successors adopted Carolingian models both for kingship and for monasticism (i.e. the Benedictine Reform), tying politics and religion together into a theocratic form of rule. He was a genius, and his work was so far reaching that he set a course for what England would be that in some ways even withstood the flood of Norman politics and Anglo-Norman culture that would later come to dominate the island.\n\nPeople tend to forget that Cnut the Great took the kingship before William the Conqueror. There were two instances of domination by an outside force, not one, and they came in relatively rapid succession. Cnut and William the Conqueror had very different ways of ruling the country though. Cnut modeled himself after the English kings, and prime among them was Alfred. He wrote laws in a form similar to what came before him, and styled himself after English kings in many ways. See [Cnut's Letter to the English](_URL_0_) to see how he reaches out to the English and connects back to Alfred's English lineage by saying that he will uphold the laws of Edgar. Cnut knew that Alfred and his successors were extremely popular, or at least some of them were, like Edgar, who was in many ways carried on Alfred's program of politics and culture better than any other English king, so its no wonder that Cnut singled him out as his model lawgiver. \n\nWilliam handled things quite differently. He dominated the English from afar and sent barons in his stead to rule the country. He built churches in a very different style overall, and changed the laws of the country dramatically. There are poems in the AS Chronicle that complain about his style of domination and note that he changed the landscaped entirely by building new buildings everywhere. This is an instance of one kind popular sentiment finding its way into the history books.\n\nSo why then would later kings take up Alfred as a positive figure? In my view, it is because they had no choice and it was advantageous for him. Alfred had long since become a figure in the popular imagination, and tales where told about him. He was a big enough figure that there are four MSS from the 13th century, in early Middle English, that preserve a text called *The Proverbs of Alfred*. He was such an important figure that he was seen as a font of gnomic proverbs even 250-300 years after his death in England. That's a tide you can't push back, no matter what. So later kings incorporated Alfred into their political and social programs.\n\nTake a look at David Pratt's *The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great* for details about Alfred's political program, with special attention to the role of learning in his model of kingship. Elaine Treharne's *Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English* looks at the period of the conquests using the status of English to focus her discussion of the history of the period. " ] }

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[ [ "http://historyonline.chadwyck.co.uk/getImage?productsuffix=_studyunits&action=printview&in=gif&out=pdf&src=/ehd/ehd00196/conv/ehd00196.pdf&IE=.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dhk5s8b" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Hey there! Are you asking about urbanization in *regions* other than that which the Inca controlled, or are you interested in cultures that inhabited the same areas before them and whose own urbanisms developed into the Inca's?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c79731b" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Unions, Churches and Ethnic clubs/General Community organizations. \n\nBefore Roosevelt, there was a strong mainstream belief that the poor should not rely on a government dole in order to get by. If they needed some help, then the community could help somebody when they were down. But this was temporary and it relied totally on the community for support. If the entire community was generally down (like during the depression) then this help could dry up completely. \n\nFurther, Union membership could help a person (usually a white man, but non-Chinese minorities and women were accepted into the Knights of Labor, and eventually this would happen in other Unions as well) get jobs. Further, organizations like the First International Workingmen's Association (a European Marxist organization) would often give money to people who were striking in order to prolong the strike. But that was only if your strike was important enough, and if the government (even the US!) didnt put you down first. \n\nThis doesnt really effectively change until the New Deal, when Roosevelt creates work programs like the WPA and the CCC which payed people to work. Note: it payed people *to work*. It wasnt until Roosevelt's second term that he passed the Social Security act which, in addition to giving money to grannies, created unemployment benefits and disability payments. This was essentially a government dole, you got paid for \"nothing\". But until the New Deal this idea of free money was looked down on as socialist(and even look at what people say about Well-fare and people on long-term unemployment). Even employing people (as opposed to hiring companies) was generally avoided by the government." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cijawoe", "cijbj9f", "cijc4xx" ], "score": [ 13, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It really depended on where you were and when. Even in modern times there have been areas that could resist taxation with remoteness, despite modern states having considerably more coercive power. In general, however, taxation was collected by local authorities and folded into rent payment. This could be ruinous, or it could be light. Historical sources mention instances of peasant farmers successfully negotiating an advantageous payment, and others being ground down by extraction.", "If I could piggyback on this question, how much did peasants, if at all, \nbenefit from the Empire's high levels of economic integration? What do we know about Roman \"peasant culture?\"", "One thing we also have to consider is the significant change from the late Republic to the Imperial Period. Under the Republic, tax collection in the provinces was carried out under contract by tax farmers. They would make a bid to deliver X amount of taxes, and realized profit by collecting more. This was hugely profitable for the Roman State, but incredibly onerous on those being taxed, as year on year you would see your people being wrung dry by a succession of tax farmers trying to realize the most profit they could on their limited contract (tax farming was one of the most lucrative ways for equites to get some serious coin).\n\nThe Empire, starting with Augustus, began to change this (although we aren't entirely clear when tax farming was phased out completely) by relying on more comprehensive censuses to allocate tax burdens based on actual wealth. This was intended to be a more sustainable solution to taxation for a working and lasting Empire, not just the imperial territory of a city state. Now, Tiako mentions the 'where and when' part of this. Although, I don't know personally of any source that dictates how often these censuses were taken (the depiction in the Bible is largely fanciful), they were quite large undertakings. These would determine one's tax burden. These systems are often an advantage for the taxed because in between when the census was taken and the point you were paying taxes, theoretically you could have realized a growth in wealth. Imagine if you had to pay income tax rates based on this year's income for the next five or ten years. How much money could you save? However, this could also be very bad. Imagine you had to pay income tax rates based on this year's income but suddenly lost your job. Often special dispensation of tax relief was granted by the Emperor in cases of natural disasters, but if you personally faced a particularly hard year, you would not suddenly see your burden lessen." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfux69x", "cfva9gy", "cfvd58u" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Alternatively I'd question the premise. Did common knights (as opposed to Barons, Earls, or other titled nobility) ever have the right to bestow knighthood upon others - particularly with regard to England, Great Britain, or the UK? If not, where did this idea arise?\n\nToday all knighthoods are bestowed by the Queen or by a member of the Royal family on her behalf. I have no idea with regard to the past.", "As an Englishman I can only really answer this in regards to the Kingdom of England and the subsequent United Kingdom effectively, as my knowledge of foreign knightly orders isn't great.\n\nWhat I can tell you is that a knight has never been able to make anyone a knight. The only person who can bestow knighthoods and other titular dignities such as peerages is a Fons Honorum (Fount of Honour). This is almost always a monarch, but some individual orders exist with their own Fount of Honour, though these are not considered legitimate by most.\n\nIt's also worth bearing in mind that knights always belong to orders and orders have set numbers of members. For example, The Most Noble Order of the Garter has twenty four members and never any more. Other knightly orders, like The Most Honourable Order of the Bath have ranks such as Knight Grand Cross and Dame Grand Cross, Knight Commander and Dame Commander and Knight Companion. Whilst Knights and Dames Grand Cross have influence on the monarch and might informally advise the Fons Honorum on who to appoint, they cannot under any circumstances knight anybody else.", "For the first century and a half or so in which knighthood was in existence - perhaps 900 to 1050 CE - it was not a title but an occupation. You were a knight (*miles* is the period word) if you possessed a horse, mail, a sword, and a lance, and had the training necessary to use them. You could be either a landowner, through vassalage or outright allodial holding, or a dependent member of a noble household. \n\nGradually, the concepts of knighthood and nobility became enmeshed, and by 1100 nobles were increasingly self-identifying as knights. From this point onward knighthood as a class becomes more formalized, more rigid, and more static. Formal dubbing ceremonies develop, and become more elaborate over time. The concept of heraldry is invented and then expanded upon. By the end of the 13th century knighthood has so many duties and expenses attached to it that it is only available, basically, to very wealthy landowners; the everyday business of war is carried on by men-at-arms, who are knights in all but title. People often confuse these men as being lower class soldiers, but they generally came from knightly families, but could not afford to be themselves knighted. They are frequently referred to as esquires, but as people tend to confuse this with boy servants, I avoid using it in a general discussion such as this. Any esquire's hope was to enrich himself enough to be knighted, but this was increasingly unlikely." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckmkbtq", "ckmtyec" ], "score": [ 62, 4 ], "text": [ "The first known interaction was reported by Zhang Qian, a Chinese explorer. He wrote that they were an advanced civilization, and commented on their currency, wine, cultivation and walled cities and also of the amount of cities. This was in 126 BCE and the two people started trading embassies and missions and had a peaceful relationship. \n\nAs they entered the Sassanid Period the two civilizations benefited greatly from trade on the silk road and were very close. Both of them worked together to guard the trade routes, and they continued to send missions to each other. The Persians were noted to send great entertainers to the Chinese courts.\n\nAfter Persia was conquered by Islam, the relations continued. However in 751, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Chinese had a border dispute. They proceeded to battle over Syr Dara at the Battle of Talas. The Persians won a great victory, and after the battle, relations returned to normal, trading envoys, goods and missions between the two, and working together.", "The problem with this question is that there have been Persian and Chinese Empire**s** more or less continuously for the past 2200 years. The Persian heartland of Fars and the Chinese Central Plains together represent two of the oldest and most continuous loci of political power on the planet. In the context of trade and contact, for much of the past thousand years Persian was the lingua franca of the Indian Ocean, which historically probably the most dynamic commercial zone on the planet, and China was the largest economy.\n\nIf you mean during the Parthian period, yes, [the Chinese knew about them](_URL_0_), but we can't say much for the reverse because we actually know distressingly little about the Parthians." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html#sec10" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckw7kbp" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Radioactive materials are often portrayed as green because back in the mid 20th century, there was a trend of making glowing watch faces with radioactive paint mixed with phosphorus. As you say, radioactivity is impossible to see with the naked eye and if you have Cherenkov radiation, it's a visible blue. The phosphorus interacting with the radioactive decay is what makes a green glow. As time went on, the glow of the phosphorus was associated with radiation. As was the case with these watch faces. Some were even made with radium.\n\nThese sorts of watches were pretty popular and had to be hand painted. Sadly the women who made them had horrible amounts of cancer from working with all these radioactive materials. \n\nSource: _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/20/2249925.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbl2xeo", "cbl3281", "cbl5mu4", "cbl7k7q", "cbl8fx9", "cblbeog", "cble5ws", "cblf8wn" ], "score": [ 385, 64, 7, 14, 8, 2, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "This is some anecdotal evidence.\n\nThe name \"Adolf\" was a relatively common one in Belgium prior to World War II. One of the most famous 19th century Belgian politicians was [Adolf Daens](_URL_1_). After World War 2, the name died out. Parents stopped naming their babies Adolf, but I don't know if existing \"Adolfs\" changed their name. Nowadays the frst name is non-existant here.\n\nSidenote: post-WW2, a lot of Belgian names were based on American/English names such as Danny, Willy, Ronny, Michael, Daisy, Bettybut are uncommon these days for newborns.\n\nRegarding the name \"Hitler\". His father, Alois Hitler, was actually born Alois Schicklgruber. He started (officially) using his stepfather's name, Hiedler, in the 1870's. That name got registered as Hitler for unknown reasons. So, Hitler's father was actually the first person to take on the name of Hitler. From there, it's relatively easy to track Hitler's (male) relatives after World War II. [William Patrick Hitler](_URL_0_). He was a British nephew of Hitler and joined the US Navy in 1941. He later changed his name to Stuart-Houston. \nHitler's half-nephew, Heinz Hitler, died in World War II leaving no children behind. \n\nI couldn't find anything else on other male relatives of Hitler, so I think the name naturally went extinct after world war II with the exception of William Patrick Hitler.\n\nI don't know about the name Schicklgruber however.", "Hitler was not a common name in that time. In fact, Hitlers father \"invented\" that name. Alois Hitler, Adolfs' father was considerd to be an illegitimate child of a Farmer in Lower Austria, who was called \"Hiedler\". Alois was called \"Schickelgruber\" after his Mother. After the death of Alois' alleged real father he changed his name into his fathers name, and changed it to Hitler. It is not clear why he did this. \n\nHilter also had siblings. Some of them changed their surname even before Adolf Hitler became \"the Füher\" because he didn't wanted the public to know about his family. E.g. Paula Hitler, Adolfs Sister changed her name to \"Wolf\"(=Wulf). \n\nSome of the Hilter offspring still live today, but they have changed their names. In fact, the Name Hitler doesn't excist anymore in Germany or Austria\n\nOther Realtives of the NSDAP-Leaders like Göring have decided to sterilize themself, because of the difficulties with their Name.", "[Here are some statistics](_URL_0_) concerning the French cognate (\"Adolphe\") of the first name Adolf (abscissa is year and ordinate is the number of males born in that year who received \"Adolphe\" as first name).", "New York Times: Three Quiet Brothers on Long Island, All of Them Related to Hitler\n\nNone have children, it was rumored that they made a pact to end the Hitler bloodline.\n\n_URL_0_", " > What about other notorious dictators/fascists in Germany and elsewhere?\n\nIn cases where the surname is common, at least, it doesn't seem to have had a large effect. Francisco Franco was dictator of Spain for years, and yet today we still have the [president of Paraguay](_URL_1_) and [an American actor](_URL_0_) named Franco. And the surname of the Greek dictator of 1967-74, Georgios Papadopoulos, is still one of the most common Greek names (it means something like \"son of a priest\").", "I've always wondered if he had the civil/parish documents destroyed for some reason, once he came to power.\n\nBut perhaps reality is simpler.\n\n", "Hitler was a rare last name but it did exist, and some Hitlers did change their names (including relatives of Adolf). For example, in letters to the editor [here](_URL_0_),a few people talk about their families changing their names from Hitler.\n\nAdolf died in popularity after WWII in Germany, Germany, Switzerland and France where the name had some presence (as Adolf, Adolph or Adolphe). In Spain, which did not fight in WWII, the name didn't get such terrible connotations and Adolfo is an acceptable normal thing to name a child. I have a Spanish friend named Adolfo myself.", "i have a only slightly related question which i wanted to ask for quite some time. When i worked for a newspaper in Germany, people often sent postcards to take part in sweepstakes organized by the newspaper. There were quite a number of people born 1943-45 who were named Adolf or even Adolphine (the female version). \nAre there any records what happened when the parents of those children claimed to not have been nazis after the war?" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Patrick_Hitler", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Daens" ], [], [ "http://www.meilleursprenoms.com/stats/histogram.php3?recherche=Adolphe&image.x=0&image.y=0" ], [ "http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/nyregion/24patchogue.html?pagewanted=all" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Franco", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Franco" ], [], [ "www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-57564,00.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlfm6li", "dlfnqgi", "dlfrp4x", "dlfrrr0", "dlftfgc", "dlg4djb" ], "score": [ 27, 87, 6, 542, 85, 7 ], "text": [ "More to the point, why did Genoa become an industrial power, and Venice did not?", "I can answer at least to the part about Venice's decline. What you said about the Ottomans wasn't entirely correct. When the Ottomans came into power, they were perceived as an enemy of Europe. This stopped flat the entry of Silk Road goods into Europe. The main exception to this, actually, was Venice. Many merchants in Venice struck deals with the Ottomans to trade those Silk Road goods, giving them a monopoly on these goods when trading with the rest of Europe.\n\nWhat caused Venice's decline was the discovery of alternate trading routes with Asia, because suddenly Venice lost their monopoly. This situation was further worsened by sporadic conflicts with the Ottomans which plummeted Venice into increasing irrelevance.\n\nAs for industrialization, it is important to consider Venice's position as a small island in the Adriatic. This means that any and all raw materials coming to Venice have to incur import costs. This wasn't a problem when the city flourished, as wealth was abundant to cover these costs. But since the decline, these costs have actually become a large obstacle to the survival of the city. Venice in modern days is suffering from depopulation and is in a state of disrepair, a truly sad state for the Serenissima.", "I have been studying quite a bit of Mediterranean history at university, and what others have said about the decline of Venice is very true. Discovery of the cape route most certainly the decline in trade for Venice, but also the entry of the English and Dutch in the 16th and 17th centuries (the so-called Invasion of the Northerners) undercut their monopoly heavily.\nOn the other hand, Genoa was already mostly out of the trading business by the 16th century with the loss of their Black Sea and Aegean colonies. But they remained financially very central to Europe through their banking business and they were able to profit from the growth of long distance trade by transforming their port into a free port (although mostly limited to grain). Opening up the port meant that Genoa became a point from which grain was distributed to the rest of the peninsula, and in term kept traffic flowing through it as the Genoese got into other businesses.\n\nI would suggest looking at works by Thomas Allison Kirk for Genoa and for Venice Frederic Lane's works are pretty good. Maria Fusaro (one of my tutors) has some works on the English 'invasion' which I highly recommend as well.", "I think you are conflating together some things that happened centuries apart. In fact Genoa's mercantile empire declined faster and more dramatically than the Venetian one. To the point that Genoa essentially lost political independence much earlier than Venice.\n\nA first phase of relative decline of the Republic begun with the long conflict with Venice, culminating in the War of Chioggia in the 1380s. Genoa's expansion was ended and most of the resources of the Republic went into consolidation of its oligarchic structure and the former trading empire evolved into a prominent banking venture. The founding of the Bank of St. George in 1407 marked a turning point in the evolution of the Republic that, surrounded by more powerful nations, had to suffer repeated periods of French and Milanese occupation in the XV Century. The fall of Constantinoples - the Genoese had been traditional allies of the fading Bizantine Empire enjoying special trading privileges - was another blow to their trading ambitions.\n\nIt was in fact the Bank which helped the City survive and avoid permanent conquest: in the XVI Century the Genoese bankers became prominent lenders to the Crown of Spain. Under the rule of the Doria family, strong of the ties with the Spanish kingdom, the city saw a period of resurgence. Noetheless the absolute prominence of the Bank within the City meant a growing identification of the Administration with the Bank's \"shareholders\". Very few most renown families held control of the Bank, which was to say of the entire economy of the City, as the Bank also oversaw traffics, tariffs and taxes, held lands under direct or indirect control; it also brought a situation where the leadership was essentially extracting money by financing no longer the debt of foreign nations but the public debt of the city itself. \n\nThe decline of the Spanish finances during the late XVI early XVII Century marked therefore a new period of decline for the Genoese; again they were subject to political and military pressure from outside forces: the French and the Austrians took turns as major influences until, after the brief restoration of the Republic during the Napoleonic Campaign in Italy, Genoa ended up with the Kingdom of Sardinia. Which is also the moment when some resurgence of its trading nature begun, as it became the main port of the Kingdom under the reactionary Carlo Felice and his more progressive son Carlo Alberto. \n\n\nIn any case, despite the glorious parenthesis of the XVI Century, the Genoese decline was more marked than the Venetian one. Venice retained a larger trading influence for longer time, a larger degree of political independence and, despite being forced to abandon its policy of conquest on the mainland, roughly after the War of the League of Cambrai a the beginning of the XVI Century, a larger mainland crossed by some trading routes. The progressive erosion of their commercial empire under pressure by the Ottomans led Venice to a similar evolution in a conservative-oligarchic sense. Here though, having retained a significant portion of land, the Venetian leadership was heavily based on land possession and the public debt was therefore transofrmed in a series of concessions - at times very unfortunate - that developed a system of internal tariffs and borders, which ultimately resulted in a general backwardness of the agrarian and (almost non existent) industrial production of the main land in the late XVIII Century.\n\n\nBy the time of the Restoration, both Venice and Genoa were in deep economic and political decline; but Venice was perhaps in slightly better condition. Unfortunately for them - if the annexation to the Austro Hungarian Empire brought a progressive elimination of the internal borders, as the Austrians used the Venetian mainland as a pathway to their more advanced Lombard holdings - the Austrians already had a main port on the Adriatic sea: Trieste. And they saw no purpose in developing another one, despite the Venetian maritime tradition becoming important for the Empire.\n\n\nBy the way, the port of Genoa isn't necessarily the largest port of Italy by every indicator - for example Trieste carries more tonnage as you can see [here](_URL_0_) and Venice is far from a merely turistic city (you usally don't visit the port and industrial town of Mestre-Marghera because frankly they are desperately unpleasant to the eye).\n\n\nThe resurgence of Venice as an industrial pole is usually tied to the personal efforts of Giuseppe Volpi, who is famous for an infinite list of things: the Cinema Festival, being in charge of the finances under Fascism, the creation of the often renamed Adriatic Society of Energy, pioneering the Hydroelectric sector with the construction of Alpine dams, etc.\n\nThis process continued during the Italian economic boom in the post WW2 period and would bring us to cross the 20 years barrier. \nAlso it must be noted that there are geographical limitations to the access to the Venetian lagoon that have made harder to logistically accomodate large volumes of traffic; essentially the need to develop and maintain channels dug into the lagoon.\n\n\n\nFor sources I used G. Candeloro's *Storia dell'Italia moderna*.\n\nI also used some data from [this publication of the City of Genoa](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\nEdit: Added a couple of sentences that were left in my fingers when I posted. \n\nAlso I think I broke the record for the use of the adjective prominent...\n\nFinally, this is a long, long subject to deal with and I am not entirely familiar with it, as Candeloro's work mostly focused on the condition of pre unitary Italy and the nature of the economical relations within the various states. I hope someone may fill in the gaps I left; also you may want to know more on the Venetian development process after WW1 but of that I know very little unfortunately.", "Timely question! I'm actually reading Alvise Zorzi's *Venezia Austriaca* right now! \n\nI've been going a bit crazy writing tediously winding posts about Italian economic history, so I'll try to be more concise here. The short answer is: The Railroad. \n\nFirst things first: Venice continued to be the political, economic, and social center of the Republic of Venice even after the stratospheric rise in Atlantic trade made Mediterranean trade comparatively less of an economic force. [Further, the relationship between Venice and the Ottoman Empire was more complex than it is commonly depicted](_URL_0_). Just because northeastern Europe accelerated doesn't mean that economic activity in southern Europe stopped altogether. Far from being a \"backwater,\" to this day Venice is the political and administrative capital of the Veneto region, one of the most industrious in Italy. Although the historic portion of the city only houses twenty thousand people in a space built for ten times as many, the area administrated by the city council extends over multiple islands in the lagoon and far into the mainland, governing two hundred and fifty thousand people. The Venezia-Pedua-Treviso urban area houses over two and a half million people and is home to three universities, two airports, and [according to an OECD study](_URL_1_), manufactures 23% of Italian exports. So just because the historic center of Venice is swamped with tourists doesn't mean there isn't anything else going on nearby. \n\nHowever, a depopulation like that experienced in Venice's city center has no precedent in Italy. Once the Republic of Venice was amalgamated into Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy, and later handed off to the Austrian Empire's constituent Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, two things happen: the apparatus of government moves to Milan, and Triest exists. You see, although Venice was awarded the title of \"Joint Capital\" with Milan, apart from the pomp and circumstance surrounding occasional royal visits, the city housed none of the offices of government above the provincial level. The city's educated young men hoping for a career in government found that they had to move to the Lombard capital, and often took their families with them. On the entrepreneurial level too, although the region was (and still is!) economically vibrant, local entrepreneurs found increasingly few reasons to visit the city from their estates and manufactures in places like Treviso, Vicenza, and Verona. Of course, they city population had already been on the decline as emergent manufacturing shifted the economic focus from the city to the mainland, but as long as the city was the gateway to the Republic it retained some economic relevancy; annexation by the Austrian Empire ended that. The reason for that is the second point I brought up: Triest. The Austrian Empire's historic port on the Adriatic was not only closer to the Empire's heartland, but also not in the middle of a lagoon. The Empire's industrialists could unload goods from ships directly to railcars in Triest, while in Venice they had to load them onto river-boats, and in a second moment load them onto railcars. River navigation had been in use for hundreds of years, and the navigable river and canal network in northern Italy was certainly extensively developed, but could in no way compare to the boon in transport and industry brought by railroad. \n\nIn addition, Austrian policies often disproportionately favored Triest. In Venice, an early boon thanks to the Austrian fleet being based there was soon erased after a series of mutinies triggered a policy of de-italianization in the navy, in addition to its relocation to, you guessed it, Triest. The move was doubly beneficial, since the triestine seaport was also revamped and updated to accomodate the move. Also, because Triest was the closer port of entry for Austrian entrepreneurs, it was declared a duty-free zone, with the natural consequence that lot of Italian trade that had previously passed through Venice was also redirected there. Edit: It's worth saying that there *were* attempts to connect Venice to the mainland via rail, however at the time of the revolt of 1848 the line stopped at Verona (and just two years prior stopped even earlier, in Vicenza). By 1857, the line to Milan was completed, but that same year Triest's connection to Vienna was also finished, sealing that port's position as the preferential point of entry for the Empire's Austrian, Czech, and Hungarian realms. \n\nOnce Italy was unified, there were some attempts to stop the city's moribund trajectory: the Università Ca'Foscari was founded, which was meant to be a training academy for the Italian Kingdom's diplomatic corps. Starting in the early 20th century, a large port complex was constructed just across the lagoon in Mestre and Marghera, and the historic center was connected to these facilities (and the mainland) with a railway bridge in the 1930s. After WWII, the government sanctioned a large petrochemical refinery to be constructed just across the lagoon. However, if these policies were meant to revitalize the city, they were sorely misguided: with so many new structures just across the lagoon, the historic center depopulated even more rapidly. \n\nThe story of Genoa was somewhat different. After it's zenith in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it would first become a puppet of the Milanese, and later construct itself as a client-state of Spain, giving up sovereignty and in return becoming an important financial center. In a twist of fate that had a surprisingly positive effect, the Congress of Vienna awarded the Republic of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia as a reward for the little kingdom's firm anti-Napoleonic stance. The Kingdom of Sardinia was a bizarre polity, centered on Piedmont but in possession of its namesake island since 1718 due to curious circumstances following the War of Spanish Succession. Under Piedmontese rule, Genoa would again flourish: the \"Royal Road\" connecting the seaport to Turin became an important transit line in northwestern Italy, while in 1844 King Charles Albert commissioned the Genoa-Turin railway, which would become one of Italy's most important industrial axis. Indeed, The Turin-Milan-Genoa triangle would become the country’s industrial heartland after unification; with Genoa the key point of departure to and from Milan and Turin. \n\nIf you'd like to know more about Italian economic history, I'd suggest the following:\n\nDavis, John A. *Italy in the Nineteenth Century, 1796-1900*. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Print. \n\nAnd if you can read Italian:\n\nRomani, Mario. *Storia Economica d’Italia nel secolo XIX.* Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. 1983. Print.", "[Paul Strathern](_URL_0_) argues that, among other things, the fall of the ERE and rise of the Ottoman Empire was one of the tipping points in Venetian history. Venice, in many ways, was *not* ideally situated for the type of commerce it mainly engaged in, to the point where the Council of Ten considered leaving and being the Republic of Venice somewhere other than the Venetian islands. \n\nPart of what had previously made Venice successful were lucrative trade deals that the Republic had made with the ERE, including trading rights in Constantinople and other major ports. With the ERE on its deathbed and the Ottomans rising, the Venetians had hoped to renegotiate these trade rights with the Sultan, which is likely part of the reason why they delayed a relief fleet which was meant to go to Constantinople. However, that did not work out as well as they had hoped and the Ottomans were far less willing to negotiate trade deals than the Greeks had been. \n\nIn addition, the 15th century was filled with many economic and technological changes, one of the most important being the Portuguese navigating a route around the Cape of Africa. So diminished trade opportunities, foreign competition, and a less-than ideal geographic location were factors to the decline." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.infodata.ilsole24ore.com/2016/02/17/traffico-merci-nei-porti-italiani-37-le-tonnellate-movimentate-container-a-05/?refresh_ce=1" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6diwuv/how_does_history_regard_the_venetian_republics/di5g5xx/", "https://books.google.com/books?id=b3Vzk0BFb24C&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false" ], [ "https://www.amazon.com/Venetians-History-Marco-Polo-Casanova-ebook/dp/B00GJ7WXR6" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cobp6yh", "cobvrl5" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "it appears to be inexperience by these armies. in the beginning of the war, the armies grew in size, many times their normal peacetime strength and so you have inexperienced leaders at every level; and large numbers of raw recruits. Frank Vizetelly an English war correspondent makes mention of this in a National Geographic article in April of 1961 (100th anniversary issue).\n\nI seem to recall that as the war went on bayonet charges were used more, at Spotsylvania, the Crater, Ft. Pillow, etc. These are all in 1864. ", "I think that one of the reasons was because of the improved accuracy of the new rifled muskets. They could be effective out past 500 yards while older smoothbore muskets were only effective 50-100 yards. So getting close for a bayonet charge when the enemy has rifles would be suicide." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f9camzp" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "The basic answer for the broader definition of Greek Myth/Religion is Christianity, but I think that broad definition isn't necessarily what most people think of when they say \"Greek Mythology\" today. The storybook version of 12 Olympian gods and series of concrete stories about each of them never existed. There were always competing or contradicting versions, and that didn't bother the ancient Greeks. In fact, many of the most popular stories are best preserved in their Roman forms by the *Metamorphoses* of Ovid.\n\n\nIt's hard for us to wrap our heads around in a world so dominated by religions like Christianity and Islam that try to define one absolute correct for of the religion, but the ancient Greeks were much more concerned with proper ceremony and practice in the present than which stories and character traits went with which gods. They also had no problem with gods from outside of their pantheon. Some gods only cared about Greece/the Greeks, others were called by different names in other cultures. If they couldn't find an analogue for one of their gods, they were more than happy to believe in a new foreign god and worship with the local traditions when they travelled. That brings me to the really radical change in \"Greek mythology.\"\n\n\nAfter the conquests of Alexander his successors carved out kingdoms from Afghanistan to Greece and made plays for power in Sicily and Italy. As Greek/Macedonian culture spread across that huge range, it was in direct contact with more outside influences than ever before. Some foreign, especially Egyptian, gods became some of the most popular and new traditions and stories seeped in. These were gods like Isis, Serapis, and Cybele.\n\n\nfter Greece was conquered by Rome (a culture that borrowed heavily from Greece, but almost never copied Greek tradition exactly) that process continued to incorporate new religious traditions from across the Roman Empire into the Greeks' traditions. Much like some of the new gods during the Hellenistic period, a few new gods of the Roman period also surpassed the traditional Olympian pantheon in some places. So already by the second century CE you have many foreign cults that coexist with the classical myths, but were also surpassing them in some contexts. It was already a very different environment in Greece than it was in 300 BCE.\n\nSome of the more famous examples include Mithra and Elagabalus. Both were Near Eastern deities picked up by the Roman armies as they marched across the region. Mithra seems to be the more popular one in Greece, but veneration of Elagabalus was found all over the Empire. We don't know much about either. They seem to have existed somewhere between traditional polytheistic religion and henotheism where one god is worshipped and many are acknowledged. Both were linked to the ancient Greek god Helios, but like I said, we don't know much in the way of details about what was really believed.\n\n\nSo finally, I get to the thing that really killed it off. It was just another little Near Eastern tradition that was circulating around the empire, competing for popularity with things like Mithra. The difference is twofold: this one was vehemently monotheistic and caught the attention of enough of the imperial elite, including the emperors. Of course, it's Christianity. \n\n\nThere had been some on and off persecution by the authorities because associations with Juaism and refusal to venerate the imperial cult (ie the deified dead emperors) were both viewed as treasonous. However, by the time Constantine gave official tolerance to Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313, some estimates suggest that Christians accounted for almost 2/3 of some major cities. It had reached Greece and Anatolia very early on and had a strong foothold there to begin with. \n\n\nClose to death, Constantine converted officially, and all of his successors were raised Christian. Aside from a brief hiccup where Julian the Apostate tried to turn back the clock with an official canonical form of Greco-Roman paganism, it was a steady uphill climb for Christianity. Each successive Roman emperor tended to enact policy that supported Christianity over traditional paganism. Churches and Christian communities were given state funding over pagan temples, pagans were blocked out of official offices, and emperor Gratian went on a spree of confiscating pagan temple revenues, removed an altar to pagan Victory in the Senate house, and became the first emperor since Augustus not to accept the office of Pontifex Maximus, high priest of traditional Roman religion. \n\n\nIn 318 Gratian and his co-emperors, most notably Theodosius I, issued a decree stating that all of his subjects should follow Nicene Christianity, effectively making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, and establishing an official Christian dogma for that state religion. Theodosius permitted, but did not outright endorse, the destruction of many prominent pagan temples. He ended any remaining legal and official support for pagan institutions.\n\n\nBeginning in 381, Theodosius engaged in official condemnation and persecution of non-Christian, non-Orthodox beliefs and practices that remained the standard policy for the Roman empire for the rest of its history, right through the Byzantine period. Despite heavy persecution, some pagan beliefs and practices probably survived for a few more centuries in rural or isolated areas, but by 400 or so, it was functionally gone in population centers.\n\n\nThe classical myths hadn't been the sole feature of Greek religion for more than 700 years by the time it was truly gone. In fact, they hadn't even been the most popular option for a few centuries, but ultimately Christianity's strict monotheism ended and replaced belief in classical Greek myths." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dibmolc" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "You're asking a lot of questions, which is understandable; Wikipedia is not a complete source of information by any stretch of the imagination. Let's begin in the beginning. \n\nAfter the eighth century, Southern Italy was contested three ways between Arabs, the Byzantine Empire, and \"Lombards,\" who were originally Germanic warriors that intermarried and replaced the old Roman \"Senatorial Class.\"\n\nWhen Charlemagne conquered Italy from the Lombard King called Desiderius, a rump state survived in Southern Italy; Seeing Charlemagne and his army at the gates of his chief city, Salerno, Duke Arechi of Benevento, a powerful and fiercely loyal vassal of the deposed King of Italy (he had married Desiderius' daughter) came to an agreement with Charlemagne. He sent his son Grimolado as a hostage to Charlemagne's court, and in exchange secured the right to continue ruling as Duke in Southern Italy; Arechi was even recognized the rank of Prince. Although culturally active, the Principality of Benevento would be marred by instability, and by the mid 9th century had split three ways: the Duchy of Benevento and the Duchy of Salerno (whose rulers both claimed the title of \"Prince\") as well as the independent Republic of Amalfi.\n\nCalabria and Puglia, on the other hand, remained Byzantine Military Provinces (called *Thema*) up to the Norman conquest. A vestige of Justinian's reconquest of Italy in the sixth century, they were ruled by an ethnically Greek *Katepano* (Commander) appointed from Constantinople. Because of southern Italy's strong ties to the Greek world, as well as the Byzantine practice of settling soldiers with land, the general picture of this part of Southern Italy is functionally Graco-Latin, leaning more towards Greek at the top of the social ladder, while the bottom would be more Latin.\n\nSicily, on the other hand, was predominantly under the Abbasid Caliphate by the ninth century. However, when Robert Guiscard (a Norman mercenary employed at the time by the Duke of Salerno) established a foothold in Messina, he revived an old Byzantine title, *Strategos*, for the governor he appointed; the same title that had been used by the Byzantine military governor (who was based in the same city, no less) when Sicily was originally attacked by Abbasids. Curiously, in the County, and later Kingdom, of Sicily the governor of Messina and its surroundings would continue to be called with the Italianized title \"Strategoto\", derived from the analogous Greek word, meaning that once the Arab-dominated ruling class was removed a Greek substrate must have been present.\n\nGenerally, the early history of Sicily saw Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs fighting with each other in every concievable combination. In 1042, Duke Guaimario of Salerno approved the Norman mercenary William Hauteville's plan to seize Sicily from the Arabs, and in return would be made Count of Puglia (should he be able to conquer that from the Byzantines as well). William (helped by his brother) went above and beyond, and used Puglia as a trampoline to take Calabria, becoming the most powerful person in southern Italy in the process. When in 1052 when Prince Guaimario was murdered, the Hautevilles took advantage of the unrest in Salerno to take the city, completing their conquest of mainland Southern Italy on their way to take Sicily.\n\nWilliam's brother Robert (nicknamed, \"Guiscard\") managed to impose himself as Count of Sicily. His rule was characterized by the unique coexistence of ethnic Arabs, Greeks, and Normans. There were some limitations on this coexistence, but no real \"genocide\" as you asked about in your question: in the Norman County (later Kingdom) of Sicily, Greeks and Arab landholders were relegated as \"Villeins\" (the lowest rank of landholder) and were taxed more heavily than Roman Catholics, a conscious decision which encouraged immigration by Northern Italian Lombards, Britons, Normans, and Provençals, and which rapidly diluted the existing Arab-Greek culture.\n\nNorman Sicily has been defined as a society based on \"Unequal Coexistence.\" Although privileged positions were given to Norman, Provencal, Lombard, and Greek immigrants (more or less in that order) tensions between Christians and Muslims would only come to the breaking point in the late twelfth century. Tensions between Sicilian Greeks and the new \"Latins\" on the other hand, were easily overcome by professing adherence to the Church of Rome, only recently (in 1054) irreparably separated from the Church of the East, in Constantinople. Indeed, Greek Christians (who had in great part welcomed the Normans) played a key role in mediating between the upper class of Latin lords and the subject populations of Muslim serfs (according to Johns J., *The Monreale Survey: Indigenes and invaders in medieval west Sicily*). It's interesting to note how within a generation of the Norman conquest, parish censuses show how serfs whose parents have Arabic names take Greek names; a testament to the dominant \"Greek Christian\" culture in spite of the new Norman ruling class and the almost entirely Arab administrative bureaucracy, and more importantly, the key role of Greek Churchmen in converting the Muslim population to Christianity.\n\nJohn Julius Norwich, in his *The Normans in Sicily* puts it this way: “Norman and Lombard, Greek and Saracen, Italian and Jew – Sicily had proved that for as long as they enjoyed an enlightened and impartial government, they could happily coexist; they could not coalesce.” Greek Orthodox inhabitants of Sicily could be expected to be fluent in Arabic, and some Muslims could be expected to be native Greek speakers. However, as with Arabic, Greek language and culture was also rapidly replaced in favor of Latin language and culture in Sicily and indeed all of Southern Italy. If you'd like to learn more, John Julius Norwich wrote a very extensive history of Sicily in two works, one chronicling the Norman Conquest and another on the actual history of the kingdom. Both works have recently been published together as a single work.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cekqdoz", "cekqezu", "cekqhow", "cekqs3d", "cekquex", "cekr157", "cekrn4b", "ceksd8o", "cektbqp", "cekunl8", "cekusne", "cekvpit", "cel2209", "cel3fdb", "cel613l", "celchxz" ], "score": [ 3, 5, 7, 5, 7, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "How did mainstream American music transition from a \"Sinatra\" sort of genre to these different sort of post ww2 genres such as Elvis, the Beatles, etc. Were there any reasons or contributing factors, or was it just a regular progression of music that occured? Sorry if I'm being too broad, just interested in the general changes in music during that era.", "What would an average American caucasian midwestern nuclear family do on weekends in the late 1950s?", "Thank you so much for arranging this very interesting panel!\n\nMy question is the following: When did the cinema become a common sight in the towns and cities of the United States? Was it something that was targeted for a specific audience or was it like today where everyone ranging from teenage couples to families can find something to watch (and be entertained by)?", "This one is for /u/American_Graffiti: What sort of children's literature was popular in the mid-20th century? Was it common for parents to read to their children or was it something they were encouraged to do on their own?", "Two questions:\n1) What were the initial reactions from Europeans when Ragtime started emerging?\n\n2) In the 1960's the phrase \"Generation Gap\" entered mainstream society. In pre-1960's America, were there any generation gaps?", "This one is most likely for /u/randommusician: bringing forward one of my [favorite unanswered questions on music](_URL_0_) from a while back, what were race relations like between early rock and roll musicians in 50s-60s America? ", "What's up with anglophilia (love of English stuff) in the 60s and 80s? Was there one thing in particular that sparked it? ", "Oh man, this is exactly what I came here to post about.\n\n/u/Bufus: In looking at the history of Cold War era comic books I have run into some scholarship that points to the use of Comic books to establish an understanding of emerging nuclear power after World War II. My question then is, if this was in fact the case, what were reactions in the industry like to nuclear accidents like Three-Mile Island or Chernobyl? I know it says above that your focus in gender in comics but I figured I'd ask.\n\nSome sources I've run into already Ferenc Morton Szasz' *Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World* and a couple articles published in the Journal of Popular Culture.\n\nEDIT: One more question. What was the portrayal of Communism like in the same era of American/Western comic books? This is what I was originally researching but I've been running into far more materials on Nuclear Power.\n\n", "Could I have an overview of how football gained ground over baseball during the 20th century, as well as the rise of football in American culture?", "Why wasn't football (soccer) very popular in the US during that era, given that in the 20th century, a large number of immigrants from nations that love soccer, such as Italy, Germany or Mexico arrived? When the USA was announced as the host of the FIFA World Cup, did the sport expect a surge in its popularity?", "For /u/Bufus :-\n\nHow did you go about reconstructing readers' responses to themes of gender and sexuality in comic books? How can we understand which elements were understood as escapist and which were embraced as models of social order?\n", "/u/yearsnotlost: How has the introduction of the automobile affected the growth and development of New York City? Has the city undergone a really major overhaul to better accomodate automobile traffic?", "Are there any notable double entendres (like \"that's what she said\") of the 50's?", "Okay, I think I've got a decent question that can apply to a few of you fine, fine panelists.\n\nIn your opinion, did your chosen field of media (music, cinema, comic books, etc.) advance or push boundaries of gender and sexuality? How so? Or, conversely, did your media follow slavishly along with established gender roles? Were there outliers? What were the reactions to these boundary-pushing examples?\n\nThank you all, so much, for doing this AMA!", "For /u/american_graffiti: how did the automobile become an essential part of the \"coming-of-age\" experience? How has it's role in that experience changed over time?", "What, if any, aspects of Brazilian culture were incorporated or influential in American popular culture? If there was none, there were any that were erroneously attributed to Brazil?" ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1p2pt2/what_were_race_relations_like_between_early_rock/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cn5d150" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "It's hard to say something didn't happen, but we can say why other groups did turn to organized crime. Ethnic groups who were blocked from traditional employment often attempt to break out and make it by turning to crime. We can see this in the heavily discriminated against groups of the Italians, Irish, Jews, and Black organized crime, but not in the generally accepted Germans." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3d24q8" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Hi, a while ago I commented on a similar question. [You could have a look here](_URL_0_), perhaps it could be useful to you as well?" ] }

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[ [ "http://nl.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mvxt4/education_through_the_ages/c34a1xd" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dd9nb2i" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Hand-to-hand can be something of a misnomer, in that it is often used as an example of hyperbole to indicate the ferocity of urban combat, and is not necessarily literal.\n\nThat being said, urban warfare gets up close and personal, and Stalingrad is in the running for most brutal urban combat of all time, and there are examples of journals from both sides where the authors specifically mention and describe hand-to-hand fighting in close quarters. \n\nEdit: I will note that the primary source letters and journals with which I'm familiar were translated into English, and were exclusively from the Soviet perspective. I'm not sure hand-to-hand is a figure of speech in Russian the way it is in English." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fjgnynv" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Civilisation is one of those loose terms that, the more we think about it, the harder it is to define. I'm assuming you mean the general sense of identity/values/aesthetics/social structures and so on that we consider to be 'Greek.' The answer really isn't simple.\n\nFirstly, to say there was a single Greek civilisation is a bit over simplistic. When most people think of Greece they think of Athenians, with their forums and philosophers, but Athens was not all of Greece nor was it often the most important. Sparta is the obvious counterpoint, but there's also Corinth, Thebes, and hundreds of other city-states with their own social structures and values. The point being that ancient Greeks were unified by a shared language (although divided by dialect) and a general region, but were not some unified cultural group by a long shot.\n\nOkay, so let's just take a general Athenian-esque sense of Ancient Greece. Did it draw from Egypt and the Near-East? Yes, absolutely. Herodotus thanks Egypt for teaching Greece things like geometry and mathematics. Did Greece take everything? No, of course not. Its language, Athenian democracy, Greek hoplite warfare, literary/oratory works like those of Homer, or great architectural achievements like the Parthenon. Egyptians and Babylonians didn't make those. Greeks did. \n\nThere's also the fact that 'philosophy' is a very broad term. French post-modernism, Chinese Confucianism, and European renaissance humanism are all philosophises of their own but are very distinct things. Humans seem to be hard-wired to question their own existence and societies. The Egyptians were among the first, but it's by no means uniquely theirs. 'Architecture' is a similarly diverse thing. Peru's Machu Pichu is a feat of architecture just like Rome's Colosseum or Beijing's Forbidden Palace, but each one is a unique reflection of their societies and time periods using different material and methods. The same is true for Greek architecture as opposed to Egyptian or Babylonian - the Pyramids are not the Parthenon. \n\nCultures are not discrete nor do they exist in a vacuum. Each one builds on what came before and redefines it for its own needs. Cultural transmission is not a case of X culture meeting Y and taking all of Y's ideas. Y's ideas might take root in culture X, but culture X's unique perspectives and uses can and almost always will produce an entirely new thing Z. Think of how tea is a cornerstone of British culture despite originally being Indian, or how rice has integrated itself into Persian cuisine despite only making it to the region in the 13th century or so. Just because something comes from somewhere else, that doesn't mean a culture can't make it their own. The premise that if one culture found something first then it's forever theirs is just not appropriate. By that logic, everything is African since the basic tenants of society like language and fire was first utilised by the earliest humans spreading from the continent.\n\nI know this answer has been more broad reaching that just Greece of Egypt, but I think taking a step back and addressing the basic assumptions implicit in the question are important.\n\nAs for some basic things that were original? I mentioned a few, but we can list more. Greek mythology, perhaps the first histories as we'd understand them from those like Herodotus or Thucydides, democracy, the Greek language and its derivatives, theatre, winches and cranes, etc etc. Of course, these ideas have changed over time. Modern democracy is not the same as ancient Athenian democracy, but that's the whole point - humanity builds on what came before and what came from elsewhere. We always have and we always will." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f1nj6yw" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It depends on the region; The Jelling Stone in Denmark announcing the establishment of Christianity as the religion by Harald was still significant even if it didn't mean the whole country was converted yet. As did the Icelandic þing decision of 1000 and Saint Olaf's supposed completion of christening of Norway a few decades later. The Swedes were supposedly still largely pagan according to Adam of Bremen in his own day (1070s) and the last concrete mention of pagan resistance there would be the martyring of Saint Botvid by a pagan in 1120. Adam of Bremen also claims fringe areas of Denmark - Bornholm and Blekinge as not having been converted properly until their bishop missioned there in the 1060s. However, Adam has a bias in wanting to hold forth the importance and relevance of the missionary work done in the ecclesiastical province of Hamburg-Bremen that he represented and there's a commonly-held interpretation that he neglected or minimized the contributions made by Anglo-Saxon and Irish missionaries. Adam was not a first-hand witness to conditions in Scandinavia either (and Orderic even less so). \n\nArchaeology actually pushes the dates back a bit. Christian burials first turn up in Bornholm already in the late 900s. The excavation of Kata Farm and other sites in Sweden now show that at least the elites in Götaland were converting in that same late-900s time frame as the core areas of Denmark, and the same goes for Østfold and Rogaland in Norway. Whereas areas like Trøndelag, Agder, northern Norway and the inner parts of eastern Norway converted later, as did Svealand in Sweden. Evidence shows rapid changes towards Christian burial practices in the 11th century in Norway. Even in Sveland's Uppland, historians tend to side with an earlier date than a later one; it was probably mostly Christian by the 1080s. Adam's claim that Emund the Old (circa 1050s) neglected Christianity could be interpreted as Adam's judgement on Emund's tolerance of paganism. It's been suggested the traditional date of 1120 for Botvid's martyring may be a bit late too.\n\nOf course by Christian burial practices we primarily mean east-west oriented graves and the abandoning of cremation. Needless to say, that doesn't necessarily mean the buried were completely Christian. (Burials in churchyards was also a thing that would come later) But Scandinavia was likely almost completely converted by 1100, and in that century Christian institutions were strengthened considerably and what holdouts may have existed would have the thumb-screws tightened by the fact that things like inheritance rights became contingent on conversion. Although law codes we have from the 13th century, like Gulathingsloven, ban pagan activities, there's no concrete evidence of such activities still happening in that period. (one might compare to Magnus Erikssons Country Law of 1340 which finally banned thralldom in Sweden but entered into force something like 70 years after the last mention of anyone owning a thrall)\n\n\nAs I said in [a post yesterday](_URL_0_), the nationalists/romantics of the 19th century really wanted to believe paganism had survived longer than it actually likely did, because they'd adopted the view that pre-Christian beliefs were a core part of national identity. (and that crowd is still around although not so represented in academia anymore) But we don't know that any actual Viking Age Scandinavians felt that way. If it was such a core part of their identity, one would perhaps expect more resistance than we know of. On the contrary, it's been argued (e.g. in _Skiftet_) that resistance to conversion may have been primarily rooted in opposition to the associated political and social changes, not the faith itself.\n\nThe Baltic States and Finland were converted later (and the Scandinavians played no small part in those Baltic Crusades), and those were much more isolated parts of Europe. Scandinavia had frequent cultural contacts with the continental and southern Europe for a millennium before the Viking Age ended. As for Delumeau, his ideas that most European weren't 'really' Christians (not just the north) doesn't have that much support. Although it's based in the correct observation that the average masses did not view nor practice Christianity the same way as the priests and educated classes, judging that this means that these people weren't Christian is anachronistic because it's based on later standards. These people regarded themselves as good Christians and by the standards of their time, _were_. It (and associated \"two-tier\" models like Muchembled's) have also been criticized since the start for being overly simplistic and creating a false dichotomy because there was in fact significant interplay between the 'low' and 'high' religious traditions. E.g. the medieval canonization of saints was often little more than an official sanction of a popular veneration that'd started spontaneously. \n\nAnyway, Denmark was mainly Christian well before Canute IV, in fact most of Scandinavia probably was by that point. Anyway, this is a pretty brief post, but to mention some sources and further reading: \n\nNora Berend (ed), _Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia_, Central Europe and Rus' c. 900–1200, Cambridge University Press, 2007 \n\nAnders Winroth, _The conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, merchants, and missionaries in the remaking of Northern Europe_, Yale University Press, 2014\n\nSten Tesch (ed), _Skiftet - Vikingatida sed och Kristen tro_, Artos & Norma, 2017" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d9ipla/did_old_pagan_gods_appear_in_later_folklore/f1l2dbl/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fb77yi5" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "There's a lot of myths about this and I've [previous debunked](_URL_0_) some of them, for more reading. So, to try to keep this short:\n\n**Invasion of Norway**\n\nSweden most certainly did not aid the _invasion and conquest_ of Norway. Sweden was no more aware of the impending invasion than Norway was, so they couldn't if they wanted to (which they did not). \n\nWhat happened here was that _after_ the invasion and occupation of Norway was completed, the Nazi government demanded that unarmed German troops who needed medical care and others on leave, would be allowed to pass from Norway through Sweden on train to and from Germany. This \"transiting\" was a violation of neutrality; although a smoewhat slight one; the former transiting was explicitly permitted under the Hague Convention, the latter was not. In a few cases, trains with sealed boxcars that the Swedes could reasonably assume had arms did pass through Sweden, and the most flagrant violation was the 'Midsummer crisis' when the Swedish government acquiesced to allow some armed German troops to pass through Sweden from Norway to Finland, for the purpose of defending Finland against the Soviets.\n\nSo Germany made no use of Sweden whatsoever to 'take control' over Norway. It had some use of Sweden in maintaining the occupation. But in the greater scheme of things it's not so clear how great the impact really was. It's not likely it would've strained Germany so much to ferry the troops over to occupied Denmark instead. The main issue was likely the safety of their troops; such ferries being potential targets for allied air raids. \n\nThe main reason the transiting is well known is not because of its great significance to the war effort, but because it was intensely unpopular in Sweden at the time as it was a violation of neutrality that helped a country most Swedes hated in an occupation they hated. It remains a well-known fact if not one of the most well known facts in Sweden, together with the Swedish iron trade with Germany. Probably _too_ well known (as historians have pointed out), the public perception of Swedes is that Sweden helped Germany much more than they actually did. \n\nYour post here certainly raises the bar to new heights of absurdity. though.