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{ "a_id": [ "cvtpq1m" ], "score": [ 79 ], "text": [ "I can't answer your question in full, but I can at least address part of it. Washington was aware of the third partition of Poland and corresponded with Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, a friend of Tadeuz Kosciuszko, in 1798. \n\nNiemcewicz, a Polish writer and statesman, had traveled to the United States and visited Washington at his home in Mount Vernon. He later wrote to thank Washington and his wife for their hospitality.\n\nThe political situation in Poland was mentioned only briefly, but this is the key part of Washington's response:\n\n > That your country is not as happy as your struggle to make it so was Patriotic and Noble, is a matter which all lovers of rational Liberty and the Rights of Man, have sorely lamented: and if my Vows, during the arduous contest could have availed, you would now, have been as happy in the enjoyment of these desirable blessings under your own Vine and Fig tree, as the People of these United States may be under theirs.\n\nYou can find the full text of the correspondence [here](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-02-02-0253" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "flfr2bh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Religious orthodoxy is effectively impossible in a premodern state. The religious experiences of people in medieval Europe, and indeed elsewhere, as you have stated, were very personal, and the exact form of Christianity practiced could change from village to village. Many places were still awash with local tradition predating their Christianizations, much to the ire of the *bureaucratic* clergy. One example of such a role is the Hungarian *taltos*. They were essentially the leftovers of shamans from the days of pagan Hungary, but of course conformed to the \"skin\" of Christianity, as it were. One *Taltos*, an Erzsebet Balazsi was accused of being a witch, to which she defended herself, saying that, \"the *Taltos* cures, finds buried treasure, and fights for Hungary in heaven*. They drew the attention of the Hungarian priest Arnold Ipolyi, who wrote of them as being a very famous Hungarian folk tradition. Another such example of an isolated tribe maintaining their \"pagan\" trappings were the *Sarakatsani* of Greece. Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was perhaps the most hellenized Barbarian in history, wrote as recently as the 1930s that they were Orthodox, but did not know of the Holy Spirit, combining the son and father into a deity called *Ays*, and that they paid great reverence to nature spirits and to the spirits of animals. So your answer for when people put aside the fairies was at least more recently than 1930." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7u2sdu", "c7u2vuo" ], "score": [ 19, 4 ], "text": [ "Hrm, I guess this is all on me. I guess I'll throw the disclaimer up that despite being an Andean archaeologist, I don't know a heck of a lot about the Inca. My focus is on periods about 1500 years earlier than them, and on the coast (areas that the Inca did eventually conquer). As far as I can tell I'm the only Andean archaeologist who posts here, but if someone else who focuses more specifically on the Inca wants to jump in, go right ahead.\n\nI doubt that anyone has a definitive answer for this, to be honest. I think it is most likely a combination of four main things: \n(1) The agency of a powerful leader (Pachachuti, who was the first to start building the empire around A.D. 1450). The Inca had begun to develop in the Cuzco area around A.D. 1200 and remained a small kingdom for a couple centuries until Pachacuti decided to begin incorporating nearby lands into the kingdom (thus forming the early empire), and building palaces and temples and terraces and all that. So basically he had an ambition to build an empire and started to do so, and his descendants followed his lead, expanding things even more.\n\n(2) A cultural context that had begun to favour larger states and empires (Huari and Tiahuanaco from ca. A.D. 850-1150, Chimu from ca. A.D. 1200-1470. The Inca in many ways saw themselves as a continuation of the Tiahuanaco empire) compared to the smaller ones that had existed in the millennia before Huari/Tiahuanaco, and that existed throughout the Andes.\n\n(3) A long-term trend in the Andes of periodic pan-Andean cultural contact with intermediate periods of more local, regional development. The Inca were the third of these. Generally the Early Horizon, associated with Chavin de Huantar as a pilgrimage centre, was from ca. 3000 B.C. - 400 B.C., then the Middle Horizon (Huari and Tiahuanaco) from ca. A.D. 800-1150), and then finally the Late Horizon (Inca) from ca. 1450-1534. So there seems to be a long-term trend in the Andes to periodically work together, and the Inca latched onto the final one of these.\n\n(4) Specific Inca management, administration, taxation, and warfare/tribute/coercion practices that happened to be highly successful, to an extent that had never before been seen in the Andes. That said, earlier societies may have used some or all of these same practices (or very similar ones) and just met with less success, but we don't know because we only know the specifics for how the Inca ran their state, because Spanish chroniclers and Inca descendants recorded it after the Spanish arrived. We have no written record for earlier societies, and archaeological data alone cannot tell us specifically how those societies operated. But the Inca building program far outstripped anyone else's and in a very short amount of time (80 years), so I'd say that their management practices were more successful than earlier societies.\n\nSo I think that it was a combination of those four things. I'm sure that other Andeanists might argue a bit differently, but I think that any convincing argument must take into account cultural factors (the environmental determinists among us might argue that a bad El Niño event or a drought precipitated the Inca expansion, and even if there is some correlation there I can't accept it as being a direct causation). Hope that helps!", "Expansion is a little vague so I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for, but the Incans were remarkably well organized and had fantastic infrastructure. They had a highway system that connected virtually all of western South America as we know it today. This made trade and travel easy.\n\nHow did they accomplish the building of feats such as this? They had a policy called **mita** which required service to the government for a certain percentage of the year. This provided a huge labor base on a pretty continual basis. Military service was also mandatory.\n\nI don't know if that's what you were looking for, but I took a class on Latin American Geography this past semester and thought I would throw in what I could.\n\nedit: Read Pachacamac's answer. It is much more comprehensive." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d32thek" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not sure what you would include as ancient leader, but AL Maqrizi was a Mamluk administrator/intellectual in Egypt in the 15th century who wrote a magnificent work on the economic troubles of Egypt 808 Hijri (1405 AD). He deals with concepts like inflation, which he termed as \"ghala'\", over-printing of money, effective governance and other concepts. Basically we would consider it as a work on monetary policy today. He also discusses the causes of food shortages and the government policy appropriate for preventing it and why food shortages happen. There is a sort of Keynesianism to his conclusions about counter-cyclical spending in relation to famines, and natural vs artificial famines that is present in the work of Amartya Sen and Mike Davis.\n\nHe Mostly blames the Circassian Mamluke administration for the decline in Egypt due to 3 main policies: currency devaluations due to cessation of silver coins and use of copper without stable exchange rate; venality in offices and bribery to get positions (Initially way to get quick money, make people in position pay for it, became outright buying of position including judges and religious positions); heavy taxation of peasants by fief holders. His solution is to base currency on silver and gold only. \n\nToday scholars say he got some things right and other things wrong. Of the things he overlooked: He perhaps could not have known that the scarcity of silver in Egypt was due to the high demand for silver in Europe. The Venetians, the main trading partner for Egypt, therefore stopped selling them silver which came from central Asia and Iberia. Egypt's trade balance due to a stagnation of industry during this time also meant they had nothing to trade for the silver or the gold from West Africa. Another factor was that Egypt just came out of a series of plagues, (black death) that also hit it pretty heavily. Third it was not uncommon for rulers to devalue currency to pay back debts at the time, even in Europe. Finally, AL-Maqrizi was a Shafi'i Muslim who believed that the prophet favored silver and gold currency over copper (which we know is inaccurate today as he did issue copper currency). His belief that these metals would have a stable value over time due to them having some inherent value is today discredited as unrealistic, though some people still talk about bringing back the gold standard.\n\nMain Source: Mamluk Economics by Adel Allouche, 1994" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dst121f" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "In the case of Syria and Lebanon, Vichy France was in control. There was no need to \"takeover.\" After the surrender of France, the Armee du Levant and the administration were pro-Vichy, and the Vichy government was able to further appoint its own administrator General Henri Dentz.\n\nIt's my understanding that the invasion of Syria/Lebanon has been woefully understudied in part because of the exceptionally high casualty rates—the Vichy French fought the \"good\" French and British invaders tooth and nail—in a way that was somewhat embarrassing for everyone.\n\nAs a result I don't know any particularly good sources on the question, but it's discussed in passing in, for example, D.K. Fieldhouse's *Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958.*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6lccam", "c6ldrzz", "c6lkjya" ], "score": [ 64, 18, 3 ], "text": [ "No. He didn't want a split at all. He wanted to reform the catholic church. Hence \"reformation.\" It was his more radical followers, mostly after his death, that just wanted to get out of the church.\n\nAt least to my understanding, but I'll admit I'm not an expert on church history or the reformation.", "Aside from allowing clergy to marry and rejecting the authority of Rome, there isn't much theological overlap between Orthodoxy and the direction in which Luther headed. In fact, the emphasis on a more personal relationship with God, rather than through the Church and clergy as mediators and the rejection of at least some of the trappings of saints, iconography, and ritual are even more at odds with Eastern Orthodox tradition than they are with Roman.\n\nMost importantly, though, as bemonk pointed out, it wasn't a planned thing. Luther didn't mean to leave the Roman Church until long after he'd already done it in fact. And, by then, the theology that he'd developed was already incompatible with any other existing form of Christianity. ", "[This might be of interest. Correspondence between the Patriarch of Constantinople and German Lutheran scholars.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/jeremiah.aspx" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "co6xdc2" ], "score": [ 50 ], "text": [ "as my old AP US history textbook (American Pagant) put it.\n\n > \"saying Americans won the revolution would be like saying 'Daddy and I killed the bear\"\n\nThe Americans didn't beat the British, the Americans, the Spanish and French Navy and huge French deficits beat the British. This is important considering the impact French debt would have on French finances leading up to their revolution and explains why the French saw it as their victory (though they were miffed when the US broke the terms of their alliance to sign a separate peace with GB). There are lots of first and second order ramifications for the French after *their* victory and American independence. \n\nI think the Franco-British conflict helps place it in a much better context for understanding how Europe reacted to the victory. \n\nThe Dutch were strongly pro-American after the war considering 1. the historical attachment to republicanism and 2. strong trade interests in having an independent America and thus were one of the first nations to recognize America and float her loans though involvement in the war cost the Duch their indian possessions.\n\ni'm going to stop here because i have a feeling i'm not really answering your question which might be a more ideological question. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdy03t1" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Well I can't tell you about the huge span of time from independence but i can give toys small slice. From about 1900 there was influx of eastern European Jews immigrating into new York did huge things to cuisine in that city, Fleeing two world wars and the russian Russia uprising. From a Jewish tradition called Ashkenazi the food culture was based into European styles things like pastrami and bagels and other Krashut foods. Basically took over as the Deli cuisine. In the past 100 years Ashkenazi style food has spread out further. \r\rIn search of plenty\rEat and be satisfied: a social history.\r" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ewm7nig" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Unfortunately many of the questions that you have are just not able to be answered. When dealing with the Viking Age there is a gross paucity of sources that detail oriented questions, like yours, rely on. We cannot know about written treaties, the bureaucracy required for conquest, or the personal relationships that monarchs cultivated quite simply because the sources that are needed to answer these questions do not exist in many cases.\n\nNow these kinds of sources do survive in some contexts, the treaty of Alfred and Guthrum survives to the modern day, correspondence between medieval people is often an important source, and so on. However this distribution is not even across the medieval period, both chronologically and geographically. Literacy, by which I mean Latin literacy, learning, and writing, did not come to Scandinavia until the advent of Christianity and even then it was a slow process. \n\nCoupled with this problem, there is another, perhaps more difficult issue to contend with. In the modern day we have conceptions of warfare, diplomacy, foreign relations, and so on that have not always held through history. We tend to think of \"war\" as being a distinct state of a society, contrasted with peace. But this simple binary does not hold for the middle ages. There were no national presses or embassies to announce declarations of war, no centralized government to bring the resources of the nation onto a war footing. \n\nTo take your questions in specific order though, will all of the above caveats in mind.\n\n > Did he inform Sweyn that they were at war\n\nWe have no way of knowing this particularly. It is likely that there was never an official declaration of war issued in writing, but that does not mean the Danes were unaware of Norwegian ambitions or attacks. \n\n > when he eventually failed, did they conduct formal peace negotiations leading to a written treaty?\n\nIts certainly possible that this happened. I do not know of any manuscript that specifically details such an arrangement, but it IS possible that one exists and I am not aware of it because it has not been published in a language I read. However, I would be extremely surprised if such a document ever existed. \n\n > Or was there some other arrangement?\n\nIt is perfectly possible that an unwritten understanding was reached between the two parties, but there is obviously no way to record that in literary or material format. \n\n > Similarly, if he had succeeded in killing Sweyn, how would he have imposed his rule, presumably against the opposition of many important Danish landowners?\n\nAskhistorians is not in the business of counter factuals, as they are by nature not history but speculation. However I will say, that the only way Harald would be acclaimed king of Denmark would be by those same leading figures. \n\n > How did these early kings conceptualise what we would call foreign relations, and how did they conduct them?\n\nThis is the most interesting part of your question to me personally. In one sense the answer is easy, we don't really know because there is not a great deal of surviving manuscript material to base arguments on about foreign relations. However, the bigger issue I think is to try and understand what foreign relations *could* mean to these people. After all we are a ways away from nation state governments with state departments, diplomatic corps, and the like. \"Foreign relations\" would not exist as we envision, but would instead be a much more individually driven force. We also need to keep in mind that the internal divisions that monarchs inexorably had to deal with, troublesome vassals who could appeal to outside forces, the Church, their own households, and so on." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crem4x0" ], "score": [ 22 ], "text": [ "The short answer is that very few to no Southerners were actively opposed to the institution of slavery, and there was not a chance in hell of it being legislated out of existence any time soon. Indeed, the period 1830-1860 saw the South largely doubling down on slavery. Pro-slavery intellectuals argued for the institution on moral, social, and economic grounds. During this time, slavery expanded beyond agriculture as the South itself began to industrialize. Railroads, mills, and factories throughout the South ran on slave labor; though in fairness, others used free labor.\n\nAnd indeed, the Civil War itself is lasting proof of the South's commitment to the maintenance of the institution. Apostles of Disunion examines the reasons given to Southerners for secession, and overwhelmingly, they focus on the economic and social consequences of abolition. The overweening fear was that abolition would produce a situation akin to Haiti, in which white men would be economically ruined, the rich through loss of labor, and the poor by being outcompeted by blacks who would work for pennies, while their daughters were raped or married off to black men. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7t7x1h", "c7thago" ], "score": [ 17, 3 ], "text": [ "I'm definitely not a 20th century historian so other answers will surely supersede mine, but AIDS wasn't officially recognized/discovered until 1981, I believe, so there's a whole decade between Woodstock and AIDS that needs to be accounted for.\n\nSocially acceptable sexual promiscuity (though it most definitely wasn't restricted to the \"hippie\" counterculture forms you seem to be alluding to) continued well into the 70s and was more definitely under serious attack prior to the 80s. In the early 70s the pornography industry exploded, divorce and adultery became much more common/acceptable in the public discourse, and homosexuality entered the public sphere more assertively (think the Village People).\n\nThis lead to backlashes, especially with the Richard Nixon's [Silent Majority](_URL_0_) beginning as far back as 1969 but also with the rise of conservatism more generally. Calls against the rising problems of crime, broken homes, poverty, etc, as well as to return to \"traditional\" family values gained significant traction by the mid-70s especially. While I'm sure the rise of AIDS in the 80s would help these calls further suppress values like sexual promiscuity, it is not the sole cause of the end of \"free love\" as you describe.\n\nA couple good books to read:\n\nJefferson Cowie, *Stayin' Alive* - Not about sexuality specifically, but covers very nicely the political and social shifts of the 70s of which sexuality was a part.\n\nThomas Borstelmann, *The 1970s* - a recent work that covers the same shifts more broadly. Pretty good book.", "My area of study is 20th century gay and lesbian history and HIV/AIDS, so I can offer some insights on this, although I can't speak much to the heterosexual population. Like others have said, AIDS did not really become an issue until 1981 (although there were cases before then, but that's a story for another day.) In the time between Stonewall and the start of the epidemic, gay men had a lot of sex. Sex was, in a lot of ways, a political act. Gay sex, something seen as subversive by mainstream culture, became a cornerstone of the gay male world. It was a way of differentiating themselves from the perceived repression of heterosexual culture. Gay men congregated in urban centers where they formed their own enclaves and created gay spaces. Bathhouses, where gay men could have anonymous sex with each other, were hugely popular (although certainly not all gay men frequented them.) A large group of people having a great deal of sex with each other, is of course going to lead to a lot of sexually transmitted infections. STIs were very common in urban gay male populations. However, the prevailing attitude was that this was no big deal - before HIV, an STI usually meant a trip to the clinic before heading back to the baths. The use of condoms amongst gay men was pretty much unheard of. There were seen as something only used by straight couples to prevent pregnancy. Then AIDS came along. Suddenly sex became deadly, and people began to worry. The first guide to what we now call safe sex was \"How to Have Sex in an Epidemic\" By Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen in 1983. Although they were incorrect about the cause of AIDS (there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of theories going around at that time) they offered some good insight into how to have sex safely. \nWhen AIDS was better understood, safe sex really took off. Bars frequently distributed condoms and people took safe sex seriously. HIV transmission rates dropped. Unfortunately, bareback sex amongst gay men has had quite the resurgence, and transmission rates are back up. However, HIV/AIDS has had a massive, lasting impact on how we view sex and how we have it. \nIf you have more specific questions let me know. \nEDIT on sources: \nSecondary: \nThe Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom by Michael Bronski. St. Martin's Press, 1998. \nPrimary: \n\"1,112 and Counting\" by Larry Kramer, published in the New York Native, 1983. \nComing out Right: a handbook for the gay male by Wes Muchmore and William Hanson. Alyson Publications, 1982. \n\"Bareback and Restless\" by Michelangelo Signorile, published in Out, 1997. \n\"641,086 and Counting\" by Michelangelo Signorile, published in Out, 1998. " ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "e3f00qh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There are very few historians who engage with mathematics or statistics in their historical practice. \"Very few\" is not \"zero\" — there are historians, and have been for many decades, who use statistical methods to analyze texts, data about the past, economic information, etc. There are also more recent \"computational historians\" who seek to find historical narratives in Big Data. And there are historians of science who seek to understand the internal workings of scientific work, and that often requires a fairly deep understanding of the mathematics involved, which is a different sort of engagement with math (looking at historical mathematics, not applying math to history). \n\nBut these are all fairly niche approaches to history relative to the whole profession in my experience. The dominant trends in history for many decades have been a suspicion of quantitative methods of analyzing the past, both because such methods only allow themselves to be applied to a tiny subset of historical information (i.e. structured data, which any historian will tell you is only a smidgen of human experience), and because the disciplines that pursue such views of the past (notably economists) often end up demonstrating the errors of such an approach (numbers can be bent to support many different ideas, and economists often miss out on much of what historians think is important). I think of myself as fairly open-minded about such things (I don't use quantitative methods, but I do digital tool development and so get wrapped up in lots of discussions and meetings with the computational historians), but I will say that in general there have not been any real huge historical breakthroughs or theses that relied upon such methods, or could not have arguably been made without such methods. Obviously this is a self-fulfilling prophecy (if people aren't using them much, they won't be used much).\n\nI have been party to conferences in the field of international relations, a subfield of political science, where deep and long debates about qualitative vs. quantitative methods have taken place (the field is roughly split between the two approaches). I admit that looking at \"how the sausage is made\" has not made me think that quantitative methods will really get us better history, though I can see a place for some people doing investigations of that as a sort of augmentation to more traditional forms of historical practice. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmrh5ue" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "Here's the evidence:\n\n**References to a brother named James**\n\nMark 6:3\n\n > Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary[a] and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense[b] at him.\n\nMatthew 13:55-56\n\n > 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?”\n\nGalatians 1:18-19\n\n > 18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [a.k.a. Peter] and stayed with him fifteen days; 19 but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.\n\nThe first two are not definitely of importance, but last one almost certainly refers to James the Just, who became head of the Jerusalem Church after Jesus died, and here Paul explicitly identifies as \"the Lord's brother\"\n\n**General references to siblings or other family members**:\n\nMark 3:20-21\n\n > 20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”\n\nJohn 2:12\n\n > 12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.\n\nJohn 7:3-5\n\n > 3 So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; 4 for no one who wants[a] to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 (For not even his brothers believed in him.) \n\n1 Corinthians 9:5\n\n > 5 Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife,[a] as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?\n\nActs 1:14\n\n > 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.\n\nThere is debate whether \"brother\" could also mean \"half-brother\" (from Mary, after Joseph died) or \"step-brother\" (from Joseph's unmentioned first marriage) or \"male cousin\" or \"close compatriot\" (this is especially used to explain \"brother of the Lord\"), but the plain reading of the text is just normal \"brother\". Most, but not all, contemporary Protestant and secular Biblical exegetes, who do not follow the doctinre of Mary's perpetual virginity, consider it to be \"brother-brother\". In light of the stuff on \"Clopas\" below, it seems plausible that maybe this James who is the brother of Joses/Joseph is a relative of Jesus's, but not *necessarily* a literal brother.\n\n**Making sense of James the Just**\n\nAfter the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to a James before the others (1 Corinthians 15:7). Which James? I don't know, but from this context, it could well mean James the new head of the Church. In early post-biblical histories, \"James the Just\" is identified as the post-apostolic head of the Jerusalem Church. Eusebius quotes Clement of Alexandria (150 CE-215CE), \"This James, whom the people of old called the Just because of his outstanding virtue, was the first, as the record tells us, to be elected to the episcopal throne of the Jerusalem church.\" Eusebius, a favorite of the Emperor Constantine, wrote his famous *Ecclesiastical History* (\"Historia Ecclesiastica\") sometime in the late third century, relying on earlier written accounts. One of these accounts was Hegesippus, who survives in fragments (I believe actually only in Eusebius), and who probably wrote mid-second century, making him one of the earliest histories we have outside of the Christian Bible. Eusebius quotes Hegesippus as writing:\n\n > After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem.\n \nThe Jewish historian Josephus has a line about James \"the brother of Jesus who is called Christ\", but there's a lot of debate about whether that's authentic or a later Christian addition to the text.\n\nThe material in the New Testament is the only witness we have to Jesus in the first century C.E. All other material comes later, but second century is pretty close. There are further references to relatives as church leaders after James would have been dead in Eusebius, but I'll let you read about that [here](_URL_0_). However, Eusebius argues that this James was the son of Joseph's brother Clopas (see below though note that there's no record in the Christian Bible about Clopas being related to Joseph)." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_of_Jesus#As_church_leaders" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4uxmtc", "c4uy3ma" ], "score": [ 6, 13 ], "text": [ "Firstly, there are many texts that are probably lost, for all time. Papyrus only survives in a few select climates for more than a short period of time, and this is what most texts were written on. All of the literary texts were written on this format. Indeed, the majority of writing was done on either papyrus or parchment or else on impermanent materials like ostraka (shards of pots), walls (that would be cleaned), wax tablets, wood.\n\nThe only reason that we found the Res Gestae is because it was inscribed and also in two different locations; the first place the inscription was discovered was actually in Anatolia, not Italy. If a work is inscribed on marble and other hard stones then there is a decent chance it will stand the test of time, which is why we have so much surviving epigraphy (inscribed as opposed to 'written' texts) from the Greek and Roman periods. However, anything written on bronze and other metallic plaques would have long since been taken down and melted; large sheets of bronze are actually quite valuable for tools. This is why whenever we find any metallic artifacts that might have been considered valuable we get excited; so much of the metal from antiquity is actually probably in many modern artifacts having been melted down several times. This is especially true for precious metals like gold and silver.\n\nCan you imagine trying to catalogue every instance of the written word from across the world, even in a single day? Now imagine that instead you have to catalogue texts from a large portion of the world across a period of 1200 years (the time from the Greeks regaining literacy to the fall of the Western Roman Empire). I will point out that I really do mean every instance of the written word; many of the texts we have access to were intended to be thrown away, including many payprii scrolls, and graffiti is considered quite an important discovery. Many of our new sources for text were semi disposable, like the pottery shards and the wax tablets, they were not considered 'literature' by the people of the time.\n\nThis is the major issue here; i'm not sure that the Greeks and Romans would have agreed with us on what constitutes an important text, and I detect a hint that you don't quite have the same conception of an 'important text' that archaeologists and historians have. Every single intelligible piece of text we discover from this period is valuable.\n\nEssentially, estimating the number of texts waiting to be discovered is impossible because we have no way of knowing what would have survived the intervening 2000+ years, or where a text might have been located in order to make a guess at whether it survived or not. Even when the conditions are right, it doesn't always result in payday.\n\nThis is why we fight for every last hint we can find. Our focus cannot be simply on trying to acquire things like the Res Gestae, they are important because they are extraordinary and rare and so you cannot assume that there are any more finds like it out there unless you come across them. You need to lower your expectations a little of what is an 'important' text for understanding the past.", "A terrifying proportion of the ancient worlds literary and epigraphic sources are lost, off the top of my head we have circa 2% of attested literary work in antiquity which survives extant to the present day (if this figure is wrong, my apologies.) \n\nThe problem is with material evidence is that it often remains unpublished. If you walked around the right places in Turkey or many other places you might find an inscription which people have simply ignored, or not spotted. Often that sort of material culture can be found stuck into modern buildings and re-used. My simple answer would be that there are plenty more inscriptions to be found and published.\n\n\nOn newly discovered texts:\n\nA new Sappho poem was found recently.\n\n_URL_2_\n\nThere has also been work going on on some of Archimedes' work previously thought lost.\n\n_URL_3_\n_URL_1_\n\nI only just found this out myself, but a new cuneiform tablet of an unknown Indo-european language has been found.\n\n_URL_0_ \n\nI am at work currently, but I will try to remember more over the weekend." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/article00311.html", "http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/", "http://www1.union.edu/wareht/story.html", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5235894.stm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0hyy5r" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "A reply to /u/PlazaOne\n\nI do not know much about the French, Scot, and English mental ailments but I am familiar with the \"madness\" that seemed to afflict the Trastamara dynasty and continuing to the Habsburgs in the early-modern era. \n\nThe most infamous case is perhaps that of Juana of Castille, that has earned her the moniker *Juana la Loca* or *Juana the Mad*. I wrote about her [here](_URL_5_). It seems to me that earlier historians tended to be very certain of themselves to prescribe \"insanity\" to Juana. After all, she gave very public displays of what sure looked like madness, including grieving over her dead husband's decaying body, and then refusing a call to rule Castille. \n\nA little later on, historians started to write a romanticized view of Juana's history, focusing on the tragedy of her being married off to a foreign land, and [living in a tumultuous time](_URL_0_). Here's an example [19th century art](_URL_4_) depicting her grieving over her husband's dead body. \n\nIt's only recently that historians started to look at her more critically, questioning whether what she suffered was brought on by what amounted to mental abuse. In particular, there has been closer examination of the absence of any indication of mental illness until *after* she was shipped off to the Low Countries to marry Philip the Handsome. \n\nRegardless of what exactly happened to Juana or what brought it on, it has been recorded that her maternal grandmother, Isabella of Portugal, also suffered from some sort of mental illness. And her maternal grandfather Juan II of Castille was also recorded as being brooding. \nFuther, her son Charles V was known to suffer from deep melancholy with increasing frequency as he grew older. \n\nCharles V [grieved for seven weeks when his wife passed away](_URL_2_). Such was his grief that he retired to a monastery to grieve in private. His young son Philip II, aged 12, presided alone at the funeral obsequies of his mother. It was his first solo public appearance.