\n\n**Trade**\n\nGermany had been Sweden's largest trading partner since well before a unified Germany even existed. International law does not ban neutral parties from trading with belligerents though, and when the war broke out, Sweden made a War Trade Agreement with Germany and the Allies in December 1939 that set quotas for trade with Germany in strategic goods such as iron ore and ball-bearings, which were set _below pre-war levels_. Trade in other commodities did go up; Sweden had no choice in that; the Gulf of Finland was mined (and Sweden was hostile to the Soviets anyway after the outbreak of the Winter war) and so was Skagerrak. Germany only allowed a few ships to pass each month, and those were allocated for the most desperately needed goods. Sweden did try to secretly aid the allies here by charging the British less for Swedish ball-bearings (on which they were critically dependent for aircraft engines) than the Germans. Which is actually a violation of neutrality. Ball bearing exports to Germany ceased completely in 1944, and generally exports to Germany were ramped down as the war progressed and Sweden's negotiating position improved. \n\nThe Swedish economy did **not** benefit from the war. It's not just false but completely absurd to even believe the GDP would increase by 20% in a time when the country was suffering severe shortages of all import goods but particularly fossil fuels, on which it was dependent for heating, steel production and vehicles. A significant portion of vehicles had to be converted to run on wood gas. Rationing was in effect for sugar, coffee, salt, meat, and other consumer goods. Sweden had received thousands of refugees from neighboring countries; such as the 70,000 'war children' from Finland, which demanded resources. Sweden's conscript-based armed forces were at full mobilization; over a million men out of a 6-million population were drafted into service. Resources were poured into arms production. \n\nI don't see how it is reasonable to believe that Sweden's GDP grew by a whopping 20% in that time period. It most certainly did not; Sweden's economy suffered from the war. In year 2000 SEK values, the GDP per capita was 56.6k SEK in 1939, _dropped_ over 10% to 50.0k by 1941, and recovered to 53.8k by 1945. ([numbers from _URL_1_](http://www._URL_1_/htmldatatest2/index.html)) \n\n > they(Sweden)committed the great crime of appeasement ?\n\nDid Sweden commit a 'great crime'? You're taking the two most well known actions of Sweden during the war - transiting and the iron ore trade - and trying to reduce the entirety of what happened to that. Which is to ignore entirely the actions the Swedish government took _against_ the Germans, who they in fact were against. Those are not as well known because unlike the transiting, they were _not_ known at the time. They were highly secret for fear of provoking a German invasion. Sweden's most egregious violation of neutrality was in fact in Norway's favor; starting in 1943, the government secretly trained over 15,000 Norwegians as 'police' to form an army unit of the exile government, which later participated in the liberation of Finnmark Fylke. This was so secret, even the Swedish military leadership wasn't briefed on it until 1944. It is a more severe violation of neutrality than the transiting of unarmed German troops, and a voluntary one at that and not one that Sweden was coerced into.\n\nLikewise, while the Swedish public were well aware of the German troops moving to and from Norway on trains, they were wholly unaware that the Swedish government had allowed the OSS and Norwegian government-in-exile to transit thousands of Norwegian resistance fighters who'd fled to Sweden over to Britain. And more generally the government was aware of the Norwegian Resistance was active on Swedish territory. It wasn't known until decades later that the Swedes broke the German codes during the war and shared some of that information with the Allies. And there are many other things. \n\nBut basically you're taking a point of Swedish wartime self-criticism here and casting it as the defining event of Swedish-Norwegian post-war relations, and it certainly was not. Casting it as Sweden enriching itself at Norway's expense by helping the Nazis is a _huge_ distortion of history." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/buqf3b/did_sweden_facilitatehelp_the_germans_in_the/epgw0u5/", "historia.se", "http://www.historia.se/htmldatatest2/index.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ck8x6t2", "ck8zmaa" ], "score": [ 6, 3 ], "text": [ "As /u/Superplaner pointed out, the lack of many notable clashes in the short span where Ironclad Battleships were the Queen of the Seas makes judging their effectiveness a little hard to manage. One of the few we have is the Battle of Hampton Roads, and all the evidence points to the Union Fleet's Dahlgren guns being especially ineffective for the purpose of armor penetration, while other guns available at the time might very well have torn the CSS Virginia to pieces.\n\nI got into a friendly debate on just this matter only last week in another thread, and while I don't think we reached a truly satisfactory conclusion to it, [the chain may at least highlight some of the issues](_URL_0_). \n\nAs you can see, it was mainly centered around the states of the Royal Navy and American Navy in the mid to late 1860s, so is not terribly applicable for later developments seen in the 1880s and 1890s, when breech-loaders in turrets became the norm. One of the most notable incidents we have of wood v. iron is the Battle of Hampton Roads, and all the evidence points to the Union Fleet's Dahlgren guns being especially ineffective for the purpose of armor penetration, while other guns available at the time might very well have torn the CSS Virginia to pieces. As I quoted in the linked thread, this section from a British publication in 1869 entitled \"Our Iron-clad Ships\" has this to say on the merits of American guns vis-a-vis British:\n\n > The Americans, as is well known, have followed a different system in the development of their naval guns, preferring to have a heavy projectile of large size with a comparatively low velocity, instead of an elongated projectile of less weight moving at a high velocity. The American system has been well termed the 'racking' or \"battering\" system, in opposition to our own method, which is known as the \"punching\" system. In carrying out their plan, the Americans have adopted guns of 9, 11, 13, 15, and even 20-inch calibre, and guns of 25-inch calibre and upwards are said to be contemplated. These large guns are almost without exception of cast iron, and nearly all are smooth-bores throwing cast-iron spherical shot. [...] Great differences of opinion prevail with respect to the comparative merits of our own and American guns. [...] Captain Noble shows that the American 15-inch gun, charged with 50 lbs. of our powder, and throwing a spherical steel shot weighing 484 lbs., would fail to penetrate the Lord Warden's side at any range' while our 9-inch 12-ton gun, with a 43-lb. charge, would send its 250-lb. shot through her at a range of 1000 yards. He also states that the 15-inch gun would not penetrate the 'Warrior' beyond a distance of 500 yards, while our 7-inch 6-ton guns (weighing about one-third as much as the 15-inch gun) would do the same with a charge of 22 lbs. of powder and a 115-lb. shot ; and the 12-ton gun would penetrate up to 2000 yards. It must be remembered that, instead of the steel shot hero supposed to be used with the 15-inch gun, cast-iron shot are really employed by the Americans; and this tends to increased superiority in our guns as respects penetrating power. There can be little or no doubt that the American guns have greater battering power; the real question at issue is, as before stated, the relative merits of penetration, and racking or battering.", "For the American Civil War part.\n\nI think the battle at Hampton Roads made it clear that wooden ships would not stand an Ironclad. Keep always in mind the different scenarios, it is very difficult to generalize because what happened in the American Civil War would not necessary apply to the scenarios that British and French would encounter, for instance intensive river warfare in the American Civil War as opposed to open seas operations for British and French; still clear that wood could not stand iron.\n\nThe debate provided by Georgy_K_Zhukov is in fact quite interesting an often forgotten. I will add few things on top of him however. At Hampton Roads the CSS Virginia had installed both smooth bore and rifled artillery while the USS Monitor used just 2 smooth bore cannons in its single revolving turret. Accounts says that the USS Monitor salvos would many times bounce off Virginia plated hull although it managed to inflict other damage. However we know that USS Monitor gunners loaded the guns with a powder charge almost half the power of the recommended one in fear of explosions, noise and recoil in such a confined space (and the turret so new technology too still to be proved). Later tests seem to have shown that have the gunners used the right load of powder the solid shot would have pierced the Virginia protection given the close range at which the engagement took place, at that range the Dahlgren pieces must have delivered a very powerful punch.\n\nIn the last part of the war a naval engagement at the English Channel off the French coast brought together the USS Kearsarge (with both smooth bores and rifled cannons) and the CSS Alabama. Although not an ironclad the USS vessel had an armor clad in its midsections, all experts seem to agree that this provided a decisive advantage over the CSS vessel ending in its destruction.\n\nSources.\n\n- Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack by James Nelson\n\n- Blue & Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War by Brian M Thomsen and Brian Thomsen\n\n- _URL_0_\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ebm7b/was_the_union_navy_stronger_than_the_royal_navy/cjy13uq" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cherbourg_(1864)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cm3rg19", "cm3rurb" ], "score": [ 4, 9 ], "text": [ "Why were the comments deleted? ", "So, apparently the people who answered you removed all their comments. So I'll try and give you some basic guidelines, but this is pretty far from my expertise:\n\n1) First of all, the level of technology did and still does vary drastically across the world.\n\nAn important thing to realise is that technology is not just knowledge, it's also the infrastructure to use that knowledge. People like the steppe nomads wouldn't have much advanced technology, because the climate they lived in and the way of life that climate required did not support the development of the complex chains of trade and industry necessary to create more advanced technology. Not because they'd be too dumb or culturally backward to learn it if necessary. *(EDIT: or maybe it's more complicated than that, see /u/siqr below)*\n\nAlso, while I'll leave the why to actual experts, size matters. Eurasia+North Africa was one continuously connected cultural sphere, and because of its size it was generally technologically ahead of the unconnected Americas.\n\n2) Second, technology is not one behemoth. Different people could excel in different things. When it came to shipbuilding I believe the Europeans were ahead of the rest of the world from around the 16th century. But part of this was simply that only the Europeans were interested in building large complex ocean-going vessels. For example the Japanese build a Western-style ship under Jesuit guidance, and [sailed to Mexico in 1614](_URL_0_). But never had any interest in trading with and exploring the world like the Europeans did.\n\n3) This also moves to the heart of your question. In general, this question is difficult to answer because for a long time what was one of the centres of technology in the Eurasian sphere, East-Asia, was simply not interested in developing the same technologies Europe did. If you're talking general scientific knowledge, then assuming there weren't any highly developed scientific communities I'm not aware of, Europe began pulling ahead from the start of the Renaissance, and you could probably jot down 1600 as a year when Europe's scientific knowledge is the best. The reason I'm picking it is because around then we have the invention of the microscope and telescope, which are the easiest examples I could think of where Western inventions are reaching new horizons in human knowledge.\n\n4) But if you want a clear and simple answer regarding European military superiority: The moment when Europe gained a truly vast and insurmountable lead over the rest of the world is the Industrial Revolution. It is no coincidence that the [Opium Wars](_URL_1_), the first time China was humiliated by a Western power, happened in 1839. Before the industrial revolution, even though the Europeans were ahead in certain respects, they were not so far ahead that China could not kick them out of their own country if they pleased.\n\nAfterwards, European powers could do essentially what they want, as it was virtually impossible for an unindustrialised nation to withstand an industrialised one." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_Bautista_(ship\\)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d54sqrk", "d56abvn" ], "score": [ 17, 6 ], "text": [ "Medieval Europe is a vast area and time. People you could meet in England in the 1100s would be different than France in the 1250s, and Italy in the 1300s. Can you narrow it down a bit?", "In European medieval cities (with the exception of a few German and Italian ones) it was illegal to be armed unless you were either just entering the city, leaving it, or if you were a city official or a knight. And when I say knight I mean an actual knight, someone who has been knighted, not just any old guy in armour on a horse that we tend to all call knights today. So if you were visiting a city and staying in an inn it was often the responsibility of the inn keeper to look after your weapons for you. Just like today they didn't want it to be a bloodbath in public areas whenever a fight broke out so people were limited to only certain types of daggers for eating and so on. \n\nThis is a record of a law that was passed in 1393 dealing with arms in the city of London. [Calendar of Close Rolls, Richard II: volume 5: 1392-1396](_URL_0_)\n\n > To the mayor and sheriffs of London. Order to cause proclamation to be made, forbidding any man of whatsoever estate or condition to make unlawful assemblies in the city or suburbs of London, to go armed, girt with a sword or arrayed with unwonted harness, carry with him such arms, swords or harness, or do aught whereby the peace may be broken or the statutes concerning the bearing of arms contrary to the peace, or any of the people be disturbed or put in fear, under pain of losing his arms etc. and of imprisonment at the king's will, except lords, great men, knights and esquires of good estate, other men upon entering or leaving the city, and the king's officers and ministers appointed to keep the peace; and order after such proclamation to arrest all whom they shall find acting contrary to the same with the exceptions aforesaid, their followers, the arms, swords etc. found with them, and to keep them in custody in prison until further order, causing their arms etc. to be appraised and answer to be made to the king for them, and certifying in chancery from time to time the names of those arrested and the price and value of their arms etc. and so behaving that henceforward no more mischief be there done by their default; as it has now newly come to the king's ears that there are evildoers and breakers of the peace, some armed, some girt about the midst with swords, and some arrayed as aforesaid, who lurk in divers places within the city and suburbs and run to and fro committing batteries, mayhems, robberies, manslaughters etc., and hindering and disturbing the ministers and officers of the city from the exercise of their offices, in contempt of the king and breach of the peace, to the disturbance and terror of the people and contrary to the said statutes, which the king will not and ought not to endure.\n\nLaws like this were quite often reissued so its clear people breaking these laws was a bit of problem. \n\nIf you're asking about how common swords were then it depends on the time you're looking at. Before the 12th Century swords were more rare among the normal population. But in the 13th Century the blast furnace made making sword blades much easier and they therefore became much more affordable. Swords would also often outlive their owners so as time went on in the medieval era you had an ever growing number of old second hand swords in addition to the new ones being made. So by the 14/15th Century basically anyone who wanted a sword could get one. The price of swords of course would vary greatly. In wills from the time we can see that they valued an old rusty sword at about 2 pence. And to give you an idea of this value an English foot archer fighting in the 100 years war would have earned 3 pence a day. On the other end of the spectrum in about 1412 Henry V had 12 swords made to be diplomatic gifts and each one of these swords was valued at 2,000 pounds and at this time there were 240 pennies to a pound. So that English foot archer would have to work every day for about 438 years to afford that. \n\nAs for bows you would only really see people with them who intended to use them for hunting or practice. Bows are big and cumbersome, they're a pain to just go about your daily business with. And that thing they all do in movies where they sling them across their back isn't really possible since it is extremely uncomfortable and annoying, if you've ever tried it with a bow you'll know this. The reason why swords were so popular as a weapon in daily life was because they were so easy to wear. Their effectiveness as a battlefield weapon wasn't the best and their capabilities are vastly over-exaggerated in movies. But their ability to function as a reliable self defence weapon without being a burden is what sets them apart. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE57662" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d9wpsas" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Not asking you to dox yourself at all, but depending on the county it might be worth contacting the county historical society and/or the local newspaper, to see if they have archives going back to the early era of when the area was settled. If I remember correctly, UNC in Chapel Hill has a newspaper archive, and some of the older newspapers in the state have microfilm going back farther than you would think and from predecessor papers as well. (I worked at the Wilmington *Morning Star/Star-News* for awhile out of college and our archives were back to the 1860s.) If you can get an idea of which family owned the land, you may be able to research tax bills or something similar to see what (and who) they owned. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c90ub9o" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "English is widely spoken throughout the world, but isn't nearly as dominant as you might think. It's second to Mandarin in terms of total speakers, and Spanish (a very global language), Arabic, and Russian aren't very far behind. A solid tip in the economy that lasted a few generations could totally upset our perception that English is the language of business in favor of, say, Mandarin. We have never had a more communicative, networked planet, and no other language has enjoyed this advantage. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "din361y", "dinhv7r" ], "score": [ 61, 26 ], "text": [ "Follow-up question:\nHow did certain cards in various games gather their names, such as the left and right \"bauers\" of Euchre or the \"vixer\" and \"old lady\" of Solo?\n\nIf I understand correctly, the games I gave as example are historically of German origin, which could have a role in the naming of the specific cards. In fact, \"Bauer\" means farmer in German, but how did the cards get these names?", "This might possibly already get answered with the original question, but Id like to put it out there as a follow up just in case:\n\nDepending on how far back this goes, were card games more common among wealthier or poorer class people? Or for everyone like it is now? It seems like Poker (for example) nowadays is portrayed in a \"classier\" way(betting money, got the cigars and scotch going and all that as a cliche), but it being such a simple, inexpensive activity, cards seem like something the more lower class would play to have fun and pass the time. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dgbmfvz" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Well, first I should note that there was quite a bit of variation. Firearms were being traded to the states of West Africa in the early 1600s, but in interior Central Africa they were still fairly rare and recent introductions in the 1830s. By the same token, use of firearms for hunting varied in different societies.\n\nI'll also note that although the question specifically asks about hunting, firearms were also sought for use in warfare, and many African kings/chiefs were quick to appreciate the military applications. Furthermore, the practice of hunting and specialized hunting fraternities have been seen as having application as training for warfare, even before the introduction of firearms.^1\n\n Though many scholars will point out that the firearms that Europeans traded to Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries were either worn out, outmoded, or otherwise of low quality. \n\nIn the Grassfields area along the modern day Cameroon-Nigeria border, flintlock muskets known as Dane guns were traded from the port at Calabar, and were used in warfare and ceremonial functions into the 20th century. Quoting Jan-Pierre Warnier-^2\n\n > According to many informants, guns were seldom used in hunting. Instead, traps nets and spears were used. They only exception may have been that of the leopard- the noblest and most valued game. Many oral accounts report leopard-hunting with guns. However, the actual tactics used in such hunts is not clear. It might be the leopard, once sighted, was lured into attacking a group of gunmen. But even this way of hunting would have been highly dangerous because of the risk of misfiring, though the discharge of an 11 or 12 gauge smoothbore at close range must have been quite effective at stopping a leopard in full _URL_0_ may be that hunters were willing to run high risks to win the rewards associated with the killing of a leopard. Often, it was the gift of a wife by the chief- an invaluable reward in a society where titled men monopolized the women and forced many junior men to remain bachelors for life.\nIn Central and Eastern Africa (DRC, Tanzania, Zambia), the introduction of firearms was intimately tied to trade in Slaves and trade in Ivory.\n\nThough on the other hand, Warnier also mentions that percussion guns began to be introduced to the region between WWI and WWII, and that flintlock owners had local blacksmiths turn their guns into percussion guns, making them much more reliable and better hunting weapons.\n\nAmong societies in Central Africa like the Luba or the Lozi, access to firearms was a symbol of elite status. Guns were procured by long-distance trade, either from Angola through Ovimbundu traders, or from the Swahili coast through Swahili or Nyamwezi trade caravans. The early-mid 19th century saw an expansion of trading networks from the coast deep to the interior of the continent. As I noted above, in 1830 firearms would have been a recent introduction among the Lozi or the Lunda, and there were initially few, and a chief's prestige would be reflected in the number of firearms or even cannons they could display.\n\nAt the same time, firearms were deeply connected to the trades in ivory and the trade in slaves. In this era, Nyamwezi and Swahili trader-adventurers like Mirambo, Msiri and Tippu Tip were establishing what I would call \"warlord states\" in eastern and southern DRC and in central Tanzania, relying on musket armed followers to enforce their usurpation, but also to collect ivory for trade to the coast, or else enforce tribute from local hunters.\n\nThis intrusion of Big Men in mid-nineteenth century Central Africa also had profound effects on societies outside of these warlord states. To quote David Gordon-^3\n\n > Ivory became the symbol of the new ruling class, the most prestigious and valued trading item. Warlord chiefs demanded all or a significant portion of ivory from the hunt or employed their own hunters to procure tusks. Indeed, the definition of chieftancy revolved around the ability to impos claims for tribute in ivory....\n\n > Guns were used to procure both slaves and ivory. But it was especially with the ascendance of the ivory trade that guns became a necessary factor of production. Guns were increasingly used to hunt elephants. The hunting of elephants had previously been undertaken by brave men organized in guilds with specialized techniques that included trapping, poisons, and specially manufactured spears. But this changed in the second half of the century. Renowned Chikunda and Bisa elephant hunters gained access to or began to manufacture primitive guns and abandoned their old hunting techniques. they had little choice if they were to compete with the gun-wielding followers of coastal caravans. When, for example, Tippu Tip's followers encountered herds of elephants, they could slaughter 'countless numbers' of elephants.\n\n > But the use of guns to kill elephants was only one aspect of the connection between guns and ivory. The export of ivory became linked to a violent regional trade in slaves. Although exhausted and famished slaves were not effective porters for ivory, the slave and ivory trades developed together as predominantly male ivory hunters desired slaves, often women, as worker and as concubines. The Lunda-Chokwe in the west of the region, for example, purchased female slaves from the Ovimbundu caravans that reached the interior and previously supplied slaves for the Atlantic trade. In exchange they sold ivory destined for the international markets. Farther north, the Kuba ppurchased slaves for ivory. Chikunda hunters in the east also purchased slave women to expand their lineages.\n\nAs guns flowed into the region, the earliest European explorers often remarked about how guns quickly depleted the local game population. For instance, Emil Holub visited the Lozi in 1875 and witnessed a royal hunt where he says perhaps 10,000 shots were fired. By 1886, the next Lozi king Lubosi Lewanika forbade the use of guns during the annual royal hunt.^4\n\nSimilarly, while living among the Kololo 1853, David Livingstone wrote in his private diary that their recent adoption of firearms to hunt elephants would mean \"very soon, none will appear in this part of the country. They retire before the gun sooner tan any other animal\". ^5 His prediction was borne out, since the ivory trade in that region of Malawi was exhausted soon after.\n\nIncidentally, with greater European presence in the colonial era, some hunting safari expeditions were seized upon by missionaries as opportunities for evangelization. These hunting expeditions could take a crude form of humanitarian relief, as food providing expeditions in time of local famine. In such circumstances, missionaries could present a successful hunt as a homily on God's gracious provision of food in time of need.\n\nIn other circumstances, missionaries armed with the latest firearms could be called upon to use them for the protection of their mission station or local communities against man-killing predators.^6\n\nIn Southern Africa, Griqua and Khoikhoi groups introduced firearms to the highveld in the 1820s and 1830s. Many Tswana and other Ngoni chiefs were quick to appreciate the military application of firearms, reasoning that through the getting of firearms, they would become militarily superior to their neighbors and equal to Griqua and whites. The Tswana were also quick to appreciate the effectiveness of firearms for hunting, which made up an essential part of Tswana food strategy until the 20th century. \n\nAs in Central Africa, the ivory trade was deeply tied to the trade in firearms. But, in the specific context of Southern Africa, firearms could come from British or Boer traders. By the 1870s, firearms had so proliferated among the Xhosa, the Sotho and the Tswana that Cape Colony officers fighting in the Ninth Cape-Xhosa war (1877-79) and the Sotho Gun War (1880-81) would complain that their foes had superior rifles than their own troops. Additionally, the Gun War was fought over Cape Colony efforts to disarm the Sotho, ending in a de-facto Sotho victory. \n\nSimilar settler unease would lead Cape Colony officials to demand Tswana disarmament in 1895. However, Tswana chiefs supported by London Missionary Society missionaries resisted these demands, arguing that firearms had become 'vital to their customary economic activity of hunting'.^7\n\nAll of that was a long-walk to say that firearms became a vital part of Tswana hunting strategy and led to a loss of traditional hunting techniques within 60 years of their introduction in Southern Africa.\n\n---\nSources!\n\n1) \"The Shirts that Mande Hunters Wore\" by Patrick Mcnaughton in *African Arts* Vol 15, no 3 (May 1982) pp54-91\n\n2) *The Cameroon Grassfields Civilization* by Jean-Paul Warnier. pp 65\n\n3) \"Wearing Cloth, Wielding Guns: Consumption, Trade and Politics in the South Central African Interior during the Ninteenth Century\" by David M Gordon in *the Objects of Life in Central Africa* pp 30\n\n4) *The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics* by Giacomo Macola pp53-72\n\n5)\"Reassessing the Significance of Firearms in Central Africa: the case of North-Western Zambia to the 1920s\" by Giacomo Macola in *Journal of African History* vol 51 no 3 pp 311\n\n6) \"Fishers of Men and Hunters of Lion:British Big Game Hunting in Colonial Africa\" by Jason Bruner in *A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire* pp 60 \n\n7) \"Firearms in South Central Africa\" by Anthony Atmore, J. M. Chirenje and S.I. Mudenge in *Journal of African History* Vol 12 no 4 pp 550" ] }

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[ [ "charge.It" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dwkxpru" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "You may find this thread useful, particularly the response from /u/agentdcf:\n\n_URL_0_ " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cbwho/if_the_dutch_discovered_australia_why_did_they/cje1bh7/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca8n5by" ], "score": [ 26 ], "text": [ "Let me clarify a few terms: (1) by \"Torah\" I am going to assume you mean the entire Hebrew Bible/Old Testament rather than only the Pentateuch, (2) by \"versions\" I'm assuming you either mean \"manuscripts\" or a more esoteric scholarly concept of \"the earliest attainable text\" - I'll address both, and (3) I don't know which \"modern day version of the Torah\" you're referring to so I'm going to choose for you - the current NRSV translation of the Bible. \n\nThe question you have asked is, of course, subjective. It is hard to quantify degrees of similarity, and what would be \"very similar\" by one person's standard would be \"very different\" to others. I'll just lay out a bunch of data and let you decide. \n\nWhat we have in terms of old manuscripts can be broken down into a variety of ways but I'll keep things simple. The current NRSV translation (and most others) of the Old Testament are based on the *Biblia Hebraica Stuttgardtensia,* (BHS for short) a scholarly reconstruction of the \"earliest attainable text.\" The BHS uses as its base the Leningrad Codex from 1008 CE. The Leningrad Codex is the earliest complete Masoretic Text manuscript of the Old Testament. The Masoretic Text refers to a group of manuscripts produced by a group of Jews called the Masoretes. The masoretic tradition is important for its addition of vowel points to the otherwise only consonantal (abjad) Hebrew script, which provides clarity for numerous otherwise ambiguous readings, and for the reputation of the Masoretes for carefully preserving their text probably beginning in the 600s CE or so. As I mentioned, the Leningrad Codex serves as the base text to which various manuscripts, ancient translations, and textual reconstructions are compared in order to correct the Leningrad Codex to the “earliest attainable text.” Here is [the beginning of Genesis](_URL_0_) in the BHS. The main body text is an exact reproduction of what is in the Leningrad Codex while the bottom of the page contains the various different readings from ancient sources when they are different, among other things.\n\nThat brings us to ancient sources. You might be thinking to yourself, \"wow, 1008 CE is really late for our earliest manuscripts.\" This is why the Dead Sea Scrolls were such a big deal! Dating from ca. 200 BCE - 70 CE, they effectively knocked back our earliest Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible by 1,000 years when they were discovered in the 1940s. The Dead Sea Scrolls are 8-900 texts, many of which are books now in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and are the earliest manuscripts we have of them in Hebrew.\n\nI should also mention a couple other relevant means to get at readings more ancient than the Masoretic Text. (1) The Samaritan Pentateuch, preserved by the eponymous Samaritans in Israel, also represents an ancient independent text which scholars compare to the Masoretic Text. (2) Scholars also use ancient versions (that is, translations) of the Old Testament such as the various Greek translations often conflated as “The Septuagint,” ancient Syriac translations, and occasionally translations from Latin or texts quoted from early Church fathers, all of which can be compared to the Hebrew by back-translating or making speculations about the Hebrew text behind their translation.\n\nSo how close are the Dead Sea Scrolls and the other ancient translations and versions to the Masoretic Text? Well, it’s really a mixed bag. Two of the Dead Sea Scrolls which contain Isaiah will serve as a good comparison, 1QIsa^a and 1QIsa^b , the latter being the famous Isaiah Scroll; both found at the same site. The former matches the Masoretic Text practically word for word; the latter, however, contains about 1,000 textual variants from the Masoretic Text version, including entire verses missing or added at several points. Another interesting example is the book of Jeremiah. The Septuagint version, which scholars had long before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was significantly shorter than the Masoretic Text, some 15%. It was presumed that the Hebrew was superior to the Greek in preserving a more original form, but when we found a manuscript of Jeremiah among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QJer^b ), it matched the Septuagint version instead of the Masoretic Text version! This demonstrated that, in fact, the Greek version preserved by the Septuagint was more ancient than the one preserved in the Masoretic Text. There are numerous examples of such differences, and I would highly recommend Eugene Ulrich, “Our Sharper Focus on the Bible and Theology Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls” *Catholic Biblical Quarterly* Jan 2004, Vol. 66 Issue 1 for a superb summary of this and its implications for layfolk.\n\nA question you didn’t ask but which I should propose anyway is, given the differences we can observe in the texts, can we reconstruct anything close to the original, or undo the changes later scribes made to the text? For the New Testament this is a much easier enterprise, but even with the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible the field of textual criticism has accomplished some amazing feats in reaching earlier forms of the text. The original versions are lost forever, there is little doubt about that, but I am continually impressed by the prodigious work in the field of textual criticism to dig further and further back. \n\nEdit: clarification of some jargon." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.uni-due.de/~gev020/images/Gen%2001pic.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cx26o9m", "cx2bch5" ], "score": [ 27, 5 ], "text": [ "The answer is that they didn't convert all that quickly at all. Those areas that did convert to Islam did so quite gradually. Much of Northern Africa, as former Roman provinces, were Christian during the Arab conquests, but gradually became more Muslim over time, often thanks in part to economic pressures. Similarly, non-Roman city states in East Africa with deep connections to Muslim areas through trade over the Indian Ocean gradually converted to Islam over centuries. It's no mere accident of history that Islam's spread mirrors trade routes: it was easier to find trust and economic security between trading partners when they shared a religion.\n\nHowever, you are mistaken in saying that Christianity has been slow to spread in Africa. There are hundreds of millions of African Christians thanks to heavy-handed and concerted evangelism efforts. Native religions are much less common. Of course, as with Europe, native beliefs are often incorporated into the way they practice Christianity. Typically, Christianity is more prevalent in areas that never developed strong Muslim communities and received heavy evangelism efforts, while Islam is found spread out along ancient trade routes. This isn't to discount communities like the Christians in Egypt, who have been there since Roman times.", "In Islam someone simply had to *submit* and they were in. Islam means submission in Arabic and a Muslim is simply a believer. If a person in a newly conquered part of 7th century north Africa thew down their idol and approached the warriors saying \"I am a believer.\" They would have to accept that person into the *community of believers*. \n\nThis is polar opposite to many many religions. The barrier to entry in Islam was so low anybody could get in. Unlike other faiths it was not restricted to one ethnicity or language group. Because all of Islam had to study it in Arabic it forced a kind of integration into greater Arab culture. But because Islam had to gain converts form so many diverse peoples it developed different flavors,if you will, as it spread.\n\nSo in Islam we have a eastern expansion to all the way to Indonesia. And a western expansion all the way to Spain. Then later beginning in the 14th C. the Turkic expansion into the Balkans which follows a similar pattern to the early movement into Christian Egypt. \n\nIn Persia in the 6th century Zoroastrianism was the predominant faith. Zoroastrianism is a religion which warships the supreme god Aurora Mazda, and has very clear good and evil motifs. They took right to Islam and the Ideas proposed in the Abrahamic ideals. The tenements of Zoroastrianism had striking parallels to early Jewish interpretations of the Torah. As an aside, some like Dr. Patricia Crone have theorized a common ancient Sumerian origin for both faiths, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. With the language being similar to Arabic and the cultures similar the transition was very easy.\n\nIn north Africa there were mainly Christian kingdoms in Egypt to Morocco. So in this area we did not see the same level of mass conversion as we did in the east. Here Islam was more reserved for the elite military class. This was due to the non pagan nature of the population. The concept of Dhimmi, or people of the book, led to a surprising level of tolerance in the dar al Islam. The people of the book meaning Jews and Christians were not to be hindered directly simply taxed to practice their faith, way better than dying IMO. The Coptic Christian and ancient Jewish population of Medina and Jerusalem were never forcefully converted due to their almost sacred authority over the Bible. Mohammad actually learned everything he knew about God when he went to Medina and engaged in six years debate with the local rabbi's. Mohammad's life is commonly divided into the pre Medina years when he was living in Mecca, which are markedly more pagan, and after in Medina. \n\nThis practice and treatment of conquered peoples facilitated trade and culture between the tree faiths in a surprising degree. Warriors picked up cultures and the cultures and flavors of those cultures in their form of Islam as it spread east and west. This is drastically different than Christendom which had the inquisition tantamount to a cultural genocide. Not to mention all of North and South America decimated in the name of god, gold, and glory, Deus Aurum Gloria . That is tree continents cultures homogenized by Christ. Shit forgot Australia, thats a fourth. Islam needs to catch up.... The forceful conversion in Christendom arguably caused a historical nightmare that destroyed Shamanic, Druid and pagan cultures around the world forever. (Thank Valhalla for the Icelandic Sagas saving my Norse heritage! Not all are are so lucky.) Christendom is unsurprisingly the least tolerant of the Abrahamic faiths having more people die in the name of Jesus than any other religion. Sadly as we constantly see in history religions of peace perverted to justify war and conquest. \n\nTLDR: But, it really goes down to early Islam being made up of a professional army of very efficient warriors. Horse archers where the Abrams tank of their day. This allowed for the vast expansion early on. As they expanded we see different levels of conversions. Today we have Bulgaria which had Islamic control for 700 years and is now mostly Christian. At the same time we have Indonesian which is the largest Islamic nation on the planet. With approximately the same amount of time under Islam. It comes down to the initial faith of the conquered peoples. Pagans were more readily converted. Where as Christians and Jews were just taxed as people of the book. I would love some feedback. \n\nI thank the beautiful book Osmon's Dream, /r/C_S_T, Dr. Nicoli Antov, and Dr. Patricia Crone for my inspiration." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e5e5flu" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Hi, not discouraging others from answering here, but you may be interested in a few earlier posts\n\n* /u/400-Rabbits in [Did Vikings ever make contact with North America before Christopher Columbus?](_URL_2_)\n\n* /u/textandtrowel in [What do we know about Vinland?](_URL_3_)\n\n* /u/A_Crazy_Canadian in [What information about Leif Ericsson can be verified as historically accurate?](_URL_4_)\n\nFor reference, L'Anse aux Meadows is a [Canadian National Historic Site](_URL_0_) and [Unesco World Heritage Site](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows", "http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/4", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/82685w/did_vikings_ever_make_contact_with_north_america/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3julq1/what_do_we_know_about_vinland/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1z6v5q/what_information_about_leif_ericsson_can_be/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwt15hr" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The history of lethal injection is an interesting and *horrible* one. Lethal injection was first suggested as a procedure in 1888, by an American doctor, incidentally a year after the abolition of capital punishment in Maine. In some ways, lethal injection has always been a very American thing. At the time, victims were executed through hanging- and hanging is not nice. Whether it involves horrible damage to the neck and asphyxiation, whether it's public or private, hanging is frankly gruesome as hell. And although some society didn't mind- or even supported- that aspect of it, a subset certainly did, and tried to find less gruesome, more 'humane' methods, or at least more humane in their eyes, such as electrocution or, indeed, lethal injection.\n\nHowever, for a variety of reasons, this never went far. Lethal injection is and was expensive- especially compared to hanging. It was not necessarily less gruesome. It leant a more medical air to execution than some people would have liked. It was more personal, as someone would have been actively injecting the victim, which didn't allow the distance and removal from the death that hanging did, even for the hangman. It was an unattractive option for accountants and executioners alike.\n\nBut the medical air of lethal injection certainly appealed to some people. Nazi Germany dabbled with lethal injection as well. It was used in the murder of the severely disabled, including young children and babies, where the victims would be injected with a number of toxic substances, such as phenol. Originally this eugenics program killed infants, before expanding to include older children, teenagers and eventually adults. Parents at first did not understand what was going on- sending severely disabled children to institutions and asylums was the norm for Germany at the time, as parents often didn't have the ability or facilities to safely care for their children, and some also sent their children to asylums out of shame or embarrassment. They were told their children had died of natural diseases- influenza, pneumonia, heart conditions- and that was that. Eventually, some parents and communities realised what was happening, so many children dying, and began to refuse to send their children to institutions. But there was enormous pressure to do so, put on by the Nazi government, with parents threatened with their children being removed from their care, or the father being sent to the Eastern front, which was almost a death sentence at some points in the war. \n\nFrom 1939, Aktion T4, which was the planned, systematic murder of the mentally, intellectually and developmentally disabled, was expanded to adults, first those found in the Polish institutions being overrun by the SS, and then across Germany. The majority were shot or gassed, not killed through lethal injection as the children were.\n\nWhy was lethal injection the chosen method of murder, for children in particular? Lethal injection carried a reputation of being painless (it wasn't) and it made the procedure medical. A doctor, a paediatrician, who had spent his life working with and saving children, might have found it difficult to allow a child to be shot in the head. But it might have rested easier on their consciences if a child died from a Luminol overdose. It would have seemed less like killing, more like euthanasia, being medicalised, sanitary and 'civilised'. Indeed, for these reasons, lethal injection appealed to a number of people, not just in Germany or America, but also in the UK.\n\nIn the late 1940s, the British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment was considering the use of the lethal injection- it not having yet been used. The British Medical Association rejected the suggestion, on the grounds that it was cruel and certainly painful, but also because associating anything medical with death was going to be a big PR mistake. The BME did not want that medical air to be added to capital punishment, and the doctors who would administer the dosage would not have been keen- actively ending lives goes against most people's morals, and even if they support capital punishment, lethal injection confronts the executioner with the reality of the act in a way that hanging, gassing or firing squad doesn't allow, although more modern methods, through lethal injection machines, have removed this problem.\n\nLethal injection was only actually used in a democratic country, openly and legally (eg not Nazi Germany) in 1982, but was first suggested in 1977, a year after capital punishment was once more resumed in the US, and the same year an execution was actually carried out for the first time since the resumption, that of Gary Gilmore, executed by firing squad, in Utah, and ten years after the previous execution in America, in 1967, that of Luis Monge by gassing. In 1972, the use of capital punishment was ruled to be unconstitutional, due to it being considered a cruel and unusual punishment, and although it was reinstated in 1976, there was certainly a need for a method of execution which would *not* be seen as cruel or unusual, and lethal injection- passing away peacefully and painlessly whilst unconscious- was ideal. \n\nThe state medical examiner of Oklahoma, one Jay Chapman, who was also a doctor, suggested lethal injection as a form of execution, believing it would be less painful. His plans were approved by a leading anaesthesiologist, also of Oklahoma, named Stanley Deutsch, and the form of lethal injection was to involve a fast acting barbiturate and induced chemical paralysis. It was soon adopted into the Oklahoma state criminal system, and the supposed relative painlessness and the medicalised, scientific form of execution apparently appealed both to the general public- who could see themselves as supporting a clean, humane procedure, compared to a brutal, violent one such as hanging, electrocution or the gas chamber, which was used in American history, which could be associated with the Holocaust as well as having a reputation for causing suffering- as well as other state governments, being quickly adopted across the US." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cabwga6", "cabx1xc", "caby61m", "cabye7s" ], "score": [ 7, 7, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "On your tangent: \"state\" is just a generic (and somewhat ill-defined) word for a sovereign political entity, it doesn't imply anything about the form of government. Kingdoms are states.", "[Diarchy](_URL_1_), the rule of a single kingdom by 2 kings (or king equivalents) happens a number of times. \n\nAs you mentioned Sparta, which claims its kings were descended from two twins Eurysthenes and Procles descendants of Hercules. They could veto the others actions. \n\nSweden had a dual monarchy several times, the most recent being Phillip and Inge II around 1110. They were brothers one older and one younger who inherited the throne from their uncle. Inge II outlived his brother and it returned to a single monarchy. \n\nHaving brothers rule, or a father and son rule is not uncommon. The father/son model in particular is used to ensure succession. By promoting the son to king (or emperor) before the father dies it ensure that the transition goes smoothly. Rome did this with the Emperors quite often promoting sons or successors to Caesar (junior emperor) and even Augustus (full emperor) well before the elder ruler died.\n\nThe model of two rulers is also seen in situations where the ruler is not not quite a king. When the Romans expelled the kings they established the office of consul (some time later) to be the temporal power for the state. Fearing one man would be to powerful they elected two men with the power to veto each others actions. \n\nAnother interesting place that's not quite king is the rulers of Andorra. Currently it is jointly ruled by President of France and the Bishop of Urgell. The President inherits his power from the previous Kings of France, who came from the Kings of Navarre, who were the Counts of Foix. Back in 1278 the Counts of Foix and the Bishops of Urgell [agreed](_URL_0_) to jointly rule Andorra.\n\n", "William and Mary were crowned as coregents of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1689. Mary had the stronger claim to the crown, being a daughter of James II, but did not wish for her husband (and cousin) William to rank lower than her. \n\n\n\n", "Peter the Great and Ivan V were co-tsars of Russia from 1682-1696. Ivan had the better claim, but had some severe disabilities." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Par%C3%A9age_of_Andorra_1278", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarchy" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckd8mf8", "ckdgliq" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "This forum has a resident castrati expert, hopefully he sees it and answers the question. They are a fascinating subject. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is your man with the answers.", "Oooh one in my subject area!! Best mark this in my diary, this only happens twice a year or so. :) Can I ask what made you think of the castrati? \n\nIt’s a little hard to say what “people” thought of them, because the castrati kinda got around! Castrati went to work in England, France, Spain, most German courts, and even Russia! So in many places where they travelled they were not just castrati, but also representatives of Italy, Catholics, and the entire noble beast that is Italian music. So sometimes attitudes about the castrati overlapped pretty heavily with attitudes about these other things. I’ll talk about their home country Italy, although I can answer for the other European cultures if you’re curious. \n\nFor the basic concept of what gender they were, most of Europe was still on a humoral (the four humors, think of medical bleeding!) understanding of medicine, and part of that was the one-sex model, which had men and women on sort of a sliding scale between masculine and feminine. Children were one sort of blank gender, and during puberty a boy got a burst of “vital heat” that made him into a man, women did not. On this model castrati are best understood as sort of permanent boys. They wouldn’t have been thought of in any way close to our various understandings of trans* people, intersex people, etc. today. This permanent boyishness also made them something like an idealized sexual object, both for men and women. You can see this echoed in opera to some extent - castrati always played the lovers, until the takeover of the tenor. \n\nThey were a socially marginalized people, because they were denied the basic human right of marriage. However, inside of Italy there was a fair amount of celibate (meaning unmarried, not necessarily sexually inactive) people in society, such as nuns, monks, priests, etc, so while they were denied marriage by the Catholic church, they weren’t too unusual there, lots of people in society had roles that denied marriage. Outside of Italy, especially in places where there wasn’t as much social celibacy, you’ll sometimes see castrati who got married, usually in Germany, as the Lutherans didn’t have any big problem with them getting married. There was a guy named Filippo Finazzi who pretty much “went native” in Germany, converted to Lutheranism, and married the widow of a blacksmith in 1765. \n\nIn general terms though, the castrati were generally considered a normal subset of professional musician and accepted as such, but also they were objects of pity or scorn, often they were subjected to rather crude “farmyard” jokes (ask me how I know all the words for castrated animals! capon, barrow, ox, etc.), sometimes treated as a threat to the masculinity of those around them, sometimes considered as a threat to the virtue of women as they were offering risk-free sex, often they were considered overpaid whiny children, and sometimes they were well-respected wealthy professionals. Some castrati were nice, some were douchy, and most just wanted to make a living. \n\nLife after their singing age was actually pretty good for them. Castrati had pretty long-lasting voices in general, and they usually didn’t retire until at earliest their 50s, usually they could sing into their 60s. If you know modern opera voices this isn’t too unusual, most opera singers don’t hit their vocal peak until their late 30s or early 40s, and they can usually go on working into their 50s-60s if they wish. After this point your successful castrato might have enough money just to retire entirely, but some also would teach singing or stay active in music this way. One other interesting example of their post musical life would be the small corps of castrati who worked at the French royal chapel in the 1700s. The French didn’t have a place for castrati really, they weren’t acceptable in opera, and no one else had them on staff, there was only this small bunch of them in all of France. These men sort of lived in a commune, they had a shared house and left all their money to each other when they died.\n\nThere’s a good argument that Italian society’s acceptance of castration was high in the 1600s and dropped off after maybe 1700. In the 1600s you can find pretty hum-drum matter-of-fact records of castration, for example a contract between parent and teacher specifying the teacher has permission to castrate the boy if he thinks it appropriate and will pay for the procedure, petitions from boys (or someone writing for the boy) requesting a local lord sponsor him and pay for his castration, records in court accounting books of paying for castrations, etc. After 1700 you don’t find so many of these records, and most men after this period also have a little tale or excuse for their castration, a “childhood accident” of some vague sort. (There are exceptions, Caffarelli told no tales about his castration, and in his grandmother’s will there’s the very plain language that she bequeaths to him “a wallet with greatly fitting music, for which Cajetanus is said to have a great inclination, and a desire to be castrated and become a eunuch” and also the income from a vineyard to pursue music. He was castrated some time after this document, maybe 1722. Caffarelli was an odd duck though.) By the 1800s castration had completely soured in public opinion, and very few castrati were made after the turn of the century, the last known musical castration around 1865.\n\nLet me know if you have any other questions! :) " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1finf8/ama_eunuchs_and_castrati/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cunx0tj" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Korean and Japanese are both *language isolates*, that is, languages not provably related to any other language. Okay, recently a dialect of Japanese has been moved to related language, but so far there are no ties between Korean and Japanese. A proposed Altaic superfamily would still leave them less connected than Gaelic and Sanskrit.\n\nSo your mind is messing with you.\n\nWhat you may be hearing is a little sprachbund effect, where disparate languages approach each other because a lot of people use both. This usually shows up in vocabulary borrowing, so it shows how slight the sprachbund is in that you heard nothing reasonable.\n\nYou see, Korea was part of the Japanese Empire from the later 1890s, ending the Joseon Dynasty's rule, until the end of WWII. So they had half a century of Japanese influence, but of a hostile memory, so they may have purged any borrowings." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ebv4vea" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I think this question assumes a homogeneity among native tribes. Often tribes were fighting amongst themselves. Europeans often played a role as another tribe to be reckoned with, either as an ally or as an enemy, as a trading partner and/or arms supplier. The long term narrative is of the constant invasion and rape of the tribes and land doesn’t accurately reflect the day-to-day interactions.\n\nYou only need to read about something like [King Philip’s War](_URL_0_) and all its background and aftermath to see the complexity. Tribes would engage with and ally with settlers for their own advantage, and vice versa, trying to get a leg up on historical enemies.\n\nThe biggest advantage Europeans had was they had an endless supply of reinforcements. Sometimes the natives were horrified and upset by the extreme lengths the Europeans would go to, like completely destroying whole villages including non-belligerents, women, children, animals, crops, and houses would all be destroyed. But they often got terrible retribution for that, to the point of failure and near extinction of early colonies.\n\nEuropeans also had many technological advantages. They also brought a sense of superiority in the white race and inferiority of natives, and a mandate to convert and uplift the heathen. Don’t underestimate the power of even a misguided and erroneous philosophy in the hands of zealots.\n\nDisease also played a role, especially smallpox. There are stories of intentional infection, but that doesn’t reflect the day to day reality. Europeans had centuries of innate immunity in their genetic code, and natives were never going to be able to obtain that. The losses and decimation were brutal in some cases.\n\nAll this took more than two centuries to happen, the image of a big war with massive migration that many people picture when viewing the whole of “New World” history just doesn’t apply. Remember, for decades, places like the middle of what is now the middle of Massachusetts was completely native territory which if any white person ventured would not live. It’s why banishment from a colony was such a huge deal as a punishment. It was basically a death sentence, either by exposure, dehydration, starvation, or disease. If you were lucky, you got a quick death at the hands of an animal or native tribe, though frequently people would be tortured to death or enslaved for entering native territory.\n\n\nCaveat: I am not a professional historian, but this particular topic has always been of great interest to me (ie, How did what started out as a small group of people come to dominate an entire continent that was already occupied, sometimes by advanced peoples)" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip's_War" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6wovr7", "c6wpgi0", "c6wwpkk" ], "score": [ 37, 15, 2 ], "text": [ "A cup with a depiction of a scene of the Illiad was found in a grave of the first century AD in Denmark. I guess they knew what the scene meant.", "Few people would have read it because few people could read. But most people would have known it, at least in a vague way, because it was so much part of the culture. (As Aerandir points out, scenes from the Iliad might be on your drinking cup.) Think of all the stories you know, more or less, without having actually read (possibilities include Bible stories, Norse myths, various classic books like Moby Dick, even the Greek myths themselves).", "The works of Aristophanes, a 5th/4th century BC Athenian comic playwright, frequently allude to or directly quote the Iliad, and there are quite a number of other plays and pieces of literature which refer to it and the Odyssey. Probably any educated person would know it, and it's likely that anyone living in a Hellenistic culture in the 2nd century would be familiar with the gist of the Iliad." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f22vhde" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Yes, they were certainly a thing. Taste is capricious. /u/searocksandtrees has collected [answers about jello oddities before](_URL_1_), feat. /u/gothwalk, et al.\n\n/u/PeculiarLeah interprets it as [part of the recovery from rationing in World War II](_URL_0_), specifically mentioning bananas and ham with hollandaise." ] }