\n\nCharles' depression worsened toward the end of his life, in addition to his [gout](_URL_3_). The failed siege of Metz was a major loss both strategically and to his reputation. Some speculate that his irrational hastening of the siege was due to a form of PTSD and/or depression. It is known for sure that following that failure, he went to Brussels and locked himself in his quarters and refused to see anyone for weeks. His son Philip II had to catch up to him to help run the royal household and continue the negotiation of his abdication. He asked his brother to preside over the very important Diet of Augsburg in 1554-5. In the end, he abdicated and then retired to a Hieronymite monastery in Yuste, Spain. \n\nI know that there are studies of the impact of inbreeding on the Habsburgs, for example [here](_URL_1_). But I'm not aware of medical studies of their mental health, and what seemed to be a hereditary disease. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36ylvx/why_was_it_common_for_european_kings_like_charles/crievsy", "http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/wp-content/blogs.dir/474/files/2012/04/i-a4e49c0d7f74b14733b809f9f46f84e7-SpanishHabsburgsinbreeding.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/476xgw/tuesday_trivia_reading_other_peoples_mail_iii/d0enhb9", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cf79r/tuesday_trivia_favorite_foods_of_historys_famous/csv3nwf", "http://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/2010/11/13/grief-and-coffins-was-juana-of-castile-really-mad/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pe8ao/was_joanna_of_castille_aka_juana_la_loca_actually/cw5slw5" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cki6grx" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7j1dh7", "c7j7fz6", "c7j93om" ], "score": [ 50, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The Terror was sold by the Committees as a vital measure for the defence of France from enemies both foreign and domestic. There was significant opposition to the revolutionary government - by 1793 France was at war with Austria, Prussia, England and Holland, and several times foreign forces came close to attacking Paris. Within France, opposition to the government was seen in the countryside, with the Vendee Revolt and the Federalist Revolt, and in Paris from political groups opposing the Montagnards (including Girondins, Hebertistes and Dantonists).\n\nThe Montagnards were not alone in pushing extreme measures to protect France. Barere, a leader of the Plain (centrists), told the National Convention that in a state of emergency, no government could rule by normal means. As a result, the \"machinery of the Terror\", consisting of laws and committees, was put into place.\n\nThe first of these measures was the Revolutionary Tribunal. It was a special court set up to try \"counter-revolutionaries\", which effectively removed the right of due process for anyone in France.\n\nThe second measure was the summary execution decree, allowing for the immediate execution of any rebel (i.e. counter-revolutionary) found carrying arms.\n\nThen, a number of bodies were set up: the Committees, of course (\"Let us embody Terror\"), of General Security and Public Safety, which were set up to root out any opposition to the Revolutionary Government. They set up a number of smaller bodies including the watch committees, and the representatives-on-mission (who perpetuated some of the worst atrocities of the Terror, including the mass drowning of hundreds of suspects in the provinces), to monitor the provinces for counter-revolutionary activity.\n\nFrom then on, three major laws gradually ramped up the Terror: first, the Law of Suspects allowing anyone who was even suspected of counter-revolutionary activity to be arrested.\n\nThe second measure requires a bit of context. The Committees did not immediately have dictatorial powers - in fact, every month the Convention had to approve the powers of the Committees initially. What gave them power was the Parisian masses - especially the *sans-culotte*, who supported the radical policies of the Montagnards and could effectively impose change upon the politicians in Paris by *journees*, days of popular (usually violent) action by the crowds. The Storming of the Bastille was the first of these *journees*. This all changed in December 1793 - the Law of Revolutionary Government effectively gave full executive (read: dictatorial) powers to the Committees.\n\nSo much of the power the government had in relation to suppressing counter-revolutionaries was given to them - or forced on them, depending on how you look at it - by the people. The people had completely fallen under the spell of agitators like Jacques Roux, Hebert and Marat, who wrote extensively of the \"counter-revolutionary threat\". As a result there was a heavy atmosphere of paranoia within France - people were terrified that traitors ready to hand over France to the Prussians, or aristocrats seeking to reverse the Revolution, were in their midst.\n\nThe worst one came near the end of the Terror, approximately two months before Thermidor: the Law of 22 Prairial. It shortened all trials in the Revolutionary Tribunal to 1 hour, with the only outcome being death or freedom. Under this law, almost 1,400 people were executed in Paris in just the last two months of the Terror.\n\n**tl;dr: Robespierre drew his power and support for the Terror from the Parisian mob, which was incited by popular radical writers encouraging a paranoid atmosphere, and which forced the hand of the National Convention**\n\nWhy did it last so long? Well, that depends on your definition of the word. The bloodiest conflict of the Terror was the Vendee Revolt, killing up to 200,000 people (estimates vary wildly), but that only lasted 4 months. The period of the Terror is usually defined as March 1793 - July 1794 - a period of just over a year - with an early manifestation in the September Massacres (1792). In the grand scheme of things, that's not particularly long. But the reason it managed to sustain itself can once again be traced to the *sans-culotte* and their power over the Convention. There was significant support for the Terror - just look at Marat and how popular he was - and that was what enabled it to sustain itself. \n\nBut soon that revolutionary fervour and paranoia which sustained the Terror died down, or turned to fatigue, both among the deputies of the Convention and the *sans-culotte* in the street. After 1795, the power of the *journees* effectively disappeared - no popular movement would threaten an elected assembly in France until 1830.", "If you're interested in this subject, I highly recommend the novel *A Place of Greater Safety* by Hilary Mantel, who has twice won the Man Booker prize for her historical fiction. Robespierre is one of the main characters along with other important revolutionaries like Desmoulins and Danton. \n\nObviously, as a work of fiction it will not give you a through understanding of all the factors of the Revolution the way a true historical work would, but it is very insightful in terms of the emotional atmosphere and personal connections that allowed Robespierre to rise to such heights (and use his power to such terrible ends).", "The Duck of Orleans' answer is pretty comprehensive!\n\nHowever, I'd add something. One of the reasons the Terror lasted so long is because Robespierre (and others in control of 'the machinery of Terror') eventually turned against the populist Parisian leaders that had supported him and his Terror. When, in early 1794, Herbert and his followers were executed, and most popular political societies in Paris shut down, Robespierre's position started to look mich more tenuous. It was ultimately a lack of support that doomed him, combined with other politicians' fear that they might become victims of the Terror themselves. (He was betrayed by fellow politicians, who shouted him down and conspired to have him executed.)\n\nI think the Terror might not have been so short-lived if Robespierre did not betray the popular movement. After all, war continued well beyond the Terror, and likewise counter-revolution, as well as severe economic issues (such as inflation and food shortages)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c688754", "c688929" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Apparently there were [house churches before the third century](_URL_0_), but no one has discovered a building that old constructed as a church.", "It's true, there are hardly any churches before Constantine (that is, before the third century). The only thing we have are the house-church in Dura Europos (which was just a room set aside for worship in a Roman house) and a similar building from Israel, recently discovered. In the early 3rd or late 2nd century, Marcus Minucius Felix wrote about the Christians that they \"possessed no sacred buildings and no altars\" (Min. Fel. XXXII, 1). \n\nThat doesn't mean that they had no room to congregate and celebrate their liturgy, though. These *domus ecclesiae* or houses of assembly were located in private rooms in houses of wealthy Roman citizens who had the necessary spare rooms. However, we don't have that much archaeological evidence for these early proto-churches. Even though the prosecutions weren't as severe as often portrayed, they took place, and the early Christians cannot have been very interested in communicating their presence through architectural features (one of the explanations for why we have little hard evidence for the existence of these domus ecclesiae). There is a theory that many of these house-churches evolved into the later tituli or titular churches of Rome, but that is just speculation. In short, there are no dedicated churches that we (or at least I) know of before Constantine. He however changed the whole landscape of sacral buildings and what people became to associate with them that it turned the whole situation on its head.\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_churches_in_the_world#Early_Christianity" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cykrvxh", "cylovyn" ], "score": [ 3, 4 ], "text": [ "I won't claim to offer a full answer to this, but one key factor was that their generals were far better (for the most part) than those of the Entente. The German military was essentially the old Prussian military with the best of the smaller German states such as Bavaria, Saxony, etc bolted on. They had been planning the attack on France since almost immediately after the Franco-Prussian war, correctly assuming the French would want that land back. In the west they were able to move quickly enough to seize the initiative and the strategically important ground time and again. British soldiers were noted complaining that the Germans always had the high ground and their own trenches were always on the low ground, so they'd often be knee-deep in muddy water and contract disease much more often. Even if their technology was a behind and their commanders weren't the best at adapting to circumstance, they still had that reputation. Perhaps an overblown one, but even a lie can scare the enemy. ", "Because while they weren't some overwhelming force of \"the best\" military in existence, they were still damned good. Please don't take a snarky post I made on /r/badhistory in response to a steam review as some ultimate beacon of truth. It's very easy to swing hard in the other direction in something so off the cuff -- being more intent on disproving the other side rather than give a balanced view. So now that you have the mythology dispelled, it's time to get the balanced view of \"Okay, they weren't *terrible* by any means\" but in fact the Germans *were* a very respectable fighting force. \n\nHere are two posts I recommend for context of Germany's conflict in the West and their fall:\n\n* [How far did the front line move on the Western Front?](_URL_2_)\n\n* [Why did the Germans surrender in WWI?](_URL_0_)\n\nThe first post is a rather direct, to the point description of just all the battles throughout it all. [Here's a non-AH post I made on the matter that is more readable/modern.](_URL_1_) I honestly prefer this one to the AH post above, as it's more concise, but it's not as rigorous so I'd look at both. \n\nThe short of it is that they held off in 1915 because 1915 was not the year of the West. There were battles, certainly, but as a whole in 1915 Germany threw the entirety of its weight Eastward, to deal with Russia, while the West was more or less a holding operation. The British meanwhile saw no need in bashing their heads against the trenches just yet -- they had a massive navy and intended to use it. So they went to the Ottoman Empire in hopes of causing their collapse, thus bringing Bulgaria and Romania into the war on the side of the Allies, thus causing Austria-Hungary to collapse and then Germany would be alone. \n\nSo we get to 1916 and these are cataclysmic battles about to happen. The Germans attack in Verdun and the French are battered terribly for months. The British counter attack at the Somme and batter the Germans terribly while the French fight back. So why didn't Germany collapse? Because, and I know it sounds cheeky, the Allies were not necessarily trying to. The Somme was designed to be a broad front operation that killed a bunch of Germans, not a breakthrough operation. The men were distributed evenly across the front for this express purpose on the first days. However, as you'll read above in my posts, after 1916 Germany *was* neutered. The Somme *was* the turning point and from then on it was truly them holding on rather than them dictating the terms in the West.\n\nIn early/mid 1917 breakthrough didn't occur because it was just a matter of how the war was fought. You would need to shell a region for days if not weeks before an offensive -- this obviously told them where you going -- and if you got any semblance of a breakthrough reserves would hit you from all sides and simply batter you back. This got even more pronounced when the Germans developed what's called 'defense in depth', detailed [here](_URL_3_), and the British countered with 'Set Piece' attacks, also detailed there. Meanwhile the French were just utterly destroyed by Verdun in the same way Germany was by the Somme, but much worse. Their manpower was stripped and the second they tried an offensive in April 1917 their men mutinied. \n\nBy the point hurricane barrages, only possible because of massive advances in spotting for artillery allowing them to sight much quicker and perform much more accurately, came into play along with Set Piece being in full swing and the British having all that conscript manpower available and trained and ready...they still didn't want to attack. Because the Americans were in the war, and they were coming. Why try some grand war ending offensive before millions of more men come to help? So they still bid their time and waited. You're seeing a recurring theme here. There is lots of waiting. In 1915 it was to see what happened in the East, for both parties, and in Summer-Winter 1917 and 1918 it was waiting for the Americans. In 1916, the year of cataclysmic battles and notably NOT waiting, the battles were not fought for decisive victory but for bleeding the Germans or French (respectively) as much as possible to prepare for said cataclysmic final decisive offensive. For the British it was hopefully a 3 pronged offensive from the Russians, French, and themselves in later years and for the Germans it was to destroy the French in such a way, and seize Verdun, such that they could bypass the mountainous regions of Eastern France and then swarm in a later offensive into Southern/Central France. \n\nAs for 1918, why that happened, and why it failed, see my posts above and you see, thus, the collapse of Germany." ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3z5x6z/in_which_a_steam_reviewer_tells_us_all_about_the/" ]

[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/281c3g/why_did_the_germans_surrender_in_wwi/ci6mjet", "https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/3ek13u/silly_questions_saturday_july_25_15/ctg8qiy", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e55o7/how_far_did_the_front_line_move_on_the_western/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/3s5n32/wwi_combat_footage_including_soldiers_suffering/cww6lq3" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1nw1vs" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The short answer to your question is that at least officially Greek only became the administrative language of the Eastern empire under emperor Heraclius (~150 years after the Western imperial insignia had been turned in). \n\nInofficially the transition may well have been under way a hundred years earlier - e.g. the *Novellae Constitutiones* of Justinian were first published in Greek." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cx0y5yi", "cx0zp0a", "cx101zd", "cx10m5n", "cx13229" ], "score": [ 453, 533, 36, 105, 23 ], "text": [ "The line in question: \n\n\n > David P. Forsythe wrote: \"The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.\"\n\n\nThe quoted source on Wikipedia: \n\n > David P. Forsythe (2009). \"Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Volume 1\". Oxford University Press. p. 399. ISBN 0195334027\n", "[Luckily Google Books has that page on preview](_URL_0_), but unfortunately it isn't elaborated so I will just sort of have to guess where the figure is coming from, and so my response is yes, it is technically correct, sort of, but the numbers game is a bit slippery.\n\nThis is really more of an issue with how bondage is being defined, as it is an issue that can be looked at in many different ways. In this particular case, I find it implausible that this figure could be arrived at without including much of the population of China. And indeed, *from European eyes* it is possible to make the argument that China's population was in bondage to the tyrannical power of the emperor (in this case the Manchu-origin Qing Dynasty) but--as you can probably guess--I think that just because we can doesn't mean we should. presumably, the idea that the mass of Chinese were in bondage rests on two pillars: officially speaking, everything was property of the emperor (technically true but practically speaking property rights existed), and in a practical sense the Chinese people were subject to corvee. Corvee can be considered bondage, except that it was considered a tax, and from that perspective, taxation can be considered a form of transferred corvee (given that taxation takes a portion of labor compensation--wage). My real issue with the notion of enslaved Chinese is that there actually various systems of unambiguous bondage in China, from serfdom to full slavery. It had been declining for some time (in the Song dynasty outright slavery was outright banned, to variable effect) but still existed. The average farmer, on the other hand, would be in a situation not unlike an English commoner on estate land, and it seems wrongheaded to lump them in with slaves.\n\nGranted I am making a lot of assumptions about Forsythe's methodology here but in my defense I can't actually see his methodology. If someone has a better idea at how the number is arrived at I would love to know, but my immediate reaction is that the figure is perhaps technically correct but not meaningfully so.\n\nMuch of my information about Chinese labor bondage is from William's Rowe's superb *Crimson Rain*.", "Would he consider women in countries under English common law to be in bondage?", "To some degree this question hinges on a definition of what free and unfree labor mean. For example, legal historian Robert Steinfeld has argued that \"free\" labor in the modern sense of the term did not really exist in the Anglo-American world before the second quarter of the 19th century. \n\n\"Free labor\" implies a number of things: (1) that workers choose their jobs voluntarily, through entering into contracts, rather than through coercion, (2) that workers have the right to leave their jobs at any time if they are unhappy with the conditions of work, and (3) that workers' incentives should be financial (i.e., wages) rather than coercive (i.e., whippings and beatings).\n\nBefore the late 18th century in England and America, none of these conditions applied. Under the English Ordinance and Statute of Labourers of 1349-1351 servants were required to sign on with their masters for for a fixed period (usually one year), were subject to criminal punishments if they failed to complete their term of service, and could be required by law to enter into fixed-term contracts - i.e., otherwise they would be considered \"masterless men\" or vagrants, subject to imprisonment. The masters retained the legal right to beat their servants if they failed to live up to the terms of service. \n\nThe distinction between servitude and slavery in this context was not that servants had inalienable rights to their own person - they didn't - but that servants (unlike slaves) consented voluntarily to the terms of service. \n\nThis legal interpretation shifted in the early 19th century as American courts increasingly refused to invoke criminal sanctions or recognize the right of masters to beat or sue their employees for their failure to live up to the terms of service. So workers became \"free\" to unilaterally break their labor agreements with legal impunity. The employer could sue the employee for breaking a contract, but could not invoke criminal sanctions to force the worker to complete the agreement.\n\nThe result was a more expansive definition of \"free labor\": whereas servants and slaves in the 18th century were located at different points on a spectrum of unfreedom, by the 19th century there was an increasingly stark contrast between freedom and slavery when it came to the ability to command one's own labor.\n\nSource: Robert J. Steinfeld, *The Invention of Free Labor* (1991)", "The thing is the idea that 'serfdom' and 'slavery' are distinct and useful concepts is really what does the TIL wrong. It is better to think of labor in different levels of coercion, some of which might be termed slavery or serfdom depending on degree. This avoids a lot of the stranger implications of this - ostensibly free labor in the south in the post-civil war era was held in conditions that were less free than supposed serfs/servants in imperial China. So defining this in terms of exact percentages falling in these groups is totally arbitrary. It might be better to observe that \"three quarters of the world population was in some sort of coerced labor system during the start of the 19th century\". This definition is so wide though as to make this statement somewhat silly. Everyone is coerced to labor a little bit - if you don't work, you don't get money to get things you want. That's coercion, though one that we generally find acceptable. " ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3suf2a/til_that_at_the_start_of_the_19th_century_an/" ]

[ [], [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=1QbX90fmCVUC&q=399#v=snippet&q=%22estimated%20three-quarters%20of%20all%20people%22&f=false" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eztxser" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Opposition? Yes. Overthrow Not really.\n\nIn the 1920s the USSR was a party but not personal dictatorship. Which is to say, the CPSU had a monopoly on politics in the USSR but Stalin did not have a monopoly on policy-making and power within the CPSU yet. After Lenin's incapacity there was no single leader of the USSR, but rather a period of \"collective leadership\".\n\nUnder the Leninist principle of \"Democratic Centralism\", there is -supposed- to be real debate and disagreements within the Central Committee and the Politburo (the highest decision making bodies in the party). Opposition to any single person is supposed to be no more illegitimate than say, disagreeing with a major party official in a western parliamentary party, so long as that disagreement is kept within the party itself and all final decisions are presented as unanimous. \n\nSo in the 1920s Stalin did face opposition and himself played in factional politics. First by allying with politburo members Zinoviev and Kamenev against Leon Trotsky. Then after Trotsky's power was destroyed he allied with Bukharin and Rykov (The right opposition) against Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky (the united opposition) over the question of whether to continue Lenin's New Economic Plan. By the mid-late 1920s, he had politically defeated the left opposition and by the 30s the right opposition had being neutered as well. Essentially every figure in the Lenin era of party leadership was arrested and executed during the late 30s. \n\nBut even before that, there was never an analogue to the Schwarze Kapelle, what became the Valkyrie plotters, in the USSR. The closest thing to it might have being the Ryutin affair of 1932 in which a small number of opposition figures led by the former secretary of Moscow party commitee Martemyan Ryutin did try to circulate a pamphlet calling for Stalin's removal and repudiation of collectivization. However, the number of people implicated was relatively small and the attempt was promptly informed to the secret police. Ryutin and 23 of his accomplices were expelled from the party for one year. However, they were never readmitted and later arrested and executed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyu4isx" ], "score": [ 103 ], "text": [ "The first records of the family which would later be known as the Medici appear in the eleventh century. In stark contrast with their later exploits, they started out as insignificant eleventh century lord of the Manor of Potrone in the Mugello. The Mugello is a region of Tuscany as immensely beautiful as it is immensely boring. This family who held Potrone were vassals of the entirely unremarkable Counts Ubaldini (their only moment of note involves an Ubaldino who embarked on a successful clerical career: once elevated to a cardinalship he was featured in the Divine Comedy in the circle of hell reserved for non-believers. Go figure).\n\nSometime in the late eleventh century the lord of this manor of Potrone might have gained a bit of a reputation as a healer, earning the nickname *Medicus*. Thereafter, his descendants would be known as the \"Medici\". This makes tracking their early activities in the wool trade in Florence rather problematic, as the nickname \"Medici\" is used pretty interchangeably with \"da Potrone\". This is partially the reason why we're not sure if the eleventh-century proto-Medici were city-dwellers who invested in lands in the countryside, or country lords who moved to the city to partake in the wool trade. It also doesn't help that the Medici made a lot of bullshit up out of thin air when they were ruling Florence and no one was asking too many questions about their origins. According to their self-published history, when Charlemagne was \"liberating\" Italy from the Lombards, Averardo, an illegitimate son of the Emperor, valorously defeated a giant called Mugello in a battle somewhere northeast of Florence. Averardo and his descendants would reside in \"Mugello's Region\" from then on. \n\nWe do know that the Medici earned their early fortune in the wool trade (recall that at this point in time, wool spun in Tuscany was shipped all over the Mediterranean) and are one of the families that consistently appears in the records of the Republic of Florence: the earliest traceable documents of their residence in the city is dated 1169, when Giambuono Medici requested a permit to build a tower near the Church of San Tommaso. It seems that they were already rather wealthy at this time, as in 1180 Giambuono took the Sizi family to court over who would be patrons of the Church of San Tommaso. Chiarissimo di Giambuono Medici (a younger son?) is registered as a member of a Florentine delegation to Siena in 1201, while Bongiunta di Giambuono Medici (an older son?) was elected to the city council in 1216. \n\nSo we have more than enough reason to believe that the Medici were important members of Florentine society from the get-go. In 1240, Chiarissimo Medici (who by then was knighted by the city council) is registered as being a creditor to the Camaldoli Monastery in the Mugello. They were clearly wealthy enough to start lending money, albeit not systematically. \n\nThe Medici continue to consistently appear in Florentine records well through the late 1200's and into the 1300's. After the institution of the *Gonfaloniere della Giustizia*, or \"Standard-Bearer of Justice\" in 1293 (a sort of supreme judge who presided over the executive, or *Podestà*, and legislature, the *Priori*) Members of the Medici family were assigned the very important office multiple times in the next decades.\n\nFast forward a number of years: When Averardo Medici, a successful trader in the family wool conglomerate died in 1363 he divided his inheritance among his five sons. You might think things would be bleak for his three-year-old son Giovanni. But the Medici were, like many other Italian families, a sort of clan and were in the business of looking out for each other (also, family members make very loyal employees). Vieri Medici, Averado's second cousin, took Giovanni into his service. Vieri was so immensely rich he didn't even *do* anything for a living. He put up money for *other* people to set up businesses or buy and sell goods and services, and took a portion of the profits (if it sounds like investment banking, that's because it is). \n\nAt age twenty, Giovanni, who had quickly proved his worth to Vieri, was sent to manage Vieri's debitors in Rome (sometimes referred to \"Vieri's Roman Branch\"). By twenty five, he used his wife's modest dowry to buyout and spin-off Vieri's activity in Rome as his own banking operation. He was living comfortably, but couldn't call himself rich. That would soon change. A series of complex deals whereby he was able to secure portions of the papal income in exchange for fronting money to various Popes and anti-Popes would make him immensely rich by the early 1400's. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "citc5n1" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "First off, it didn't actually replace Greek. Up until the end of WWI, and the later exchange of populations, there were huge populations of Greek, Armenian, Syriac and Arabic speaking communities in Anatolia, among others. There were many newspapers and books printed and published in Greek and Armenian throughout the 19th and early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire. The reason Turkish became so successful was the huge amount of migration from Central Asia. Mahmud al Kashgari, Jalaladdin Rumi and other historical figures who lived and died in what was the Seljuk Sultanate were from places in China and Northern India." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f6quqqk" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "[I've discussed this here which should help you out](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pcjfv/one_gets_the_gun_the_other_gets_the_ammo_did_this/cw54qf3?context=3" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crtssct" ], "score": [ 39 ], "text": [ "Shaka Zulu led a massive wave of military reform that catapulted the Zulu into being the most dominant native force in the region. Because of his many successful military reforms and his tactical brilliance some have even likened to to being \"the black Napoleon\".\n\nUp to the time of his reforms, tribal warfare often focused on skirmish style confrontations with an emphasis on throwing spears. Shaka continued to train his forces to use throwing spears, but also put a new emphasis on hand to hand combat and melee with short stabbing spears.\n\nHe improved Zulu logistical ability, increased the speed that the Zulu army could move, and established a new regimental system that made chain of command more streamlined.\n\nIn addition to being a reformer, Shaka was also a great tactician and is personally credited for creating the \"bull horn\" formation which was extremely difficult for his opponents to counter.\n\nThis is a diagram of it: _URL_0_\n\nSkirmishers and a large contingent of senior warriors in the front/middle (chest), two groups on either side of young, fast warriors who's job it was to flank around the enemy (horns), and in the back there would be a large reserve force (the loins) to patch up any holes the enemy was able to make once surrounded, and to pursue any enemies that escaped. " ] }

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[ [ "http://i.stack.imgur.com/4mIrw.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmd4atd", "cmd5m0o", "cmdfxdu" ], "score": [ 10, 7, 3 ], "text": [ "Caveat: my information is a bit late, from the fifteenth century, but may be useful since I suspect it is relevant for the 12th as well. \n\nI dont know if you count bells as music, but bell ringing would have been a constant sound during their life. Every peasant would have been able to hear the bell of his village and there are records of complaints when the bell could not be heard in the fields. The bells of churches, abbeys, and monasteries would ring regularly. But on special occasions like the signing of a peace treaty or the election of a new pope, they would ring for days, all through the night continuously. \n\nRegarding songs and musical instuments, the processions of the nobility were always preceded by great ceremony, often using trumpets and other brass instruments. And famous itinerant preachers would be greeted by entire towns coming out to greet the preacher with songs and chants and music, all processing multiple times around the town. Music appears to be a big part of life, part of general emotional feeling, as well as a ritualised part of corporate life.\n\nSource: The Waning of the Middle Ages, by J. Huizinga", "In Paris the music scene was dominated by the Notre Dame school (Leonin/Perotin). The written music was Latin sung Organum, basically a Gregorian chant with a second voice paralleling the chant at a different interval. There would be no instruments accompanying that. In fact, there is not a ton known about what inatruments were used. There were percussion and some shawms from the middle east, but most of the instruments you know in the modern europe were a couple centuries away. ", "Related question: in places like Brittany, there are dances and songs associated with all sorts of work, such as the salt gatherers in Guerande. When where these dances and songs first put together? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgysqbe" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "All of these. If you look at a database like [the megalithic portal](_URL_0_), or even our own /r/megalithporn, you see that theres plenty of similar stone monuments all over the world. However, the amount of megaliths is still a peculiarity of Britain, though I do not know what happens if you broaden the definition to also include burial mounds (Denmark might beat it) or runestones (Sweden might beat it).\n\nStill, rather than just comparing and counting stone monuments over vast areas of the world, it would be more useful to look at the individual monument traditions in their own local region. The megalithic traditions (British Henges, Funnel Beaker megaliths, Atlantic menhirs and dolmens) do have their own regional inspirations and divergences, nevermind the chronological differences between them (we're talking about millennia-scale time differences between the later phases of Stonehenge and the first long barrows in Brittany, for example). So if you're looking mostly at henges, then yes, Britain has most of them because most of them were built in Britain. In this sense, your question is quite similar to asking why pyramids occur in Egypt.\n\nOf course, environmental factors like the availability of stone is also important, as is the fact that many British monuments were built on heathland relatively immune to intensive agricultural practices or later construction activities." ] }

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[ "http://www.amazon.com/Standing-With-Stones-Journey-Megalithic/dp/B001SGEUBK", "http://standingwithstones.net/" ]

[ [ "http://www.megalithic.co.uk/index.php" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dm17wtl", "dm2gwzs" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Why wasn't China partitioned before anyways? The European took over an entire continent but no China? why? ", "I assume by the \"8 powers\" you mean the Eight Nation Alliance. The simple answer to this question is that they did not have the intention nor the manpower required to do so. \n\nYou see, the primary purpose of the Eight Nation Alliance's intervention in China was to crush anti-foreigner rebels, and maintain continued access to the lucrative Chinese market, which would otherwise have been cut off should the rebels have succeeded. \n\nThe picture often painted of the Boxer Rebellion tends to be one of the western armies fighting the Chinese. In truth, the westerners paid the Chinese armies led by men like Yuan Shikai to fight the Boxers on their behalf. Now, the actual western forces sent into China were certainly capable of winning battles, but conquering and holding a country is another matter altogether, and letting their Chinese warlord mercenaries (of dubious loyalty) hold conquered territory for them was a questionable decision. \n\nInstances where the colonial powers have taken over entire continents (the Americas) and subcontinents (like India) are also reliant on the region being 'less civilized' - that is to say, decentralized and/or being technologically/structurally lacking. This was not the case in China, which had a centralized (if albeit weak) government, a coherent unified Chinese identity, and while technologically lacking nobody could call China 'uncivilized' by any measure. \n\nIf you look at the numbers of the regular armies of the Eight Nation Alliance at the time, their combined might was just over 3 million. Obviously not all of that fighting force can be sent halfway around the world, leaving their home territory and other holdings unguarded. Then take into account the Chinese population was 150 to 400 million at the time.\n\nAll these factors taken into account means that here was no way the Eight Nation Alliance could have possibly conquered and held all of China between themselves. And the colonial powers were not wont to partition lands peacefully between themselves anyway, there was always fierce bickering in such an event. Japan, Germany and Russia certainly wanted to carve up China like you proposed, and that desire was blocked by countries like the USA. \n\nThat being the case, the Eight Nation Alliance, after their victory over the rebels, were content with peace terms that forced the Chinese market to remain open with generous trading benefits for them. In this way, they hoped to reap the profits of colonialism without actually having to administer a colony the size of China. \n\nReferences: \n\n* Silbey, D.J., 2012. The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History. Hill and Wang.\n\n* Preston, D., 2000. The boxer rebellion: the dramatic story of China's war on foreigners that shook the world in the summer of 1900. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.\n\n* MacKinnon, S.R., 1980. Power and politics in late imperial China: Yuan Shi-kai in Beijing and Tianjin, 1901-1908 (No. 24). Univ of California Press." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ceiaupe", "ceihvdu" ], "score": [ 16, 2 ], "text": [ "I believe Clayton Donnell wrote a book a few years back on WWI fortifications on the Meuse (looks like this is it [here](_URL_0_)). It dealt specifically with the expensive Belgian project to attempt (in vain) to prevent the next French/German war being fought through their country by building a chain of forts in the 1880's. That put them a few decades out of date by WWI.\n\nThe moral of the story, to attempt poorly to sum things up, was that the forts were terribly outclassed by modern weaponry (German 42 cm howitzers were able to destroy the concrete reinforcements) and held off the Germans for roughly a week instead of the month they were designed for, but that week was sufficient to allow mobilization to occur to eventually hold the Germans back. In other words, they did not fulfill their paper mission, but they contributed in no small part to eventual success.", ".....not really at all.\n\n\nThe root issue was that the fort in a traditional sense really only *exposed* forces to enemy artillery, and was expensive to boot. This is the entire reason why trenches were so entirely important in WW1- they were inexpensive and offered real protection. A fortification just gave you guidelines on where to drop shells, but a properly dug trench told relatively little while maximizing protection. Artillery shells in WW1 operated on a level of magnitude where if it landed in a fort, it hit something important, and if it didn't, the crap it kicked up probably hit *someone*. \n\n\n\nI guess you could argue that the fact that they bought time meant the forts fulfilled their purpose but for effort (man hours, money, any metric you pick) in versus yield out they didn't really prove themselves worthy. \n\n\n\nIt really wouldn't be until WW2 or so, and period-contemporary construction realized that the usage of densely populated re-bar reinforced concrete was a *colossal* pain to deal with. Some Nazi structures were so difficult to destroy that even in peace time, the occupying forces just caved (no pun intended, I swear) and buried them. Urban explorers still like poking around some of them today in Germany. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/Forts-Meuse-World-War-Fortress/dp/1846031141" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cavapyx", "cavh0f9" ], "score": [ 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Until at least the Scientific revlotion reading aloud was the norm for those who could read in the western world (I can't speak to Asian Cultures). In fact reading in one's head was considered by to be a sign of demonic presence (or some such non sense) during the European medieval period. Many monks, especially those of the early orders which were focused on eliminating the will, spent day after day reading and copying books as a means of submitting to the will of God. Many were forbidden from speaking because by speaking one excersizes ones own will but by reading (ie reading aloud) from the bible one is exercising God's will.\n\nIn the *The Swerve* by Stephen Greenblatt he writes to great extent about the reading and writing practices of ancient Rome and Monastic Scholars.\n\nIn *A Day in the life of Ancient Rome* Alberto Angela discusses the schooling practices of ancient romans and that they did indeed read aloud.", "I can't answer to the question about reading rooms in other cultures, but the thing about ancient Europeans reading aloud is a stereotype that was very firmly disproved about fifteen years ago (so it's not surprising that it's still hanging around).\n\nIn the Greco-Roman world silent reading was the norm.\n\n[Here's an older thread](_URL_0_) that goes into more detail. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10f13m/shift_from_reading_out_loud_to_reading_silently/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlp0th1" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "PART 1\n\n & nbsp;\n\nWell, you are asking for a tough challenge, that is being able to know what Franco was actually thinking at any point. Knowing his position of power was based in him being the center of the balance amongst several \"political famillies\" (the army, falangists, traditionalists, monarchists, opus dei...) he was not prone to show his cards regarding key issues like this. Some people will say too that him being galician didn't help to expect clear answers from the guy either, but that's another matter. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nFortunatelly regarding the issue of succession, we can count with an interesting source where Franco himself openly talks about the issue.\n\nFrancisco Franco Salgado-Araujo was Francisco Franco Bahamonde's cousin (Franco Bahamonde is the famous one, of course) and the head of Franco's Military House. Thus, he had usual private conversations and confidences with the other Franco, and methodically recorded those conversations in a personal journal that was later published in 1975 entitled as \"Mis conversaciones privadas con Franco\" (My private conversations with Franco\"). It covers conversations from 1954 to 1971. It's a good source to shed some light about Franco's actual ideas for different reasons: They were private conversations with a man trusted by Franco. Franco didn't know his cousin was recording the conversations, and also, the cousin lacked any political or personal ambition doing it, since he never published his notes during his life. The foreword of the recollection is telling about its nature (everything in parenthesis in this quote and the following quotes in mine):\n\n > My only goal is to make the absolute truth be known. By someone who lived many years close to El Caudillo, who owes gratitude to him like any other spaniard but never forgets that, above Franco, is the Fatherland (*Patria*) and the loyalty owed to it. \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nAmongst the many issues they talked about during the almost two decades the notes record, the matter of the succession was obviously one of them, and a recurrent one in fact. \n\nFrom the conversations with his cousin we can extract some conclusions:\n\n & nbsp;\n\nFranco had a more or less clear idea about his succession from an early moment, even if he reserved it to his more private confidences (I will add a bit of political context below) For him the legitimate successor was Don Juan de Borbón, Alfonso XIII's son and Juan Carlos I father. But Don Juan's political positions (and in Don Juan's case, \"positions\" in plural is the accurate word) made him an impossible option for Franco. In March 1945, in the so-called \"Manifiesto of Laussane\", Don Juan, knowing the francoist regime was facing a very delicate and unclear future with the imminent defeat of the Axis powers, and trying to court the favour of the Allied powers, called for a monarchist restoration in Spain. He openly linked the francoist regime with the totatilarian powers. \n\n > The regime established by General Franco, since the beginning inspired by the totalitarian Axis powers, is fundamentally incompatible with the current world circumstances (...)so I rise my voice to ask General Franco, aknowledging the failure of his totalitarian conception of the state, to leave the power, allowing free pass to the Restoration (*of the monarchy*) \n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nObviously Franco never forgot this declaration. Furthermore, Franco didn't like some of the members in Don Juan's entourage, considering them too liberal or too close to franc-masonry (one of Franco's obssesions) It didn't help that Don Juan played all the strings, keeping contacts with the opposition, the monarchists inside Spain, and of course Franco himself.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nSo, with Don Juan out of the cards, there were two options left: Don Juan's elder son, Juan Carlos I, and Alfonso de Borbón Dampierre, son of the Infante Don Jaime, Alfonso XIII's second son who had renounced to his rights to the throne due to his deafness (after his older brother, Alfonso, had made the same to get married with a commonner woman)\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nAnyway, the most legitimated option was Juan Carlos, and it's in the following years when the negotiations between Franco and Don Juan about Juan Carlos future begun. As it happened, Juan Carlos would be educated in Spain under Franco's overseen. Despite Don Juan's will was to give the prince an international education, Franco preferred to avoid external influences and Juan Carlos education was completly held in Spain. Meanwhile Alfonso was considered a backup option in case the other option failed, though the guy even married Franco's grandaughter.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nSo, going finally to your question, what was Franco's idea about Spain under Juan Carlos? Well, following the aforementioned source, in 1955 he points that \n\n > \"The new Monarchy will be based over the postulates of Falange\" \n\nLater, in 1959, he is more clear:\n\n > \"a Monarchy based in the principles of the Movimiento ( *Movimiento Nacional, the umbrella term to include the forces behind the 1936 uprising and the nature and the only party of the regime, with the short name of Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET-JONS)*) not one similar or like the one that fell the 14th of April (*14th april 1931 was the proclamation of the Second Republic*) because it wouldn't last ever one year and would bring chaos to Spain, making the Crusade useless\" (*Cruzada Nacional was a term used by the nationalists to refer the Civil War*) \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nIt doesn't seem Franco's vision on the issue changed too much in the following years, not certainly in a verifiable way, though some figures of the later years of the regime afirm that during his final years Franco knew that after him deeper changes would be needed. It's not impossible considering the growing internal and external pressure over the regime, but on the other hand in the 70's Franco was an octogenarian, far from the overcontrolling strongman of previous decades, ill and weakened by age, doesn't seem the kind of person who changes his opinions radically or can get a good understanding of the a quickly changing society around him. \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nHowever, Franco was many things, but not a gambler. Thus, he kept always an eye over Juan Carlos. In this regard, there is an interesting memo from the Dirección General de Seguridad (The organ charged with wide competences about public order) about a meeting between Juan Carlos and some \"progressive\" individuals (for the standards of the regime, including politicians, professionals, bankers and bussinesmen) In the meeting, in 1966, the future of Spain after Franco was discused. Juan Carlos hosts considered that the future Spain should have a political system similar to that in other western european countries. In the memo it's said\n\n > The Prince suggested that the excesses of pluripartisanism should be avoided. Villar and others added that it would be enough with an inteligent electoral law to grant in the practice a two parties system, social democratic and christian democratic, with some other marginal or complementary sectors\"\n\nStill the report points that:\n\n > In every moment the Prince talked with respect about the Head of the State and didn't take any commintment.\n\nOf course this report went directly to Franco's desk, though Franco didn't seem worried about it. After all, the Prince had not made any promise and he should have to swear an oath to the principles of the Movement before becoming officially successor. \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\n\nBut also it's important to note that, as powerful as Franco was, he was not the only figure involved in the decissionmaking of the time, and specially from the 60's onwards his role was more that of a refree in the political bickering amongst the diferent factions inside the regime, mainly the strong and mercyless rivalry between Falange and Opus Dei. And in this rivalry, Juan Carlos and the succession was a key front.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\n\nFranco's succession wasn't a big worry before the 60's, when the dictator came to a certain age and started to show some health problems. Also, in the 60's the deep changes the spanish society would see in the next two decades after the implementation of the 1959 \"Stabilizatation Plan\" were becoming visible, and it didn't affect only to daily life of the average spaniard, they also drastically changed the political landscape and brought a new wave of very active opposition against the regime. \n\n & nbsp;\n\n\n\nBut let's go a bit before. The 40's and early 50's had seen a failed attempt on economical Autarky with disastrous consequences that caused Spain to take 20 years to recover the economical levels of 1936. Realizing, by the force of reality and the shadow of a default of the spanish debt, the inviability of this path, and with the 1953 \"Madrid Accords\" with the USA in the background, Franco more or less reluctantly acceded to a new economical plan based in a push for economical liberalization and industrialization. The plan was rather succesful in the following two decades, though during its first phase it also caused a big surge of unployoment and a large emmigration of spaniards to other (mainly western european) countries, phenomenon that would have also political consequences. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqhmlf8", "cqhn9sa" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "If that were the narrative, what you say as a reaction would make sense. However, you've got virtually every part of the story incorrect.\n\nThe entire *capo* of the Templars in France, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were arrested by surprise by the bailiffs and seneschals of the King of France, Philip IV. **IF** I had to put it in terms like you have:\n\n > \"Ok, that's cute. I have the gold. I have the land. More importantly, I have the swords. You're fucking dead, mate.\"\n\nThen I would refer you to the equally fictional end of Godfather where Michael has the heads of competing mafia Dons killed at once. I hate this comparison because the suggestions of equivalency of power, and the absence of a third mediating power, are wrong for describing the relationship of Philip to the Templars. But it makes do for the effect of complete and utter decapitation of the order in France.\n\nPhilip IV (The Fair), and in particular his ministers Guillaume de Nogaret and Guillaume de Plaisians, waged a significant propaganda campaign against the Templars before this, seeking their dissolution and arrest by the Church. However neither the papacy nor any Papal inquisition were involved in the arrest; in fact, Pope Clement V declaimed Philip's assumption of jurisdiction in arresting Templars for heresy. The arrests and torture were conducted by secular authority:\n\n > thanks to the indulgence of the inquisitor of France and royal devotee, Guillaume de Paris, the jurisdiction of the Church acted under the king’s direct control, in fact if not in law. ^1\n\nIt was only a few years before this that Philip had attempted to declare the previous pope Boniface VIII a heretic *himself* which had lead to years of running crisis between papacy and king.\n\nThe whole episode is reflective of Philip's seeming desire to assume authority of the Church himself after years of conflict over the papal role in the rule of France.\n\n^1 Julien Théry, *A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the “Perfidious Templars,” and the Pontificalization of the French Monarchy*, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, Vol. 39, No. 2 (2013), pp. 117-148", "You're missing one essential fact: the Inquisition was not behind the arrest of the Templars. It was the King of France, Phillip IV. Phillip IV ~~would later go on to arrest~~ had previously ordered the arrest of the Pope (Boniface VIII). He certainly did not have any fear whatsoever of the Templar order. By 1307, the Templar order was far less wealthy and powerful than it had been at its peak. The time of overwhelming European interest in crusades for the Holy Land had largely passed. The Templars had been steadily losing ground for decades and had been driven out of their most important fortresses and holdings in the Holy Land. With those losses came a great decrease in the actual fighting capacity of the Templars. Most of their European bases weren't castles full of standing troops, but centers of bureaucratic administration. Philip IV's order for the arrest of the Templars was given out to royal agents in secret and caught the Templars completely by surprise. Being spread out across France and the rest of Europe, they had no time to effectively organize for any sort of armed resistance. Even if they had, it's extremely doubtful that they could have fielded a force capable of challenging the army that the King of France could have put together much more quickly." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cc2u1w2" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Basically the existence of 'youth culture' began at the same time as the existence of recorded music.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPrior to the 20th century, people married very young, or were working, or spent most of their time with their family. It wasn't until industrialization with the attendant excess wealth and free time, and the existence of compulsory schooling that most kids could spend enough time with their peers to form a distinct culture from their parents." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dfeojkn" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There were a couple of reasons for the lack of close air support; First, anti-aircraft fire and weather conditions (mostly fog early in the day) prevented the kind of low-level flying required for CAS. Second, the planners of the operation made the strategic decision to focus bombing further inland behind the beaches. There were several different reasons for this. In Gallipolli, the invasion of Sicily and Anzio the initial landings were unopposed. It was only later that a counter-assault was made to push the invaders off the beaches. The other reason was German trench warfare doctrine in WWI, which the Allies assumed the Germans to still be using. This doctrine called for a weak front line consisting of machine gunners to slow down the initial assault and spotters to call down artillery fire, with strong secondary and tertiary lines to break the assault. Thus, the Allied assumption was that the beaches would be easy to take, and that it was further inland where problems would arise (problems did show up there, but that's a different story). I would dispute the ineffectiveness of the naval support. Several bunkers both on the beaches and inland were destroyed by 16-inch shells from the five battleships present, and counter-battery fire greatly helped the landing parties. In addition, the HMS Ramillies was instrumental in suppressing the German tank forces, which were supposed to form the spearhead for the counter-assault." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8spdo2" ], "score": [ 34 ], "text": [ "Feudalism as it was known in other parts of Europe was never fully applied in Sweden, Norway or Finland. Elsewhere it was a relic of the Roman Empire but these lands were never conquered by Rome and were too far from the Empire's borders to have been greatly influenced in how they structured their society. \n\nThe closest they got to it was the Vistarband system imposed by Norway in Iceland, whilst they ruled over it from the 15th to the 19th c. it required those who did not own their own land or farms to seek farm work employment and to effectively become Serfs for year long contracts. The status of these workers was similar to Feudal Serfs as they were bonded labourers, however, there was no slave class and the contracts lasted for just one year without restrictions on seeking employment elsewhere when the contract ended. Manorial Serfdom (where freedom of movement is denied) and slavery were explicitly made illegal in Sweden in the 14th c. in response to a few rogue landlords who had attempted to apply it in the German fashion. \n\nThe conditions of life in Scandinavia were such that a large privileged elite couldn't emerge in the middle ages in an agricultural setting, put simply it's just not good enough farm land to support that kind of society. A trading elite did emerge, supplying fish to Catholic Europe meant that Scandinavia could develop an influential mercantile class very early on.\n\nThis is a good source _URL_0_ \n\nThe whole book is uploaded and free to access \n\nEdit - should add that the same applied in Scotland, Manorial Feudalism was only practical in the Southern half of the British isles, the Scottish system was much closer to the Scandivanian model. \n" ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Qv8zxie3A18C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Franklin+Daniel+Scott%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L5o7UeazKsGS7AbLmoCIAg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "db8ff4l", "db9glim" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Post WW2 strikes me as kind of an odd time frame because of course that's actually when most of these states become independent *from* foreign powers.\n\nI think for most of that period though you have to ask whether the foreign interference and intervention actually was meaningfully more substantial in a Cold War context than other parts of the world. I'm not sure whether qualitatively on quantitatively that is in fact the case given Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the host of interventions, interference and Cold War related conflicts in east Asia, Africa and Latin America.\n\nBut if we were to just stipulate the point and ask why the Middle East would be a place where you would have foreign intervention and interference above beyond the basic Cold War aspect that the US and USSR were intervening pretty much everywhere all the time, then I think you could point to a few things.\n\nFirst of all, in the early part of the Cold War, the emerging Arab nationalist movements were basically ideologically neutral in the Cold War context. The United States, small-r republican as it is, thought it was fine to see the old European imperialist-installed monarchies in countries like Egypt go out the door and that it was necessary and good to embrace and empower Arab nationalism. So for instance Gamal Abdel Nasser's enormous popularity region-wide was partly the result of his radio broadcasts on *Sowt al-Arab*, \"The Voice of the Arabs\", which was a radio station that was initially funded and equipped by the CIA.\n\nThe Russians felt much the same in terms of wanting to be the steward of anti-imperialism.\n\nInterestingly both Russia and the US were also initially pro-Zionist, so Truman recognizes the new state of Israel in 1948 after a matter of minutes while Russia becomes the first country to recognize Israel in legislation, I believe a couple days later.\n\nMeanwhile the European imperial powers, particularly Britain and France, are basically undergoing de-colonization. This happened in spurts, some sudden, some protracted. So French are basically forced to grant independence to Syria and Lebanon right after WW2, the British are kicked out of Suez in 1956 and that's all quite sudden but then the Algerian War of Independence drags out from 1954-1962. Nonetheless a large part of these \"interventions\" are actually the *end* of empire.\n\nThe Suez Crisis and 1956 though are when I think a lot of the dynamics I've just described above start to change. Nasser ends up recognizing Communist China and completes an arms deal with Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia and in violation of a regional arms embargo that had basically been agreed to (very imperfectly) after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to try and keep the peace. The Soviet Union then also stepped in to fund and helped construct the Aswan High Dam after Eisenhower withdrew support because of Nasser's recognition of China.\n\nPretty much after that point you basically enter the period of [the Arab Cold War](_URL_3_) where the Arab nationalist cause became more specifically an Arab nationalist *socialist* cause and the United States, generally speaking, came to back the conservative or status quo Arab monarchies-- Jordan, Saudi, the Gulf States, Iraq prior to 1958, Iran prior to 1979 (not Arabs, but you get my point), etc. \n\nAnd, eventually, critically, Israel.\n\nThe Soviets, in turn, generally backed the Arab Socialist movements-- Nasser in Egypt, the Baathists in Iraq and Syria and so on.\n\nThere are also associated developments that I won't get into like the attempt to form the \"Baghdad Pact\" as a kind of Middle East equivalent of NATO, the [Eisenhower Doctrine](_URL_4_) which stated that any Middle Eastern country that requested it would receive assistance from the United States in fighting communism (and which was acted out in the little known [1958 US intervention in Lebanon](_URL_0_)).\n\nSo ideologically and politically the region is very much \"in play\" in the Cold War.\n\nIt's also, I don't quite want to see *uniquely* in the second half of the 20th century for fear that someone will contradict me but it's one of the few places in the world where you have repeated, large scale, sophisticated inter-state conflict. So whereas the defining conflicts of the Cold War I think you would point to, say, Vietnam or Afghanistan which are in large part these sort of shadowy civil conflict proxy guerrilla wars, the wars involving Israel in '48, '56, '67 and '73 aren't really like that. They're much more WW2-esque. Huge territories, and indeed entire states, were threatened with outright conquest on a very short time scale. They were fought with exactly the kind of sophisticated, mechanized, technologized combined-arms approach that you would have seen had their been a conventional conflict between NATO and the Warsaw pact in Europe.\n\nAll of that made these wars very dangerous and of intense interest to the US and USSR. It is no coincidence that in several of these crises both the US and the USSR contemplated or threatened a nuclear war and that the Soviets considered direct intervention in three of the Arab-Israeli wars and a fourth time in 1970 during the \"War of Attrition\" between Egypt and Israel.\n\nI think lastly I would want to touch on oil, because I think you could make the case that oil is less important to the regional and geo-political importance of the Middle East than some [very ill-informed commentary about the region might have you believe.](_URL_2_)\n\nI would make that case on the basis that the majority of these interventions and interferences aren't actually occurring in oil-bearing countries or primarily because of oil. If that were the case then you would see conflict and intervention in, say, Saudi's Eastern Province or the Gulf States. Instead of having so much of it focused on the oil-poor levant. I also think prior to the 1973 Opec oil embargo, oil is a strategic resource but not necessarily viewed as being a critically vulnerable one. Russia had lots of oil. The US had lots of oil. Oil was certainly profitable for whoever had control of it and of vital importance for the petro states, but not of the kind of criticality that fuels contemporary conspiracies that it's all really about oil.\n\nSourcewise:\n\nI haven't finished it but I'm quite enjoying *Ike's Gamble* so far. I always tend to recommend Eugene Rogan's *The Arabs: A History* and D.K. Fieldhouse's *Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958.* I think of the regional cold-war aspects of the wider Muslim world are well-covered in Steve Coll's book *Ghost War.* Francis Fukuyama's essay [*Soviet Threats to Intervene in the Middle East 1956-1973*](_URL_1_) would also be worth a read.", "Regarding reasons for 'many' military interventions in the Middle East: for most of the last 100 years, core essence of most of these were relations between various foreign powers, and their attempts to directly influence developments in preferred direction. 'Oil' did play its role, no doubt, but by far not as often as generally accepted. In period 1991-2015, reasons were slightly different (i.e. primarily related at outside powers attempting to re-shape the Middle East once again), but more recently relations between the West and Russia are dominant once again. \n\nHere I would recommend readings like [A Line in the Sand](_URL_4_) and [The Great Syrian Revolt](_URL_0_) - as 'starters'. \n\nIn the first, you can read how mutual relations between Great Britain and France - plus their relations to various other powers (Germany, Russia) - influenced their shaping of the modern-day Middle East. The second is a rare insight (even more so because it's based on French documentation, but published in English) into one of early reactions of local people (and their motivation) to such behaviour. \n\nIt remained very much that way during the subsequent times, i.e. after 1945. For example, at least a part of British involvement in the Suez War of 1956 was British concern about 'raising Soviet influence in Egypt' - and London's failure to convince Nasser to join the Baghdad Pact. French, on the other hand, were curious to remove Nasser because - between others - he was providing support to Algerian insurgents and various other anti-colonial movements in Africa. For a very good insight into contemporary way of thinking I would recommend Roy Fullick's and Geoffrey Powell's [Suez, the Double War](_URL_1_). \n\nSimilar reasons were crucial for the British intervention in Jordan, and the US in Lebanon, of 1958: both operations were launched in reaction to what was seen as a 'threat' of 'Soviet clients' - Egypt, Syria and Iraq - prompting local uprisings that threatened pro-Western governments. By 1961, this came so far that Britain launched another intervention in Kuwait after Baghdad merely 'thought loudly' about a possibility of invading its southern neighbour. \n\nThrough the 1960s, the USA were gradually dragged into openly supporting Israel - out of Israeli interest in securing US military aid but also the US interest in securing Israeli support for the US intervention in Vietnam. These efforts went so far that President Johnson granted permission for export of F-4 Phantoms to Israel expecting Israeli government would express its support - which never happened. Versa-vice: in 1970, Soviets launched a military intervention in Egypt in reaction to what they saw as US providing Israel with vastly superior military capabilities - F-4 Phantoms - which in turn required bolstering Egyptian defensive capabilities. 'Bonus' were basing rights in places like Marsa Matruh and at Cairo West: these bases were interesting for Soviets exclusively within the context of the Cold War rivalry with the USA. In this regards, I would recommend [Taking Sides](_URL_2_). \n\n1970s were characterised by the [Nixon Doctrine](_URL_3_) (see: 'we arm our allies so they can defend themselves on their own'), and 1980s by most of involved parties maintaining the status quo. Thus, there were relatively few military interventions. Exceptions were such like operations against Libya in 1981 and 1986, and the intervention in Lebanon of 1983. A fine study of backgrounds is [El Dorado Canyon](_URL_5_).\n\nMotivation for more recent interventions - i.e. those launched since 1990-1991 - was slightly more complex, though still dominated by the same topics like before, including 'maintaining the status quo' (Iraq, 1991), or 're-shaping the Middle East' (Iraq, 2003; Libya 2011). " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lebanon_crisis", "https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/notes/2005/N1577.pdf", "https://twitter.com/drjillstein/status/789896659211788288", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Cold_War", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Doctrine" ], [ "https://www.amazon.com/Syrian-Revolt-Nationalism-Modern-Paperback/dp/0292706804/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481870624&sr=1-1&keywords=the+great+syrian+revolt+provence", "https://www.amazon.com/Suez-Double-War-Roy-Fullick-ebook/dp/B00K1KIXDU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481871667&sr=1-1&keywords=suez+the+double+war+fullick", "https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Sides-Americas-Relations-Militant/dp/0915597543/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481873205&sr=1-8&keywords=taking+sides+green", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Doctrine", "https://www.amazon.com/Line-Sand-Anglo-French-Struggle-1914-1948/dp/0393344258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481870584&sr=1-1&keywords=line+in+the+sand+barr", "https://www.amazon.com/El-Dorado-Canyon-Reagans-Undeclared/dp/1682471233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481874270&sr=1-1&keywords=dorado+canyon+stanik" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dj1n4rl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I’ll take a stab at this, though as will become clear as you read my response I don’t think this is the sort of question that admits of a simple answer.