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[ [ "https://new.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aqbi9r/why_was_mid_century_food_so_weird/egxytoi/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9abesk/whats_up_with_those_gelatinous_american_recipes/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c54sw0w", "c54tbom", "c54ui2k", "c54uxfb", "c551il0" ], "score": [ 18, 8, 5, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "European discovery of the Americas. Close to 90% of Native Americans died to diseases. ", "In Australia, both world wars caused reasonable depopulation of rural/remote areas as young men enlisted (and, in many cases, didn't return). Just under 10% of the population ^([416,809]) of Australia enlisted during WWI (then a country of under 5 million people) and of that, [~216,000 were killed, wounded, gassed or taken prisoner](_URL_2_): that is, 51.8% of all enlisted men. The total casualty rate was 65% - [the highest of any country in the war.](_URL_0_)\n\nI can't seem to find a source for it, but when I was studying history at the University of Adelaide we were taught that roughly 10% of the population of South Australia (which was mostly concentrated in Adelaide) had died, leading to severe labour shortages in the rural districts.\n\nDuring the Second World War, a similar trend emerged, the effects of which you can briefly read about in [this extract from my Honours thesis.](_URL_1_) (Start from the last para on p. 17 through to the first para on p. 19).\n\nDuring the Great Depression in Australia, the Victorian government introduced rules for receiving sustenance (welfare) that meant workers had to seek work constantly, preferably in the country, and were not allowed to claim sustenance in the same place twice in a row (sustenance was provided every 3 weeks). There's a citation here somewhere in the books on my desk but it'll take me a while to find it; if you want it I can track it down for you.\n\nDuring the 1960s-90s there was quite a lot of migration from South-East Asia as the various wars destroyed peoples homes and lives. Though the scale of migration by boat to Australia has been a lot of movement out of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Burma to various countries around the world.\n\nNow that I've noticed your inclusion of the Black Death and Mongol invasions (these are.. recent?) I suppose I should also include the Gold Rush in the early 1850s, which sucked huge numbers of people out of the various cities and colonies on the Australian mainland as people went to find their fortune. Didn't last, though. ", "Wikipedia has a large (though not exhaustive) [list of famines](_URL_0_). This includes ones from the 20th century - natural or otherwise.", "Europeans killed every single Tasmanian aborigine by the mid nineteenth century, if that is what you're after.", "If you are worried about global overpopulation, don't. Industrialized nations all around the the world eventually reach a climax where thereafter populations stay stagnant for a while, then decline. If you don't believe me check population records of nations like the US, France, the UK, Japan, and South Korea. South Korea's population is declining so quickly that the government operates a pretty substantial pro-pregnancy campaign. \n\nIn short, there is plenty of Earth to go around as long as the rich nations help the poor ones industrialize." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/enlistment/ww1.asp", "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/718663/thesisextract1.pdf", "http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/ww1.asp" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cckljnp" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The Colleseum in Los Angeles was built for the 1932 Olympics. Cleveland built their Munincipal Stadium in an attempt to augment their bid for the 1932 Olympics. Not only did they not get the Olyimpics, they could not convince the Cleveland Indians to play there until the 1950s. They did have an NFL team, the Rams, that played there from 1937 to 1945. The Rams won the 1945 championship on a fluke play. Sammy Baugh threw a pass from his own end-zone that richocheted off the goal post and scoring a safety for the Rams. The Rams moved to Los Angeles for the 1946 seaon and played in the LA Colessium until the early 1980s, when they moved to Anaheim. Al Davis moved the Raiders to Los Angles and played at the collessium for less than ten years before they moved back to Oakland, the same year the Rams moved to Saint Louis. Al Davis left because an earthquake damaged the collessium and would have been to expensive to repair. \n During the 1920s, the National Football leaugue was still in an embryonic stage of development. Without television, it was not yet a popular sport. College football was popular though. Especially in the Ivy League and Big Ten states. Schools like Michigan could build a stadium with 100,000 seats and sell enough tickets to fill them all. The revenue generated by a successful football program gave the presidents of other schools an edifice complex. They want to build a stadium tha was comparable in size and get their own piece of the pie. During the 1920s college football replaced boxing and horse racing in popularity, and only baseball remained more popular. There were sound business reasons that colleges built such large stadiums. \n " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fmo44l8" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Yes they were. Asians were subject to segregational practices in many cities. I wrote a bit about this topic previously [here](_URL_0_), but am always happy to add on to it or have more of a discussion on the topic. Filipinos, for example, were prominent targets of attacks by white people. This was often rooted in white men feeling threatened by Filipino masculinity; it manifested in arresting or even attacking or shooting Filipinos who were seen with white women during periods where anti-miscegenation laws were in place, as well as the invention of stereotypes about Asian men that are still widely believed today. In general, Filipinos were seen as less civilized than whites." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b9fpg3/during_segregated_america_1860s_1960s_were_other/ek5q6ym/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fi24gl5", "fi2ego5" ], "score": [ 8, 7 ], "text": [ "There's a lot to it, but the gambit was that a) the US had put missiles in the USSR's back yard (the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, to say nothing of the [over a dozen](_URL_0_) nuclear deployments that the US ringed the USSR and China with in the late 1950s), and this was both payback and a stimulus to remove them; b) this was also tied up with Khrushchev's feelings on the Berlin crisis, and he thought it would give him leverage there; c) Castro wanted the missiles so that the US would (once again) not try to invade his island, as they had tried to with the Bay of Pigs. \n\nThe idea that the US would freak out about this was not obvious. The US leaders themselves acknowledged, privately, that the missiles in Cuba did not in any meaningful way change the balance of military power. The US itself had been engaging in \"absurdly reckless\" behavior of the same order for several years. The US chose to escalate it to a full crisis; it was not obviously one, and the Kennedy administration could have had many different responses to it than the one they had (which brought them to the brink of war and was only really released because Khrushchev allowed them a way out of it). The Soviets were extremely surprised by the intensity of the US response.\n\nWhich is to say: when you look at it from an exclusively American perspective, yes, it looks crazy. But if you look at it from the Soviet perspective, the US reacted in a very dangerous and irrational way to what was, at worst, a tit-for-tat operation.", "I would like to add something to the above answer. With the mentioned points I mostly agree with, but I'd like to add directly from Khrushchev's own memoirs as I think these would be quite relevant to this question. \n\nKhrushchev wrote about this in his memoirs. It must be noted he wrote these memoirs in the late 1960's, while in forced retirement - and the Cuban Missile Crisis was cited as the reason for ousting him from power by the Politburo in 1964.\n\nKhrushchev's later remarks are not necessarily what he truly thought at that moment, and he tried to save his legacy, but it does tell us something about his line of reasoning.\n\nHis version of events begins with the Cuban Revolution and the fact that for a while, the Soviets did not expect Cuba to turn communist anytime soon. They did have a KGB officer who had coincidentally befriended Castro's brother a few years before and told Moscow that Raul Castro was a Communist. Eventually, Cuba began to receive aid, and started nationalizing US assets, followed by the Pig's Bay invasion in 1961. Unexpectedly, Castro declared his regime Socialist, and according to Khrushchev the Cubans began to form a symbol. If Cuba became a success, more socialist revolutions in Latin America would follow.\n\nAt the same time, the USSR and NATO butted heads in Europe over West-Berlin, as the Soviets demanded West-Berlin to become a neutral ground and that NATO would withdraw its troops. However, Khrushchev writes he was fairly confident the West wouldn't start a war from West-Berlin. About Cuba however, he was not so sure. He was convinced that after the failed invasion of 1961, the US would continue to try to overthrow Castro.\n\nWhat could the USSR do to prevent this? Khrushchev argued that making firm statements and issueing stern warnings would not deter the US if it was not backed up by \"real force\". In his view this is how \"imperialists\" are to be treated: they only understand force.\n\nCuba had to be protected at all costs: if America could crush Cuba, it would undermine the \"revolutionary will among many other peoples and nations\". Cuba needed to survive as an example for other countries to follow suit. If I may say so, it almost sounds like an inverted Soviet version of the domino theory: if one revolution fails, all will fail.\n\nThen also comes the problem that Soviet missiles at that time could not yet reach US territory from the Soviet Union, and its strategic bombers would have to go on suicide mission to deliver one atomic bomb to the US. \n\nKhrushchev worried deeply about \"losing Cuba\". He worried about the blow to Marxist-Leninism in the world that would be, he worried about Soviet prestige (Khrushchev's personal ego was deeply connected with Soviet prestige) and he wanted to show the world the USSR could do more against US agression than expressing mere protest at the UN.\n\nThe \"obvious\" solution to Khrushchev for defending Cuba was to do what the US had been doing to the USSR already: placing nuclear weapons. Khrushchev also sounds a bit vengeful, as he wanted to threaten New York and make America \"feel threatened\" like they had done to the Russians.\n\nAccording to his memoir, he developed his plans in private while visiting Bulgaria, and continued not to discuss it with anyone, because he knew that if he and Castro would do this, it had to be kept absolutely secret. Eventually when he had decided to do this, he presented the plan to the leaders of the Central Committee and gave them a week to think about it. \n\n\"Cuba must become a torch blazing in the night\", Khrushchev wrote. \"A magnet of attraction for all the oppressed peoples of Latin America fighting against exploitation by the American monopolies\".\n\nKhrushchev's Politburo colleagues cautiously supported his decision, but basically told him it was his decision and they would support whatever he decided. He felt the burden of responsibility not to let things escalate into war, but, he tries to argue his strategy was one of agression to preserve peace. If the USSR continued to be \"weak\", back away, and do concessions to the imperialists, he wrote, then this would inevitably embolden them and lead to war. Khrushchev believed he had to draw a line to protect Cuba, show his teeth to the US, appear threatening, and thereby maintain balance in the Cold War and with it, peace.\n\nHe concludes in his memoir that the Cuban Crisis \"brilliantly set off our foreign policy\" and considered it a \"brilliant success without firing a single shot\".\n\nI hope this further illuminates some of Khrushchev's thinking during the Crisis. I must warn that this man changed his thoughts and ideas as often as the weather, depending on his mood and temper, and that his memoirs above all reflect his own reconstruction of what he was doing.\n\nNikita Khrushchev & Sergei Khrushchev (ed.), \"Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev Volume 3: Statesman (1953-1964)\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dqw8ndj" ], "score": [ 537 ], "text": [ "* /u/kieslowskifan has a fantastic post on the [creation of the Rasputin mythology](_URL_0_) out of contemporary Russian court gossip and post-Revolution anti-Romanov polemic. It addresses the \"power\" aspects of the legend\n* /u/carlton_the_doorman addresses the rumors specifically connected to [Rasputin's assassination](_URL_2_) using Edvard Razinsky's *The Rasputin File*, a fascinating book based on the massive reports from early Soviet/Revolution interrogations of czarist political figures. One thing to note here is that he acquired some of his sources privately through an auction house, leaving a fragment of a question about reliability--[here's a review](_URL_1_) from a Russian history professor addressing that issue which is nevertheless overall positive." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5f6ol4/why_is_rasputin_famous/dahvokl/", "http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/06/11/reviews/000611.11dani.html", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yk3gb/has_there_been_a_scientific_analysis_of_rasputins/cpb057x/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7by3ay" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "An actual historian can give you a more detailed answer, but you should check out the Wikipedia page on [ancient literature](_URL_1_). The short answer would be the Sumerian texts discovered in Abu Salabikh and the Akkadian legend of Etana. While there are earlier examples of writing that has been translated, these are the first things that can really be called \"texts\". If you're interested in reading some really old texts check out the [Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature](_URL_0_). " ] }

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[ [ "http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_literature#Bronze_Age" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cunl7d9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Have you read Todd Gitlin's [The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left](_URL_0_) (1980)? Gitlin is now an academic, but during 1963-4, he used to be the head of the SDS, the main student activist organization in the US, and was involved heavily with the anti-war movement. He wrote in detail about how the media skewed the protest movement in order to contain and control its impact. Rather than the protest movement itself, Gitlin actually credits the mass media and its distortion of the Tet Offensive with turning the national tide against the war, with implications for policy makers in Washington. He argues that the anti-war movement was heavily instrumentalized by the media in order to justify their headlines. In any case, it's worth a read, and it also points to a number of follow-up sources on the political impact of Tet, although they're a bit dated by now. " ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=00iwHPO73mkC" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e6yaqo1" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It’s true the term “Blitzkrieg” does not come up often in German plans, old memoirs, or communiques. It’s closest word or phrase that the Germans/Prussians may have used more often was Bewegungkrieg or maneuver warfare. The term Blitzkrieg however pops up more post-war to describe the tactics of their Wehrmacht during the WW2. But to be honest the Prussians and later Germans have been practicing these kind of tactics for years and the end result was this form of warfare during WW2. \n\nThe reason Blitzkrieg is so prevalent when talking about the Germans is because it’s a buzzword that most people recognize and can understand automatically." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgtm9a7" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "They were un defendable these colonies were right on the doorstep of Australia and New Zealand two British colonies with millions of people compared to the German colonies couple of thousands. If they had tried they would have failed. Any attempt to reinforce would have resulted in the ships sinking by the Royal Navy.if they had attempted to reinforce before the war then they would be blockaded and surrender. The action the Germans took was the only option." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d65j8jd" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I can give a broad summary from the point of view of the British as, like so many other British War myths, it is more complicated than it has subsequently been reduced to and therefore infinitely more interesting as a result (in my admittedly nerdy opinion).\n\nSo I will assume the common narrative is widely known, the surprise and certain defeat, the plucky English resolve, Churchill and rousing speeches and the little boats. Now much of this lies in well founded fact, though shaves off a lot of the complexities which then simply reduces the nature of British society and politics during the war.\n\nFirst things first the reaction was not simply joyous. It was a clear defeat and setback which signalled a grave turn in the war. And while the absence of more death and capture was certainly good for morale at home it did not distract from this fact far beyond the last boat reaching blighty. Indeed the press, bouncing off this disaster, had a field day attacking the ex-PM Chamberlain and his ilk for their inadequate preparations. Linking implicitly, and at times explicitly the disaster - perhaps a little unfairly - at the door of Chamberlain. A great example of this feeling was the pamphlet *Guilty men* which opened a rabid attack on interwar government with the beaches of Dunkirk, casting the honest soldiers there victim of the ineptitude and complacency of the uninspired grandees of the previous decade. The anonymous writers (a Tory, Liberal and Labour supporter and future leader) emphasised the futile bravery of the front in marked contrast to the antagonists. To quote its evocative first chapter's final line: \n\n\n*It is a story of an army doomed before they took the field.*\n\nDespite publishers avoiding it, *Guilty men\" sold 200,000 copies.\n\n\nNow this was perhaps a little unfair, while there was plenty of blame and there were problems which led to this disaster, to lay this in the laps of solely the old political order was a little much. Without wanting to get into the monkey knife-fight that is appeasement historiography on the internet, Chamberlain perhaps did not deserve the image portrayed in this book. However, it certainly did not do Churchill any harm to have his rivals in the party (Chamberlain and Halifax, the preferred contender for the PM's office against Churchill) so publicly savaged. His wartime coalition shedded meaningful need for these individuals and as a result became easier to manage. It also saved the reputation of many men still involved in the war effort yet perhaps also partially responsible. Anything else one wishes to add is speculation so far as I understand, whether this was a happy coincidence for Mr Churchill or something more orchestrated lacks firm evidence one way or the other.\n\nAside from this the cultivated and co-opted press loudly triumphed the official narrative of heroism on the day. From the Daily Mirror proclaiming the heroic retreat as *\"bloody marvellous\"* to War Illustrated outlining the *\"Immortal story of Dunkirk\"*. However this struggled at times when squared with the experiences of retreating men. Gardiner emphasises the combination of the chaos of war with the wounded pride of retreating men creating a toxic atmosphere of recrimination. For example in one village pub a patron recounted an NCO whose:\n\n*\"loud-mouthed criticism of junior officers of his Ack-Ack unit seizing the only available transport and making for the French coast, leaving their NCOs and men to fend for themselves\"*\n\nor the sister of a soldier, Harry Woolf, who recounted:\n\n*\"he saw his cousin dead on the beach & another man on the street. He was talking to a chap who was showing a silk handkerchief bought for his joy lady. That moment a bomb killed him. Harry took the handkerchief. Harry has had eno' of this war and is certain of our defeat - got no arms & no aeroplanes - how can we do anything\"*\n\nThe civilian population, though clearly depending on a multitude of disparate and ever shrinking factors, was mixed in its reaction. Women assisted in aid stations, some cheered paraded troops (one commentator noted that the lining of the streets and accolades were more frequent then than during the soldier's embarking to France). Church membership rocketed up, with Calder pointing out that:\n\n*\"even Guildhall was not big enough to accomodate more than half the congregation that flooded to the united service\"* \n\nwith 2000 listing outside on loudspeakers. \n\nElsewhere Donald Johnson, a medical officer, recounted:\n\n*\"From the moment you woke up, you thought, ‘Oh, my God’ as you realised [Britain’s] position afresh …It was only after two or three beers at lunch that the situation did not seem quite as bad; but by three thirty in the afternoon it was desperate again—and it was quite time to go back to the mess for another drink. In the evening, the outlook depended entirely on the amount of alcohol you consumed. I use the plural ‘you’ because everyone was in the same boat.”*\n\nPeople carrying gas masks increased from basically 0% to 30%, black marketeers trade slightly declined and strikes fell in the month following. There was a 25% increase in production as workers worked longer, without holidays and weekends one must distinguish between patriotic fervour and invasion-panic.\n\nAn interesting example is how one pigeonholes the famous \"fight them on the beaches\" speech made to the Commons, and delivered in extracts by a BBC announcer to the wider public. While it has been proclaimed as a masterful oratory, public reaction was mixed. Addison in his wonderful work based on Mass Observation, one of my favourite-ist things going in this period points out the following extracts:\n\n*\"he grave tone of Churchill’s speech made some impression and may have contributed in some measure to the rather pessimistic atmosphere of today. […] The contents of the speech were on the whole expected but some apprehension has been caused throughout the country on account of the PM’s reference to ‘fighting alone’. This has led to some slight increase in doubt about the intentions of our ally [France].\"*\n\nHowever it is worth noting the the general consensus from the different areas of the British Isle was that the speech was well received if not fervour-rousing. Though, as a *further* caveat, even its immediate effect was perhaps not brilliant, as Winston's wife said afterwards about the House of Commons and the original speech:\n\n*\"a great section of the Tory Party were not behind Winston & had received his great speech […] even in sullen silence.\"*\n\nThis may point to the esteem the 'double-rat' and wilderness-dweller Churchill held amongst his backbenches, shocked & pessimistic immediate reaction to the news or the quality of the speech (or any of the above in combination).\n\nInterestingly, the rumour summaries for each day (may I say you should really get [his book](_URL_0_)) emphasise a rich and at time bizarre array of rumours emanating from the disaster which demonstrates a society perhaps not entirely unified. A common a pressing one was the well-trodden discontent of the army with the RAF, the latter being perceived too weak/suspiciously absent during the evacuation. The report nervously notes that this should be checked though an official statement as its effects would be:\n\n*\"most unfortunate in military and civilian circles\"*\n \nAdditionally paranoia of infiltrators and aliens underlined the daily rumour mill. From arrests of German parachutists in the Midlands (usually neither German nor parachutists) to Belgians children being denied access to play groups in London (probably not because they are Belgian), suspicions ruled supreme. This is just a taster -there were many other examples of rumours showing a society confused, angry and scared, all suggesting a society ill-at ease.\n\nNow clearly self-interest and patriotism are interlinked and are certainly not mutually exclusive, but it would be wrong to characterise the work ethic which followed as simply a \"we are all in this together\", long lasting and significant shift in the relationship workers had with the wartime economy. While people were more acutely aware of their national predicament and therefore willing to sacrifice this may well have been as much for narrow self-interest than a stoic submission to the needs of Britannia. \n\nAs the immediate fear of invasion fell back so too did these positive and negative effects. Indeed this boost in production fell back a few weeks later as workers tired and the propaganda around immediate invasion rang increasingly hollow. Gas mask-uptake fell back down to 10% by August and the black market returned to booming normal. Even the rumour mill died down, which is often an excellent barometer of public feeling. Therefore it is difficult to view Dunkirk as a profound rallying of the public will. As (a) it caused as much division and ill feeling as it did unity and (b) its effects were temporary. \n\nHowever there is an interesting argument that Dunkirk, though much of the effects on soldiers and civilians was indeed negative, acted as a positive 'bookend' to the war. Essentially it acted as a shift in narrative between the war of the 'old guard', complacent, elitist and slow to the war of the people. A more dynamic war effort and one where society had a greater stake. Now indeed it helped that the old guard were functionally out of office and replaced with an evolving coalition of all major parties, so this potentially toxic narrative did not disrupt politics too greatly immediately. However I have seen Addison argue that this is in part a reason for the result in 1945, so intimately connected was the mainstream Conservative party to this clique in the minds of many. I perhaps would not go that far, but it certainly added to the milieu of the time.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.amazon.co.uk/Listening-Britain-Intelligence-Britains-May-September/dp/0099548747" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c92m2vv", "c92m9vo", "c92p178" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 7 ], "text": [ "Oh man, I have tons of notes on this subject from a previous class but they're all stuck on a windows partition that just shit the bed today.\n\nBasically, Napoleon reorganized how France was governed in the form of departments and greatly increased the bureaucracy. This allowed for much more efficient governing as well as harnessing the resources of the state to a greater degree than any other country in Europe. When France conquered most of Europe, this system was brought to these other states and usually the longer that the French stayed, the more entrenched the system became. A prime example of this would be Belgium. He essentially set the framework for modern states and did away with much of the remnants of the old noble governing.\n\nThe framework was built upon a mix of meritocracy and nepotism. Napoleon did like appointing friends and family, but usually to high positions rather than heads of departments.\n\nI wish I could expand more but I haven't revisited this subject in two years and have been focusing my studies elsewhere as of late.", "Napoleon did a number of things which built the framework for modern France. Some of the more substantial things were making all Frenchmen equal before the law, regardless of social class or other factors, he greatly increased the efficiency of the French bureaucracy (something which was picked up by many European states, including conservative ones), he abolished the system of feudalism in many areas of Europe, and weakened many noble rights which were in place. \n\nEven after he abdicated many of these changes remained. If you look at the French Charter of 1814, which re-established the Bourbons as the Monarchs in France, you will see many of these policies. After Napoleon popularized many of these policies there was simply no turning back without huge revolts from the masses, and almost all of the political leaders at the time wanted stability more than anything (If interested look up The Concert of Europe).\n\nHope that helps! ", "By \"set the framework for modern France,\" the documentary was probably referring to the [Civil Code](_URL_0_) of 1804. That link provides the Code in its entirety, so you can peruse at your leisure.\n\nThe Civil Code standardized legal jurisdictions across all of France regarding subjects such as inheritance, civil rights, marriage, finance, etc. To understand what a monumental achievement this is, it's important to realize what law was like under the Old Regime. Each region in France was governed by a set of overlapping juridical bodies that often vied for power: local nobles argued with the king's functionaries (notably the royal tax collectors, the _intendants_), the _parlements_ (regional judicial bodies) argued with the crown over matters of authority, guilds argued with municipal authorities over labor rights, and so forth. There was no such thing as a single, universal law that applied to all of France, and such a concept would have been anachronistic under a system regulated by privilege based on social class and geographic location.\n\nThe Civil Code changed this by standardizing legal codes and partitioning France into the _départements_ (administrative units, sort of like American or British counties) it still uses today. [Here](_URL_5_) is a convenient visual of that administrative structure. Most importantly, the Code greatly facilitated a process of state centralization begun under the Old Regime that the French still debate to this day.\n\nBonaparte, however, didn't create a standardized law _ex nihilo_. Rather, he modified developments that were already under way during the French Revolution. The idea of a universal law was a concept articulated by [The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen](_URL_1_). Also, the system of _départements_ was originally proposed by the National Constituent Assembly in 1790. Divorce [became easier](_URL_4_) during the Revolution and [feudal privileges were abolished](_URL_2_) on August 4, 1789.\n\nIn other words, the ideas and structures that Bonaparte implemented were outgrowths of the French Revolution. Martin Lyons [makes an explicit point](_URL_3_) to view Bonaparte and his accomplishments as children of the Revolution, rather than understanding the coup on 18 _brumaire_ as a radical break or an end-point." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/c_code.html", "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp", "http://books.google.com/books?id=qfD9Aswfi98C&dq=feudal+privilege+abolition&source=gbs_navlinks_s", "http://books.google.com/books?id=QTdAbbNhHaEC&dq=martin+lyons+napoleon&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wapRUbH1FoLr2QW0pIGgDg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA", "http://books.google.com/books?id=zYSiCSy9tx4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=desan+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CatRUf7mIe_W2wWrnICwCA&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=desan%20revolution&f=false", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Administration_territoriale_fran%C3%A7aise.svg/685px-Administration_territoriale_fran%C3%A7aise.svg.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cckr0ji" ], "score": [ 87 ], "text": [ "Tesla claims, in his autobiographical [*My Inventions*](_URL_1_), the following regarding his time at the Machine Works in NY:\n\n > For nearly a year my regular hours were from 10.30 A.M. until 5 o'clock the next morning without a day's exception. Edison said to me: \"I have had many hard-working assistants but you take the cake.\" During this period I designed twenty-four different types of standard machines with short cores and of uniform pattern which replaced the old ones. The Manager had promised me fifty thousand dollars on the completion of this task but it turned out to be a practical joke. This gave me a painful shock and I resigned my position.\n\nWe don't know for sure that \"The Manager\" was Edison, and the use of that title suggests it was someone else. Tesla resigned in 1885, when Edison's involvement in company operations was very limited (the death of Mary in 1884 had deeply affected him), and day to day management was the province of [Samuel Insull](_URL_2_). Insull apparently disliked Tesla; he referred to the prospect of dealing with him over his patent for certain lamps to be \"most objectionable\" in 1887. Of course, it was also a good way for Tesla to tell that part of the story without running the risk of a lawsuit. We don't know the details beyond that, because here's what Edison had to say about this period with Tesla in his own papers:\n\nNothing.\n\nAbsolutely nothing. \n\nNot in the Edison Electric Company papers, not in Edison's personal papers, nowhere--no reports from others at the Works, no angry notes from Tesla, nothing. I've been in those papers for this very period, and all we have is evidence of him being on the payroll before this time. If we had the records of the European company in better order there might be something there (he worked in Europe before coming to New York). But the truthfulness of this claim will never be established, and it has been taken as gospel and magnified by every author since O'Neill's hagiography in the 1940s. Some of the embellishments appear to have no actual source.\n\nBut it gets better and more suggestive than that, even. Edison and Tesla corresponded in the 1890s over X-rays and may have worked together; we don't have Tesla's letters to Edison, but Edison wrote to Tesla on 18 March 1896: \"My dear Tesla, Many thanks for your letter. I hope you are progressing and will give us something that will beat Roentgen.\" (LB062322) That's hardly the language or activity of mortal enemies. I've never seen the original letter Tesla sent, or what he was offering--was it collaboration, purchase, contract? Edison even seems somewhat protective of Tesla in this time; in response to a critical essay to be published in the *Electrical Review* in May of 1896, Edison said he didn't care what the article stated for his own sake, but that Tesla \"was of a nervous temperament and it will greatly grieve him and interfere with his work. While Tesla gives vent to his sanguine expectations when he should not do so, it must not be forgotten by [the article author] Mr Moore that Tesla is an experimenter of the highest type and may produce in time all that he says he can.\" (LB062498) Again, if the bad blood was between those two, why this expression of confidence in Tesla's work and ambitions? There's more to this story, and it may be hiding among Tesla's papers in Belgrade in any of a dozen languages. *Good luck, researchers!*\n\nMy personal suspicion was that any clash probably involved Insull, and that were any idle offer made, Tesla did not really believe it--he was idealistic, but not *that* naive. It's worth pointing out that Insull was alive in 1919 (until 1938 really) and controlled an empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he didn't get there by being nice--so Tesla would be suicidal to cast aspersions on someone of Insull's power and reach. Of course after Edison died, Tesla tossed a few barbs at his crude methods of experimentation, which was totally in keeping with his opinion in 1919. But if either had another grudge, the War of the Currents had probably been the real poisoner of the well. In that case, Tesla had cause to be angry at Morgan and Westinghouse in the aftermath more than Edison. \n\n(For sources, the numbers and letters after the quotes above refer to the digital edition of the [Edison Papers](_URL_0_)--plug in the doc number and up it will come. Not everything has been digitized--some things are still on microfilm--but the hardcopies at West Orange don't seem to include any Tesla surprises.)\n\n[edit: too many semicolons; added TLDR]\n\n**TL,DR: Tesla says there was a joke offer of money he took seriously and quit over; Edison says nothing about Tesla at that time, nothing at all. Evidence suggests that the two were at least cordial until the late 1890s, contrary to popular belief.**" ] }