\n \nSo, in order to decide if history is a science, we would seem to need to know what a science is. Or, at the very least, we need some set of necessary and sufficient conditions for when something gets to count as a science. This sort of thing is what is known in philosophy as a *demarcation problem*. The demarcation problem in science has gotten a lot of attention, which I will briefly summarize here.\n \nFirst, you might think that science is simply those studies that deal with what is objectively verifiable. To be a bit more careful, we might say something like this:\n \n > X is a science if and only if X deals with what is empirically verifiable or analytically certain.\n \nThis sort of view is called *verificationism* and is most closely associated with the Logical Positivists of the early 20^th century.^1 Let’s unpack this a little. First, “analytically certain” is meant to allow for science to deal with what we might loosely term definitional truths. Stuff like “All bachelors are unmarried men” or “1=1=2” and so on.\n \nWhat about “empirically verifiable”? Well, clearly we don’t want to require that science be empirically verified, since we are doing science before we get the results of experiment. We also don’t want to say that science must eventually be verified, since Newton’s theory of gravitation is clearly science but could never be totally verified given that the theory turned out to be false. So what we seem to want to say here is that science deals with theories that could, in principle, be verified empirically.\n \nOk, so what is the problem with verificationism? Well, consider the case of astrology. Take the claim: Capricorns tend to be angry. Now, this claim is obviously, in principle at least, empirically verifiable. We could go take a poll and find that Capricorns do, in fact, tend to be angry. But surely we don’t on such grounds want to say that astrology is a science! So verificationism seems to get these sorts of cases wrong.\n \nAnother theory, due to Karl Popper, is that science deals with claims that we could in principle falsify. Such a view, naturally enough, is called *falsificationism*. We can deal with this theory quickly, since it falls prey to the same counterexample as verificationism. Again, clearly we can empirically falsify astrological claims, but this does not mean we want to say astrology is a science.^2\n \nThe best view, at least imo, is that science is what Wittgenstein called a game concept.^3 Roughly, science is an organic concept which, while meaningful in ordinary language, does not admit of necessary and sufficient conditions. Rather, it is defined by usage and paradigmatic instances. So, we might say that science is defined by how we use it to classify paradigmatic cases like physics (it is a science) and astrology (it isn’t).\n \nUnfortunately, history seems to be a borderline case. It doesn’t appear obviously to be a science like physics, but it also clearly doesn’t belong with non-sciences like poetry or astrology. At the end of the day though, I don’t think this is so bad. While we tend to attribute a ton of value and authority to science, we needn’t do so to the exclusion of other fields. And fwiw, history clearly seems closer to a science than not, imo. History is informed by the empirical investigation of the world (via archaeology, historical records, etc) as well as careful appeals to authority (e.g. when a Roman historian appeals to Tacitus). History emphasizes rationality and checking oneself carefully against the evidence. Maybe it is a science and maybe it isn’t, but it certainly seems to me to be both rational and valuable. That is good enough in my book.\n \n\n**Notes**\n\n1. This school is perhaps typified by figures like AJ Ayer. Awesomely, you can actually hear Ayer himself talk about Logical Positivism in [this video](_URL_0_).\n \n2. Obviously, this is way, way too quick. For a good overview of Popper’s view of the demarcation problem, see [here](_URL_1_) and sources cited therein.\n \n3. Again, since this is a reddit post, I’m moving through this rather too quickly. See [here](_URL_2_) for more details.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMlXmLbGKJY", "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#ProbDema", "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#MeanUse" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dku7b0d" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "This may be simply a case of linguistic confusion on the part of the Poles. There's precedent elsewhere in the period: the German bishops and chroniclers Adam of Bremen and Thietmar of Merseburg disagree during the eleventh century as to whether the Wendish 'Radigast' is a person, a god or a city, for example. With Charlemagne styled as Karolus Rex or Imperator Augustus, it is not inconceivable that \"Karol\" was accidentally appropriated as a title, or actually done purposely in order to display an aspirational allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire.\n\nEspecially following the Schism of 1054, receiving your crown from Rome was particularly symbolically important. In part it fed into concepts of *Romanitas*, a cultural notion of legitimacy and authority deriving from the continuation and propagation of Roman Imperial laws, customs, symbols and religion. This was actively encouraged by the Church and the theology of Augustine of Hippo's *City of God* which postulated Christendom as the spiritual successor to the Roman Empire, with a duty to unite and guide its people. Just as Roman political, military and econonic power was an aspirational goal, so was membership of the Roman Church. \n\nCharlemagne himself had been crowned by the Pope, as more recently had Otto I, II and III, whose resurgent Holy Roman Empire was encroaching ever further eastward. Securing a Papal coronation was a statement of Polish political autonomy and faith, a ward against any Germanic designs on Slavic, 'Pagan' territories. St Stephen of Hungary had similarly received his crown from Pope Sylvester II in 1000, converting in a way that would build alliances with the Holy Roman Empire who had previously been enemies of the Hungarians. The Catholic option is equally symbolic. Accepting the authority of the Lateran was a powerful symbol of autonomy from the Orthodox Church in Constantinople, which was much closer and had designs on extending its authority into Eastern Europe." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cs9ewa6", "cs9mnoh" ], "score": [ 7, 5 ], "text": [ "I can only shed light on a tiny sliver of the answer to this question. One of the reasons you don't see modern buildings near Vatican City in Rome is that tall buildings are actually forbidden by treaty--the Lateran Accords. This treaty was signed in 1929 and regularized the relationship between the new nation of Vatican City and the Italian state (solving the \"Roman Question\" that had lingered since 1870), and the treaty is still in force today with very minor changes. The relevant section is [Article 7](_URL_0_):\n\n > The Italian Government undertakes to prohibit the construction within the territory surrounding the Vatican City, of any new buildings which might overlook the latter, and shall for a like purpose provide for the partial demolition of similar buildings already standing near the Porta Cavalleggeri and along the Via Aurelia and the Viale Vaticano.\n\n > In accordance with the provisions of International Law, it shall be forbidden for aircraft of any kind whatsoever to fly over Vatican territory.\n\n > On the Piazza Rusticucci, and in the areas adjoining the Colonnade, over which the extra-territoriality referred to in Article 15 hereof does not extend, all structural alterations or street construction shall only be effected by mutual assent.\n\nAs you can see it is actually forbidden to build any new buildings that would overlook the Vatican. Hence, there are no 50-story high rise office buildings or apartments in the area.", "Paris went through a number of urban transformations, starting with the Pont Neuf, the Places Royale and des Vosges, and the remaking of the Ile St. Louis in the 16th and 17th centuries. This also includes widening of streets into boulevards, including the tearing down of the city walls to create a circular walking boulevard around the old city, only to have it rebuilt 70-80 years later in order to better collect taxes from merchants bringing goods into the city. \n\nBaron Haussman in the 19th century performed similar reinvention of Paris, removing, widening, and straightening of streets into easily navigated avenues, to make the views more alluring and aesthetically pleasing, as well as easily pass from one side of Paris to the other. This also includes today's parks around Paris and the current structure/format of the Champs d' Elysses and other avenues, giving Paris that specific architecture (cream buildings, 4-5 stories tall) that it is famous for. \n\nIn the 20th century, Paris passed a regulation limiting buildings within city limits to be no more than 121 feet tall. This was done after the construction of the Tour Montparnasse was completed (at roughly 700 feet tall). Many residents felt that the modern skyscraper took away from the beauty of Paris. (Having been to both Manhattan and Paris, I have to agree with them!) This has recently changed (in 2010 or 2011 iirc) allowing specific areas to build up to roughly 200 meters tall in order to keep more Parisians IN Paris, rather than move to the suburbs, and to decrease congestion moving in and out of the city.\n\nSources: *How Paris became Paris* - Joan DeJean, *Parisians* - Graham Robb, *Paris Reborn* - Stephane Kirkland" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/treaty.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e90u7yz" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "I believe your reading is correct; it is also the reading of Mary Boyce.\n\nI tend to subscribe to the idea that Middle Persian literature preserves only a portion of what was a wider spectrum of cosmological views within some constraints of orthodoxy (think of something like the six orthodox/vedic schools of Hinduism), with differing interpretations of the meaning of the _Yasna_.\n\nSomething that should not be overlooked is that the essential statement of Gathic dualism in Y 30 presents the two primal beings not as Ahura Mazda vs Angra Mainyu, but as Spenta Mainyu vs Angra Mainyu. Mainyu is conventionally translated \"spirit\" as you know, but is used interchangably with _manah_ and should also translate as 'mentality' or something similar; the cosmogony presents a primordial choice between good and bad thought which humans still face to this day. In this cosmic order Ahura Mazda seems to be something like the highest manifestation of good, proper, holy thought, viz., _wisdom_.\n\nAn alternative reading which to my understanding was the one of Martin Haug and which found some traction among Parsis, is that Ahura Mazda is instead more primordial than the _mainyu_, and that the _Spenta Mainyu_ was a mere \"emanation\", thus making Ahura Mazda eternally superior. Haug infamously posited that Zarathustra's original teaching treated the yazata/amesha as mere \"philosophical abstractions\" and that treating them as divinitkes was a later \"corruption\". This reading is downright silly to me; it's fairly obvious that there was no hard line between abstract concepts and divinities in the Indo-Iranian cosmic order.\n\nRegarding Zurwanism, much of our understanding of it comes from Christian polemic which found Zurwa, a flawed creator, an easier (and perhaps safer) target for attacks than Ohrmazd. It is therefore almost impossjble to know to what extent a Zurwanite sect existed and what they believed.\n\nSo, essentially, I don't think there's any real basis for reading \"monotheism\" into early Zoroastrianism." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d34cmb9" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It's not a surname, but it's incredibly common in Arabic to take on \"Abu [first son's name]\" after your son is born and to use that as essentially your sole name.\n\nedit: or \"Umm [first son's name]\" for women." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dqsuagw" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This submission has been removed because it violates the [rule on poll-type questions](_URL_0_). These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion. Questions about the \"most\", the \"worst\", or other value judgments usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. For further information, please consult [this Roundtable discussion](_URL_1_).\n\nFor questions of this type, we ask that you redirect them to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48hjn0/rules_roundtable_6_the_no_polltype_questions_rule/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dsamnx6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "That is an interesting question that I hope someone can answer over the full period of time you asked for.\n\nI can tell you that in the very beginning society did not think much about explorers. In fact, the most famous explorer of them all died without fully understanding the impact his discoveries were to have on the rest of history.\n\nAfter Columbus returned from his first voyage to the New World, the news of his discoveries seems to have mostly interested scholars and officials. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were probably very pleased to have some kind of meaningful gains from the voyage, but any kind of average person in Europe would likely not know or not care about Columbus's voyage. We think so because there are only a handful of pamphlets of the news of Columbus's discoveries still in existence (although it's clear they were translated into several languages), which means they were likely studied by the courts and the scholars only. Columbus's discoveries were certainly known to many Spanish navigators and the most privileged among the Spanish government and he certainly did not die in complete obscurity. But little attention was paid to his subsequent voyages as well; almost nothing was published about the rest of Columbus's travels until after his death (1506). It appears that only in 1511 was his story published in all of Spain and began to be paid attention by the general public. From there it spread to the rest of Europe and throughout the rest of the 16th century plenty of works have been written about him.\n\nAnd there is good reason to avoid idealizing an explorer like Columbus. From his journals, he seems to have been obsessed with gold and would stop at almost nothing to fulfill his ambitions of gaining glory for his name. He was not against lying for dramatics if it meant furthering his own cause. Overall, he was probably not entirely that pleasant of a man to interact with.\n\nWe know that Columbus certainly became an important figure in Italy, England, Spain, and the United States during the 17th and 18th centuries, and that by that time people all across Europe knew of his discoveries. \n\nBut I am also curious to know about other explorers and their discoveries, and whether most people even cared at all. My guess is that they were also respected, given the sheer number of countries, cities, and places named after explorers.\n\n*The Conquest of Paradise* by Kirkpatrick Sale is a great book to read for a detailed description of Columbus and his legacy." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ff1k2b6", "ff236r4", "ff2nhop" ], "score": [ 56, 6, 11 ], "text": [ "Hey, german here. The translations from google are almost correct, however I read over them and made some corrections to maybe make some more sense. Maybe post a picture of the note for a better translation since you seem to have misinterpreted some letters which makes it quite hard to understand and also explains why google had a hard time translating some of it. (This might include some mistakes aswell as some sentences I could not translate since I had to guess some of the words.)\n\n\"Choral and Organ are not there for the organist, but Organ and Organist aswell as choral are there for the congregation. Page 45\"\n\n\"Therefore, may the organist never forget that he is entrusted with a holy duty, and is therefore obliged to muster everything to further the religious edification of the believers. Page 40\"\n\n\"The organ always appears leading or accompanying (other instruments). Page 39\" (I'm not sure what \"lütend\" is supposed to mean, but it might be \"führend\" which would translate to \"leading\")\n\n\"A simple, genuine Choral accompaniment is always the best, most expedient and most dignified. Page 45\"\n\n\"So, dear organist, simply play the choral, without proposals, nuances, warble (?), etc. strictly according to the book. Page 46\"\n\n\"The first requirement is that the organist is able to play the choral smoothly and without inducement (?) and according to the beat. (Es choral gelungen spielt (?)), that he pays the necessary attention to the key, and that he understands to not only accompany the singning of the congregation but to lead it too. Page 46\" (Again, I think what you interpreted as \"lute\" which is not a word might actually say \"führen\" which would translate to \"lead\")\n\nI can't really provide a better translation than google to the last paragraph since the sentences seem to make very little sense. Still, I hope these corrections provide some more insights.\n\nAs far as \"G. C. A. Käppel\" goes, I did some research and you seem to be right. I found [this article](_URL_0_) about \"Georg Christopher Albert Käppel\" who wrote the book \"Die Orgel im Gottesdienst\" (The organ during service) among some other books. It also mentions something about Wittenberg which seems to align with the blog post you already found.\n\nSo, I'm guessing these are passages from G. C. A. Käppel's book \"Die Orgel im Gottesdienst\" that someone copied, probably because they were writing some paper about the topic and then forgot them inside the book. However, without a date on them we can't really know when these notes were taken.", "This sounds like the page in the front of the Methodist Hymnal written by John Wesley on how to sing properly to be a good christian. It says not to sing too loudly, which shows hubris, and not too quietly, which would put off other people, but to aim to be even with everyone else around you.\n\nIt's the tone that's so similar, even the word choices. How to be godly and humble and an invisible part of a greater whole. \n\nI think German Protestants are Lutherans, which is very similar to Methodists.", "I can’t help with the translation of the text, because my German is not good enough, but I can still help with explaining its meaning. The Lutheran church has a collected body of hymn tunes called chorale melodies, and Lutheran organists have a long tradition of playing preludes on them and accompanying the congregation in various ways. The most famous of these organists was J. S. Bach, who left behind a body of work that includes several collections of chorale preludes, including the *Orgelbüchlein*, which are rather charming and worth a listen. \n\nThese preludes treat the chorale melodies in several ways, including ornamenting them with trills and other decorations, playing them in canon, or setting them in different voices (eg. in the alto rather than the soprano). There is adventurous use of harmony in some cases. The note that you have found seems to be an instruction to the to the organist in question that he should not treat the chorale tunes in elaborate ways such as these, particularly when leading the congregation. As an organist myself, I can agree that a congregation does often need a simple accompaniment, but that does not stop me admiring the work of the likes of Bach. \n\nIf I recall correctly, *The New Bach Reader* by Christoph Wolff includes a copy of Bach’s contract at Arnstadt, which details his duties as organist in a manner not too far removed from that in the note you found. Bach was also admonished by the authorities at Arnstadt for playing chorales in a manner that was considered too adventurous, and perhaps this latter organist who was the recipient of the note you found was a kindred spirit. \n\nThe site _URL_0_ is an excellent resource for information about chorale melodies and their provenance, by the way. \n\nPerhaps a local professor of music might find your note to be of interest? Particularly one interested in sacred music or organ music.\n\nEdit: having read the other translation offered by the other redditor (sorry, would acknowledge but I’m editing this on mobile), I wonder if what you have found are notes made by someone learning to play the organ for liturgical use. I initially formed the impression that it was a letter of admonishment, but perhaps it is more a record of someone intending not to fall into such apparent pitfalls." ] }

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[ "https://lutheranmuseum.com/2017/08/25/another-wittenberg-musician" ]

[ [ "http://cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=k&word=KAPPEL.GEORGCHRISTOPHALBERT" ], [], [ "bach-cantatas.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ev94ss9", "evag6fa" ], "score": [ 5, 10 ], "text": [ "Hi there, not to discourage further answers but you might be interested in u/BadgerFest's answer to a similar question [here](_URL_0_) and u/amp1212's [here](_URL_1_).", "Answering your question is giong to be extraordinarily difficult, for a number of reasons. My area of interest is the European Air War in World War II, so I am going to try to limit my comments to something I know a little about.\n\nIn terms of assessing the effectiveness of the Bomber War in WWII, you need to consider the emphasis on the theory of the time, which was \"The bomber always gets through\" and bombers were effectively considered to be next wonder weapon (so to speak). In reality, the most modern air force at the start of WWII, the Luftwaffe, had light to medium bombers (the HE-111, JU-88 and DO-17/217) which had limited bomb loads and therefore limited capacity to cause damage to industry that would fource countries to sue for peace. -The bombing of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe which resulted in the surrender of the Netherlands can be considered a false positive in terms of the effectiveness of this approach.\n\nThe London Blitz, where the Luftwaffe attempted to bomb the British into submission failed because the bombing was (relatively) indiscriminate and didn't do enough damage to industry to really make a difference to British war industries.\n\nThe RAF at the start of the war was flying medium bombers (such as the Whitley and Wellington) which carried small bombloads, were underpowered and essentially deathtraps for crews (this is probably a discussion for another time) and the British approach to planning operations was haphazard and bombing results were less than impressive (as per the Butt report). This resulted in Sir Arthur Harris being appointed to the helm of Bomber Command and he set out on improving the effectiveness of Bomber Command, through a number of methods:\n\n* Changing tactics to minimise losses by putting as many bombers are possible over targets in waves (a wonderful example is the 1000 bomber raid on Cologne in 1942);\n* The introduction of sophisticated electronic navigational aids such as Gee, Loran and H2S to improve navigation to targets (in an effort to reduce error from as high as \\~10 miles to actually hitting the target);\n* The introduction of the Pathfinder force (PFF) to accurately mark target aiming points (and in some cases, mark turning points to assist navigation)\n* The introduction of heavy bombers capable of hauling large (\\~7 tonnes) bomb loads to Germany;\n* The formation of 100 Group, whose purpose was to counter German defences using electronic warfare;\n* The establishment of a night intruder force, whose task it was to hunt German nightfighters over their home bases;\n* Training of aircrews on an industrial scale.\n\nHarris was also instructed to change his targetting approach to complete economic warfare and it included specific orders to disrupt, dislocate and demoralise the German workforce (I can't remember the exact wording, and I don't have my sources with me). Harris, being Harris, took this quite literally as an opportunity to go *carte blanche* on cities as the major targets, and he set out to attack industrial areas, transport hubs and other significant infrastructure assets. -Given that the RAF was expecting bombing error of about a mile, this meant that many civilians would be hurt and killed, but it also meant that important infrastructure such as housing, roads, schools, water, electricity and gas (to name a few) would be disrupted in the area, and the German economy wasn't really geared up for that.\n\nThese strategic attacks on cities did grind away at the economy, but it wasn't until the RAF (and the USAAF) started focussing more on the oil refineries that drove the German war effort that Germany's ability to really wage war was impacted significantly.\n\nThe outcome of the European Air War was essentially the destruction of Germany's economy, and analysis by historians on the conduction of the campaign points to the idea that attacking petroleum, oil and lubricant (POL) facilities earlier probably would have ended the war much sooner. However, that is the benefit of hindsight, and doesn't consider the hubris of the main players, the misconceptions of the decision makers and the operational realities faced by crews. Was strategic bombing effective in World War II? Definitely. It showed what happens to economy when you set out to systematically dismantle it.\n\nSome of the sources which are useful:\n\n* Bomber command by Max Hastings;\n* The Bomber War by Robin Neillands\n* Tail End Charlies by John Nichol and Tony Rennell" ] }

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[ [ "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hy5ly/ive_read_that_the_effectiveness_of_strategic/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aoxc2g/how_effective_was_strategic_bombing_in_world_war/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cco67f1", "cco8n9b" ], "score": [ 6, 6 ], "text": [ "[Bomben auf England](_URL_0_), Bombs on England, is the classic example - being used most famously in the film The Battle of Britain. \r\r\r•Excuse the mobile link im on my phone\r\r\r\r", "Quite a few! \n\nMy favourite has to be \"[Das muß den ersten Seelord doch erschüttern](_URL_1_)\", to the melody of a popular German sailor's song.\n\n Das muss den ersten seelord doch erschüttern:\n\n Wie gern' hätt' Churchill uns blockiert\n You see it looks now black\n Das deutsche U-Boot torpediert\n Ihm seinen Frühstücksspeck\n Ihn selber trifft ein jeder Schuß\n Die welt zu rulen ist jetzt Schluß\n Die Nordsee ward ein deutsches Meer\n Nu kiekste hinterher\n\n Das muß den Ersten Seelord doch erschüttern\n Jeder Streich macht ihn weich, macht ihn kleen\n Wir werden ihn noch weiterhin zerknittern\n Siehste wohl, siehste wohl Chamberlain\n \n Am Meeresgrund: three mighty ships\n Wir kriegen ihn noch an den Schlips\n Das wird den Ersten Seelord doch erschüttern\n Siehste wohl, siehste wohl Chamberlain!\n\nMy Translation:\n\n How Churchill would have liked to blockade us\n You see it looks now black.\n The German U-boat torpedoes\n his breakfast-bacon.\n Every shot hits him himself\n To rule the world, it's now over.\n The north-sea became a German sea\n Now you're looking!\n\n That certainly has to shock the First Lord of the Admiralty\n Every strike makes him weak, makes him small\n We will continue to crumple him\n You see, you see, Chamberlain!\n\n On the bottom of the Sea: three mighty ships\n We'll get him by the tie\n That certainly will shock the First Lord of the Admiralty\n You see, you see, Chamberlain!\n\n\nAn interesting aspect of this is that it uses a lot of English. English loan words were a big part of the German sailors vocabulary at the time. \n\nAnother example would be \"In England wohnt ein fetter Wicht\"; 'a fat wight lives in England', which of course meant Churchill. \n\nOr this satirical song about Stalin, printed in Russian and distributed as Propaganda in 1941: _URL_0_\n\nI have found no translation, however. " ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Rabbit_Run" ]

[ [ "http://m.youtube.com/verify_controversy?next=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DMI5YplRfDyo&client=mv-google" ], [ "http://www.bundesarchiv.de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/bilder_dokumente/01065/index-11.html.de", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Fg6iMcIzI" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6sh1b8" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "An add-on question of sorts, how did the French army change after the battle of Agincourt? Did it adopt new anti-archer tactics?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chrsmdu" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "The antecedents to Christian baptism appear to be developments of baptistic practices among some Jewish groups, themselves an development of some of the 'washing for purity' rites in the OT. Thomas, in *Le Mouvement Baptiste en Palestine et Syrie* says he discovered no evidence of 'pagan baptists', that the phenomenon was purely Jewish. We also know that the Qumram community, among others, practised ritual washings, though it is not clear if they can be seen as truly parallel. Baptism's distinct feature is that it is an initiatory rite undertaken once for all. \n\nThere has also been the suggestion, and argument, that in the 1st century Jews practiced proselyte baptism, that is they baptised outsiders who were becoming Jews. Problematically, neither Josephus, Philo, nor the NT seems to mention such a practice. The first clear references to proselyte baptism that I know of are in Epictetus (Dissert. II.9.9-21), also a possible reference in the 4th Sibylline Oracle, and then in the Mishna (b.Yebamot 46A).\n\nIf proselyte baptism were known *earlier* than our records indicate, then John the Baptist's novelty is in asking Jews, who were not proselytes, to undergo baptism as if they were. Essentially it is a statement of the need to become an insider as if one was an outsider, and so an act of repentance/conversion/cleansing.\n\nThe early church takes up that practice and moves it in a slightly different direction, but one clearly built on and from John the Baptist's practices. Jesus, through his disciples, seems to baptise disciples of himself, and teaches the practice as an initiatory rite with the same kind of meaning. The *practice* of early christian baptism, as seen in the *Didache* for example, seems patterend on Jewish practice (cf. the tractate Mikwaoth), but the baptismal theology begins to shift, though with parallels. For example, the NT links baptism with a dying and rising experience that symbolises new birth (Romans 6:1-6), which may fine antecedents in (b.Pesahim 91B, b.Yebamot 22A), however baptism entirely dislocates the place of circumcision in the rite of people becoming Christians, rather than Jews, and the symbolism of death and rebirth is not abstract, but tied to participation in the historical death and resurrection event that Christians believed.\n\nWhat is it's role? It was the definitive rite which marked the entry of a believer into the Christian community, integrating meanings of participation in Jesus, repentance from sin, and cleansing from unholiness. It was probably built on Jewish practices, but especially the innovations of John the Baptist, and developed by Jesus and his early followers in a new direction." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9zepzx" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I imagine the story you are referring to is the tale that Britain was settled by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas (of Troy). Brutus' three sons divided the island between them, with the youngest, Albanactus, getting Scotland.\n\nThis story was often used by the English to prove that England had dominion over Scotland as, so the story goes, Albanactus died childless and Scotland was inherited by his brother Locrinus, the ruler of England.\n\nIn an attempt to quash this story, a different story was told. Scota (who gave her name to Scotland) was the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh and she traveled with her husband, a Greek prince named Gathelus, to Spain; their descendants traveled to Ireland, then to Scotland. Their arrival in Scotland, under Fergus I, in 330 BC was an attempt to supersede the story of Brutus - if the Scots were already ruling Scotland, how could they descend from Brutus?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6weukq" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "Congress had already taxed income without any sort of massive resistance. See the Revenue Act of 1861 and subsequent tax laws. The only problem was that the Supreme Court ruled that a direct income tax on what was essentially capital gains was unconstitutional in *Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust Co.* 157 U.S. 429 (1895) because it was unapportioned among the states. Income taxes on wages, however, were left in place. The subsequent situation saw wage and salary workers potentially paying taxes on income while the wealthiest paid nothing. Given that there had been a strong push for a progressive income tax since the mid-1890's from the Democratic Party, it's not surprising that once parts of the Republican Party agreed with it, it passed without significant furor. \n\nAdditionally, the adoption of the income tax allowed the federal government to rely much less on the tariff, which was an extremely contentious issue for most of the late 19th and early 20th century. Farmers especially were willing to trade lower tariff walls for an income tax. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dnuikir" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Technically, that's a picture of people in the current era, since it's obviously a promo image for a tv show or movie or an advertisement for costumes. But said costumes are intended to date to the early seventeenth century; although they are not really accurate to any given date range, they're most appropriate between 1620 and 1640 due to the flat lace collars and matching cuffs on the men on the right and left and the slashed sleeves. Here are a few examples:\n\n[\"James Stuart (1612–1655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox\", Anthony van Dyke, 1633-35; MMA 89.15.16](_URL_0_)\n\n[\"Portrait of William Style of Langley\", unknown painter, 1636; TC T02308](_URL_1_)\n\nThe wide sashes give the impression of a low waistline with short basques (skirt tabs), but it's impossible for me to say what's going on there; judging by the doublet in the middle, they're completely loose and unfitted with no waistline other than the one a belt or sash gives, which makes them not technically \"from\" any period at all; the trousers are also quite modern and black lace was not really worn. I can't really be in-depth or comprehensive about this - they're film costumes with the standard level of accuracy." ] }

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[ "https://imgur.com/a/1q6K6" ]

[ [ "http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436252", "http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/british-school-17th-century-portrait-of-william-style-of-langley-t02308" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e5tg51o" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not to discourage further answers, but u/MrDowntown had [a brief answer](_URL_0_) on a similar question last year. " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ym75d/what_happened_to_cairo_illinois/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cad6jwc", "cad6pcz", "cad8rd6", "cad950j", "cadg9ny" ], "score": [ 3, 12, 95, 35, 6 ], "text": [ "What of Tank Guy? If the army were defending themselves against a small group of thugs, why did he risk his life to stop the tanks?", "I am under the impression that most of the bloodshed happened on the boulevards that lead up to Tiananmen Square. The square itself was clear by the time the tanks rolled in, since most of the action had already been done by then.", "The massacre at Tiananmen square certainly did happen. Figures suggest that there were upwards of 2,000 democratic protesters that were killed. There is a fantastic documentary called Moving the Mountain (1994) that interviews the student leaders of the Tiananmen protests. I can't find it online, unfortunately, but [this one has a lot of similar footage](_URL_1_) used in Moving the Mountain.\n\nThough it is true that protesters were allowed to leave after Deng Xiaoping declared Martial Law, it was the moderate protesters who left. The radicals remained because they wanted a direct statement addressing their concerns. As moderate protesters vacated the square, more radicals began to flow in. In this way, perhaps the students demanded too much, but the military did open fire and they used live ammunition. \n\nEdit: I found Moving the Mountain! It's in several parts in no consecutive playlist, but its definitely worth watching!\n_URL_0_", "If you take a look at the Talk page for the article, you can see that many users have noted the 'sanitisation' and multiple revisions carried out that have removed terms like massacre and so on. The lead up to the event's anniversary seems to be a focal point for changes and a number of users have indicated the bias in those changes. \n\n\n_URL_0_ ", "If we assume the cable is completely accurate (and other accounts either false or misinterpreted) and the massacres didn't take place in the square proper, but instead *around* the square, what's the significance of that?" ] }

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[ "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html", "Telegraph.uk", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989&diff=558558494&oldid=558542035", "http://www.bearcanada.com/china/letstalkabouttam.html" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO9a1RtHUW0&list=UUJJDv9O2Cj663QA49fxWIQA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-NlFVZqTM" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crnu88w", "crnwz7h", "crnxjg2", "croi0n3" ], "score": [ 10, 23, 7, 3 ], "text": [ "The Germans simply never managed top drop the kind of tonnage of bombs that the Allies did. The German bomber offensive against the UK lasted from summer 1940 until spring 1941, and German bomber aircraft carried nowhere near the kind of payload that B-17s, B-24s, Lancasters and Halifaxes could. The Allied strategic bombing offensive really began in 1942, and continued all the way until the end. More bombs were dropped more often, hence the greater amount of duds. That said, German unexploded ordnance can be found across Europe, and it was and still is a problem in post-war Britain.", "It's a matter of sheer scale and numbers.\n\nLike /u/DuxBelisarius pointed out, the German bomber offensive was miniscule compared to the combined Allied bomber offensives. Britain was bombing Germany by night, and the Americans were bombing by day. Furthermore, the sheer numbers in their formations were much higher. Even early in the American offensive, an American bomber stream could include roughly 200-300 bombers. The British were able to mount a 1000-bomber raid even before that.\n\nThere was nearly 3.2 *billion* pounds of bombs dropped on Germany during the war. So if 5 bombs out of every 1000 were a dud, then 200,000 lbs/year would be what you get in your questions. In a wartime economy where they're mass producing these, that's not a totally unreasonable number.\n\nAlso, I imagine a significant portion of that number also comes from artillery shells as well.", "Was the article solely focused on munitions from the Second World War? \n\nMillions of shells were fired during the First World War and most of the major battle fields were saturated by both exploded munitions (shrapnel, bits of lead, explosive and gas residue) and unexploded munitions (shells, bombs, grenades, rockets, etc). \n\nPrior to the first day of the Battle of the Somme, for example, British artillery fired a million shells over a seven day period into a frontage of 16 miles. On the first day of the battle alone British artillery fired nearly 250,000 shells.\n\nIf you have ever driven through rural areas either in the United States or Europe, you'll no doubt have noticed all of the piled stoned walls surrounding farm fields. Stones rise to surface over time, farmers churn them up with plows and then pile them up. The same thing happens with unexploded munitions. In Northern France this known as the yearly \"Iron Harvest,\" and it still produces piles of munitions year after year. \n\nIn many cases, the rush to produce shells during the war years to meet heavy demands meant that quality control was poor. The result was lots of ordinance that did not perform as anticipated. In addition, at least on the Somme, the chalk soils and churned up ground contributed to shells simply not exploding when they hit the ground. This problem was later partially resolved with proximity fusing (as opposed to contact fusing) that allowed shells to detonate above ground level.", "Just a little to add to the fine answers here- it's important to realize that bombs are they are designed to be inert. Bombs are often stockpiled in large ammunition dumps and if one accidentally exploded, the results would not be pretty. Normally, armorers kept bombs separate from their fuses until the mission. There were multiple types of fuses as well. One type that has proven really dangerous for postwar ordnance removal is the delayed action fuse, which was timed to go off several hours after contact with the ground to play havoc with recovery efforts. If somehow the bomb fuse was faulty or damaged or hit at an odd angle, it might not go off. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn3vy7c" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "A lot of similar questions have been asked and have gotten some pretty excellent answers:\n\n/u/Celebreth gave an excellent answer to [Why when people hear Julius Caesar, do they think of a great historical figure and a tragedy in the form of his assassination, when he was so obviously a tyrant?](_URL_0_)\n\n/u/Tiako and /u/XenophontheAthenian among others spoke on [Was Julius Caesar a reformist, a conservative or just an opportunist?](_URL_4_)\n\nXenophon also answered in part [Why is Julius Caesar often referred to as a villain?](_URL_2_) and along with /u/LegalAction [Why was Julius Caesar considered a Tyrant, and how exactly did he bring down the Republic?](_URL_5_)\n\nThere is also this thread on [Why is Julius Caesar typically depicted as being a 'good guy'?](_URL_1_) \n\nAnd \n[Was Julius Caesar a good person in real life?](_URL_3_)\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21574z/why_when_people_hear_julius_caesar_do_they_think/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5yfe83/why_is_julius_caesar_typically_depicted_as_being/?utm_term=8d3e4949-e85b-4957-9c50-2de95aec6d2b&utm_medium=search&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=AskHistorians&utm_content=1", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3jhyl2/ive_seen_julius_caesar_reffered_to_as_a_villain/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/30kwkd/was_julius_caesar_a_good_person_in_real_life/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hfg6f/was_julius_caesar_a_reformist_a_conservative_or/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4elzly/why_was_julius_caesar_considered_a_tyrant_and_how/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0gbevp" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Herodotus is a bit of a fanciful historian. I don't think he goes out his way to make up stories (some people would argue that he does), but he simply reports the information that was available to him; in 5th century BC Greece, this of course meant mainly rumors, folktales, and accounts that had been passed down to him through dozens of other mouths. The aim of his work is to \"record the mighty deeds of Greeks and barbarians\", and *Histories* (the Greek name ἱστορία would, actually, be more accurately translated as 'Enquires') is a joyous cocktail of history, myths, anecdotes, ethnography, geography, science, and everything he was able to find out about the known world; it shouldn't really be approached like a modern work of history. Some of his information is, however, perfectly legit and comes from e.g. written sources that predate him or from his own travels.\n\nAaaaaand his story of Cyrus the Great's childhood and accession is definitely NOT one of those cases. No scholar takes Herodotus' story of Cyrus' rise as a veriable account. We don't have any other reliable and bullet proof accounts to Cyrus' accession that would trump it, but it's very clear that Herodotus' account is littered with tropes that were popular in Greek or/and Persian folktales and myths: prophetic dreams, 'the son or grandson that would be destined to kill his own father', 'the commoners raising a royal blooded as their own son', oracles, 'the parents tricked to eat the flesh of their killed children'... Just a few of the elements that could have featured in the story time repertoire of any ancient Greek grandmother. Herodotus himself seems to believe that his account is true; he says that he knows four different stories of Cyrus' childhood, but that he decides to give us only the one that is most 'reliable'. This shows that, clearly, a rich mythology had grown around Cyrus the Great's figure; he had become a legendary figure as the founder of the Achaemenid empire and the conqueror-king, a model of both great and virtuous leadership and manly military might. The ancients' rationale required a story of a divine scale to explain how a mere human like Cyrus could reach such god-like achievements. \n\nHerodotus only starts to be more reliable and reporting 'actual' history when he recounts that Cyrus' became a king through ganging up with the Persians, and then revolting against Medes and his grandfather Astyages. The war between Cyrus and Astyages is reported in two ancient Babylonian sources, the [Nabodinus Cylinder](_URL_0_) and the [Babylonian chronicles](_URL_0_). The exact year of the revolt is unfortunately left unspecified in both. \n\nHow did Cyrus become a king, then, if not after a series of flashy myths and prophetic dreams? Another version of Cyrus' childhood and accession comes from a 5h century BC Greek physician and writer, Ctesias (transmitted through Nicolaus Damascenus' work), but his version is just as fantastical as that of Herodotus; he was considered unreliable already by ancient authors. Ctesias thought that Cyrus was not of royal Achaemenid blood but rather a man from the nomad tribe of Mardi. His father, Atradates, was forced by poverty to become a bandit, and his mother, Argoste, herded goats. When she became pregnant with Cyrus she saw in a dream that her son would be master of Asia. Once grown, Cyrus became a servant at the court of Astyages and then royal cupbearer. The king sent him to suppress a revolt in his kingdom but instead Cyrus rebelled and seized the Median throne. \n\nThe stories related by other later ancient authors - Dinon, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Justin - all use Herodotus or Ctesias as their sources, and are thus equally useless. The one last version we have of Cyrus' accession seems the most probable, and also the most boring and least detailed one: Cyrus simply was the son of the Persian Cambyses I and Mandane, the daughter of the Median king Astygates (Herodotus gets Cyrus' parentage right; this is supported by most modern scholars), and thus one of a long line of royal rulers. This is confirmed by the so-called [Cyrus cylinder](_URL_1_), where Cyrus calls himself “son of Cambyses, the great king, king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, the great king, king of Anshaṇ . . . of a family (that) always (exercised) kingship\". Unfortunately no Persian sources have surfaced that would tell us about Cyrus' childhood or accession; all they give us is that he was of royal blood and took the Median throne from king Astyages by force.\n\nMost likely Cyrus simply lived his whole childhood in court; this is the version given by the writer Xenophon in his *Cyropaedia*. But, although framed as a biography of Cyrus, its genre is so weird that it's difficult to say, how much historical value we should give it. Xenophon's account of Cyrus' life definitely *seems* the most realistic and 'low-key', but he gets lot of facts wrong which Herodotus does not, and he introduces scenes that are clearly pure fiction; *Cyropaedia* is more like a romantic story of an ideal ruler and a philosophical enquiry rather than a biography of the historical Cyrus. But, Xenophon travelled widely in the East, so he might have been able to get his hands on some actually accurate Persian sources. So, how does he think Cyrus became the king? Xenophon actually gives two different versions. In the *Cyropaedia* (8.5.17-19) he says that the reign­ing Median king was not Astyages but his son Cyaxares, whose daughter Cyrus married, and Cyrus received the Median kingdom as a dowry. This we can discount as we know from the Babylonian sources I cited above that there was a revolt. Xenophon's 'ideal ruler' does not wage war out of greed or ambition, so might be, that he changed the story to fit his general thesis of the *Cyropaedia*. But, a decade earlier, Xenophon had written in *Anabasis* (3.4.11) that the Persians conquered Ecbatana (the Median capital) by force. And that's all. He doesn't dwell on it any longer, although he would probably been the person who actually *knew* things. Thanks a lot, Xeno. \n\nSo, to sum up; Herodotus' account of Cyrus' accession is a fantastical fairytale sundae and not really reliable aside from some parts. Only historical sources that we have can only confirm that Cyrus was the son of an ancient Persian royal family, most likely became the king of Persia purely through succession, and that he waged war and seized the Medean throne. We don't have any reliable sources that could illuminate the circumstances of Cyrus' accession any further, I'm afraid. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.livius.org/sources/content/nabonidus-cylinder-from-sippar/", "http://www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrus_I/cyrus_cylinder.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e6sr8fo", "e6sz9k1", "e6v4irf", "e6wxs60" ], "score": [ 82, 61, 59, 39 ], "text": [ "Alright, these are detailed enough I hope you don’t mind if I tackle them separately.\n\n1. Maybe.\n\nDid he marry 14 year olds? He definitely married Helen Mar Kimball when she was 14. That was well attested by both herself and multiple other sources. She married Jospeh in May 1843. There’s no question or controversy over whether Joseph married Helen. \n\nThe second potential 14 year old wife was Nancy Maria Winchester. First we have to look at if she was actually married to Jospeh *at all*. The evidence of her being a plural spouse comes from two later sources. Eliza Snow included her on a list of wives she wrote out in 1886. The second reference to her marrying Jospeh comes from Orson Whitney’s (Helen Mar Kimball Smith Whitney’s son), biography of his grandfather, *Life of Heber C. Kimball, an Apostle*, in 1888. Despite both sources being after the fact, these are generally considered good sources. Eliza was deep in Jospeh’s confidence and it’s likely Orson of course knew his step grandmother. So we’d expect both to have good information on Nancy. \n\nWe simply don’t know *when* Nancy married Joseph though. He had promised his first wife Emma to cease to marry other women in July 1843. And he largely stuck by that. We know of only two additional wives taken after the promise was made. Melissa Lott and Fanny Young. And the Young marriage may have actually been something of a joke. It’s very likely that Joseph married Nancy in the spring of 1843, when he took at least 14 other wives. It was his most active period of marriage. And as Helen Mar shows he didn’t shy away from marrying 14 year olds. But it is possible he married her after she turned 15 on August 10th. We simply don’t have enough information to say for certain.\n\nThat said, did he have sex with his 14 year old wives? We simply don’t know. He definitely did sleep with at least some of his plural wives. Fascinatingly enough there was a property lawsuit in Missouri in the 1880s and 1890s which turned on the question of which branch of Mormonism was the true successor to Joseph Smith Jr’s church, Brigham Young’s or Joseph Smith III’s. In order to show that Joseph practiced polygamy a number of witnesses were brought forward to testify to Joseph’s polygamy, including former wives. So we have sworn testimony from Melissa Lott that she was Joseph’s wife, “in very deed.” Of 30 odd wives we have either their own testimony or third party testimony of Joseph having sex with about a dozen of them. That includes several of his teen wives (Fanny Alger, Eliza Partridge, Lucy Walker, Maria Lawrence, and Sarah Lawrence). Because these include sworn statements given in court, it’s very clear that Smith was practicing polygamy like his later followers did, by having sex with his wives. It’s possible that he held off with his youngest wives. But that wouldn’t be keeping with his normal practice. Apparently his normal practice was to bed with them the night of their marriage, like Louisa Beaman. He secured a house to let for the night (her brother in laws) before marrying her.\n\nSo moving on. Did he marry other men’s wives? Without question. Roughly a third of Joseph’s wives were still married to other men. Some of these marriages were performed with the permission of their husbands. Others were done secretly, and in some cases while the husbands were away on church business. For example Joseph married Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde while her husband was on a mission to Jerusalem in the spring of 1843. \n\nWe again know that at least some of these marriages were sexual via the testimony of some wives. Sylvia Session Lyons told her daughter Josephine Rosetta Lyon that she was Joseph’s and not Windsor Lyon’s. DNA testing of Josephine’s descendants has since proven this false. But the fact that Sylvia was convinced about Josephine’s parentage, has to be taken as pretty solid proof about Joseph having sexual relations with other men’s wives.\n\nFor more reading I can’t recommend Todd Compton’s *In Sacred Loneliness* enough. There’s other solid works like Richard Van Waganer’s *Mormon Polygamy, A History* that covers Smith’s polygamy. But Compton is really the go to at the moment.", " > 2- Did Joseph Smith start a militia to over throw local governments and plan to take over the country?\n\nNot precisely, and certainly not the way I’d have worded it. But the idea isn’t entirely without merit.\n\nJospeh raised three militia armies. The first was Zion’s Camp. In 1833 the Mormons got into a fight with other local settlers and were driven from Jackson county Missouri. Over the course of 1833 God’s revelations via Joseph became increasingly militant, and in spring of 1834 he was ordered to raise an army to redeem the sacred lands in Jackson county. The army of 200 men marched from Ohio. But before the group could engage in any fighting, an informal political settlement was reached. And the army returned to Ohio.\n\nThe second army was the Danites. Raised in 1838 in secret, this is the force that fought the 1838 Missouri-Mormon war for Joseph. The original pact was signed by 83 men. But by the time fighting broke out that fall, virtually all adult Mormon men in Missouri had become affiliated with the group. The second time fighting broke out in Missouri the Mormons were largely the instigators rather than the victims. By the time the Missourians retaliated, the month long Mormon depredations had driven out almost all of the non-Mormon Missourians from Caldwell county and attacked into Carrol and Davies county. By the time of the Battle of Crooked River, where the Mormons attacked into Ray county, they were well organized into companies with regular officers and the like. For all intents and purposes Joseph *had* overthrown the local government and was functionally in charge of several counties. Unfortunately for him, Governor Boggs fully activated the militia, and outnumbered 3 to 1 Joseph was forced to surrender.\n\nThe third army was the Nauvoo legion. Unlike the others, this one was officially sanctioned and authorized by the state of Illinois. Joseph planned to never be caught unprepared again. Participation was mandatory for all adult men. And it was well organized into three regiments (two infantry, one cavalry), of between 2,500 and 3,000 men (possibly up to 5,000 in a pinch). This was easily more than the equal of all other militias in the state, and roughly one third to one half the size of the US regular army at the time. And Smith used it. When charged with serious crimes, he declared martial law in Nauvoo and activated the Legion. \n\nFortunately (although not for him) his wife Emma and other close confidants convinced him to surrender himself to authorities. If that hadn’t happened we’d almost certainly be talking about the siege of Nauvoo, rather than the mob attack on Carthage. It’s the primary reason that Joseph was killed by a mob, when he hadn’t been during previous arrests. The Warsaw Regulators and other local militia groups were terrified at the prospect of tackling Joseph in his fortress. Of the five men tried for Joseph’s murder four were officers in the various local militias that otherwise might have had to fight the Legion.\n\nIt’s also worth pointing out that apparently Joseph was initially unconcerned at the approach of the mob, because he thought it was a company from the Legion, as he had smuggled out an order back to Nauvoo that he be broken out. Instead Governor Ford had disbanded the Legion and was meeting with other Mormon leaders at that moment. So Joseph definitely ordered the Legion to take illegal actions against Illinois; declaring martial law to prevent his own arrest and ordering them to break him out of prison.\n\nMoving on Joseph definitely was seeking political power. After his confinement in Liberty Jail, he was clearly firmly working toward making sure he never fell into such a position again. He eventually worked his way into Mayor and Chief Justice of Nauvoo. He was also General of the Nauvoo Legion, securing himself the title of Lieutenant General, so as to make himself the highest ranking officer in Illinois (and the US) so as to preclude any chance of him being court martialed. And at the time of his death he was actively campaigning for the presidency of the United States.\n\nAt the same time Joseph established the Council of Fifty. This secret organization was organized to take over the US government as a shadow cabinet. From what I’ve read though most of its members thought the fall of the government would happen through an act of god, not their own insurrection. They’ed just be there when the government collapsed. The Council of Fifty also had Joseph internally declared/crowned as King of This World and Jesus’ Regent on Earth. But again this sounds far more like the hope of a too be fulfilled prophecy, rather than an active plan at insurrection and overthrow. The meeting notes of its first two years was just published (in 2016), but as of yet I haven’t had a chance to read them. And no one appears to have found evidence of an active conspiracy in those notes. It simply seems to be a conspiracy to take over during Armageddon, not a plan to instigate a takeover before then.\n\nIn short. Yes, Joseph raised several militia armies and used them against local governments, and had intentions to do so again. He did seize control of city and county governments both by force and via legal means. He had plans to rule the US, but likely not a specific plot about how to get there.\n\nFor further reading on this I recommend Robert Flanders’ *Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi*, Fawn Brodie’s *No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith*, Richard Bushman’s *Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling*, and Matthew Grow’s and Eric Smith’s *The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History*\n\nI have to get to work... but I’ll try to tackle the remaining questions tonight.", " > 3- Was Brigham young really a fan of blood atonement, killing people to help them repent of sins i.e. if they leave the church we kill them to help them get to heaven\n\nThis one was surprisingly difficult for me to come up with an answer I was fully satisfied with. There’s no single documentary book that covers the history of blood atonement. \n\nThe basic doctrinal concept absolutely *was* taught by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other early church leaders. In its basic form the doctrine was simple, and an extension of other LDS beliefs. “Faith without works is dead.” Mormonism has never accepted the idea that faith alone is sufficient for salvation. They’ve always had a concept that participating in ordinances and obeying commandments are necessary for additions to pure faith.\n\nSo that the idea that certain sins were so heinous as to require a person to be properly punished, wasn’t too much of a step further. Exactly what sins required the personal shedding of blood slowly expanded over time. Initially it was just murder. Then sexual sins were added. It was during this initial period that Utah added beheading as a proper form of punishment for capital crimes, so the blood could flow. Beheading remained the nominally preferred form of execution from 1851 to 1888. In practice it was not used, except for the execution of the Piute Patsowits, who was garroted... an interesting episode in of itself, but a digression. As far as I can tell no other official execution ever used the method. But it was on the books, and had been added at Young’s explicit recommendation to fulfill the needs of blood atonement.\n\nIt wasn’t until the Mormon Reformation of 1856-1858 that apostasy and similar sins were added to the list of those requiring blood atonement. The Reformation was a period of re-entrenchment. Young had finally really gained the loyalty of the Mormons, and he used the period as a time to cleanse the church of the non-faithful and most opposing voices. It’s the only period where the nominal membership of the church *decreased* as Young purged the less faithful from the rolls, and drove them from the territory. And the rhetoric definitely went to the, “kill your fellow man to expunge their sins territory.” Here’s just one small sample from a sermon given about apostasy on Feb 8, 1857. \n\n > All mankind love themselves, and let these principles be known by an individual, and he would be glad to have his blood shed. That would be loving themselves, even unto an eternal exaltation. Will you love your brothers and sisters likewise, when they have committed a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? Will you love that man or woman well enough to shed their blood?\n\nIt was not just Young preaching that apostates should be killed. If anything apostles like Jedediah Grant and Parley Pratt were as or more enthusiastic in preaching the death of apostates. There is no doubt that such hyperbolic teachings definitely led to some of the violence of the period, the Utah War, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, etc.\n\nBut that comes to the question of whether this was overenthusiastic rhetoric, which Young was always guilty of, or if it was ever put into practice. Did Young ever order someone killed for apostasy? Did local congregations take it upon themselves to do it anyway regardless of Young’s orders. There unfortunately aren’t nearly as clear of answers as *I’d* like. \n\nYoung as governor encouraged summary violence so as to save the cost and work of trials. In a letter addressed to the bishops of the territory in December 1846, he told them, “When a man is found to be a thief, he will be a thief no longer, cut his throat, and thro him in the River.” Likewise when worried about a pair of suspected horse thieves Young sent instructions to American Fork and Cedar City, \"Be on the look out now, & have a few trusty men ready to pursue, retake & punish. We do not suppose there would be any prosecutions for false imprisonments, or tale bearers for witnesses. ... Make no noise of this matter, & keep this letter safe. We write for your eye alone, & to men that can be trusted.” Near Cedar City the men were seen with a known apostate, and their camp was summarily ambushed and 56 rounds fired at the suspected horse thieves and apostate. Although wounded, all survived. \n\nOther accounts are less well documented. There’s definitely contemporary accounts of blood atonement. For example John Lee wrote about about a bishop’s council executing Rasmos Anderson for adultery. But there’s a valid question about how much weight to put into the words of a man convicted of mass murder. Other accounts exist of a lot of similar things. But there’s a lot of question about which of these accounts can and should be trusted. \n\nUltimately though Brigham Young did *preach* killing others for their sins. He also presided over a very violent and theocratic judicial system that authorized summary executions without trial. And there’s multiple accounts of murders executed for blood atonement reasons. So I have to give it a qualified, yes. ", "And to wrap these up:\n\n > 4- Were African Americans really denied rights to heaven because of their black skin, and was their black skin taught by Brigham young and other prophets clear into 1970 that they were an evil and lesser race cursed by god?\n\nIn short. Yes.\n\nIn long, I’m going to copy and add to an answer [I posted last year](_URL_0_).\n\n**Part 1**\n\nInitially the LDS church was fairly progressive toward African Americans. It allowed black members. It even had some black men in positions of moderate leadership. For example Walker Lewis was an important Elder in the Boston branch of the church. When he ran for US president in 1844, church founder Jospeh Smith, even had a campaign promise to emancipate all the slaves, and compensate their owners via the sale of public lands.\n\nThat changed when Brigham Young gained the church leadership. I'm going to extensively quote a speech he gave to open the Utah legislative session on Feb 5th 1852 highlighting the church's positions on blacks.\n\nYoung taught that Africans were the descendants of the original murderer Cain.\n\n > What is that mark? you will see it on the countenance of every African you ever did see upon the face of the earth, or ever will see. ... I tell you, this people that are commonly called negroes are the children of old Cain.\n\nHe also taught that this meant they were cursed and not allowed to hold priesthood or fully participate in church.\n\n > Now then in the kingdom of God on the earth, a man who has has the Affrican blood in him cannot hold one jot nor tittle of preisthood; Why? because they are the true eternal principals the Lord Almighty has ordained, and who can help it, men cannot. the angels cannot, and all the powers of earth and hell cannot take it off, but thus saith the Eternal I am, what I am, I take it off at my pleasure, and not one partical of power can that posterity of Cain have, until the time comes the says he will have it taken away. That time will come when they will have the privilege of all we have the privelege of and more. In the kingdom of God on the earth the Affricans cannot hold one partical of power in Government. The the subjects, the rightfull servants of the resedue of the children of Adam, and the resedue of the children through the benign influence of the Spirit of the Lord have the privilege of seeing to the posterity of Cain; inasmuch as it is the Lords will they should receive the spirit of God by Baptisam; and that is the end of their privilege; and there is not power on earth to give them any more power.\n\nThey could join and be baptized into the church but that was the limit. They couldn't teach, administer, or participate in any other way other than simple membership.\n\nThis curse of being black was so great that he said it'd be a favor to kill a man who was \"mingling seed\" with Africans\n\n > Where the children of God to mingle there seed with the seed of Cain it would not only bring the curse of being deprived of the power of the preisthood upon themselves but they entail it upon their children after them, and they cannot get rid of it. If a man in an ungaurded moment should commit such a transgression, if he would walk up and say cut off my head, and kill man woman and child it would do a great deal towards atoneing for the sin. Would this be to curse them? no it would be a blessing to them. -- it would do them good that they might be saved with their Bren. A man would shuder should they here us take about killing folk, but it is one of the greatest blessings to some to kill them.\n\nHe then goes on to say that they should be barred from government.\n\n > Again to the subject before us; as to The men bearing rule; not one of the children of old Cain, have one partical of right to bear Rule in Government affairs from first to last, they have no buisness there. this privilege was taken from them by there own transgression.\n\nThe are also natural slaves, according to God's orders, but they shouldn't be treated like they were under southern chattel slavery.\n\n > I am as much oposed to the principle of slavery as any man in the present acceptation or usage of the term, it is abused. I am opposed to abuseing that which God has decreed, to take, a blessing, and make a curse of it. It is a great blessing to the seed of Adam to have the seed of Cain for servants, but those they serve should use them with all the heart and feeling, as they would use their own children, and their compassion should reach over them, and round about them, and treat them as kindly, and with that humane feeling necessary to be shown to mortall beings of the human species.\n\nThis speech was far from the only time Young discussed the issue. But he really spelled it all out on that occasion. I could have pulled from dozens of other speeches or talks he gave. His 26 volume Journal of Discourses are full of such talks.\n\nBlacks were sinners and descendants of the original sinner Cain. They were cursed to be servants, and they had no proper role in the governance of the church or civil affairs. As Young lead the church for 30 years, these doctrines became firmly entrenched within the church.\n\nFor example here is an except from a talk given by Young's successor John Taylor.\n\n > And after the flood we are told that the curse that had been pronounced upon Cain was continued through Ham's wife, as he had married a wife of that seed. And why did it pass through the flood? Because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God; and that man should be a free agent to act for himself, and that all men might have the opportunity of receiving or rejecting the truth, and be governed by it or not according to their wishes and abide the result;\n\nSimilar talks were given over the following decades. Going further forward to the 1950s and 1960s we have church leaders like John Lund publishing books like The Church and the Negro or Bruce McConkie's Mormon Doctrine spelling out how this was still official doctrine and belief.\n\nThe problem for the church was that of course by the 1950s the Civil Rights movement was starting to take hold. The LDS church was under increasing scrutiny and pressure. You still had church leaders like Mark Peterson giving talks that included snippets like this.\n\n > Think of the Negro, cursed as to the Priesthood.... This Negro, who, in the pre-existence lived the type of life which justified the Lord in sending him to the earth in the lineage of Cain with a black skin, and possibly being born in darkest Africa – if that Negro is willing when he hears the gospel to accept it, he may have many of the blessings of the gospel. In spite of all he did in the pre-existent life, the Lord is willing.... to give him the blessings of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. If that Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the Celestial Kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory.\n\nThe LDS church was still actively teaching that African Americans were cursed, and that heaven was segregated. In the 1950s the LDS church was far from alone in discussing race in such terms. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s they were more of an anomaly and the civil rights leadership increasingly put them in the spotlight. The church owned school BYU became the target of protests and boycotts. Some schools like Wyoming responded by expelling athletes who wouldn't compete against BYU. Others like Stanford joined the protests and officially refused to play the school. At the same time the IRS started cracking down on various church owned affiliates for engaging in racial segregation, starting with the non-LDS Bob Jones University.\n\nThe problem the LDS Church had was that they had over a century of prophets saying that the LDS Church's policies and doctrines came directly from God via revelation. It wasn't simply a policy that could be changed... God had to change it. From the writings of the church leadership in the 1970s you can see how much many of them wanted to change it. In 1969 the Quorum of Apostles even voted to change the policy. Then the Apostle Harold Lee who had been traveling in Europe returned to Salt Lake and reminded them that they couldn't just vote it out... so it stayed." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xapfi/in_i_believe_from_the_book_of_mormon_elder_price/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ex6q5ib" ], "score": [ 117 ], "text": [ "Great question! This is something that is often overlooked at most Historical House museums and often glossed over. It is my personal pet-peeve that American Historical House Museums (i.e. Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpellier etc.) did not until very recently address the issue of Slavery in the American South.\n\nEnslaved African American had no rights, which meant that after the Virginia Slave Code of 1705, were treated like property in regards to whoever \"owned\" them. In the case of no heirs, the enslaved people could be passed on the next of kin, like nieces/nephews etc. or if there were no present they would be auctioned off. This often meant that entire families would be separated quite brutally. Even if related next of kin could be located, this often meant that the enslaved people had to be separated since they came from different families. What I mean by this is shown by the fact that when George Washington died, he only freed a portion of the enslaved people at Mt. Vernon, the ones that he owned as part of the Washington family (even then, with the provision of after Martha's death). The vast majority of enslaved people were owned by Martha Custiss under the Custiss family. So enslaved people, after years of working and living together, forming families and bonds had to be separated abruptly because of dynastic propriety rights. Also, keep in mind that even if there was a provision in someone's will to free enslaved people, since many of the plantation class were buried in debt, this meant that the enslaved people would be auctioned off to pay creditors, regardless of the will. \n\nAnother great example of this comes from Melvin Ely's book, Israel on the Appomattox where he recounts of an instance where in the 1800s a Slave Owner decided to free all of his enslaved people after his death since he had no heirs. In addition, he would liquidate all his assets and that would be distributed towards the newly freed Enslaved. Quite a nice gesture! Unfortunately, a distant relative of his managed to somehow get a hold of his will and hide it away, so he successfully went to court and received all of the enslaved people as his property. The truth only came out much later because of his wife finding the will (why he didn't destroy it I do not know) and contesting in court successfully against him. Unfortunately, this took years, and these enslaved people did what people do and married, had kids or passed away. Ultimately, the court ruled that only the original enslaved people were eligible to be freed, but not their spouses or kids, and since the old property had already been liquidated it meant they would not receive any money. This meant that many, even though freed, had no choice but to stay because of family and also, no money. \n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Sources:**\n\n\\*Ely, Melvin. Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War. 2005 [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nNorthup, Solomon. 12 Years A Slave, 1853. [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\nBoles, John B. *Black Southerners, 1619–1869.* Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.\n\nStampp, Kenneth M. *The Peculiar Institution.* New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n*\\*Must read book about Free and Enslaved African Americans in the Antebellum South, highly recommend!*" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Appomattox-Southern-Experiment-Freedom/dp/0679768726", "https://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3ATwelve%20years%20a%20slave%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlk7mq1", "dlkoblj" ], "score": [ 6, 9 ], "text": [ "You can find a detailed discussion of the 'functionality' of gas chambers at Auschwitz [here](_URL_2_), and again [here](_URL_0_), both courtesy of /u/commiespaceinvader. \n\nRichard Green and Jamie McCarthy have also written a detailed discussion of this topic in the framework of a point by point debunking of Holocaust Denier Germar Rudolf, called [Chemistry is not the Science: Rudolf, Rhetoric, and Reduction](_URL_1_). ", "So, my [older answer](_URL_5_) has already been linked but it bears pointing out that when people talk about the capacity of crematoria complexes at Auschwitz, starting from the Nazis themselves, when they talk about \"capacity\", they usually mean the crematoria itself rather than the gas chambers. The gas chambers had a much higher capacity than the crematoria and all of the \"bottlenecks\" of the Nazis and the camp administration in Auschwitz come from the fact that they can't burn bodies as fast as they can theoretically kill them.\n\nAs I wrote in my other answer: While the gas chambers could handle killing 16.000 people a day, the crematoria couldn't handle burning that many bodies in a comparable time frame. This was among other things to be addressed by the Crematoria complexes (consisting of a crematorium and a gas chamber in one building) that were ordered to be build in mid-1942 and for which construction started in August 1942.\n\nStarting in March 1943 with Crematorium II, later to be followed by III, IV, and V, the first big gas chamber-crematorium complex went into use in Auschwitz. Crematoria II e.g. was in continuous use for almost the rest of the history of the entire camp, being shut down on November 24, 1944 and having operated for 603 days.\n\nIn each of these the gas chamber had about 230m^2 and a capacity according to the SS of about 2000 people in one gassing. Once again, the problem for the SS remained cremation. While the ovens had expanded significantly, they still could not keep up with the rate of killing. They were still able to keep up enough though: Calculations made by the Zentralbauleitung on June 28, 1943 showed the crematoria could burn 4,416 corpses per day—1,440 each in crematoria II and III, and 768 each in crematoria IV and V. This meant that the crematoria could burn over 1.6 million corpses per year. (Which incidentally is how the Soviets arrived at their initial estimate of 4 million people dead in Auschwitz – by taking the maximum capacity and then subtracting 20% to account for down time. This number has been pretty quickly demonstrated as not correct with the information I use in my [already linked answer](_URL_5_))\n\nAs for the logistics, it all starts with transportation. Once the Nazis had planned for a round-up of Jews from an occupied territory or Ghetto, they would get in touch with one of three Reichsbahn (Reich railway) Generalbetriebsleitung (general management bureau) to plan for having transport space available. When the local Nazi authority in charge for rounding up Jews got the go-ahead about a date when transport space would be available, they started setting things in motion, both in terms of initiating a round-up either directly, via their local collaborators or through the Jewish communities who had to provide a certain number of names to them for deportation as well as in terms of payment.\n\nPayment because the Reichsbahn treated deportations like any other train for the purpose of transporting persons. According to a special contract between the Reich Security Main Office and the Railway, there would be no deportation trains costing less than 200 Reichsmark with the price of transportation of one person, third class, which in this case meant cattle car, being 0.50 RM at minimum and 0.04 RM per kilometer per person. Children under ten had to pay half price and children under 4 were deported for free. The money for the Reichsbahn came either from the collected belongings of Jews or from the Jewish communities where a sort of tax was levied by the Nazis on richer Jews to pay for the deportation of poorer Jews.\n\nIn 1942, this agreement was amended so that when the Reichsbahn deported over 400 people, the prices were halfed. Usually the Reich Security Main Office tried to at least deport 1000 people per transport but later increased that to at least 2000 people per transport. With the people arrested and the train rolling, the next question was if the camp was ready to receive them. Sometimes, when they were not, this had terrible consequences for the people in those transports.\n\nThe deportations were horrible to start with. Cattle carts packed incredibly tight, no water or food provided and for relief, at most a bucket in some corner. Some cars were so tightly packed that people died standing up and could only be removed once the train was unloaded. If the camp was not ready, this was prolonged in that the train was usually halted and stayed a side track for a day or more with the people in them. Neither comfort nor even survival was the goal here, so the SS had no qualms leaving trains packed tight with up to 700 in [one of these train cars](_URL_3_) standing somewhere for days.\n\nWhen transports arrived in Auschwitz II, prisoners had to get off the train and the selection process would begin. This process was to separate those able to work in the camp from those to be killed on arrival. The latter group comprised the majority of all transports (women with children, the elderly, children, and young men and women whose professions were not needed in the camp) and the former group was to be exploited until they too died from overwork or one of the camp selections. The start of selections in Auschwitz attested first in April 1942 and the process involved people existing the trains and being told they had arrived at a \"resettlement\" camp and had to be examined and could go take a shower.\n\nThe selections were usually conducted by the camp doctor on shift that day/night and involved glanicing at the prisoners, asking their name, age, and profession and then sending them either left or right with one direction for those being able to work and one for those about to be murdered. [Here](_URL_1_), [here](_URL_4_), and [here](_URL_6_) are photos showing the selection process of Hungarian Jews in 1944 which usually involved 30-50 guards, one officer, the doctor and the Jewish Sonderkommando, the work detail in the crematoria complexes, who themselves were gassed in regular intervals.\n\nSometimes, the deception that this was a \"resettlement camp\" succeeded. Sometimes it did not and the SS became extremely violent towards the prisoners, herding them through a specially fenced area to the gas chambers. The chambers itself functioned as shown in [this model in the USHMM](_URL_0_). On the right it shows people entering and undressing, in the underground area are the gas chambers and above, the cremation ovens.\n\nIn the Zyklon B gas chambers like the one in Auschwitz, gassing it took three to 15 minutes depending on climatic conditions though during normal operations, in order to ensure the death of all in the chamber, it wouldn't be opened for 20-30 minutes. During heavy operations, the camp administration shortened that to ten minutes or to the point when - according to Auschwitz commander Höß - \"the screaming stopped\". The Zyklon B would be filled from holes in the roof. It was in [pebble form in cans](_URL_2_) and would then dissolve inside the chamber into gas blocking the bodies ability to process air.\n\nOnce the people operating the chamber were sure those inside were dead, they would engage the ventilation and send in the sonderkommando to carry the dead to the elevator and clean out the chambers while above others from the commando would start the incineration process. The reason for incineration was multiple fold. First of all, the camp administration was afraid of epidemics spreading with all the corpses around and then there was also the issue of secrecy. In Sobibor, where the bodies had initially been buried, so many bodies amassed under the ground that during the following summer the gases from the decomposing corpses pushed up remaining liquids form the bodies which subsequently ran like a river towards the Polish village downhill. In light of this, incineration was necessary to the camp administrators. Once, this process was completed and the incineration almost complete, a new selection was initiated if another transport was waiting.\n\nAs you can see form this description, most of the most gruesome work of this entire process fell not to the SS guards but to other prisoners – the Sonderkommando. A group of Jews selected after arrival and because they knew the machinery of murder so well, regularly murdered themselves. They lived somewhere in the crematoria complex, were forbidden from contact with other prisoners and spent a generally horrible existence, spending their days with cleaning the gas chamber and incinerating bodies. When it comes to the most horrible fall out of this whole process, the SS had found a way to keep their hands clean of it.\n\nUnder these circumstances, it is no wonder that in a suicidal action in 1944 that cost all of them their lives, the Auschwitz Sonderkommando blew up one of the crematoria and tried to initiate a mass break out that while it did fail, at least accomplished to set back the murder process in Auschwitz considerably.\n\nSources:\n\n* Raul Hilberg: Sonderzug nach Auschwitz\n\n* Bertrand Perz et. al.: Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas.\n\n* Nicholaus Wachsmann: KL. A History of the Concentration Camps.\n\n* Laurence Reese: Auschwitz.\n\n* Hermann Langbein: Menschen in Auschwitz.\n\n" ] }

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[ "http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/auschwitz/crematoria/furnace-capacity-analysis.html", "http://imgur.com/a/BH42d" ]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66fqtu/doubts_about_the_deathtoll_in_auschwitz/", "http://www.phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/not-the-science/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lxzav/are_the_nail_marks_made_on_the_walls_auschwitz/dbzhe1g/" ], [ "https://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/2005Photos/KremaIIModel.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Birkenau_selection_on_the_platform.jpg", "https://imagingenocide.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/zyklon-b-pressac.jpg", "https://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/alpha/n00090.jpg", "http://www.ndr.de/kultur/geschichte/chronologie/auschwitz181_v-ardgalerie.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66fqtu/doubts_about_the_deathtoll_in_auschwitz/", "https://media05.onetz.de/2015/12/11/230865_web.jpg?1449831834" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dauj2hi" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Well, let's look at the words of the Southerners themselves. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens gave a speech known as the [Cornerstone Speech](_URL_1_), in which he declared:\n\n > The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically [...] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. *They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.* [emphasis added]\n\nThe state of Mississippi also issued [\"A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union\"](_URL_2_) in which they declared:\n\n > Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.\n\n[Texas](_URL_0_) was no less direct in their devotion to the Peculiar Institution:\n\n > She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time [...] We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, *were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race*, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that *the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free*, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator\" [emphasis added]\n\nCareful reading of these documents shows that the \"rights\" the Southerners complain about being denied are exclusively the rights of slave-holders, like Northern states denying rights of transit or defying the Fugitive Slave Act in deference to their own state laws (which contradicts neo-Confederate claims that the war was fought over state's rights). These documents, and the ensuing century and a half of legalized segregation and Jim Crow laws would seem to demonstrate that most Southerners didn't necessarily believe that African Americans didn't deserve rights, but that they had already given African Americans all the rights they did deserve." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html", "http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/stephens.html", "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9cw3o4", "c9cxpz3", "c9cxrta" ], "score": [ 15, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Firstly, Muhammad lived at least 30 years longer than Jesus did. Jesus' ministry is said to have lasted 3 years, while Muhammad lived 23 years after his 'revelation'. This, in itself, could explain why Islam would have a more solid base at the time of Muhammad's death than Christianity had at the death of Jesus.\n\nSecondly, Jesus preached pacifism and early Christianity was largely a religion of the poor (though there were obviously some wealthy and powerful converts). Muhammad, on the other hand, initiated armed conflict, first against Mecca (which allowed him and his followers to acquire significant wealth and prestige) then against the rest of Arabia.\n\nMuhammad's conquests ensured there was a firm base for the religion safe from persecution. Christianity arose under the boot of Rome and, while the persecution probably wasn't as bad and pervasive as some stories suggest, early Christianity didn't exactly have it easy.", "Muhammad was very politically minded and religious groups are political groups. If you split the Quran chronologically into two, you see that a fledgling Mohammed with little support preaches inclusiveness (to gain numbers in a more fragmented system of tribes) and peace (with no military support, anything but peace would lead to his end quickly). Then when he gained more serious strength, he started to demand more, which is best if you want to grow quickly. \n\nFrom the Quran, \n\n“And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers” [Aal ‘Imraan 3:85]\n\nTaxation of non-Muslims, death for apostates, harsh criticism of pagans and polytheists meant that he could develop a solid user base quite quickly. An emphasis on religious education to determine basically all facets of life meant that he maintained and secured an information imbalance, he and his scholars knew what was right, as religious information was hoarded for more than one reason. Most were unlearned, and logic/ reasoning was less important than seemingly arbitrary rules of Allah. \n\nThe push to incorporate religion into everyday life, like prayer 5 times a day, means that his religion becomes part of daily routine and that strengthens its hold and position over someone,\n", " > Why was Muhammad a more successful religious leader than Jesus?\n\nThis is too subjective a question to be answered. For starters, there is no objective way to define \"successful\".\n\nYou have also *assumed* that Mohammed is more \"successful\" than Jesus, and are then asking everyone else to justify that assumption for you.\n\nI've therefore removed this question.\n\nIf you simply want to compare the two prophets, then ask a question that simply compares them:\n\n > **Are we able to compare the different outcomes achieved by Mohammed and Jesus during their lifetimes?**\n\n > Are there any ways in which either of them could be considered more successful than the other? Can we measure success by the number of people who converted to their religion during their life, or by how accurately their teachings were passed along? I seriously don't want to get into a theological or religious debate, just examine the historical facts and compare the two as prophets and leaders of men." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cv18876" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Instead of focusing on the degree itself - What do you want to do after university? What sort of job would you like to get? How would you like to spend your time? \n\nFocus on answering that, and then it's be much easier to figure out which degree would best suit you. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e7tk6hy", "e7tlt4k" ], "score": [ 3, 10 ], "text": [ "Follow up: does this have to do with Porfirio Diaz and the United States' railroad partnership in the 1880s?", "Not to discourage further answers, but's a existing post on this sub that has quit a few rspoonss that addresses the possiblee factors for this:\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1984ff/why_are_most_mexican_cities_in_the_middle_of_the/?sort=top&st=jnamwf1p&sh=e74f99ce" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2g5rgr" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "I'm sure someone else will be able to cite an instance where Chesty Puller did, but the best most recent example I can think of is Brig. Gen. Ted Roosevelt landing at Utah Beach with the first wave of landing craft, coordinating the initial assault and directing the landings that followed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ey7g4l7" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) employed women extensively during the Second World War. In total, about 800,000 women served from 1941-1945. Notably, the RKKA allowed women to serve in combat roles, although the majority of women were support staff and noncombatants such as nurses, telephone operators, and doctors (with that in mind, many of these 'noncombat' roles were exposed to the dangers of war regardless - telephone operators were killed when command posts were shelled, and paramedics and nurses often took fire while retrieving the wounded from the front lines). There were several notable all- or majority-female combat units; for example, the all-female 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Regiment flew 24,000 sorties and produced two dozen Heroes of the Soviet Union. One of the separate sniper brigades in the Reserves of the Supreme High Command was composed entirely of women, as well. Women featured prominently in Soviet propaganda, particularly ace snipers such as Lyudmila Pavlichenko (a claimed 309 kills, [though for some needed context on the cult of the sniper in the RKKA see this post by /u/georgy_k_zhukov.](_URL_1_)) However, the presence of women as combatants in the RKKA should not be taken as evidence that the egalitarian Soviet social reforms had swept away sexism. Sexual assault was rampant, and even the frequent consensual relations were tinged with misogyny and double standards. One soldier wrote home in 1943 that \"in the army, they regard women like gramophone records...you play it and play it and then throw it away.\" Officers as well as enlisted men frequently took \"marching field wives\", *pokhodno-polevye zheny* or PPZh, a play on the PPSh submachine gun. Although these relationships were initiated by men more often than by women, women bore the brunt of the societal condemnation. From Merridale's *Ivan's War*: \"In fact, the front-line women faced prejudice based on their wild reputation. One describer what happened after she married her wartime sweetheart. Her new husband's parents were furious. 'An army girl,' they barked. 'Why, you have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now?' It was assumed that women slept with officers as a way of getting on...When the coveted medal 'for military service' (*za boevye zaslugi*) was worn by women, it was jokingly said to be 'for sexual service' (*za polevye zaslugi*).\" However, despite the prejudice, many of this women volunteered for service for the same reasons that Soviet men did. A sniper named Iuliia Zhukova reflects thus on her voluntary service: “I had, you see, volunteered for the army, guided by one desire - to defend the country and my people.”\n\n######Sources and Recommended Reading:\nAlexievich, Svetlana. *The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II.* New York: Random House, 2017.\n\nBhuvasorakul, Jessica Leigh. [*Unit Cohesion Among the Three Soviet Women’s Air Regiments During World War II.*](_URL_0_) Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 2004.\n\nMarkwick, Roger D. “‘A Sacred Duty’: Red Army Women Veterans Remembering the Great \nFatherland War, 1941–1945.” *Australian Journal of Politics & History* 54, no. 3 (September 1, 2008) 403-420.\n\nMerridale, Catherine. *Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945.* New York: Picador, 2006 \n--- “Culture, Ideology, and Combat in the Red Army, 1939-45,” *Journal of Contemporary History* 41, no.2 (April 2006) 306-324\n\nI have not had the opportunity to read it yet, but Roger Markwick also has a book on the subject, the aptly-titled *Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War*. Based on the quality of his journal article cited here, I feel comfortable recommending this book as well." ] }

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[ [ "https://web.archive.org/web/20120225213451/http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses_1/submitted/etd-03302004-154056/unrestricted/BhuvasorakulJThesis.pdf", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7c3bth/why_do_many_people_take_sniper_kill_counts_for/dpnghm0/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg3odhc", "cg3tzub", "cg46ckf" ], "score": [ 18, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I think it would depend on the person trying to read it, just like it does today with a person reading Shakespeare or Chaucer. The more one has read and studied, the easier it would have been. But the average person would have had a lot of difficulty.\n\nAlready by the thirteenth century, Old English was getting difficult for the average person to read, but the scribe who wrote in the so-called [\"Tremulous Hand\" of Worcester](_URL_0_) was able to work through Old English manuscripts and provide glosses to help. \n\nIf we move forward to the 16th and 17th centuries, there are scholars who studied Old English. People like Humphrey Wanley (who catalogued the collection of manuscripts once owned by Robert Cotton), John Leland and other antiquaries could read it as well, after studying it.\n\nEven if one could understand the words and could handle the grammar (which is much more different than Middle English is for us today), the process of actually reading it would have been quite difficult, simply because of the strange letter forms. I have seen some laws from the Middle English period in which an earlier law of William the Conqueror was quoted and it is clear that the scribe was unable to make much sense of the text he was copying. When it came to odd letters like the g ð and þ he simply tried to replicate the form of the letter, not realizing what it meant. Besides the letter forms, the spelling conventions were a lot different. We spell things today roughly similar to how Middle English was spelled, but Old English has a very different way to spell sounds than we do. Besides the odd letters like ð and þ, in Old English \"sc\" represents the \"sh\" sound, \"cg\" is our \"j\" sound, and so on. \n\nTL:DR It would be much more difficult for a Middle English speaker to read Old English than a Modern English speaker to read Middle English.", "You may also want to ask the linguists in /r/AskLinguistics, /r/Linguistics, or /r/AskSocialScience.", "I asked a very similar question on r/linguistics a couple of months ago and received [some good responses](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/The-Tremulous-Hand-Worcester-Thirteenth/dp/0198117426/" ], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/1jkaqo/how_would_middle_english_speakers_relate_to/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e89q5wo" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Clothing was quite expensive in the nineteenth century, so taking care of it was an important aspect of housekeeping. At this time, many women were publishing manuals that would fill in the middle-class housewife on the finer points of domestic economy, from cooking and baking to the laundry and washing-up, often in excruciating detail. This is excellent for us today, since it gives us a good look at ordinary practices.\n\nEstelle Woods Wilcox's *Practical Housekeeping* (1883), for instance, explains that clothes must be taken care of so that they will last longer, and not be \"crowded into a closet\" or \"tossed in a drawer\". \"Handsome dresses that are not often worn\" - someone's best black silk, maybe, or their one evening dress - should be folded up very carefully, so that the ruffles and flounces didn't crease in the wrong places, and stored on or in something instead of being hung; every so often, she suggested, the skirt could be hung upside down from loops added inside the hem, in order to smooth out any wrinkles. If a woman didn't have a sizable closet or armoire to store these good dresses, she could buy pasteboard boxes to stack up in the corner. (Hats and bonnets she also says should be always kept in boxes.) For more everyday dresses, Wilcox instructed women to brush them off to get rid of dust and fully clean any hems that were really dirty, and then hang them up by loops sewn into the armscye; the best practice was to hang each dress on its own peg, but it's likely that women without much space doubled them up. Interestingly, she also describes essentially a home-made wooden coat hanger to be used to store cloaks in order to keep the shape of the shoulders. Wilcox specifically discusses the practice of throwing clothes over a chair, and as you may have guessed, she was against it.\n\nNow, the thing about prescriptive literature like this is that if something is spelled out, that typically means that it *needed* to be spelled out. That is, if everyone folded up their best gowns, Estelle Wilcox would not have felt the need to remark that keeping dresses hanging can be more rough on them than wearing them. If people didn't throw their clothes over chairs, she wouldn't have bothered to say that she thought it a terrible way to treat them, and if they didn't leave their hats out on a table, she wouldn't have had to instruct readers to dust them, take care of the ribbons, and put them back into a box. At the same time, wealthy women had dedicated lady's maids, whose jobs revolved around caring for their employers' appearances: these women's clothing would, we can assume, just about always be cleaned, repaired, and put away with the utmost care. \n\nWhen traveling, it's likely that clothes were treated a bit less carefully. A wealthy woman traveled with her lady's maid, of course, and the lady's maid would continue to take her employer's clothes into her own custody as soon as they were taken off, but women who couldn't afford lady's maids traveled as well. Etiquette books suggested that they pack a small wardrobe: *The Lady's Every-Day Book* (1874) told women to wear only one old wool dress when on board ship; *Evening Hours* (1876) recommended a \"good black silk\" for dinner and a black wool/cashmere/alpaca dress for the day, for *five or six months* of travel for a lady who's not going into high society. These women might have thrown their gown over a chair, but would probably have done better to use a clothes brush to dust it off and hang it up to air better." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgi075v" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "hi, this is a popular question! there's always room for more expert input on this, but meanwhile, check out relevant previous discussions in the FAQ*\n\n[Native Americans and (European) Diseases](_URL_0_)\n\n*see the link on the sidebar or the wiki tab" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican#wiki_native_americans_and_.28european.29_diseases" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ci10ly9", "ci15ine", "ci1ei02" ], "score": [ 22, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The short answer is yes, there were some proponents for [Imperial Federation](_URL_0_). \n\nI obviously can't offer an authoritative answer as to why this never happened, but I can touch on most parts of your question:\n\nOne thing that's key to understanding the British Empire of the 19th century onward is the presence of Responsible Government in most settler-colonies. By the mid-to-late 1800s, most settler dominated colonies (i.e. north america, Australia and New Zealand, southern Africa) elected their own colonial governments. The taxes they paid would have gone to the colonial state, not to Britain. These countries' paths to independence were gradual rather than an abrupt break from Britain. \n\nMy best explanation for why Imperial Federation never 'took' politically is that it would have meant a decline in relative power for both British and Colonial legislators, and that the existing system 'worked'.\n\nI have mostly answered your question regarding 'a more limited form involve just Canada and Australia'. Re: the rest of the empire, political representation for non-Europeans was simply a non-starter. The non-self-governing, non-white colonies were treated quite differently from the largely autonomous settler colonies. \n\nOn a somewhat related note, France's colonial empire might interest you. France always took a more integrationist approach: some of its colonies actually did receive representation in the National legislature, with suffrage granted to Africans who were deemed \"assimilated\" into French culture. To this day, there are representatives from France's remaining overseas territories in the Assemblee Nationale (whereas Britain's remaining territories, while electing their own Governments, are unrepresented in Parliament). ", "It's not exactly the same thing, but during WWI there was an Imperial War Cabinet. It wasn't directly a parliamentary body, but the effect was to codify the fact that the major dominions and India gained a direct say in British foreign and defence policy. The longer term effect was to hasten the growing independence of the white dominions in particular.\n\nIn WWII when the it was proposed (by the dominions), it was rejected primarily *because* it was seen as a regressive step toward a more tightly integrated Empire. So you can see that the forces at play were driving the dominions toward greater independence and that the inclusion of the constituent parts of the Empire into British policy was simply a stepping stone along the way to eventual complete independence.\n\nIt's really quite a fascinating example of a largely peaceful and mutually beneficial separation. It's too bad that the entire British Empire wasn't dissolved this way.\n\nThis system was succeeded by the current Commonwealth.", "To add another question to yours, would that even have been feasible if you were to A.) include all the Empire and B.) give it fair representation by population? Cus then the British Empire would become the Indian Empire. Unless of course there were stipulations thrown on top limiting non-British entities, or India was represented as it's individual 'nations'. Even then, it's possible Bengal and maybe a few other states might've had a larger population than Britain still. " ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cjs06xu" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "hi! additional info is welcome here, but meanwhile, you may be interested in these previous posts\n\n* [Why didn't the Romans invent the bicycle?](_URL_0_)\n\n* [What was necessary for the bicycle?