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[ [ "http://edison.rutgers.edu/NamesSearch/NamesSearch.php3", "http://archive.org/details/MyInventionsTheAutobiographyOfNikolaTesla", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eak8uym" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The Boxer Rebellion, which took place at the start of the 20th century, was a 3-way power struggle between Chinese peasants, the Boxers (a xenophobic, anti-Christian, anti-modernization, mystic religious group), the Qing Empire and (mostly) Western foreign powers.\n\nThe United States desired to set up commercial operations in China (Open Door policy) before the rebellion to compete with other European powers, especially British dominance, but had no interest in involving itself in military matters. However, after realizing how serious the rebellion was becoming, the McKinley Administration through Secretary of State John Hay, approved military action combined with European powers (the Eight Nation Alliance included Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Russia, France, Japan & USA), despite its diplomatic tradition of avoiding entangling alliances, and the policies of the Monroe Doctrine, to avoid getting involved in the politics of European colonial powers.\n\nThe defeat of the Qing Empire in Tianjin and siege of Beijing by the Boxer rebels in July 1900 caused major world powers to intervene more directly, and the Eight Nation Alliance arrived in Beijing (Peking) to lift the siege.\n\nUS Troops were sent from the naval base in the Philippines and included the 9th Infantry, 14th Infantry, 6th Cavalry, 5th Artillery regiments and a Marine battalion under the command of Lt. Gen Adna Romanza Chaffee and was known as the \"US Army China Relief Expedition\". This was the first time US forces fought on Chinese soil, and also set a historical precedent where the president could intervene in a sovereign nation's affairs without the express authorization from Congress.\n\nJapan sent the largest contingent of troops: 20,840 and 18 warships, but they also suffered a disproportionate number of casualties: more than half of allied casualties in Tianjin, and almost two-thirds of the losses in Beijing. The reason is that (according to a British military observer), the Japanese were aggressive, used densely-packed formations and were over-willing to attack.\n\nThe British was also engaged in the Boer conflict at the same time, so they had limited troops available, and had to rely on the 'China Squadron' and troops from India. They were the third largest contingent after the Japanese.\n\nThe Russians had the second largest force, of 12,400.\n\nAustria-Hungary sent a single cruiser and sent some sailors to defend positions in Tianjin.\n\nThe Germans initially had a garrison of about 2,000 men around Qingdao (Tsingtao), and sent a larger force of around 15,000 later in the struggle, but they arrived too late to take part in any major action.\n\nThe French sent three battalions and a brigade of marines.\n\nThe Italians had around 2,000 troops, initially made up of sailors from warships and later included troops dispatched from Italy.\n\nAfter the rebellion was culled, the signing of the Boxer Protocol of 1901 which was signed between the Eight Nation Alliance and the Qing Empire then allowed Britain and the USA (and to a lesser extent the other 6 nations) to have a great deal of influence in Beijing and to be in control of how the country could be partitioned.\n\nBefore the rebellion, there was a lot of discussion in the media about the rebellion, and The Washington Post, for example, had a field day publishing reports about it, mostly factually incorrect, as they had no reporters on the ground; there was a major disconnect between the information in China and the US public and it could be argued that the public opinion in the US was shaped by American and Chinese interest groups to support the rebellion and draw US forces into the war. \n\nAfter the rebellion, there was a great deal of debate about the US involvement. It was revealed that a number of atrocities were committed by foreign troops, and precious artifacts and treasures were heavily looted from places like the Forbidden City. Mark Twain gave his famous \"I am a Boxer\" speech that mocked and criticized Christian missionaries and the US government involvement in China. Furthermore, the reparations payments on China were extremely high and they were forced into virtual disarmament." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dakdpfl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I can only speak of the American slave trade, and not anything that happened before 1492, but as far as the Transatlantic slave trade goes, slavery was never seen universally as a positive good.\n\nBartolomé de las Casas was a contemporary of Christopher Columbus's and participated in early expeditions to America. He criticized the practice of slavery vehemently, and wrote a book called [*A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies*](_URL_3_) that was published in 1542. The light he shed on what was happening in the Americas led to the banning of slavery by Spain, at least for the time being.\n\nJumping forward and north to British North America, in the first decades of colonization of the future U.S., there wasn't yet full slavery. There was indentured servitude, which still guaranteed some rights to those servants (not splitting up families, you could take your master to court, things like that). In the 1640s and 50s, outright slavery began to be instituted and it was more or less immediately criticized.\n\nQuaker leader George Fox wrote in support of the slaves' struggle [as early as 1657](_URL_1_). \n\nIn 1673, Puritan leader Richard Baxter published [*A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience*](_URL_0_) which speaks against the evils of slavery.\n\nIn 1684, Thomas Tryon published [\"The Negro's Complaint of Their Hard Servitude, and the Cruelties Practised upon Them\"](_URL_4_), another anti-slavery text.\n\nIn 1688, the people of Germantown, Pennsylvania, signed a document now called the [\"1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery\"](_URL_2_) admonishing the practice of slavery and calling for its end. \n\nFrom that same year, there is also [\"Oroonoko or The Royal Slave\"](_URL_5_), a work of fiction published in London that often ridicules the practice.\n\nIt took many decades for slavery to become normalized in the American South, and it never became normalized in the North. New York was the only state north of Maryland where it ever took off, but never to the same extent as in the slave states. Future slavery was banned in New York pretty much the moment that the American Revolution ended. But by then, it had become a widely accepted practice in Maryland, Virginia, and all points south, which led to it being protected in those states when the U.S. Constitution was written." ] }

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[ [ "http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A26892.0001.001", "http://www.qhpress.org/texts/oldqwhp/gf-e-153.htm", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/The_1688_Germantown_Quaker_petition_against_slavery.jpg", "http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20321", "http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A63791", "http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29854" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dcw17ak" ], "score": [ 146 ], "text": [ "Warning: Wall of text incoming. But then this was /r/AskHistorians, so you expected this.\n\nFor practical reasons this answer relies substantially on European sources and wars against Europeans, but I did intentionally avoid talking about more modern weaponry like muskets or cannons.\n\n---\n\nThis question is really hard to answer, simply because Indonesia was and is such a diverse region. For example, the distance between [Aceh](_URL_4_) and [Pidie](_URL_2_) is, what, 100 km/70 miles? But a local romance notes the drastic difference in tactics between the two (Charney, *Southeast Asian Warfare*, p. 75-76):\n\n > Fighting in Pidië is quite different from fighting in Acheh, bear that in mind! \n\n > Fighting in Acheh is attended by a lot of stratagems; they hide behind fortifications.\n\n > Outside and inside these they dig trenches, and it is very difficult to surmount the palisades and mantraps.\n\n > These fortifications are half a coconut palm high, whitewashed and plastered.\n\n > What are you to do if you do not take with you chisels and saws?\n\n > You will not gain your object, and the people will be slain without the enemy making an appearance.\n\n > You had better go to war here in Pidië, my son...\n\nSo the answer is that \"a battle between two warring kingdoms\" would be drastically different depending on where you are.\n\nWith this in mind, let's look at warfare in one specific area of Indonesia, the peninsula of [South Sulawesi.](_URL_1_)\n\n# Mobilization\n\nWar has just been declared. What now? If you're a king in South Sulawesi, the answer is simple: send out the *bila-bila*.\n\nThe *bila-bila* are knotted palm leaves sent out to all your allies and vassals. The number of knots tells you how many days there are left until war is to begin. If the leaf is knotted eighty times, for example, eighty days later every lord great and little *must* show up with their armies. \n\nBut who are these armies made up of? There was a core of heavily trained nobles (think knights in Europe) who rode on horseback and fought with swords. Once Europeans showed up, they started wearing chainmail and using guns. But these elite troops were a small minority. In a 1676 war between the kingdoms of Gowa and Boné, the king of Gowa himself and two of his leading nobles approached a Boné fortress with 500 troops - but even among these troops deemed worthy of accompanying the king, only a fifth wore chainmail. \n\nThe vast majority of the army was instead composed of peasants and slaves. Peasants were conscripted as part of their corvee duties (corvee is like a tax, but instead of paying money to the government, you pay in labor). Slaves were conscripted because, well, they're slaves.\n\nSo South Sulawesi armies were basically peasant levees. That explains the huge army sizes reported in many sources. 17th-century South Sulawesi probably had a population between 1 and 2 million, but one Frenchman claims that one kingdom could raise 160,000 troops. While this is almost certainly not true, armies in the lower tens of thousands are well-attested. South Sulawesi's kings had chosen quantity over quality.\n\nBut we shouldn't underestimate these troops, even if they weren't professional ones. They were trained three times an year and specialized in different weaponry; one European observer noted that the only weapons common to the entire army were a helmet, a shield, and a piece of armor for the chest. And in a society where war was glorified, even common troops took pride in being a soldier. And so:\n\n > Being full of these notions, they never beg quarter nor give it, and ten Makassars [an ethnicity of South Sulawesi], with their drawn daggers, will attack ten thousand men; and no wonder, for men who have such principles engrafted in their very nature are void of all fear, and are very dangerous people to deal with.\n\n# Weaponry\n\nBefore the coming of guns, South Sulawesi troops were armed with \"cudgels, lances made of sharp-pointed bamboo or wood of the areca palm, various kinds of spears with a fine copper or iron tip, swords, [daggers], blowguns, and shields made of woven twigs.\" Fairly simple weaponry, you might say. \n\nBut being 'simple' does not make weapons any less dangerous. The [blowgun](_URL_3_) was the most terrifying. South Sulawesi troops never used the bow and arrow. Sure, arrows might be more powerful on their own. But the merest scratch from a dart could be mortal, for they were coated with the sap of the [Antiaris tree](_URL_5_), a deadly poison which stops the heart almost the moment it enters the bloodstream. Local sources report the potency of the blowgun in warfare. In the early sixteenth century, the armies of the kingdom of Gowa were said to have been routed by a single enemy blowgun:\n\n > Thus died one by one the people of Gowa. Sombaya [the king of Gowa] was routed. Those people of Gowa who still lived ran tumbling like chicks abandoned by their mother. Hundreds of people from Gowa died in the battle. If they had stayed, clearly all would have died too, because I Buqle [the name of the blowgun] did not shoot in error. All were cut down.\n\nEven if the victim survived, the poison would linger on - as in the case of the unfortunate Dutchman who was hit in the chest by a dart, then, *three years later*, \"felt a burning in the same spot, followed by a raging fever that killed him.\"\n\nBesides the blowgun, poison was applied on stabbing spears and swords. One clever innovation for close-range combat was turning the blowgun into a bayonet. As the Dutch reported:\n\n > We also had to heed the Blow-pipes themselves, because those warriors in the front ranks of the enemy had fastened them with iron blades, like spears, and smeared these with poison.\n\nThere were ways to save yourself from poison, of course. The oxhide armor most troops wore would have protected them from many darts, while an apparently excellent antidote was human feces. But well-made poison darts kill instantly, and a way to save victims of sufficient *Antiaris* poison from immediate death has never been found, not even today. \n\n# Tactics\n\nSo war has begun. What now? Stockades of rammed earth and thorny trees - big enough for a few hundred troops and sometimes as many as 3,000 people - would be built in strategic locations. But these were temporary, mainly intended to deter ambushes and night attacks. It was assumed that stockades would fall before a well-equipped enemy, so one side was always left open so that the defenders could flee when their position was about to fall.\n\nActual fortifications did exist. In the 1670s the Dutch encountered a formidable complex of three stout forts, protected by a six-feet-deep moat and pits full of sharpened bamboo spikes. After the mid-16th century brick forts began to be made and proved a major obstacle even for European firearms. \n\nBut overall, sieges were uncommon. Most battles were fought in the open, often between two stockades. The fight would begin with the armies in a fixed position; in at least one kingdom, there was a central battle corps and flanks to the left and right, and each division was manned by troops from a specific area of the kingdom. One war poem says:\n\n > As soon as the soldiers heard the command\n\n > they took up their positions.\n\n > Every man was at his post\n\n > almost anticipating his general's orders. \n\nBut we actually have little information about the tactics in these battles. It does seem likely that battles were commonly determined by a mass charge launched toward the enemy. As one European said:\n\n > So soon as they see the Enemy, they try to terrifie him with redoubl'd Cries and hideous Yells. All the Drums beat at a Time, and so soon as the King's Standard has given the Signal, they hasten to engage, and fall on with all their Fury upon the First they meet. [...] And then it is, that they butcher one another in such a Horrid manner, that they have an Abhorrency of it themselves, when the Battel is over, and that they have once recovered their Reason.\n\nThese charges often involved soldiers 'running amok,' or in a state of terrifying frenzy. Troops running amok could supposedly brush aside lethal injuries. One European described such an incident:\n\n > I plunged my lance into his stomach; nevertheless, the Makassar, as if he had no sense of feeling, advanced upon the weapon which I held fast in his body, and made incredible efforts to come at me in order to run me through; and he would infallibly have done it, if the hilt of the blade had not hindered him. I found that my best way was to retreat a little, still keeping the lance in his stomach, without venturing to repeat my thrust, till at length I was relieved by others of the lancemen who laid him dead upon the spot.\n\nCharges also involved cavalry, although Europeans believed that South Sulawesi troops \"were much better Infantry than Cavalry.\" Nonetheless, South Sulawesi was a major center of cavalry and \"indigenous cavalry presented a very real challenge\" to the Dutch as late as the 19th century. (If you're wondering how cavalry can exist in the tropics, [Sulawesi has its own breed of ponies.](_URL_0_))\n\nOnce the battle was lost, the defeated army sought to make an honorable retreat. In one campaign the army of Gowa was forced to abandon their stockades, but as they retreated they fired a salvo of muskets to let the enemy know that they had retreated in an organized manner.\n\nOne final tactic was perhaps the simplest: foraging. Armies would raid enemy territories for provisions and plunder, burning down villages and chopping down fruit trees on the way. This was a potentially devastating tactic because it sapped enemy morale and deprived the enemy army of basic supplies. Rape and pillage could win wars just as much as battles and sieges. " ] }

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[ [ "http://equineavenue.com/site/horse-breeds/sulawesi-pony/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sulawesi", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidie_Regency", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowgun", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banda_Aceh", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiaris" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1s0jnd" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "There are some errors in /u/dbcanuck's post, at least if we're thinking of the area *prior* to the arrival of Europeans. A lot of what's said in that post more closely resembles a later colonial era view. The main issue is that dbcanuck skips over the people who were living in the immediate Niagara area at the time.\n\nAt the time of European contact, or perhaps slightly before, the the Erie had been living east of the Niagara River, with the Seneca being east of them (the Genesee Valley being the boundary). In traditional Iroquoian history, the Erie were once part of the Seneca - and thus part of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois Confederacy). Eventually they opted for autonomy and left the Haudenosaunee to form their own confederacy; there are two versions of this story - one that says the split happened during a war and another that says the split was peaceful but a war followed sometime later. Regardless, this war is said to be the reason that the Erie Confederacy moved from the eastern Niagara region to the eastern shore of Lake Erie. \n\nTheir departure left the area between the Niagara River and the Genesee River virtually uninhabited. The Seneca were eyeing it for themselves, but so were the Wenro. The Wenro were one of the nations of the Chonnonton / Neutral Nation that existed in southern Ontario west of the Niagara River. Incidentally, the Niagara are one of the other nations in this group and river and falls were named after them. I wrote more about Chonnonton culture in [this post](_URL_0_). \n\nThe Wenro crossed the Niagara River in the late 1620s, thinking the rest of the Chonnonton would back them up if they needed to fight the Seneca. Seneca called their bluff, and the Chonnonton decided to cut the Wenro loose rather than fight the entirety of the Haudenosaunee. Since they were on their own, the Wenro decided to cede the territory to the Seneca and evacuated to the Wendat (Huron) Confederacy north of Lake Ontario. [This map](_URL_1_) so the situation in 1630, just before the Wenro exodus (**EDIT**: I just notice that the map still has \"St. Lawrence Iroquois\" north of the Mohawk. This is inaccurate since the St. Lawrence Iroquoians lost a war against the Algonquins and ended up merging with the Wendat and the Mohawk. So in 1630, that area should be Algonquin.)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/413p5a/what_was_everyday_life_like_for_an_aboriginal_in/cz08tw9", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Wenro-Territorium_um_1630.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cexbsnw", "ceykveh" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "If you are wondering about the 100 years war and the part the longbow played in it, I believe I can help you there. In the battle of Crecy, the English victory was due in part to the cunning leadership of King Edward III. His use of longbowmen was legendary, and the first major victory for longbows over crossbows. Their astounding success was due to the tenacity of the English archers, and their ability to **keep their bowstrings dry**. The crossbowmen could not remove their heavy strings. So, on the rain drenched field of Crecy, their crossbows were proven useless. So, their knights marched on without any cover. This allowed the English knights to move around with impunity, and strike wherever they felt necessary. That, combined with the ranged assistance of the English bowmen, won them Crecy. Apparently, it took them a century to fix their poor tactics, as they suffered yet another crushing defeat on the battlefields of Agincourt, under very similar circumstances. However, the crossbowmen were able to adapt, thus giving their army much needed consistent ranged support. That, and keep in mind that the French were able to draw troops from local conscription; the English were not. It would take amphibious landings to receive additional troops. Also, as armour became more and more advanced, they were able to withstand longbows more well. This is where the crossbow became the ultimate knight-killing machine. A crossbow has much more power in each shot than a bow. It was able to puncture armour more effectively, thus rendering English knights more vulnerable. However, both sides used the crossbow, and the longbow, respectively. The French just used the crossbow more, and were able to drive the English from their land, and keep their country.\nI really hope this helps!\n\n\n\n\n\nSource:_URL_0_\n _URL_1_", "It depends on what the French commander had access to, essentially. They used pavise crossbowmen at Constance, rushed the longbowmen with cavalry before they could prepare their defenses at Patay, did the same but with infantry at Pontvallain, used artillery for psychological warfare purposes at Formigny, and forced the English to attack at Castillon (which is sometimes called \"Crecy in reverse\").\n\nGenerally speaking, when provided with good logistics and experienced commanders, French armies found a variety of ways to defeat English armies and the longbowmen they used. The consistent problem facing the French was usually a problem of logistics, in that French commanders could not be certain what forces would be available to them on the battlefield. This prevented effective combined arms counters to the English combined arms forces, and even blunted the force of those counters when they could muster them - look at Crecy and the inability to supply the Genoese crossbowmen with their pavises!\n\nAfter the *Ordonnance* reforms of the 15th century, French armies were able to ensure that they had certain elements (artillery especially) at hand when battle was joined, which in turn allowed commanders more tactical flexibility in order to beat the English at their own game." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.britishbattles.com/100-years-war/crecy.htm", "http://www.britishbattles.com/100-years-war/agincourt.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d9g5nzg", "d9gpvat" ], "score": [ 12, 2 ], "text": [ "With the greatest respect, your question is based on a largely false or flawed assumption that most western countries did experience unprecedented levels of economic prosperity following the years 1914-1920. Certainly this is true of the US, not so much for Europe. The places where the ravages of the Great War, and/or Spanish Flu hit hardest were the ones that fared worst during the 1920's, which is also partly the reason why fascist leaders came to power in Italy in 1922 with Mussolini, in Germany in 1933 with Hitler, and in Spain in 1936 with Franco. Countries that could not take advantage of the post war economy were even less prepared to weather the Great Depression and, as Franklin Roosevelt said in his State of the Union address in 1944, \"People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.\"\n\n**Let's start with the UK:**\n\nOf all European nations, the UK probably fared the best during the Roaring Twenties. However, economically, times were still very tough. Soldiers who returned from the war faced huge levels of unemployment. Between the years 1900-1910, unemployment peaked at 7.8% with it as low as 3.8% in 1913. In 1921 unemployment had risen to 16.9%. Unemployment stayed well above 10%, briefly dipping to 9.7% in 1927, but rose again in '28-'29[.pdf Source](_URL_1_)\n\nThe big reason for this level of unemployment was the lack of demand for British goods. Before the war, the British economy had largely depended on its industrial production of goods and resources. In Liverpool, Manchester, and much of the North East, textiles, particularly in cotton from Egypt and jute from India were enormously important, but developments in new synthetic fabrics from the US, particularly in cotton substitutes like Rayon, hurt the British economy enormously. \n\nSteelworks in Newcastle and Sheffield, without the demands of a war, suffered layoffs and cutbacks from which they would never recover.\n\nCoal mining in Wales was still strong, but as shipping, factories, even domestic heating moved away from coal to petroleum and gas, demand was stagnating. This coupled with frequent strikes and labour disputes put the future of British coal mining on a knife edge.\n\nAs evidenced, the UK's problem wasn't so much a lack of manpower (they hadn't fared nearly so badly as Germany or France), but a shift in the global economy as the US moved to overtake the UK and a global production powerhouse. Massive immigration from Europe helped the US enormously in this regard.\n\n**France:**\n\nFrance, on the other had, hand virtually no unemployment. Hovering between 2%-5%, peaking in 1927 at 11%. [.pdf Source, unemployment tables on page 9](_URL_0_)\n\nFor France, the problem was manpower. Between 1914-1918, French casualties were estimated at 1.6-1.7 million, roughly 4.3%-4.4% of the total population, roughly 1% higher than German casualties as percentage of population. It's important to note that French casualties were higher, or more concentrated in the North and North-East with huge damage done to infrastructure. \n\nFrance made enormous strides in terms of industrial production, as the country continued to industrialize largely rural areas. However the lack of manpower continued to hamstring them. The result was a mixed bag. France struggled to repay its foreign debts, so the nation remained largely poor, but the plentiful work and (comparatively) low working population meant that the coming Great Depression was less severe in France than in the UK or Germany. Many historians have pointed to this as a partial explanation for why fascism failed to make significant inroads in French politics in the 1930's, though communism did. That and the right-wing parties, who were in power during the war, were blamed for the scale of the destruction.\n\n**Germany:**\n\nFamously, Germany fared pretty badly post-war. Not only did it have to make reparations payments for its part in the war, but also trade restrictions and tariffs were placed on German made goods, making reliance on an export economy rather difficult.\n\nRather like France, unemployment was actually fairly low intially, around 2% in 1921-1922, again owing to the casualties from the Great War. For Germany the issue was twofold. Firstly, the German government under Gustav Streseman had tried to kickstart the economy by spending heavily on social services which, without a strong private sector, is very difficult to sustain and was coupled with the aforementioned reparations. Secondly, though industry was on the rebound, exports struggled so they stubbornly refused to become profitable.\n\nAdd to this the infamous hyperinflation Germany suffered in 1923, and the Wall St crash of 1929, which largely scuppered the Young Plan (which was a US led plan to lessen the strain of reparation repayments and to replace the failed Dawes Plan of 1924) and led to many US banks recalling loans to Europe, meant that any small gains the German economy made between 1920 and 1929 were quickly extinguished. As the world economy crumbled, and governments (particularly the US) sought to protect industry at home rather than abroad, world trade fell through the floor and unemployment in Europe soared leading to the Great Depression of 1933 and contributing to the rise of fascist powers in Europe\n\n**Further points:**\n\nUnfortunately, I haven't time to flesh this out properly, so I won't hold it against the mods if they see this as an incomplete answer and choose to remove it, but I hope it provides some context to show that the Roaring Twenties didn't exactly 'roar' for everyone.\n\nA couple more points I want to make very quickly:\n\nWhile I in no way wish to disparage the American contribution to the war effort, American casualties expressed as a percentage of the US population is only around 0.13% which was a loss of manpower the US economy could weather comfortably. Combine that with the mass influx of migrants from Europe and the challenges facing industrial power in UK, France, and Germany, and the relative un-industrialization of the rest of Europe, meant the US was poised to become the dominant economic power, which it achieved comfortably by 1929.\n\nAs an aside, Bill Bryson's *One Summer; America, 1927* provides fantastic context for how America emerged as the dominant economic and cultural power in the mid-late 1920's, essentially, an explanation for why the Twenties Roared so loudly in the US.", "To point out a few more false assumptions and points for thought: \n\n* Not nearly \"an entire generation\" was wiped out. Yes, lots and lots and lots of people died. But regarding Germany specifically, approx 2million men died in the war out of approx 13million mobilised.That leaves 11million returning. Additionally, not everyone mobilised was at the front, and even if they were they weren't there all the time - the idea of a \"front generation\" is pretty much a myth. This means that while a significant proportion may have returned psychologically damaged, many more returned to a pretty ordinary life. (See Richard Bessel - *Germany after the First World War* for many more stats and the effects of the demobilisation.)\n\n* To be a young person in the 1920s, you likely didn't fight in WWI. If you're 25 in 1925 (to pick an easy example), you were 14 when the war started, 18 when it ended so at most you were drafted for a few months at the end. If you're 20 then, you definitely didn't fight. (Also see Richard Bessel on the generation that was just too young to fight and how this influenced the romanticisation of the war, the idea of the front generation which could be seen as an \"exclusive club\" that those too young had just missed out on, the effects of many jobs being given to returning soldiers rather than those who had not fought etc.)\n\n* The roaring twenties aren't necessarily about rich glitz and glamour. You link them to economic prosperity but I don't see that a necessary linkage compared to the link to a new and different culture. Sure, they are most easily portrayed that way but post-war Germany was culturally avant-garde. The 20s were a lot about a change in *culture* towards the modern e.g. the new woman, identity, youth-movements and independence etc. You can be an \"new woman\", \"independent\" with your \"own identity\" and go dancing, all without being rich. (Endless literature, maybe Peukert - *The Weimar Republic. A Crisis of Classical Modernity* is a good starting point for a critical view of \"modernity\"). \n\n* As others have pointed out, the twenties weren't a big thing everywhere. German history especially is very Berlin-centered and Berlin was a cultural epicentre. That's what you see in those \"roaring 20s\" representations of the era. What you don't see is the life in other parts of the country. (I found Leif Jerram - *Germany's other modernity* interesting regarding how modernity was experienced in Munich, although it's not a comprehensive overview of course.)\n\n* You hear a lot about a the \"crisis\" of the 20s regarding Europe. And the economic crisis was of course real. But what is interesting that while contemporaries talked about crisis a lot, it didn't necessarily have the negative connotations associated with the word today. Instead, crisis means that a decision is about due that could go either way (think of a crisis in an illness - either the patient recovers or he dies, the crisis comes before the decision). Instead, the contingency of the time period was a big thing. This means the openness of it - the decision is nearly due but it could lead to a good future too. (See Föllmer & Graf *Die Krise der Weimarer Republik*, unfortunate only in German). This openness, the possibilities many people saw (and which was expressed in the literature) is, I would argue, part of the defining feature of the 20s where society and culture breaks away from more conservative norms (although of course the conservative nature and authoritarianism also remained a big deal in postWWI Germany - nothing is true for everyone, everywhere!!). \n\nSo it could be argued that the \"roaring 20s\" were culturally strongly influenced *because* of the aftermath of WWI causing a state of \"crisis\" in which new possibilities arose. " ] }