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Did the Romans have the technical prowess to build functional bicycles?](_URL_2_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t63nr/why_didnt_the_romans_invent_the_bicycle/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26gxpc/what_was_necessary_for_the_bicycle/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gk8u7/did_the_romans_have_the_technical_prowess_to/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dtnwv3d" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "Interesting, I just read this in a book on vexillology. As well as your red, green, and yellow, black is also popular in both regions. This will be a shorter abridged version of what is in Tim Marshall's *Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags* which I highly recommend reading.\n\nIn Africa, it stems from the flag of Ethiopia, as it was the only uncolonised African country (Liberia is another matter not for this topic). That flag's coulours stem from the apparent colour of the rainbow after the Great Flood of Genesis. Marcus Garvey, leader of the US organisation UNIA, took inspiration from this to create the UNIA flag that contained red, green, and black, as he misthought the Ethiopian flag had black instead of yellow. Rastafarianism also helped combine the two separate 3 colour schemes together. Many African flags stem from these four 'colours of Africa'.\n\nAs for the Middle East, yellow has been replaced by white. The three colours were first brought together as the Arab Revolt flag during the First World War to unify the Arabs against the Ottomans. The white represents the Umayyad dynasty, responsible for expanding the caliphate from Portugal to Samarkand. Green represents the Fatimid dynasty but is also considered to be the colour of Islam as it was the Prophet's favourite colour. Black represents the colour of the Prophet's main banner and the headdress worn by pre-Islamic tribesmen in battle, while red is the colour of Sharif Hussein's tribe, included because he is the one who designed the Arab Revolt flag.\n\nIf you want to know what each country says the colours of their flag officially represent, the book has chapters dedicated to both regions." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjwad5z" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I think it's important to not view the Islamic world as a ideologically united, homogenous unit today as well as within the historic parameters you've described. I also think that due to their importance in Western culture, the advances made under the \"Golden Age\" of Islam are obviously given more attention than other aspects. Many Islamic countries are developed, educated and make advances scientifically. I think the more recent arrival of reactionary movements like Wahhabism and salafist movements certainly don't favor a progressive society. But they definitely do not encompass the values of the Islamic world, Which would include North Africa, the Middle East and much of Southeast Asia. I don't feel that Islamic values has seriously impeded the growth of Islamic states I terms of education or sciences. Many were previously colonies of western nations as well. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e77dwys" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Well it depends of the time you're speaking of. Squire is a somewhat blurry term in medieval times, because its sense changes a lot through time. In the begininning squires were expected to become knights after a time, we could see squires as knights-to-be. If you're already a squire, you'll be knight : you're noble, trained for battle, may even have fought some battles, etc.\n\nIn the late medieval times, especially XIVth - XVth century, squires were not that much seen as knights-to-be. It was, obviously, a prerequisite for knighthood, though all squires were not to end up as knights. You could see 30-40 years old squires who were, basically, knights without knighting. They were heavily armored, rode horses to battle, were nobles and all, only they hadn't the title.\n\nAt that moment the title was more or less honorific, although it played a role in military organization. In particular, knights were to be paid more than squires when it came to military service. Both, indeed, owed military service to their Lord and King, although it often came with financial compensation.\n\nIn the end of Middle Ages, \"knight\" was essentially an honorific title, as progressive professionalization of the armies and developpment of new weapons (gunpowder, crossbows, ...) were challenging their status of military elite. The idea that you needed to be a knight to fight well in battle, that dominated for a time, came to pass.\n\nTL; DR : In the early medieval times, it was very uncommon for a squire to become a knight, it was more seen as a two-in-one package, so to speak. In the late medieval times, it made very little difference on the battlefield, although prestige was significantly higher for a knight. (For exemple, François Ier of France demanded to be knighted on the battlefield of Marignan in 1515 by the Chevalier Bayard, France most famous and honorable knight at the time. IHe had already fought and led as a squire, but the idea of being a knighted... well, knight, was just to glorious to let it go)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3556gc" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "According to \"Norges Historie\", vol. 3 Europe coastal regions got better military organized. Denmark, Norway and Sweden became organized states as well, since the 9th century and Christianized kings didn't wanted a competing military power at their side. It was a relative slow process, which lasted for example in Norway until the end of the civil war in the 12th century. The population in countries like Sweden and Norway was small, which is a disadvantage for military adventures. In Norway the population was less than 200000. Europe became an economical zone which resulted into the important trade with stockfish and the import of wheat. For Norway it was important, because since the 12th century this region was simply not suitable to produce enough wheat. One calorie of fish gave 3 calories of wheat in this trade. \n\nA climatic cool down in the 13th century resulted into a series of epidemics since 1348 and years with starving. It costs Norway 2/3 of the population. Institutions like the church which were part of the administration broke down and the income from taxes vanished. Norway vanished as a state in the Union of Kalmar as a result." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbwd9ke", "cbwe09b", "cbwev20", "cbwpxgc", "cbwrchg" ], "score": [ 30, 6, 37, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "Just FYI, this isn't Askreddit, all topics are \"serious\" and the mods work very hard to remove jokes from every thread.", "Pre-scientific is such a strange qualifier. Clearly the mechanics (have sex, make babies) were known before written language. Consider the [Rape of the Sabines](_URL_0_). Sperm cells were discovered by Antony van Leeuwenhoek in the late 17th century. \"\n > In letters to the Royal Society of London of 1699, later 1701, he mentions male and female sperm animals: Hoc videns mihi imiginabar, alterum esse masculinum, alterum femininum. I have often observed the sperm of a healthy man without waiting for it to become corrupt or fluid/watery, five or six minutes after ejaculation. I have noticed that a large number of small animals, I think it must be more than a thousand, on an area no larger than a grain of sand.\" [source](_URL_1_)\n\nI am not sure if that helps answer your question.\n", "The people who were the most confused about conception were the people who tried to _apply_ scientific understanding to it. It's obvious, non-scientifically, how it works — sex makes babies. The scientific mindset is the one that says, \"ok, but what's the exact connection between the sperm and the woman and etc.?\" There have been divergent speculation on this from Ancient times to the present (even Aristotle came up with a particularly incorrect theory on this point — believing that men provided the soul and women provided the matter).\n\nSo for example, the first guy who \"discovered\" that sperm was composed of lots of little wriggly bits (in the 17th century during the early years of microscopy) decided that they each must be [complete human beings in miniature](_URL_0_), which then go into the woman to grow. This approach (Preformation Theory) was a very old \"scientific\" explanation of conception, and obviously a quite incomplete one, but remained popular through the 19th century when a more accurate cell theory of reproduction (and a slightly better understanding of genetics) began to emerge. ", "I can't really speak to the many historical perspectives on conception, but to give you some idea I have some information on Elizabethan beliefs. The following examples are taken from Suzanne Hull's *Women According to Men*. The chapter is called \"Misconceptions on Conception.\"\n\nShe cites a book on midwifery by Jane Sharp, which states that\n > \"this clitoris will stand and fall as the yard [penis] doth, and makes women lustful and take delight in copulation, and were it not for this they would have no desire nor delight, nor would they ever conceive.\"\n\nAt the time, the belief seems to have been that unless a woman had an orgasm she could not get pregnant. Part of this was the belief that the woman released a sort of seed of her own during sex. Hull quotes Sharp again, who says,\n > \"So by the stirring of the clitoris the imagination causeth the vessels to cast out the seed that lyeth deep in the body\"\n\nThis led to some unfortunate implications with regard to rape, where if a rape resulted in a child, it would be assumed that a woman must have enjoyed it. Hull states that,\n > \"If it was later found that she was pregnant from her rape, she had no case since she presumably enjoyed herself, experienced an orgasm, and thus produced seed to add to the rapist's. Culpeper . . . told his readers, 'There never comes conception upon rapes.\"\n\nThere were other misconceptions with regard to why children of a certain gender were conceived. Culpeper claimed that\n > \"The reason why sometimes a male is conceived, sometimes a female, is the strength of the seed. For if a man's seed be strongest, a male is conceived; if the woman's, a female . . . and that's the reason weakly men get most girls, if they get any children at all.\"\n\nAnd there were also some unusual classical ideas about conception, much of which can be traced back to Aristotle, such as the belief that women were essentially imperfect, undercooked men.\n > \"Males developed in a warm and dry environment, and females formed where it was cold and moist.\"\n\nIf a woman's womb did not produce enough heat, then the formation of the male was incomplete and resulted in a woman.\n\nThere is a preview for the book here: _URL_0_\nBut, alas, the section that I'm referencing is not included in this preview.\n\nI've got some resources on Elizabethan beliefs about menstruation as well, and if I can find them I'll provide some details about that as well.", "Maybe this will help\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women", "http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1593.html" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Preformation.GIF" ], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=lIHagicCGIoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1d2i2n/history_of_menstruation_periods_and_menopause/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbc62at" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Romania lost Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviets following an ultimatum issued by them on June 26 1940. To understand the reason for this ultimatum you have to understand why the Soviets never acknowledged Romanian authority over Bessarabia.\n\nBessarabia was originally part of the Principality of Moldavia. Following the Ruso-Turkish War of 1806-1812 and the subsequent Peace of Bucharest the Ottomans ceded Bessarabia to the Russian Empire. Russia reorganised this territory as the Governorate of Bessarabia and proceeded to integrate it into the empire. Moldavia regained southern Bessarabia in 1856 after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War. Moldavia and Wallachia soon came into a personal union in 1859 under the leadership of Alexandru Ioan Cuza when he was elected as \"domnitor\" (leader) in both countries. He was eventually deposed by the land-owning elites who, in order to maintain the union, brought Carol of the Hohenzollern Dinasty on the throne. Romania declared its independence during the Ruso-Turkish War of 1877-1878, joining the war on the side of Russia. After the conclusion of the war the southern portion of Bessarabia was forcefully ceded to Russia in exchange for the region of Dobruja. Romania then became a kingdom in 1881 with Carol I as its king. \n\nIn 1917 the Russian Revolution happened. During the chaos Bessarabia declared independence and voted to united with Romania on 9 April 1918. The actual union happened on 20 December 1919. A number of border clashes occured between the USSR and Romania forcing Romania to withdraw a couple of its divisions from the western front and commit them to Bessarabia (at the time Romania was fighting a war with Hungary). Shots were fired, skirmishes were had but in the end nothing happened. The USSR called for a plebiscite to be held in Bessarabia to determine its status but the Romanian government refused, maintaing that Bessarabia was unjustly taken in 1812 and rightfully belonged to Romania. The Soviet Union, finding no diplomatic means by which it could aquire the territory, declared that Bessarabia was under Romanian occupation and refused to acknowledge Romanian authority over it. On 7 March 1924 the USSR created the Moldavian ASSR hoping to bolster its claim on the region. This event is the reason for the modern Republic of Moldavia's troubles with the Transdniester territory. \n\nOn 23 August 1939 the USSR signed an agreement with Nazi Germany called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Secret protocols of this act divided Europe in spheres of influence, German on one side and Soviet on the other. The Soviets then issued their ultimatum to Romania which led to its aquisition of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Romania then lost Northern Transylvania to Hungary and the Cadrilater Region to Bulgaria after the Second Vienna Dictate. This didn't stop the now fascist Romania from joining the Axis and participating in Operation Barbarossa through which it managed to reaquire both Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina alongside some other territories (which it had hoped it could annex as payment for losing the Cadrilater and Norther Transylvania). During the Battle of Stalingrad Romania lost two thirds of its fighting force and was eventually invaded by the USSR. After a coup Romania switched sides to the Allies and participated in the invasion of Hungary, retaking Northern Transylvania. \n\nTl;dr: Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia in 1940. \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbhdhyf", "cbhdz9u", "cbhmo9c", "cbhmtx8", "cbhntmd" ], "score": [ 8, 21, 20, 6, 39 ], "text": [ "A big one is, well, most of the bible. Was there a united monarchy? If so, what did it look like? Is there something behind the Exodus narrative, or is it a myth to give the Israelites a history separate from the other Canaanite groups?", "A while ago I posted the following in response to a similar question regarding whether myths about the gods could be based on actual people: \n\n\"This is actually an old idea, called euhemerism, taking its name from the Greek 4th-century BCE thinker Euhemerus (Euemeros) who postulated the idea that many myths and their heroes/gods could be attributed to historical characters and events. The idea has received renewed vigor periodically over the past two millennia, but it is generally disregarded - at least in most cases. People don’t need a real, past prototype to populate the universe with spiritual powers. There may be no way to prove that, but there is also no way to prove most euhemerism. The idea is an opportunity to speculate, but it really leads to little of substance or value.\"\n\nThe same can be true of however one wants to characterize the legendary material of a culture or a historic period. There does not need to be a basis for the stories. Humanity is fully capable to generating these without a real prototype. Searching for the event or person that is the root of a legend (or myth or whatever one wants to call it) can be a fun exercise and sometimes it can bear, but one must be prepared the shrug one's shoulders and say, \"well apparently this doesn't have a prototype.\" \n\nToo often, past historians have insisted they have found the connection that \"must explain\" a myth or some sort of story, when it is much easier to see it simply as a story. And too often all the historian really has is some fantastic speculation.\n\nJust a word of caution. Not to be a wet blanket. We should all have fun with the exercise and the question.", "My specialty is the Battle of Agincourt and the Hundred Years War as a whole, which isn't lacking in mythologies of its own. But today I'd like to talk about WWI and the Archers of Mons. \n\nIn the opening days of WWI, the German army's advance into France through Belgium seemed like it would crush everything in its path to Paris. Although the Germans were finally stopped at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, things seemed fairly dismal for the French army and British Expeditionary Force. It is therefore unsurprising that legends and mythologies would arise from the frightening and chaotic first months of the war. \n\nAt the Battle of Mons on August 23, 1914, the British Expeditionary Force faced two-to-one odds in its first major engagement in the larger battle for the borders of France. The well-trained British troops were eventually ordered to retreat, but they had successfully delayed the Germans and inflicted greatly disproportionate casualties upon the German First Army. The British army's heroism at Mons was a great source of pride for the public, including the Welsh author Arthur Machen. Machen was inspired by the battle to write a little story for the papers. \n\nThe story, which I recommend you read for yourself [here](_URL_0_), details the desperate fight at Mons and the retreat from the town. In the last, desperate moments of the battle, who should come to the rescue of the British army but their proud ancestors from the Battle of Agincourt! Thousands of ghosts of British archers appeared shout their war cries and wreak havoc upon the German lines. \n\n > His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons. He heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: \"St. George! St. George!\"\n\n > ...\n\n > And as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of arrows flew singing and tingling through the air towards the German hosts.\n\n > ...\n\n > In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that salient of the English army, and consequently there was no Sedan. In Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, the Great General Staff decided that the contemptible English must have employed shells containing an unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead German soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English.\n\nAs is typical in these events, what was created and intended to be read as fiction became confused with reality. Other sightings of visions and spiritual happenings were reported by Spiritualist papers as well as more mainstream presses. Many people wanted to feel assured that God was on the side of the Allies, that divine punishment was in store for Germany because of its violation of Belgium. Some rather cynical people have suggested that these rumors were fed by propaganda writers seeking to rally the support of the populace. \n\nI have no idea whether that's true or not. The Archers of Mons are obviously fictional and Machen never intended for it to be anything otherwise. But that didn't stop it from resonating with the British public in the darkness of the opening years of WWI. \n\n", "One thing I've been very curious about, is the mythology that arisen around Theodoric the Great under the guise of Dietrich von Bern, and how much of it has been transmitted to the modern age. \n\nI'm curious if anyone here is German, and possibly remembers being told in their youth any of the legends regarding him? Or if that particular mythology has not survived into the modern day, along the lines of Charlemagne's waning popularity in concordance with the rise of Arthur's. \n\nTo me both figures, Charlemagne and Theodoric, are fantastic comparisons of historical and mythological figures where we have access to not only what was written about them as real people by their contemporaries, but their evolution over centuries as legendary figures as well. ", "This isn't much of a mystery, as the historical origin of the myth is currently more well known than the myth itself, but it may be a good way to understand how these things get started. If you were to take a guess based on my flair, you may well realize I'm talking about the Cult of Che, or the *San Ernesto* phenomenon.\n\nIn life, Che Guevara became an unprecedented international figure for revolution. This was the result of the convergence of Che's abilities as a revolutionary guerrillero leader, the nature of his international revolutionary actions in Latin America and Africa, his public eloquence and charisma, his youthful and handsome appearance, and a [damn good photograph](_URL_0_). However, in death, Guevara became a martyr for the left, and the international symbol of \"Che\" only grew to new heights. From the 1968 Mexico City student protests to the socialists in modern Venezuela, Che has become a transcendent symbol for the leftists of the Americas. Beyond just the Americas, though, Guevara really is a world symbol, his face plastered to shirts and murals from Palestine to South Africa by every leftist group you can imagine.\n\nIn parts of rural Latin America, though, and particularly in Bolivia, the country of Guevara's final guerrilla war, capture, and execution, Ernesto \"Che\" Guevara has become more than a revolutionary. He's become a saint, a Christ-like figure. [This 2007 piece in the Guardian](_URL_1_) reports on the phenomenon in rural Bolivia. I've excerpted some key parts below, but I'd really recommend reading the whole thing to get a grasp on the modern phenomenon.\n\n > *Father Agustin, the Polish priest, reads out prayers written down by local people: 'For my mother who is sick, I pray to the Lord and ...', hesitantly, 'to Saint Ernesto, to the soul of Che Guevara.' 'Saint Ernesto,' the parishioners murmur in response.*\n\n > ...\n\n > *'For them, he is just like any other saint,' Father Agustin says ruefully. 'He is just like any other soul they are praying to. One can do nothing.'*\n\n > *On a bench in the square, Freddy Vallejos, 27, says: 'We have a faith, a confidence in Che. When I go to bed and when I wake up, I first pray to God and then I pray to Che - and then, everything is all right.'*\n\n > ...\n\n > *Susana Osinaga, a nurse who cleaned Guevara's body back then, recalls: 'He was just like a Christ, with his strong eyes, his beard, his long hair.' Today the laundry where Guevara's corpse was laid is a place of pilgrimage. On the wall above Osinaga, an engraving reads: 'None dies as long as he is remembered.' Osinaga has an altar to Guevara in her home. 'He is very miraculous.'*\n\n > ...\n\n > *Melanio Moscoso, 37, sits against a wall next to a Guevara poster. 'We pray to him, we are so proud he had died here, in La Higuera, fighting for us. We feel him so close,' he says. His neighbour, Primitiva Rojas, professes devotion: 'I have lots of faith in him. Because he stopped existing does not mean he is not here with us.' A few days ago, when feeling sick, she prayed to him and soon felt better. 'That same night I dreamt of a man with a black beard and tender eyes, who was telling me: \"I was the one who cured you\".'*\n\nThe process by which Che has been canonized, both into the folk Catholicism of the *campesinos* and into a sort of \"secular saint\" for those who otherwise hold no religious traditions, is under study, but, in my opinion, deserves more. Others, like Óscar Romero, have also been dubbed saints in rural Latin American folk Catholicism, though Romero's case differs in that the *San Romero* phenomenon is not as widespread or fervent as *San Ernesto*, and in the fact that Romero was Catholic himself and actually has a chance of being made an official saint by the church.\n\nAnthropologist Phyllis Passariello, in her article *Desperately Seeking Something: Che Guevara as Secular Saint*, the power of *San Ernesto* is drawn from the same resolve, charisma, universal appeal, and hardness of purpose that makes other heroes and saints. That Che might hold a certain appeal in Cuba or Bolivia is unsurprising, given his revolutionary actions in those countries, but the fact of Guevara's pan-American stature represents a universal appeal unrivaled by other revolutionaries struck down in their prime (like his comrade Camilo Cienfuegos), perhaps because of the fact that, as an Argentine doctor who became a Guatemalan defender of democracy, a Cuban revolutionary, a Congolese rebel adviser, and finally a Bolivian guerrillero could be imagined to be present in any country where the people felt that they were repressed and drew inspiration from Guevara's example. \n\nThat his comrades encouraged the Cult of Che, when Guevara had, in life, expressed distress about its growth, certainly helped crystallize its role in Latin American. Régis Debray, a Frenchman who had fought under Guevara in Bolivia, speaking of the comparison between Che Guevara and Jesus Christ not long after his death, said, \"Che was a modern Christ, but I think he suffered a much harder passion. The Christ of 2,000 years ago died face-to-face with his God. But Che knew there was no God and that after his death nothing remains.\" More recently, the comparison has been taken up even by Benicio del Toro, who said, after playing Guevara in the two part film *Che*, \"I think Che had perseverance and morality... being the underdog and fighting against injustice and standing up for the forgotten moved him so hard. Kind of like Jesus, in a way—only Jesus would turn the other cheek. Che wouldn't.\"" ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hv6me/monday_mysteries_literary_mysteries/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cvbaz/monday_mysteries_missing_documents_and_texts/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j9zv8/monday_mysteries_verifiable_historical/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1g1we7/monday_mysteries_lost_lands_and_peoples/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eoypm/monday_mysteries_unsolved_crimes_in_history/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1icd0x/monday_mysteries_leastaccurate_historical_books/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ce73h/monday_mysteries_notable_disappearances/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gj0q2/monday_mysteries_what_in_your_research_is_proving/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f57b0/monday_mysteries_fakes_frauds_and_flimflammery_in/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dcbb3/monday_mysteries_lost_and_found_treasure/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gz7ac/monday_mysteries_your_family_mysteries/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1e9el2/monday_mysteries_ancient_ruins/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1itbtx/monday_mysteries_difficulties_in_your_research/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fl9uw/monday_mysteries_local_history_mysteries/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hfffk/monday_mysteries_contested_reputations/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dslor/monday_mysteries_decline_and_fall/" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.aftermathww1.com/bowmen.asp" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrillero_Heroico", "http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/23/theobserver.worldnews" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch89ztl", "ch8edmo", "ch8gl51" ], "score": [ 7, 50, 33 ], "text": [ "I'm going to ask to save the more qualified some time, so they can answer faster!\n\n Which theater would you be looking for? Obviously the Eastern Front, Arabian revolt and Western Front are massively different affairs... and that's only the theaters I can think of, other than Gallipoli.", "On the Western Front, capturing villages that formed part of the German line such as Beaumont Hamel and Pozieres usually meant assaulting well constructed defenses. If the towns had not previously been subjected to artillery bombardment then they would have been prior to the beginning of the attack. This ultimately left them as piles of rubble. Regardless, the Germans still made use of them, digging shelters and weapon positions into the rubble that attacking troops would have to clear. In some cases such as that of Pozieres which was captured by the Australians during the Somme Offensive in 1916, the village was virtually wiped out as you can see [here](_URL_0_). What had been the village was replaced by the more familiar moonscape of shell holes and trenches.\n\nIf you want literature on the war, John Keegan presents a rather well rounded overview of the conflict that I have enjoyed in the past.\n\nSource: Writing thesis on the Battle of Hamel and looking at the experiences of troops who had fought in similar previous battles\n\nImage source: Les Carlyon's *The Great War*", "here is two airial photographs that show what happened to a town that was part of a major battle. \n\nPasschendaele1916 _URL_1_\n\nPasschendaele1917 _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://imgur.com/pAG4hvs" ], [ "http://i.imgur.com/C5rwN4n.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/bPLRauQ.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1vqkj3", "d1w1vf7" ], "score": [ 8, 5 ], "text": [ "There have been several studies of the dental deposits in the teeth of fossil humans lately - this material is essentially fossilized plaque. In it we can find a variety of useful material to answer pointed questions about the diet of early humans. One of the things we seek is starch grains, which can bear markings indicating whether they were cooked or not, and if they were roasted or boiled.\n\nFor instance, in Al Khiday (Sudan), dental deposits of human remains from the pre-Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Later Meroitic age have shown evidence of the consumption of both roasted and boiled nut-sedges ([Buckley *et al.* 2014](_URL_1_)). Similar observations have also been made confirming widespread presence of cooked starches in Neanderthal diets ([Henry *et al.*, 2010](_URL_0_)) throughout their range. \n\nSo cooking has been a part of who we are for a long, long time. That being said, eating raw food has a long tradition as well, whether out of preference or out of necessity, and still is an important fact of life in several cultures such as the Inuit.", "There is some evidence to suggest that the use of fire predates *homo sapiens*, and that *homo erectus* lit fires and cooked food. *Homo neanderthalensis* certainly did. On that basis, it's actually reasonably safe to say that humans have cooked food for as long as there have been humans.\n\nHowever, there is also raw food use throughout history and up to the present - most vegetables are perfectly good raw, and oysters, many forms of fish in sushi, beef and lamb are eaten raw (or in the case of the beef, just barely away from raw) in lots of cultures worldwide. \n\nThere are two main reasons we cook things - one is to actually make them edible. This is the case with a lot of carbohydrates; humans are not really digestively equipped to turn raw grains or potatoes into energy. Cooking many meats and vegetables also makes them easier to digest, even if it's not strictly necessary.\n\nThe second is for a set of chemical reactions called the Maillard Reactions. These are an interaction between amino acids and reduced sugars which are, frankly, beyond me in terms of chemistry, but which are the reason that cooked foods - meats in particular - taste 'better' to us than many uncooked examples of the same stuff. \n\nSo cooked food can be either necessary or desirable, and as humans spread from reasonably warm origins to colder parts of the planet, the use of fire was good for heat as well as cooking - and once you had it there for heat, you might as well cook over it.\n\n**Sources:**\n\nWil Roebroeksa and Paola Villa, [On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe](_URL_0_).\n\nHarold McGee, *On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen* (2004)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/486", "http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0100808" ], [ "http://www.pnas.org/content/108/13/5209.full" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvs0lbj" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "[I wrote a piece dealing with comparative production of the US and the USSR](_URL_0_), and to quote the relevant part about food production:\n\nAll in all, it came to roughly 12 billion in aid from the USA. Soviet claims are that Lend Lease represented only four to ten percent of their total production (the impact was seriously minimized in Soviet studies of the war), but even if they are not downplaying it, this is no small amount! Certainly not all of it was the best stuff. The boots especially were ill-suited for Russian winter, and the opinions of the thousands foreign tanks (16 percent of USSR production) and planes (11 percent of USSR production) were mixed, but the trucks and food can't be overstated enough, the latter quite possibly saving the USSR from famine level hunger in 1942, since they had lost 42 percent of cultivated land to the German offensive, losing 2/3 of grain production! Equalling 10 percent of Soviet production, two percent of US food production was sent off to the Soviets, which, to put in perspective:\n\n > It has been estimated that there was enough food sent to Russia via Lend-Lease to feed a 12,000,000-man army half pound of food per day for the duration of the war." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ku09p/in_ww2_who_had_greater_industrial_capacity_the/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cy7wucx" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Hiya!\n\nYou'll struggle to find a quality answer due to the way you've framed your question, I'm afraid. In effect, you're asking whether there's evidence earlier than the earliest evidence we have. Your question sounds like you're trying to ask whether we have evidence of civilisations which declined and 'regressed' technologically - if that's the case, I'd urge you to resubmit your question and frame it more in that direction. We don't have evidence for any civilisations that pre-dates the earliest evidence we have of civilisation. That's what 'earliest' means. :P\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cah8j3z" ], "score": [ 23 ], "text": [ "Could you be a bit more specific- Are you asking how functional uniforms were? What did they look like/what was worn when? Which army? \n\nI'll try to give you a little general information on the British army, which will hopefully answer some aspects of your question- \n\nThe British infantryman who boarded a transport at Southampton or Portsmouth wore a very elegant costume- On his head was a tapering, cylindrical shako. Around his neck was a high collar, and a leather neck-stock. His red coat had ten buttons, evenly spaced and bordered in white tape, and cut off at the waste, with tails hanging in the rear. His trousers were of a dark, almost black grey, known as 'oxford pattern' with a red stripe running down the side of each leg. His collar and cuffs were in a contrasting color, unique to his regiment. Light Infantry were distinguished by shorter coat tails, and a green tuft on their shakos. Grenadiers wore a white tuft. Both flank companies wore distinguishing shoulder wings in lieu of epaulettes.