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[ [ "http://irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/12-88.pdf", "http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-trends--discontinued-/january-1996/unemployment-since-1881.pdf" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dwqp4e7", "dwqslg7", "dwqwnau", "dxhfsg5" ], "score": [ 14, 5, 11, 6 ], "text": [ "This sort of thing is THE hallmark (not just A hallmark!) of the Intermountain West. Towns frequently burst into existence around the discovery of an ore body with precious metals. But precious metals being what they are, they are typically rare, and so while an ore body might seem promising, it was a finite resource and typically limited at that. This resulted in a rush to the new location with people eager for an opportunity to strike a claim, find a job, or to provide essential services. This often resulted is a sudden rise in population and the building of a lot of structures. When the ore was exhausted, the population would just as suddenly dwindle. Buildings were often hauled away to the next boom - or they fell victim to a harsh environment.\n\nIf the community was sufficiently long-lived and promising, it might succeed in establishing itself as the seat of county government, with the promise of a few jobs when the boom subsided. That said, seats of government can be moved - and they frequently are - so even this source of revenue and employment was vulnerable, and some communities went from shadows of their former selves to complete oblivion.\n\nThere are hundreds of instances of all of this in the vast uninhabited outback of Nevada, the seventh largest state in the nation (with roughly 87% of its land under federal management). In the nineteenth century, Hamilton was home to an important mining boom and became the county seat of White Pine County. It yielded that title to Ely, which retains it to this day. Dayton prospered as a result of it being able to offer milling to the Comstock Mining District, but as the mines failed, so did Dayton. It retained the title of Lyon County seat until its courthouse burned in 1910 (locals maintain it was arson caused by someone who wanted to move the seat of government). Dayton subsequently dwindled, although it has enjoyed a recent resurgence as a bedroom community. Yerington took the seat of government, and it retains that title.\n\nAustin in central Nevada became a boomtown with such promise that everyone thought it would overtake Virginia City, which was suffering a slump (Virginia City's mines prospered for an astounding two decades before it also crashed). An entrepreneur even moved Virginia City's International Hotel to Austin in the mid 1860s, and Austin became the seat of government for Lander County (building what is likely the nation's last Greek revival courthouse, erected in 1872). Its mines quickly failed. It lost a part of Lander County to neighboring Eureka County (experiencing another mining boom-bust cycle), but it retained its government for nearly another century until Battle Mountain was able to take the seat of Lander County government.\n\nOne of the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon involved Goldfield, often put forward as the site of the last gold rush in the continental US. Shortly after the turn of the century, thousands flooded into remote south-central Nevada and established the town of Goldfield, which quickly took the title of Esmeralda County government from Hawthorne (which had earlier taken it from failing Aurora, now a ghost town). At one point Goldfield had about 25,000 people and was the largest city in Nevada. Its mines failed within a decade, and eventually Hawthorne began a fight to regain its seat of government: although its mines had also failed, it was able to claim other means of support. Ultimately, the Nevada government split the enormous Esmeralda County to form two new counties, so both places could have the benefit of county government. Goldfield and its diminished Esmeralda County declined until that enormous piece of real estate (rivalling the size of some smaller states) had only a little more than 300 residents.\n\nThis cycle of boom and bust has resulted in what may be a record for the most times that \"largest community in the territory/state\" has been exchanged: That title has moved from Dayton (AKA Chinatown) to Mormon Station (AKA Genoa) to Carson City to Virginia City to Reno, to Goldfield, back to Reno, and finally (or so far!!!) to Las Vegas. That's eight times that the title has moved; whether that is record could be contested here, but it is certainly remarkable.\n\nThis is a pattern throughout the mining West, caused by an industry with resources located in remote, often inhabitable land, where cities boomed into existence because of the attraction of wealth, and then just as quickly disappear. Two state parks are dedicated to this phenomenon: California's Bodie State Park and Nevada's Berlin State Park both commemorate the nineteenth-century quest for wealth and ingenuity that it took to scrape together an existence where nature provided little - together with the inevitable abandonment of the towns when it was no longer possible tor resist the effects of gravity.", "I spent some time as a youth in a small town in Missouri named \"Excelsior Springs\" which I've always thought of as a great example of a boom town.\n\nThe town of Excelsior Springs was formed around several fresh water springs in the area that all had different alleged \"healing properties.\" Within a year of the town being officially founded by two men named Flack and Wyman in 1880, almost 200 homes had been built in the area.\n\nBy late 1881, schools, an opera, and several hotels (including [this famous 1888 hotel I worked at briefly](_URL_0_) ) were being built. No other city in Missouri had ever seen as much growth as Excelsior Springs in a single year by this point. It continued to expand, building a golf course and becoming a destination for a few US Presidents.\n\nNow before I continue, what made/makes Excelsior Springs springs so unique is their incredibly diverse and dense combinations of different minerals found in the waters. For example, there are only 4 springs in Europe that have relevant levels of Iron and Manganese, and the only two in the United States are located in Excelsior Springs. There are over 20 different springs with different levels of types of minerals, making it one of the most dense areas of mineral-enriched spring water in the world. This was the primary reason for the idea of the waters' healing properties, and the explosive growth of the town.\n\nIn 1963, with help from national organizations like the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation, legislation was passed that prevented many of the clinics that had opened in the area from advertising the spring water as \"cures.\" In addition, the Saturday Evening Post published an article called [The Hucksters of Pain](_URL_1_) which destroyed a lot of the credibility of the springs' healing properties.\n\nA combination of modern medicine, the dying of 3 railroad nodes in the area, and former citizens leaving the city for greener pastures essentially killed off the city by the 1970's. You could say their main source of revenue... *evaporated*\n\nIt still exists today, and the Springs are still a tourist destination, but the amount of abandoned Art Deco buildings and boarding houses still seen today are both beautiful and indicative of a lost age for the small town.\n\n\n", "I'll answer this from a slightly different angle, in how these towns entertained themselves, using three ice hockey teams as examples:\n\nThe Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was the home of the first openly professional ice hockey league during the early 1900s, a direct response to a mining boom, particularly copper, that occured. The governing bodies in Canada refused to allow professionals, but the US was a little more lax on amateurism (at least in regards to hockey, at that time), so the International Hockey League was formed in 1904, based in several towns that grew due to the mining industry (and Pittsburgh, as it had an arena with artificial ice, I believe the first to do so). But with the 1907 crash in commodities, and the subsequent legalisation of professionals in Canada at the same time, the IHL folded up; however most of the top ice hockey players of the era played at least a few games in the league during this time period, giving it some added notoriety. Just a small note about the impact of boom-towns and what happens around them.\n\nThe Klondike Goldrush also saw the formation of an ice hockey team in Dawson City, Yukon, though several years after the goldrush had ended. The team, the Dawson City Nuggets, are most known for their 1905 Stanley Cup challenge, in which they travelled across Canada, travelling variously by train, dog sled, boat, and walking, until they reached Ottawa and played the strongest team in the country, the Senators (known unofficially as the Silver Seven). The Nuggets would proceed to lose the two-game series 9-2 and then 23-2, the latter being the largest margin of victory in a Stanley Cup game.\n\nA similar situation happened with the Ontario town of Kenora, known as Rat Portage until 1905. It experience a minor boom when the Canadian Pacific Railway built a stop there in 1877, lasting until about 1908. They established a hockey team, the Thistles, comprised entirely of local players, and competed for the Stanley Cup four times between 1903 and 1907, winning in January 1907. With some 5000 people in the town at the time they were, and remain, the smallest city/town to win the Cup, and after losing it in March 1907, the shortest holders of the trophy. The economic downturn, and advent of professionalism spelt the end of the team, which folded in 1908.\n\nThere are probably more examples I could add, but the above three are the most famous ones in hockey, and show both the rise and fall of boomtowns and their economies. All of them happened for simple reasons: these rapidly-growing towns/regions had an influx of people (mainly young, single men) who suddenly had a lot of disposable income, and they needed entertainment. Sports proved to be a great answer to that, especially as betting was a huge part of sports culture in the early 1900s (and far more open and prominent than today). Of course once the economic upswing ended in these places, the teams died out, just as quickly as they arrived, and they are now largely footnotes, somewhat insignificant in the overall status of hockey today (while the IHL helped push forward professionalism in Canada, it was arguably only a matter of time before that happened).\n\nSources:\nInterestingly enough, there are several academic papers on this very topic (at least for the IHL and the Thistles; nothing on the Nuggets that I know of, yet):\n\n* Daniel Mason, *The Origins and Development of the International Hockey League and Its Effects on the Sport of Professional Ice Hockey in North America* (1994). Mason wrote his MA thesis on the IHL, which has come to be regarded as the major source for the league. He later published a condensed form as a journal article, \"The International Hockey League and the Professionalization of Ice Hockey, 1904-1907\" in *Journal of Sport History*\n\n* John Wong, *From Rat Portage to Kenora: The Death of a (Big-Time) Hockey Dream* another article in *Journal of Sport History* looks at the economic impact of the Thistles, and how it shows the rise and fall of these boomtowns.\n\n* For the overall impact of all three, I'd suggest:\n* Michael McKinnley, *Hockey's Rise from Sport to Spectacle* (2000). Not an academic work, but thorough (even though he lifted a passage in the book from somewhere else; yes, plagiarised), and goes over these three examples in particular.", "(1/2)\n\nWell I'm pretty late here but I thought I could maybe add something about buccaneer or pirate \"boomtowns\" in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The economic impact of theft at sea could be very important, not just to those whose wealth was stolen and not just to the thieves themselves but also to thriving communities in port side towns who set themselves up to benefit from this plunder, in many ways far more than the buccaneers and pirates ever did. These port side towns known today as \"pirate havens\" thrived on this sometimes huge influx of stolen plunder that the buccaneers brought back with them from their raids and usually recklessly spent ashore on alcohol and prostitution, or cheaply fenced to enterprising merchants. \n\nAlthough their glory days are long gone, the names of some of these major havens in the Caribbean like Tortuga, Port Royal and Nassau still live on and conjure up images of drunken and debauched pirates rampaging through the streets. Of course something like this has always been a stereotype of sailors in all eras but the added impact of huge amounts of stolen plunder made these piratical and violent sailors especially extravagant and important. However, as European nations increasingly grew to have more peaceful and mutually beneficial trading relations with one another in the late 17th and early 18th century, those governments that had once given tacit or explicit support to the buccaneers as lawful privateers began to turn on them and outlaw them as pirates. And with that crackdown on piracy, those port side towns that had once thrived on it also quieted down faded away into obscurity. I believe the last real \"pirate haven\" came to an end in 1718 with the British capture of Nassau in the Bahamas, although by then the era when buccaneers could readily rely on real safe-havens offered by complicit local governors had already disappeared at least several decades earlier.\n\n**The heyday of Tortuga and Port Royal**\n\nOne of the first notorious pirate havens in the Caribbean was the island of Tortuga off the north coast of Hispaniola (modern Haiti). Although claimed by the Spanish, it was first taken over and settled by French adventurers in about 1625 who survived by hunting wild cattle and pigs in the wilderness and then selling the hides and smoked meat to passing ships (the apparatus on which they smoked the meat was referred to as a *boucan* and this is where the words bacon and buccaneer come from). Despite only numbering a few dozen at first and despite being attacked and driven away several times by the Spanish, the French settlers on Tortuga and nearby Hispaniola always returned and quickly grew in number. By the early 1630s they were striking back at their Spanish attackers by undertaking acts of piracy against passing Spanish ships using small boats. By the 1640s and 1650s, the buccaneers had grown bolder and they were joined in Tortuga by hundreds of English and Dutch privateers who banded with them to attack the Spanish, either by capturing Spanish ships at sea or raiding coastal towns. \n\nBy the 1660s, buccaneers in Tortuga had reached the height of their power and frequently sacked large Spanish towns along the Caribbean before returning to Tortuga to spend their loot. The former buccaneer surgeon Alexandre Exquemelin writing in 1678 describes a typical return voyage of buccaneers under their ruthless leader Francois l'Olonnais after sacking the Spanish towns of Maracaibo and Gibraltar in 1666:\n\n > Having divided the spoils, the buccaneers set sail for Tortuga, where they arrived with great joy a month later. For some the joy was short-lived -- many could not keep their money three days before it was gambled away. However, those who had lost what they had were helped by the others. A short time previously, three ships had arrived from France with cargoes of wine and brandy, so liquor was very cheap. But this did not continue for long: prices quickly went up, and soon the buccaneers were paying four pieces of eight [equivalent to about $200] for a flagon of brandy. Tortuga at that time was full of traders and dealers. The governor got the ship laden with cacao for a twentieth of what it was really worth. The tavern-keepers got part of their money and the whores took the rest, so once more the buccaneers -- including l'Olonnais their chief -- had to consider ways of obtaining more booty. (Exquemelin, 104)\n\nAlthough the governors and merchants in Tortuga benefited tremendously from all this, their ultimate control over things was often tenuous and nominal at best. The buccaneers tended to be strongly independent and violently ready to oppose government regulations. The French governor of Tortuga, Jean le Vasseur, was killed by the buccaneers in 1653 after a dispute. In 1669 when Bertrand d'Ogeron, the French appointed governor of Tortuga, attempted to impose trade restrictions and tariffs on the buccaneers living on the island, the buccaneers rose up in arms and shot at him in his boat. Then a group of them planned to attack the governor's fortress and kill him, only being dissuaded when two fully armed French warships showed up to intimidate the buccaneers into retreating to the woods. The French soldiers landed and burned down the buccaneers' houses but then negotiated and agreed to the buccaneers' demands of free trading rights.\n\nThese towns were often extremely violent places because pirates themselves were engaged in a very violent business. Exquemelin describes how buccaneers would frequently get into quarrels and kill each other or fight to the death in duels. The behavior of later pirates in the 1720s in a base they had established in Madagascar was described by one observer like this:\n\n > When we bartered with the Pyrates at Ranter-Bay for Provisions, they frequently shewed the Wickedness of their Dispositions, by quarrelling and fighting with each other upon the most trifling Occasions. It was their Custom never to go abroad, except armed with Pistols or a naked Sword in their Hand, to be in Readiness to defend themselves or to attack others. (Downing, 115)\n\nDuring this same time in the English town of Port Royal in Jamaica, the situation was no less violent and chaotic. Captured from the Spanish in 1655, Port Royal quickly became an alternate base for buccaneers to freely spend their loot. As in Tortuga, the settlement in Jamaica was under constant threat of Spanish invasion to recapture the island and this contributed to it becoming a refuge for buccaneers who were longstanding enemies of Spain. As in Tortuga, the English, French and Dutch buccaneers came there to recklessly spend their loot on alcohol and women before departing again to bring back more. This was vividly described by the former buccaneer quoted earlier in his 1678 book *The Buccaneers of America:*\n\n > Captain Rock sailed for Jamaica with his prize, and lorded it there with his mates until all was gone. For that is the way with these buccaneers -- whenever they have hold of something, they don't keep it for long. They are busy dicing, whoring and drinking so long as they have anything to spend. Some of them will get through a good two or three thousand pieces of eight in a day -- and next day not have a shirt to their back. I have seen a man in Jamaica give 500 pieces of eight to a whore, just to see her naked. Yes, and many other impieties.\n\n > My own master often used to buy a butt of wine and set it in the middle of the street with the barrel-head knocked in, and stand barring the way. Every passer-by had to drink with him, or he'd have shot them dead with a gun he kept handy. Once he bought a cask of butter and threw the stuff at everyone who came by, bedaubing their clothes or their head, wherever best he could reach.\n\n > The buccaneers are generous to their comrades: if a man has nothing, the others will come to his help. The tavern-keepers let them have a good deal of credit, but in Jamaica one ought not to trust these people, for often they will sell you for debt, a thing I have seen happen many a time. Even the man I have just been speaking about, the one who gave the whore so much money to see her naked, and at that time had a good 3,000 pieces of eight -- three months later he was sold for his debts, by a man in whose house he had spent most of his money. \n\n > ... but to return to our tale. Captain Rock soon squandered all his money, and was obliged to put to sea again with his mates.... (Exquemelin, 81-82)\n\nThis \"Captain Rock\" mentioned here was known by the nickname Rock Braziliano and was originally a Dutchman. He was known to be incredibly violent and Exquemelin goes on to describe how in the early days of Port Royal he would get drunk and prowl the streets with his henchmen, attacking random people who got in his way and hacking off their limbs or killing them with his cutlass. Apparently the governor and any law-keeping forces in Port Royal were too afraid to do anything or arrest him. In fact, they probably not only feared violent retaliation from Braziliano's own crew (who were probably capable of killing the governor just as French buccaneers had done in Tortuga) but more importantly if they made an example of him that it would scare off other buccaneers from using Port Royal as a safe-haven. That would not only deprive Port Royal of its main source of revenue but leave the town virtually defenseless against Spanish attacks.\n\nPort Royal was grew to be referred by contemporaries as \"the wickedest place on earth\" and the \"Sodom of the New World\" one English clergyman wrote this description:\n\n > This town is the Sodom of the New World and since the majority of its population consists of pirates, cutthroats, whores and some of the vilest persons in the whole of the world, I felt my permanence there was of no use and I could better preach of the Word of God elsewhere among a better sort of folk. (Talty, 139-40)" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.elmshotelandspa.com/", "http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/18086891/hucksters-pain" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyzw5lv", "cz1qgtk" ], "score": [ 13, 2 ], "text": [ "I've never found any evidence suggesting it did.\n\nKathleen Tobin has written [an article](_URL_0_) claiming that policymakers' fears of atomic attack was a significant factor in population dispersal. I find it to be an astonishing piece of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, using a few magazine articles discussing the *concept* of dispersion to prove that it was federal policy—despite the absence of a single federal law or regulation on the subject.\n\nAs for the role of Interstate highways, those were proposed long before the Cold War, and throughout the years of congressional debate, military strategists repeatedly testified that they didn't need any particular routes or geometric specifications, always saying that highways built to promote commerce would also serve their needs. To Pres. Eisenhower, the public-works and job-creation aspects of the system were about as important as defense aspects. I am not aware of any serious civil defense or military rationale that was part of Congressional debate. The words \"and Defense\" were added to the name of the \"National System of Interstate Highways\" in conference committee, almost as an afterthought, and played no role in congressional voting. See *Congressional Record* 102, Part 8, pp. 10991-10997. The definitive source on this history is Rose, Mark H. *Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989.*", "There were definitely a lot of government _discussion_ about the value of dispersion, from the point of view of civil defense (ameliorating damage from a nuclear attack). An article that discusses them in some detail is Peter Galison's \"War Against the Center\" (2006). In the 1950s, for example, the Bureau of Commerce directed planners in metropolitan areas to move new industry outside of city centers. Project East River, in 1952, studied the problems of dispersion specifically as civil defense issues, and the ways in which you could encourage it to happen (e.g. by making it a consideration in federal loans, insurance, and contracts). There were also some cases of specific federal agencies (like the Atomic Energy Commission) having their headquarters being located outside of assumed target areas (in this case, the AEC was moved to Germantown, MD, rather than Washington, DC). Apparently there were some tax incentives put into place for moving industry out of prime metro areas in the early-to-mid 1950s. \n\nSo there was urging, there was planning, there were many pamphlets and studies. Is this why dispersion and suburbanization actually _happened_? That, I think, is a harder argument to make. There are lots of other reasons (economic and social) that can be more directly attributed to those movements. I am not sure (and Galison's article does not indicate) whether these more heavy-handed inducements (other than the aforementioned tax benefits) actually were put into place. " ] }

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[ "http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2016/01/70-percent-global-internet-traffic-goes-through-northern-virginia/124976/" ]

[ [ "https://pdf.yt/d/ngRmM9OYAqvydrAi" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "co47wk7", "co4fz92", "co4hqwo" ], "score": [ 11, 8, 7 ], "text": [ "There wasn't anything that would guarantee survival, but there were things you could do to increase your chances. Even in the worst years, 1937-1939, the number of people who were \"repressed\" (contemporary term for those that were arrested and either deported, imprisoned, or executed) was between 1.5 and 2 million -- about 1% of the total population of the country. So your chances to survive we're pretty good -- unless you were one of the priesthood, or a relative of former czarist civil servants or officers, or rich, or Jewish, or a supporter of the wrong political movement du jour, or, funnily enough, being a communist party member -- in 1936-39 arrest rate among those was 50%!\n\nGenerally, not being one of the above, and not getting yourself noticed (e.g. making political statements in front of others, having a business or trading \"under the table\", being in someone's way (always a good chance of being denounced)), you would have very good chances to survive, above 99.9% I would say.\n\nSources: born there and know history; Conquest's \"The Great Terror\" (1990), Rogovin \"The Party of the Executed\" (in Russian). ", "If you were brave, in decent health, and had the resources, you could have done like the Lykov family and [fled into the Siberian wilderness](_URL_0_).\n\nOf course, this was not easy, by the Lykov account, and most of the family did not survive to old age. On the other hand, they lasted altogether for several decades, which might have been more than if they stayed.", "I hadn't intended to write so much on this so apologies if it comes across as somewhat disjointed. It started out as a reply to /u/Impstar2 but ended up rambling well beyond that.\n\n**Repression Deaths**\n\nJust a note on the figures. There's obviously been a huge amount of debate and controversy on these over the past few decades but the trend, as I can see it, has tended to favour lower numbers to those popularised by Conquest. \n\nThis debate became particularly acute when Getty *et al* published, in English, the official NKVD archival figures of 682,000 executions for 1937-38. Now, nobody accepts these numbers literally but they serve as a lower boundary to the estimates and are more useful than the previous estimates and guesswork that had informed Conquest's work.\n\nWith this in mind, today's estimates for 1937-38 (in English language literature) typically tend to range from 1-1.2m deaths. But, as I say, this is still a pretty contented area. Going beyond deaths and into the broader category of 'victims of repression' is even more difficult.\n\nThe important point is that while these numbers are high, and are higher when you add in Gulag figures, they do not represent a cull of the Soviet population in general. Soviet citizens would know about the purges but there was little to fear unless they were in one of the below victim groups.\n\n**Victims**\n\n/u/Impstar2 is right to point out the degree to which the elites suffered. The ranks of Communist functionaries was particularly gutted. There is a great story of two young graduates and junior party members (Ponomarenko and Chuyanov) being called up to party offices in Moscow only to be immediately packed off to the regions as the new heads of the Communist Party in Belarus and Stalingrad, respectively. In many ways this was a clean sweep of the pre-Purge party leadership.\n\nBut the Purges weren't an entirely elite affair, as was once thought. The majority of deaths were products of the 'mass operations', Order 00447 being justly infamous. In addition to those with suspect class backgrounds, at high-risk were those labelled 'socially harmful elements' (eg homeless, beggars, prostitutes, 'hooligans'), the intelligentsia and petty criminals. In addition, the 'national operations' targeted a range of suspect national minorities.\n\nAnd, of course, there was pure bad luck. Getty provides the example of Turkmenistan in 1938 where \"a fire at a factory became an occasion to meet 'quotas' for sabotage by arresting everybody who happened to be there and forcing them to name 'accomplices' (whose number soon exceeded one hundred persons)\". He also notes that \"it was always possible to round up people having the bad luck to be at the marketplace, where a beard made one suspect of the 'crime' of being a mullah.\"\n\nBut, while there is still debate on how far down the terror reached into society, for most people who never appeared on the state's radar there was, other than bad luck, little to fear. Workers in high-priority industries or with in-demand skills were relatively unscathed by the repression. (The draconian labour laws to tighten labour discipline didn't begin to appear until late 1938.) Workers were also protected to a degree by their enterprises, who were loath to lose skilled labour.\n\nEven those that were at risk could sometimes survive by moving (so called self-dekulakisation) and getting work elsewhere. (Occasionally the neighbouring village was far enough, the Soviet state apparatus being uncoordinated enough that this sometimes sufficed.) This was after all a society continually in flux.\n\n**Sources**\n\nMichael Ellman's *Soviet Repression Statistics* is a nice summary of the 1990s literature on the topic, particularly the repression deaths. \n\nThe key post-Soviet paper on repression is Getty *et al* *Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years*, which gave rise to a range of related polemics and articles. That also serves as the reference for 'bad luck'.\n\nThe story on rapid promotion during the purges came from Shelia Fitzpatrick's *Education and Social Mobility in the USSR*.\n\nFor general discussion around the purges and the nature of its victims, see Paul Hagenloh's *Stalin's Police* and Gerland and Werth's chapter on mass violence in *Beyond Totalitarianism*.\n\nThe note on 'self-dekulakisation' came from Mark Edele's *Stalinist Society.* Also useful, in understanding the reactions of ordinary people, is Sarah Davies' *Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia*." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/?no-ist" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdv8qfs" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The Versailles Treaty in 1919 assigned to Poland the territories of Poznan (Great Poland) and Gdansk Pomerania (is Germany and the West also known as Western Prussia or Danzig Corridor) and decided that Upper Silesia and southern part of the Eastern Prussia will be plebiscite territories.\n\nGreater Poland was already controlled by local Polish authorities since the uprsing in December 1918; Pomerania was taken over in July 1919.\n\nThe Prussian plebiscite took part in July 1920 and was quite a disaster for Poland who only won a few villages.\n\nUpper Silesia was finally was divided after 3 Polish uprising and a plebiscite in October 1921.\n\nPolish southern borders were created after heavy disputes (sometimes open conflict) with Czechoslovakia over the former Duchy of Teschen/Cieszyn and Spis(z) and Orava regions. The conflict was somehow resolved in 1920 with the arbitration of the Western Powers, on terms that were rather unfavorable to Poland. Some very small border changes were later made in 1924.\n\nPolish eastern border largely defined by the March 1921 Riga Peace Treaty with the Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (USSR not yet existing)\n\nThis didn't include the important areas of Vilnius and Eastern Galicia through. Vilnius was taken over by a \"rebellious\" (actually acting on the orders of Polish supreme leader Józef Piłsudski) Polish general in 1920; for some times it functioned as an \"independent\" state of Middle Lithuania before it was officially annexed in 1922.\n\nEastern Galicia was captured by Poles in 1919 but its legal status was complicated: Western allies only consented to Polish administration for the period of 25 years, not incorporation. Polish ownership was offically recognized in 1923.\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fajmoly" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "There have been overall shifts, but there is also a \"horizontal\" diversity in the approach taken by historians, based on different theoretical models. Today, almost any good academic history will contain a section discussing its methodology. Academic history essentially consists of writing _narratives_ which are then critiqued, rejected, amended and so forth in the broader historiographical discussion.\n\nOne broad shift that I always think of is from the Rankean paradigm of figuring out history \"as it really was\" based on identifying the most reliable sources or harmonizing diverging narratives. This kind of presupposes that a history should always represent what a historian think is, overall, the most plausible account of everything. The problem is that this generally leads to a prohibitively broad scope (or more likely, vastly suboptimal criteria for choosing how to read sources), and therefore, historians will often deliberately write histories from a particular perspective. For example, Richard Payne's \"A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity\" re-examines the notion of the zealous, theocratic Sasanians oppressing their Christian and Jewish minorities by reading the traditional Armenian and Aramaic martyrdoms as situated in an Iranian political context, and discussing how the Sasanian Empire could be understood as a pluralistic society under a supreme monarch, submission to whom was paramount. For instance, this perspective suggests that Khusrau II's pilfering of the True Cross from Jerusalem was not merely intended to humiliate his Christian adversaries, but also to yield a glorious trophy for his Christian subjects and a banner for his legitimacy among the Christians of the Eastern Mediterranean he intended to subjugate.\n\nThis reading has various advantages, such as highlighting potential tensions between a more pluralistic monarch and religiously conservative high nobility and clergy, and yielding a potential explanation of the dissolution of noble support for Khusrau at the zenith of his empire's power. But it isn't necessarily the most plausible or palatable narrative in all regards - it has a tendency to gloss over real religious violence and persecutions as a necessity to uphold the barriers Payne takes as essential to this \"state of mixture\". However, Payne's monograph is far more useful in this form as a point of reference, than would be the likely outcome of an attempt to consider _every possible angle and implication_ of _every single source_ to highlight _every single possible implication of interest_.\n\nSo yes, the era a history is written in should absolutely be taken into account, but writing will differ not just based on time but also on the individual historian and their preferences, whether they have a degree in history or something like philology, and so forth. Ultimately, you should look at the historian's argument for reading a source in a particular way, as well as why what that reading yields might be interestikng. In most cases, you are unlikely to find a single monograph that is a truly satisfactory account of an era; studying the actual historiography and differences between accounts is necessary to get a strong understanding." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccoe96l", "ccoftu7", "ccot4a3", "ccozqvw", "ccq11k7" ], "score": [ 7, 27, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "During what era? Because France wasn't particularly unified until Richelieu.", "By West Francia and East Francia I am assuming you mean the kingdoms controlled by Charlemagne's descendants? After Charlemagne's death his son, Louis the Pious (co-emperor with Charles) took over and kept the kingdom intact for the most part. After Louis' death his three sons split the Empire. This was accustom of Frankish boys to split their father possessions. Since Louis was claimed the legitimate heir to Charlemagne's throne he was the only one to receive his father's blessing and the kingdom (he did rule in a kind of co-emperor deal, but he was the head honcho if you will). Since Louis had four boys, three who were \"legit\" they split their grandfather's empire. Lothair was named Emperor but after a series of rebellions and negotiations each took an equal piece based on economic means. They were not split by geography but by what the land, cities, and import/exports were worth. Charles the Bald received the western portion of the Empire, Louis the German received the Eastern Part, and Lothair I (eldest) received the lands between the two and that stretched to Rome. He was also named Emperor and King of the Franks. The brothers often quarreled trying to dispel one another and seize each others lands. Louis almost obtained the Western portion but was stretched too thin along his eastern border and in Western Francia. \n\nThe reason why the German part of the Frankish empire dissolved after Louis the German's death was because of his sons, nephews, and the rival duchies on his borders like the Slavs and Magyars. So it was a political and cultural differences as to why the German portion couldn't remain together, remember their sons get their possessions. As for the Western Frankish Empire his sons had a buffer zone from those rivals but also had the support of strong rulers. \n\nsources: [Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German](_URL_1_)\n\n[Early Carolingian Empire: Prelude to Empire](_URL_0_)\n\n\nAlso the label France is just for geography reasons. But for the medieval period it should labeled Frankish Kingdoms or Gaul depending on when and where you're referring.", "West Francia was not more unified than East Francia. East Francia did deal with the Magyar threat, but the Vikings devastated West Francia and helped to destabilize it. Basically the West Frankish Kings could not stop the vikings from pillaging at will, so they paid them off with ridiculous sums of silver, which bankrupted the Crown, which they then tried to pass off to the rest of nobility to collect. This goes on for 150 years or so of summer raids and destabilizes the government almost from the start, because nobility and ordinary citizens had no faith in the central government to protect them. Things were not much more centralized in East Francia, but it was the first major government in mainland Europe to really come together into a unified authority after Charlemagne, under Otto I in the early 10th century. As someone else suggested, West Francia did not really unite until after the 100 Years War.\n\nSource: Birth of the West, by Paul Collins", "Semantics aside, the HRE was less unified because the power of local landlords (particularly castellans) was disproportionate. A rich family would control and tax their own lands, and if they had a castle the emperor couldn't really control what they did. Geography played a big part in this, but I think the emperor being unable to control local powers is really the big reason.", "Paradoxically, it is because initially, power was much less centralised than in the East (with the Ottonians). The process of unification in France went from a totally shattered area in term of power distribution, slowly amalgamating itself, to one dominant player who took it all.\nIn Germany, it went from a powerful central power that kept being checked by growing regional ones. The main thing is that the German side loaded itself with the title of Emperor, and thus kept having imperial dreams for the longest time. For the Emperor, East Francia (Germany) was not a goal, just a step, a power BASE.\n\nThe French kings never really had such ambition: their one and only goal was to unify under their direct rule (the domain) their whole kingdom. For the French kings, France was the goal to achieve. They went at it for generations and generations, through marriage, wars, and acquisitions. It was a more modest goal and they got lucky to have one family rule (Capetians) for the longest time ever.\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Early-Carolingian-Warfare-Prelude-Empire/dp/0812221443", "http://www.amazon.com/Struggle-Empire-Kingship-Conflict-Conjunctions/dp/0801475295" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eec6xrn" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "u/kieslowskifan has an answer to this! \n\n_URL_0_ " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aetyc7/how_did_allied_forces_discover_the_names_of/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cley5bb", "clf4omh" ], "score": [ 4, 6 ], "text": [ "Follow up question, during Muslim Iberia what per centage of the population stayed christian?", "Different states treated the Muslims differently.\n\nCastile and it's possessions were known to be extremely aggressive towards Muslims and Jews. However, for most of the period of the Reconquista, this was in the form of a heavy tax burden placed on non-Christians, similar to the Jizya (the Muslim tax on non-Muslims) in place earlier, although probably much heavier. However, prior to the completion of the campaigns, this monetary contribution was probably more beneficial, as it encouraged conversions in the same way the Jizya did; that is, without having to resort to costly and dangerous population purges. The key thing is that any attempt to avoid the heavy (often crushing) burdens placed on them was harshly punished. This was an easy way to target individuals. In addition, huge swaths of land were appropriated by incoming Castilian nobility, which was often still worked by the formerly Muslim peasantry. This gave landowners another important leverage over those that worked their land.\n\nIn Aragon, things worked a little differently. Initially attempts were made to incorporate much of the existing leadership structure of the conquered areas of Catalonia and Valencia, but a revolt in the 13th century by Muslim leadership put the kibosh to that. However, within the coastal cities relatively lax treatment was available to Muslims and Jews, as these populations and their trading relationships were seen as very valuable.\n\nIn both Castile and Aragon, things changed drastically in the very end of the 15th and early 16th centuries. Muslims and Jews were given the option of conversion of expulsion, and this is when the Spanish Inquisition earned it's reputation. Paranoia about falsely converted Muslims and Jews was what gained them that. \n\nI am not as familiar with Portugal however. It does seem that in the early 16th century they too took a harsher tone against Muslims by expelling all Moors, but I am not as certain as to the levels of persecution prior to that. It is important to note that Portugal completed their own Reconquista far before Castile.\n\nAs for the ultimate fate of the Muslim population of Spain, most of them would be descendents of the original inhabitants there before the invasion by the Caliphate who had converted over the centuries, and probably not all that ethnically different from their northern neighbors. The Muslims in leadership positions were the ones who would be the ones most likely to be expelled on sight or killed. Southern Spain has a population with higher 'Moorish' blood origins, likely thanks to greater intermingling of the population with North Africa's due to proximity as well as time spent under their rule (leading to the distinct 'Andalusian' ethnic/cultural group." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eaq17dm" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "To add to what the others have said, those accusers who had suffered from the conflict with neighbouring Indians had had their lives upended. Those who were orphaned were now living with relatives or friends of their late parents, and those whose families had been displaced lost whatever livelihoods they had previously worked. Their prospects, both for marriage and the rest of their life, were greatly diminished. They could provide little in the way of a dowry, a vital part of arranging a beneficial marriage, and their newfound benefactors (if they had them) had other priorities than their new wards. It is perfectly understandable to look at their situation from their perspective, and feel resentment and anger towards the events that had led to their diminished position; this was the problem. They had been taught that feeling this way made them perfect recruits for the Devil’s cause. He could use their resentment to slip through their defences of faith and use them to further his diabolic aims. \n\nRichard Godbeer suggests that while these first accusers may have genuinely believed that they were the victims of the Devil, their ‘possession’ gave them a legitimate method of expressing their grievances in a society that disapproved of such self-pity. It’s hard for a modern perspective to understand how firmly held beliefs in magic and the Devil were. In other trials, some individuals willingly handed themselves over for the crimes they believed they had committed. Alexander Sussums of Long Melford, Essex had volunteered to be searched by a witch finder during the East-Anglian panic, out of a genuine belief that he had been a witch for over a decade and a half. Through his guilt and negativity, combined with a genuine belief in the power of the Devil and his mother’s reputation for witchcraft, Sussums convinced himself that he too was a witch. Such was his conviction that he actively sought out the man who could, and did, order his arrest and trial for capital crimes (although he was eventually pardoned). Of course, with a society as deeply strained as 17th century New England, there were definitely accusations driven by more mundane motivations, but it is very likely that at least some of the young women who declared their possession did so out of a genuine belief that they were the victims of the Devil.\n\n* Anderson, Virginia Dejohn, 'New England in the Seventeenth Century', in Canny, Nicholas (ed.) *The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: The Origins of Empire*\n* Godbeer, Richard, ‘Witchcraft in British America’, in Levack, Brian (ed.) *The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America*\n* Hansen, Chadwick, ‘Andover Witches and the Causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials’, in Levack, Brian (ed.) *The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America*\n* Le Beau, Bryan F., *The Story of the Salem Witch Trials*\n* Levack, Brian, ‘State-Building and Witch-Hunting’, in Oldridge, Darren (ed.), *The Witchcraft Reader*\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cn9jzar", "cn9qojx" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "I am not a historian, but the Library of Congress has a good overview with source documents [here](_URL_0_).", "As a follow up question, how about in the same period in Great Britain?" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/irish5.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqxj05o" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "[Here is a paragraph from the University of Oregon Holden Leadership Center on record keeping during meetings:](_URL_0_)\n\n > As you can see, the role of a secretary is more than \"just taking minutes\". The secretary is in effect, the historian. What he/she records will be referred to by current members as a reminder of finished and unfinished business, what needs follow-up and what actions were taken. It will also be kept for future members to read to gain an understanding of where the organization has been and why. Many organizations make it the secretary's responsibility to notify the membership about upcoming meetings-time, date, location-as well as any important items to be discussed.\n\nMany business meetings, particularly important ones, will keep minutes with a stenographer, and government business meetings are no exception. Minutes of a meeting are useful for the principals to later refer to as an aide-memoire, to reference in the event of a later dispute of what was said by whom; for sharing with non-attending staff, possibly even for eventual publication for some types of organizations, there are a wide variety of reasons why minute-keeping is a common practice. Minutes are kept for many meetings, whether the governing board of the local floral society, all the way to the highest government councils, committees, and cabinets.\n\nWhat is more interesting, is that in the modern era, there exists a delicate balance between keeping minutes or particularly audio and audiovisual recording of important meetings and deliberate obfuscation of such records. The infamous White House audio taping system was used to fix Nixon's responsibility, \"what did you know and when did you know it\" during the Watergate crisis and was instrumental in forcing him from office.\n\nWatergate and the role of the taping system in bringing down a Presidency was definitely noted by later politicians of all parties. Part of the art of modern government is to keep the President and other important and public figures from being pinned down to a position, or to having learned a particular bit of knowledge. This permits \"plausible deniability\" in the event of a crisis. The leader can be vague or deny knowing about the decisions that led to the crisis, and on occasion, a convenient subordinate can be thrown to the wolves of the media or the legal system.\n\nLook at the controversy over the use of personal, non-governmental email by some well-known public officials. Government records are almost always preserved and archived, and they are subject to subpoenas during judicial or congressional investigations. In the event of a scandal or crisis gone bad, without good records, a leader can testify with a high degree of vagueness or ignorance: \"Of course if I had warning that this terrible event might happen, I would have taken action to prevent it.\"\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://leadership.uoregon.edu/resources/exercises_tips/organization/keeping_minutes" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cko4cni", "cko4gmo", "cko8nf2" ], "score": [ 68, 11, 27 ], "text": [ "The Western/Libyan Desert is 1000 km north to south and 1000 km east to west and largely blocks access out of the Nile and Nile Delta.\n\nAs we saw in the WW 2 desert campaign, the Western Desert makes even mechanized and motorized maneuvering problematic.", "From a geographic stand point most of the land immediately west of the modern day country of Egypt is mostly desert. The Ancient Egyptian empire was almost primarily based around the Egyptian river and would have been fertile and habitable land. Anything outside of that would be illogical and extremely difficult to live in.", "Before modern nation-states, the control of such large barren areas was very rare and often only nominal. If you go due west from the heart of ancient Egypt, you run into the \"Great Sand Sea', which is exactly what it sounds like. Places like this have no pre-existing infrastructure to conquer, and there is no way to build a meaningful infrastructure either; there is simply nothing to support a sedentary population. \n\nThe only parts of North Africa that could have conceivably been conquered would have been along the Mediterranean coast. But why did they not conquer these areas then? Well, the Egyptians were not a particularly naval people, and he only large seagoing ships that the Egyptians used were for commerce. Also, inhabitable land along the north-African coast is somewhat segregated, thus discouraging any king of land invasion. The closest arable land west of Egypt would have been on the Marj Plain, near modern-day Benghazi. Between there and Alexandria, there's a whole lot of desert to dissuade invaders. \n\nAlso for what it's worth, the Libyan Berbers who inhabited this area weren't wilting daisies. They were so aggressive in fact, that they managed to install a dynasty in northern Egypt, the Bubasites, for 200 years. So perhaps it was not just geography that suppressed the ability to conquer North Africa." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chre35z" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You'll probably get more help over at /r/whatisthisthing, the appropriate subreddit for these kinds of questions." ] }

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[ "http://imgur.com/zWX6WZW" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dzomol0" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "EDIT: Just to be clear, not a historian, but I’ve been reading this book for the past ten years, I think I know a little bit about it.\n\nThe Law actually says a lot about slaves and servants and how you were to treat them. How well they followed it or if they followed it all is questionable whether you believe the Bible (That’s a heavy theme of the Old Testament) or not but we can look at what they thought they were supposed to do.\n\nAmong fellow Israelites the law was explicit about keeping one another out of poverty, helping the poor, forgiving debts Ect. But not everyone cooperates. So if you could not afford to pay a debt, pay for your land, pay for a dowry, or if you couldn’t even take care of yourself, you could sell yourself, or your children and become a servant.\n\nBut this was not permanent. The law gave you two outs. You could work for seven years then you were free to go. If you married while in service and had kids, the owner kept those. And if you were Female, you had to marry into the family, if you could. But other then that, you were free. You could even go back to your own land or your husbands land if you were working off a Dowry. \n\nInteresting though if you didn’t want to leave, you could become an Indentured servant, from Exodus 25.\n\n“But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.“\n\nBasically if you treated your slaves well, they could stay on and become basically a family member. It’s was a good incentive to be nice to slaves. \n(And there were laws in place to prevent people from like forcing slaves into indentured servitude without consent but that’s another story)\n\nThe other way to be free was called the year of Jubilee. The idea was that every fifty years, all debts just stopped. If you sold land to someone, you got it back. If you owed someone money, you were covered. And if you were a Israelite slave, you were free. Period. And as cool as it sounds (If completely unpractical for a more advanced civilization) I can say for certainly, I doubt this was ever observed due to Ocupation and quarreling before the exile. And afterwards, land was fairly scarce.\n\nForeigners weren’t quite as lucky. If someone came to live in your land peacefully, you weren’t allowed to enslave them. The law said that you should incorporate Foreigners into your land and basically make them Israelites. People you were fighting though were fair game. Though most of the time, the law said kill everyone and take none for slaves. Like the invasion of the promised land, and they didn’t want the natives to breed with the Israelites so they didn’t turn to idols. The Old Testament acknowledges this didn’t happen basically at all. And Foreign slaves were not under the seven years rule, I don’t believe. Luckly the law was pretty lax about becoming an Israelites. Basically be circumcised and respect Passover. So a foreign slave could become an Israelite and become free by extension.\n\nTreatment of slaves was pretty good according to the law. You were to respect slaves as people, feed and give them space, and refrain from sexual relations. Indetured servants were to be treated as family. And punishment for mistreating slaves ran from heavty fines to freedom for the slave.\n\nI’ve been mostly pulling from Leviticus, Exodus, Joshua, and the all important, Spurgeon’s commentaries." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cz3honu" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Charlemagne, at his death, ruled an Empire encompassing modern day France (sans Brittany), the Pyrenees, Austria, Switzerland, the low countries, the northern half of Italy, and the majority of modern Germany. After his death, his son Louis I came to power, then died leaving his three sons to divide up his Empire, which they did in 843 with the Treaty of Verdun. Charles the Bald was given West Francia (modern France without Provence or Brittany), Lothair (the eldest) was given a strip of land encompassing the low countries, Burgundy, Provence, and northern Italy, and Louis the German was given the eastern territories (East Francia). [Here](_URL_0_)'s a map to clarify things. East Francia and parts of Lotharingia developed into the Holy Roman Emperor.\n\nThe traditional dislike between the French and the Germans come from more recent sources (such as the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war, and the two World Wars)." ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Partage_de_l'Empire_carolingien_au_Trait%C3%A9_de_Verdun_en_843.JPG" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cb46bhu" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Pinkertons were part of a huge private detective agency that was essentially the Black Water of the 19th century. One of the Pinkerton's specialties was strikebreaking. Employers would hire the company to provide thugs that would stop strikes in progress, and this is arguably what Pinkertons are most famous for. So yes, that is definitely something a Pinkerton would do." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dbfg5to" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "I asked a similar question a few months ago that I think might get to the heart of what you're asking. Hopefully this helps? The response I got was fantastic! (all credit to u/goodmorningdave)\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4fo56f/why_was_eisenhower_chosen_over_other_more_field/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgd2hcs" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "**Clothing**\n\nThe major theaters served as fashion runways, setting popular trends in clothing. Costumes were elaborate, expensive, and often borrowed from or donated by local tailors, cobblers, and jewelers. These clothiers could then advertise that they were producing the clothes being worn in the most fashionable theaters in town. And in late 1500s - early 1600s England, fashion was serious business:\n\n > In these days a wondrous excess of apparel had spread itself all over England, and the habit of our own country, though a peculiar vice incident to our apish nation, grew into such contempt, that men by their new fangled garments, and too gaudy apparel, discovered a certain deformity and arrogancy of mind whilst they jetted up and down in their silks glittering with gold and silver, either imbroidered or laced. The Queen, observing that, to maintain this excess, a great quantity of money was carried yearly out of the land, to buy silks and other outlandish wares, to the impoverishing of the commonwealth; and that many of the nobility which might be of great service to the commonwealth and others that they might seem of noble extraction, did, to their own undoing, not only waste their estates, but also run so far in debt, that of necessity they came within the danger of law thereby, and attempted to raise troubles and commotions when they had wasted their own patrimonies\n\n* [A Complete History of England: IV. The history of Queen Elizabeth I](_URL_1_), written by Edward, lord Herbert of Cherbury in 1706, page 452.\n\nSee also:\n\nStephenson, Henry Thew. The Elizabethan People. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1910. Shakespeare Online. 20 Feb. 2010. (accessed March 27, 2014) _URL_3_\n\n**Language**\n\nThere was no dictionary of the English language prior to 1755. In the Elizabethan period, London was teeming with foreign trade and with it came linguistic influences from many far-flung cultures. English was a fluid, dynamic language and the plays of the period are famous for their wordplay. Theaters of the day became laboratories for language with new words being adopted, adapted, or invented to convey the emotions of the characters. Shakespeare alone is believed to have invented (or at least been the first to write down) some 1,300 common words.\n\nSee [The Development of Early Modern English](_URL_2_), by Marta Zapala-Kraj, 2009.\n\n**Thought/Society**\n\nIn *Hamlet* Act 3, Scene 2, Shakespeare describes acting (and by extension, the purpose of theater) as being an art \"whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure\".\n\nShakespeare's plays reflect the society they were written for. England was in a period of transition between its Medieval past and its Renaissance future and the growth pangs of that transition were being played out on stage. Among Shakespeare's greatest influences on the art of theatrical storytelling is the heavy use of the soliloquy as a means of allowing the audience to listen to a character's most intimate thoughts. As we listen, we meet people who are simultaneously progressive and old fashioned. They have complex, multi-faceted personalities and think of themselves as unique individuals defined as much by merit and personality as by social class. We hear superstition wrestling with science, urban sophistication clashing with provincial wisdom, and numerous variations on the eternal human question: \"Given the knowledge of our own mortality, what should we do with the time that we have to be alive?\"\n\nSee:\n\n[Shakespeare's Philosophy](_URL_4_), by Colin McGinn, 2009.\n\n[From Shakespeare to Existentialism: An Original Study : Essays on Shakespeare and Goethe, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Toynbee](_URL_0_), by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 1980" ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=wvKRUSdUsnkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=From+Shakespeare+to+Existentialism&hl=en&sa=X&ei=57szU7GIAaazsQSBzYHYCA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=From%20Shakespeare%20to%20Existentialism&f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=HGZZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=lp0phazoyIsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+development+of+early+modern+english#v=onepage&q=the%20development%20of%20early%20modern%20english&f=false", "http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/elizabethanclothes.html", "http://books.google.com/books?id=TtgnbxfshI0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=shakespeare's+philosophy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P7szU6HtCcPgsASm74GQAQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=shakespeare's%20philosophy&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cku58eq", "cku5zf5", "cku6md2", "cku6rde", "cku96id" ], "score": [ 10, 15, 11, 23, 2 ], "text": [ "What cheap building materials are you talking about in particular?", "I'm assuming you are asking about why houses in tornado or hurricane zones are constructed out of wood. Hurricanes and tornadoes are extremely destructive and no building material can hold together in the path of a F4 or F5 tornado. In fact concrete and brick blocks can cause even more damage if they end up flying. So instead, buildings in Tornado Alley are required to have underground tornado shelters that can keep its occupants safe in a tornado. \n\nI don't know where you got the idea that buildings in the US don't have strict building codes. ", "(On my phone, so will add sources later.) In California, at least, unreinforced masonry construction has been banned since 1933. This is because wood buildings flex in earthquakes but stay standing; unreinforced masonry, like brick or stone, falls down. Because of this, most new buildings less than six stories are wood-framed, and everything taller is steel framed or made of reinforced masonry or reinforced concrete. \n\nedit: it's the Field Act of 1933 and Garrison Act of 1939.", " > Unlike in Europe, where the tradition is still to build in brick and concrete\n\nWhat do you mean by \"in Europe\"? I'm from a European country where pretty much all houses are made of wood. ", "It's also a lot about which materials are abundant in a region. \nWhen you live in a wooded region like Canada it's only logical that many buildings are made of wood. \nBut, when you take the Netherlands as an example, there aren't a lot of forests left but there is an abundance of clay which can be made into bricks. \nOn a side note it also has a lot to do with the popularity of the Chicago school in the USA. If I recall correctly this style focused a lot more on concrete instead of bricks. \nThe Chicago school was however not widely adopted in Europe. " ] }

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