\n\nAs regards equipment, he wore a belt carrying his cartridge box over his left shoulder, and a new-fangled waist-belt with a frog to hold his bayonet. On his back was a bulky, box shaped knapsack- tremendously uncomfortable. He carried a water bottle and haversack on the march as part of camp equipage.\n\nHis brothers-in-arms in the cavalry had their own unique appearance- Dragoons of the 'Heavy Brigade' wore brass or silver helmets, with short-tailed red coats and oxford trousers. Light Dragoons and Lancers, both part of the famous Light Brigade, were distinguished by double-breasted blue coats; the lancers were further distinguished by their curious Czapka headdress. By far the most elegant of the cavalry regiments were the hussars- with their braided blue coats and fur busby headdress, they gave off an exotic and dandified air. \n\nDistinct from the ordinary Line Infantry were the Guards, Highlanders, and the Rifle Brigade. The Guards wore imposing bearskins and double-breasted coats, while the Highlanders were conspicuous in the feather bonnets and kilts. The Rifle Brigade, famously, wore green uniforms, though their role was somewhat superfulous at this stage- Almost all the infantry went into the field armed with new and deadly-accurate Minie Rifles.\n\nArtillery wore a uniform similar to that of the infantry, but with a blue, double-breasted coat instead of a red, single-breasted one. The horse artillery were another matter entirely, dressing in smart, hussar-style uniforms.\n\nAll in all, the British soldier's appearance was more suited to a parade ground than a battlefield- And his leaders were aware of this. Since 1833, journals were advocating a revised dress for the army, and these were taken under consideration by Horse Guards in 1850. However, due to deliberations, the new uniforms were not in use when the Army of the East embarked for the Crimea. \n\nIn the colonies, soldiers made due with what they were given, often adapting their simpler undress uniforms (consisting of a round, tail-less jacket and cap worn on fatigue duties) as fighting dress. However, in the Crimea, British troops were facing a European foe for the first time since Waterloo, and were required to appear in top form. \n\nObviously, these elegant uniforms did not last long when faced with the conditions of campaign. First to go was the obtuse knapsack- the commanders deemed it too heavy to be worn by the men, who had been enfeebled with cholera after a stay in Varna (on the black sea coast of present-day Bulgaria). In place of knapsacks, soldiers wore rolled blankets into which the placed their possessions. \n\nThe infantry landed in the Crimea on 14 September, 1854. Timothy Gowing, then a corporal in the Royal Fusiliers, described their condition:\n\n > \"A portion of the infantry with a few guns were first landed; but I must say that our condition as an army in an enemy's country was pitiable in the extreme. We had no tents, our officers had no horses, except a few ponies... We made fires the best way we could, with broken boats and rafts; It was a fearful night!\" (Gowing, 42) \n\nGowing goes on to record that the men presented \"a woeful appearance\" come the morning. We can only imagine what a night spent exposed to the wind and the rain did to the mens' constitutions, let alone their uniforms. \n\nThe army marched the following day, and the the infantry were to have their first taste of battle the day after. On the 20th, the allied army attacked a Russian force, 3,000 strong, entrenched on the banks of the River Alma and carried the day. During the course of battle, men turned down their collars and discarded their shakos. \n\nBy late October, following the famous clash at Balaklava, Lt. Cavendish Taylor of the 93rd recorded:\n\n > \"All are more or less dingy and in rags; and the tawdry, useless and expensive lace on the coatees makes them look much worse than they otherwise would. Some men have shakos, some only forage caps, some have neither; these have forage caps taken from the Russians. Trousers are mended with patches of colour which show at once where the rent has been. Our present dress is not adapted to service.\" (Barthorp, 35)\n\nThe condition of uniforms, and the men who wore them, continued to deteriorate, as the army faced the fury of a Russian winter. No-one in authority had foreseen the campaign dragging on into winter, and thus the men were completely unprepared. One officer wrote \"Our men have lived in their clothes since Febuary, and the rough stony ground as beds by night, with continuous trench work by day, had reduced their garments to tatters, though they had often been repaired with sandbags.\" (Barthorp, 38) Men did not receive proper winter clothing until January-Febuary, and distribution was delayed due to the inadequate transport system. By the time most had recieved their winter kits, the worst of the winter was over. Roger Fenton had the opportunity to photograph some men in this unusual dress, as seen [here](_URL_0_)\n\nWith the spring of 1855, officers made an effort to smarten up their men. New regiments and drafts of troops of men arrived. New uniforms arrived, too, in the form of a full-skirted tunic, which replaced the old and impractical coatee. \n\nWell, that went on quite longer than expected. Please let me know if you require any more information, I'd be happy to provide it. However, I'm afraid I'm not quite as knowledgeable about the French, Russian or Turkish forces as I am of the British. \n\n***\n\nSources:\n\n* Barthorp, Michael. *The British Army on Campaign 2: The Crimea 1854-56* (Osprey Publishing, 1987)\n\n* *British Infantry Uniforms since 1660* (Blandford Press, 1982)\n\n* *Heroes of the Crimea* (Blandford Press, 1991) \n\n* Gowing, Timothy. *A Soldier's Experience* (T. Forman, 1892)\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g09000/3g09300/3g09376v.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cke3qju" ], "score": [ 172 ], "text": [ "It's a complicated question, but it depends on how you define \"fixed.\"\n\nThe German Economy in 1933 was facing a severe deflation in line with the majority of the planet after the Great Depression. The Great Depression, [as I wrote in one of my earlier posts](_URL_0_), was caused by a contraction of the money supply due primarily to the particular features of the Gold Standard in the United States, and to the deliberate policies of the Federal Reserve Board in the 1930s. The US money supply contracted by a full third, which devastated the world economy, and also lead indirectly to the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff, which caused global trade to decline by 50%. One of the most affected nations was Germany, which was reliant upon American loans to repay the War Reparations required by the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had, in the process of ten years, seen a massive hyperinflation (in 1922), where the Reichmark became literally worth less than paper it was printed on, and, in 1929, a massive deflation, which required deep austerity in the terms of the slashing of government programs, welfare, and civil services.\n\nThe 1933 elections were complicated as no centrist party was able to gain a constitutional majority in the Parliamentary elections. The two largest non-Centrist parties were the NSDAP, the Nazis, and the KPD, or Communist Party. Largely because of political maneuvering, NSDAP Chairman Adolf Hitler and Chancellor Franz von Papen, and de facto leader of the Catholic *Zentrumspartei*, agreed to form a coalition, on the Condition that Adolf Hitler would be Chancellor and von Papen would be Vice-Chancellor, with Hindenburg as president. This was agreed upon, and after winning in the 1933 elections, a Grand-Coalition of sorts was formed. Ultimately, however, Adolf Hitler out-muscled von Papen (pawning him off to write the Concordant with the Vatican, which simultaneously moving to oust him), and then fused the office of Vice-Chancellor with that of President following Hindenburg's death.\n\nOnce Hitler was in power, he initiated a number of programs. Firstly, the Versailles Treaty was to be unilaterally revoked, and the Saar Valley, which had been forcibly requisitioned by France, was to be remilitarized with the Rhineland. This was a massive gamble, but the French did nothing, and Germany was able to vastly increase its budget while virtually eliminating the financial hemorraghing that the Reparations had caused.\n\nHowever, now there was the task of actually rebuilding the economy, since Germany was yet to be out of the depression. The issue with deflation is that it is a contraction of the money supply, and what that means is that its a contraction of loans, bonds, and financial instruments that can be used as leverage, collateral, or loans to fund development. Businesses typically require these loans in both the short-run, in terms of paying worker's salaries, rent, and all of the general costs necessary to keep balance sheets in the black, as well as the long-run, in terms of financing expansions, renovations, and developments of new factories. This also affects consumption, as in deflationary periods, consumers are more likely to pool their money in the banks, while fewer people are willing to take out loans, so banks make less money. Modern economics, in the form of quantitative easing, attempts to solve this problem by lower the reserve rates and interest rates of the Central Bank to near-zero levels, so the effect is opposite, there is little saving at near 0% interest, but a lot of borrowing. The downside to this is that it will create unstable bubbles.\n\nSo, the end result of this economic phenomenon is to create a scenario in which consumption dramatically decreases in all markets. Firms can't get the financing to build new factories, so resources are devoted elsewhere; they also can't finance workers in the short-run so they're more willing to lower wages or fire people, thus spiking unemployment. Then, you get in a negative feedback, as the many people who are employed are working in a race-to-the-bottom to get employed, so they offer to work for less. Moreover, even if firms get the financing for production, and can employ enough workers, there is still the problem of consumers not having enough money to purchase many finished goods.\n\nThus, most governments at the time adopted policies of direct government intervention (the New Deal, the Corporatists state in Italy, and the German Autobahn Project). Speaking of the Autobahn Project, the Nazis decided to turn an about face to their opposition to Autobahns (originally they opposed it as being an instrument of Jewish Capitalism, as most Germans were too poor to afford a car). Now, they desired it because artificially creating jobs for unemployed people will indirectly help alleviate the downward trend of wage depreciation amongst those already employed, and it can help unskilled laborers improve their skills, and it can possibly increase national infrastructure. Hitler's plan from the beginning was to consolidate power, rebuild the military, and prepare for war, and thus all major economic reforms were explicitly geared towards this, including the autobahn, as it would improve Germany's logistical network.\n\nNow, towards industry. Corporatism, or the fusion of Labor and private firms into government-run cartels, was a major feature of fascism, but also of other governmental policies, such as the New Deal. Basically, private cartels, or trusts were outlawed, because they would result in private attempts to corner markets unethically and maximize profits. Here, the government would step in and corner the market through regulation, but it would do so to lower the market price to a more competitive equilibrium. That was the idea of course; however, in practice, it was done largely to favor firms at the expense of the consumer initially, and later, to benefit the government at the expense of the producer and consumers collectively. During the wartime economy, price and wage fixtures were implemented to provide the German economy with what it thought was cheap goods and materials. However, price and wage restrictions are inherently inflexible and decrease overall welfare because they cannot adjust to economic realities.\n\nThus, while initially successful, the corporatist policies later harmed Germany, and were undone in the late 1940s by Konrad Ardeneur, largely resulting in the West German Economic Miracle of the 1950s. They also served the policy of consolidating economic power under the German state, and quashing any potential dissenting elements.\n\nThe next phase was remilitarization. As I said before, as private consumption decreased, it needs something to compensate for the slack in the market place. Government consumption is one method of doing this, and it need not always be for peaceful means. Germany attempted to resuscitate its economy by converting it to a wartime economy. Now, in the short run of a few years, unemployment dramatically declined as many of the unemployed were either employed in government projects, or drafted into the army. It also saved many industries from going under and built new ones. However, the problem is in the long run, since this is inherently an unstable policy for two reasons: the first is simply because constantly building weapons is useless unless you are going to use them, and even then, its at the expense of other nations. The second is that you are going to need a new way to finance it.\n\n(Part 1/2)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24fzux/liberals_usually_praise_fdrs_new_deal_for_saving/ch71p5q" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cal49as", "cal508p" ], "score": [ 13, 9 ], "text": [ "Given that people *still* sometimes call Native Americans \"Indians\", it is pretty clear that the latter of the two scenarios is what transpired.\n\nProbably a better way of phrasing what the poster intended to ask is: what is it that made the term \"Indians\" stick for so long? Did it take a long time for people to realize that the term was obviously wrong? Furthermore, when did this term stick: during the days of exploration, or the days of settlement? Were there ever movements to replace the term with something else, and if so, what was the proposed alternative?", "There was never any intention on the part of Columbus of reaching India. He was hoping to find the way to China and Japan.\n\nHe *believed* that he had reached the East Indies - what we today call Indonesia (for the most part), because he found small islands with \"primitive\" peoples, and not a continental land and a rich civilization." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cj22ald" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Visual source documentation of fashion prior to 1300 is very scant: archaeology can't help (clothing degrades), preservation wasn't an apparent concern until late middle ages, and visual resources are thin (manuscript imagery is not in full gear yet, painting hadn't taken off yet). \n\nSome also argue that 'fashion' hadn't taken off yet, either - or at least that is the argument of this book:\n\n* Sarah-Grace Heller, *Fashion in Medieval France* (Boydell & Brewer, 2007)\n\nThis book covers the 'start' of fashion in the 13th century and, this is the frustrating part typical of academic work, it lacks illustrations. However, the bibliography is huge and has some very good resources. If you want the bibliography I can scan it for you - just PM me. Again, bear in mind that you will be working with a time period with a lot of guess work.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccy4bqp" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I've been recreating ancient Roman recipes for the last year or so, which are online for you too see at [Pass the Garum](_URL_3_). This will help with your cooking plans, and will give you an example of some of the foods on offer. \n\nHowever, whilst I've chosen relatively accessible recipes, which would have been available to a Roman of means (like your hypothetical merchant), this might not be entirely representative. Evidence, such as shopping lists scribbled onto the walls of villas at both Pompeii and Ephesus, suggest that meat wasn't as frequently eaten as recipe collections such as *Apicius* would have us believe - these lists seem to indicate that it was eaten only a few times per week. Of course, it's impossible to extrapolate from just two lists, so eat as you wish.\n\n\nThe very rich often took things much further, holding ostentatious feasts where they dined on gazelle, flamingo, and other such oddities from the furthest reaches of the empire. You have to remember that feasts were a form of entertainment, and an opportunity for people to flaunt their wealth and status. These feasts were full of conversation, music, drinking, games, and dancing. (For your meal, you might want to play some of [Michael Levy's](_URL_6_) music. No ancient Roman music survives for us, but Romano-Greek music does, and he's done an excellent job of interpreting this). Needless to say, the Roman feasts we read about in literature and see in mosaics and frescoes are never going to represent a standard dinner.\n\nDinner, or *cena*, was started in the evening, and might carry on late into the night (when you have no telly to watch, what else is there to do?) It was eaten in a *triclinium*, which was organised like [this](_URL_8_). As you'll notice, everybody is lying down to eat, reclining around small tables. There was no such thing as individual plates and portions - food was communal, and people grabbed at it as they wished. You'll notice that I said grabbed - no forks here! Roman food was a hands on business (there's a great story about a man training himself to grab and eat hot food, just so that he could be the first to eat in a meal). Dinner started with appetizers, continued with everything else, and might be followed by a 'dessert' (typically fruit).\n\nIf I can be of any more help, please ask away and I'll endeavour to answer your questions. When it comes to your meal, I particularly recommend the following recipes:\n\n[Dill Chicken](_URL_3_2012/12/roast-dill-chicken.html)\n\n[Baked mackerel and cheese](_URL_3_2013/04/baked-mackerel-and-cheese.html)\n\n[Roasted cabbage stalks](_URL_3_2013/02/cabbage3ways2.html)\n\n[Stale Bread Salad](_URL_0_)\n\n[Placenta](_URL_2_) - note: this is a cheesecake, and has nothing to do with animal placenta. Promise.\n\nWash it down with some [Posca](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/stale-bread-salad.html", "http://bit.ly/16CtVPu", "http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/placenta-perfecta.html", "http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.co.uk/", "http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/roast-dill-chicken.html", "http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/baked-mackerel-and-cheese.html", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgmQQQXXTy0", "http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/cabbage3ways2.html", "http://allaboutbiela.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/romans-communal-eating-httpcookit-e2bn-org.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cldjr8v" ], "score": [ 102 ], "text": [ "Background information on this era is very opaque; record keeping was almost nil, which is why the Domesday Book of 1086 is so notable. It was a huge survey of landholders, their landholdings, and their value, primarily for paying of royal dues and taxes. Despite its ambitious scope, it remained an incomplete survey of England. Not only were important cities like London excluded, but only heads of households were counted, i.e. potential taxpayers. Clergy, women, children, artisans, merchants, serfs and the rest were excluded, and we don't have an accurate householder:population ratio available beyond speculation.\n\nYou can actually access the book here \n_URL_0_\n\nWilliam's force at the Battle of Hastings is also uncertain. You see laughable estimates as high as 1,200,000 by Guy of Amiens in *Carmen de Hastingae Proelio*. Of modern historians, Peter Marren puts it at 7-8000 men, 1-2000 cavalry, while M.K. Lawson puts it at 10-12,000 men. I think it's reasonable to estimate anywhere from 2,000-3,000 people in the baggage train and camp followers considering typical armies and the lesser amount there would be for a quick battle after a landing than a long overland campaign. William's army did have, and rely on, horses, which always increases the logistics involved.\n\nIn terms of post-Hastings settlement, we know the English Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was basically replaced completely by William's Norman lords. Where castles did not exist to take over, William went on a massive castle building campaign. England had a sufficient population at the time to be relatively prosperous, with a few cities even capable of supporting 10-20,000 people. Richard Huscroft suggests 8,000 Normans settled after the battle, presumably along with many of the surviving knights, squires, and sergeants. Most modern estimates for England's population at the time run from 1.25-2 million, considerably less than the upwards of 6 million during its time as the Roman colony of Brittania.\n\nIf you're wondering for reasons of language and culture, the Norman lords were fairly estranged from the populace until Henry II and beyond, only assimilating very gradually over hundreds of years. A big reason for the eventual fusion of French and Old English came from Norman patronage of literate Anglo-Saxons, that is to say, the clergy. \n\nFun Facts: For those not in the know, \"Normans\" are derived from Normandy, where William had lands and English kings would have lands from along with Poitou and other regions for the next 140 years, and both are derived from \"Northmen.\" English kings would speak French, and very few old or Middle English, for hundreds of years, and conduct the court in Latin. Other Normans like Robert and Roger Guiscard conquered southern Italy over several decades and became a major thorn in the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire's side.\n\nHuscroft, Richard. *The Norman Conquest: A New Introduction*. Boston: Routledge, 2009.\n\nLawson, M.K. *The Battle of Hastings 1066*, New York: Tempus Publishers, 2002.\n\nMarren, Peter. *1066: The Battles of York, Stamford Bridge and Hastings*. London: Pen and Sword, 2004." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.domesdaymap.co.uk/book/kent/01/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cm0ykhw", "cm1ayie" ], "score": [ 35, 8 ], "text": [ "Because if you want to change a countries base language then you need to bring a whole bunch of working class people, the vast majority of the population, with you when you do it. Just bringing in a mass of mainly top tier individuals and their retinues proved in this case insufficient. Outside the castle gates almost everyone continues to speak the local language. Eventually numbers tell. \n\nThere may have been other structures working alongside this, although its hard to be sure what effect they may have had.\n\nAt the time there was no formal learning structure (schools), most people couldnt read and write and the bureaucracy was mainly limited to the administration area. Thus there are no schools where you can demand all children learn French from 5-18, no street signs renamed, no govt. paperwork that ONLY now comes out in French, no literature/papers etc. Thus the 'peasants' had no incentive to learn French or even an easy way to learn it. The (very small) middle classes may have had an incentive in an attempt to ingratiate themselves to the Norman overlors, but obviously not enough to trickle down more than a number of words that integrated into English rather than replacing it.\n\nWe know HEAPS less about the AngloSaxon period, with nothing much more than a few words here and there and nothing pertaining to this issue. Thus there is a lot of argument about the details, most of which is indirect (DNA, Linguistic studies) and thus subject to interpretation, how many Angles, Saxon and Jutes, what position they held, why did their language win, was the West German grammar altered by exposure to Brythonic etc. But putting it on a base level it appears that AngloSaxon 'won' because it was introduced at a lower level, and perhaps in greater numbers than the Normans (who largely went around marrying one another and keeping things inhouse to a degree) and at some point it was easier for everyone to get on well together by speaking the same. Its hard to quantify but I suspect the AngloSaxon ruling classes (as much as they were) were also much closer to the people than in Norman times, thus providing a bit more incentive to be able to speak to the boss. The old belief that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes just 'pushed' the Britons into Wales and replaced them is no longer credible. It was an admixture, but we/they are still debating how much and why.\n\nNote. This is a simplification of a very complex situation.", "Because it's not a superstrate language.\n\nThe linguistic model of language transition is that substrate languages adopt superstrate (prestige) languages rather than the other way round - this means that the new language doesn't adopt many loanwords, but the old language adopts many new words. Eventually, the old language dies out, which is what we see in France and in Scotland, where Gaulish and Pictish is replaced by Latin and Gaelic. When the Romans invade Britain, much of the Celtic language disappears and Latin is adopted *for whatever reason*. \n\nThat's the model and you can see it in effect above: if Old English is a prestige language, then it will become adopted widely, and have very few loanwords from Latin and Brittonic. When the Anglo-Saxons arrive in England, virtually no Britonnic or Latin is absorbed into the language because Anglo-Saxon is a prestige language *for whatever reason*, and Latin/Brittonic are substrate languages. What's even stranger is that Anglo-Saxon place names at least, move into areas where there are not many Anglo-Saxons - Wales and Cornwall have a high level of AS names but they're on the fringes of where the AS mostly settled - but that's what you'd expect with a prestige language. Anglo-Saxon speaking is also suggestively linked with being a prestige-class - Britons are worth less than an Anglo-Saxon, so there will be some effort to socially improve yourself, which will inevitably require language acquisition.\n\nIt's also clear from later writers (Bede), that we are all Anglo-Saxons really - so there's a sense of identity about speaking Old English, a point reinforced by Alfred's reforms later on, and the centralising of the English state (!) during Alfred's time and beyond probably plays a part in reinforcing a sense of identity. There's no similar thing in Norman England with French, and it's difficult to see any love for the French who have suddenly replaced the entire top level of English society, with the attending replacement of all things Anglo-Saxon- church dedications and local saints are all replaced by the French which indicates that the local culture was beneath them - again, not a way to win friends and influence populations. Only about 20,000 French come in (1% of the population) and while numbers for AS England are unknown, I suspect that the lack of organization of the tribes probably plays a part in the adoption of a migrant force.\n\nOld English survives in Norman England for a while, but French becomes an elite language and Latin is used for governmental writings, so England is trilingual until about the 1150s, and Old English mutates into Middle English, adopting a large number of French and Latin words, but retaining its position as the primary language for the population." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1knsoi" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "Assyria was always in conflict with the glory of Babylon! For thousands of years, the Assyrians and the Babylonians fought between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. My illustrious father, Nabopolassar fought the Assyrians and conquered them, subjugating their empire under Babylonian authority for the rest of time. What was Assyrian territory became Babylonian territory. I in my turn extended the glory of Marduk throughout the lands, even unto Egypt. The last of the Assyrian rulers, Ashur-uballit II fought well for a time. My glorious father Nabopolassar sought alliances with neighboring polities, including the Medes, and finally slew Ashur-uballit II in Haran where he had fled like the cowardly dog he was. Assyria had been ravaged by civil war. The last Assyrian kings were hardly kings at all, and their own people embraced my glorious father Nabopolassar, only Numrud and a few northern cities remained loyal to Ashur-uballit II.\n\nThe north of Assyria was granted to the Medes for their service in the war, and the rest of the land was once more under the throne of Babylon. The final battle was at Carchemish, and it was a glorious day indeed. I led the armies of Babylon against the combined armies of Egypt and Assyria, and I crushed them. The Egyptian army withdrew before me. i accomplished their defeat and beat them to non-existence. As for the rest of the Egyptian army which had escaped from the defeat so quickly that no weapon had reached them, in the district of Hamath the Babylonian troops overtook and defeated them so that not a single man escaped to his own country.^1\n\nAfter this, I continued to push the borders of glorious Babylon even farther. My conquests made Babylon the largest, strongest empire ever to rule the land. It was I who destroyed Judah, deporting the Judahites to Babylon, who pacified the great Phoenician state of Tyre and made them tribute to me. Once I had subjugated the entire realm, I made it beautiful, engaging in glorious construction projects and making Babylon one of the most advanced civilizations to see the face of the earth at that time. [I left my mark on the buildings I constructed.](_URL_2_) Babylon eclipsed Assyria within their own borders as a glorious civilization.\n\nTo read about my exploits and the conquests of Assyria, you may read these sources:\n\n* [Van de Mieroop, Marc. 2007. A history of the ancient Near East: ca. 3000-323 BC. Malden, Mass. [u.a.]: Blackwell.](_URL_4_)\n\n* [Radner, Karen, and Eleanor Robson. 2011. The Oxford handbook of cuneiform culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.](_URL_0_)\n\n* [Roux, Georges. 1992. Ancient Iraq. London: Penguin Books.](_URL_1_)\n\n\n***\n1. I wrote a monument about this, you can [read more about it here.](_URL_3_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-handbook-of-cuneiform-culture/oclc/646111382&referer=brief_results", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/ancient-iraq/oclc/27075037&referer=brief_results", "http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=674208&partId=1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_Chronicle", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-the-ancient-near-east-ca-3000-323-bc/oclc/266666883&referer=brief_results" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e4u9w6u" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Great question! You're more talking about house calls, rather than GPs; a general practitioner is a non-specialist outpatient doctor, a term used in England, Commonwealth, and formerly colonized territories. In the United States and a lot of the rest of the world, the term is \"primary care physician\" (PCP), though the training regimen is slightly more complex. But that's neither here nor there. As you can imagine there is some regional variation, and I can really only speak for England, the United, and (to a lesser extent) France. We actually have pretty good statistics on house calls throughout the 20th century, and the 1930's to 1940s seem to be an inflection point -- in 1930, house calls were 40% of all physician encounters in the US. Only twenty years later, they were 10%, and by 1980 they were less than 1%, where they remain today (Kao et al, \"Past, Present, and Future of House Calls\"). I am not aware of any statistics from house calls in the 19th century, though I suspect they were higher. Some other astonishing statistics, these from Herrit et al, The House Call; American Gps were, on average, making 2.4 calls for a cold, 3.6 calls for the mumps/communicable diseases, 4.7 for nervous diseases -- they were seeing their patients a LOT. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo let's talk mostly about the nineteenth century, which you mention. The frequency of house calls was very geographic dependent -- essentially, the more rural you are, the more likely the doctor would come to you, rather than the alternative. In large cities like Paris, London, or Boston, many prominent doctors would have clinics, similar to today. John Snow, for example, saw patients from from waking until the late afternoon, before embarking on his cholera studies. Rene Laennec would see patients before breakfast, at lunch, and after dinner -- the remainder of the time would be spent in the hospital. In more rural areas, prior to the advent of better public transportation (trains, streetcars, and later automobiles), doctors would come to their ill patients, though it could be rather infrequently. This would be included even for rather sick patients who would otherwise be hospitalized; one of the purported reasons the first opiate epidemic started was doctors leaving large amounts of morphine and syringes with their own patients.\n\nClass also played a part in it; the poor were more likely to seek care, either with a lay provider (an \"Empiric\" or \"Quack\"), or with a hospital, which in this period were starting to become the treatment centers we know today, rather than just a place for the poor to die. Seeing a doctor, even in the nineteenth century, still was not cheap. I submit this FASCINATING document ([_URL_0_](_URL_0_)), a fee schedule agreed upon by the doctors of Charlotteseville, VA, in 1848. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nTo call an initial consultation with a doctor -- well, if you lived within the bounds of George Sinclair's, the Farm, Bellmonte, Wm Booth's, Mudwall, and William J Robertson, that would run you 1.00 for the transportation, and five dollars for the visit. Inflation adjusted, that's 172.69 in 2017 dollars. If you just visited the office, that'd be 143.91. Compared to today, Medicare will reimburse a doctor 63.75 for a 99213, or 96.01 for a 99214, the two most common codes for visits to doctors with complaints ([_URL_1_](_URL_1_)) (you would add your co-pay to this, and private insurance reimburses higher). But you can see, the prices really aren't that different than today (though the patient pays less today because of insurance). Medical care isn't cheap!\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWith fees this high, poorer people could not often afford doctors consultations, or would have to save up (or rely on the charity care of a hospital). I imagine the characters in the books you are reading are upper class.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo what happened? A couple trends coalesced to decimate the house call. First of all, medical technology improved and evolved -- new diagnostics like laboratory tests and x-rays became a standard part of a doctors visit. Transportation improved dramatically so it was easier for patients to get to their doctors. But both those predated what appears to have been the death knell -- insurance-based systems, and the relative drop in primary care. The 1940s saw nationalized insurance schemes take off all over the world; in 1948 for the NHS (and the US, obvious, has a haphazard system, but this same era still had the U.S. government offer massive tax incentives for employer-sponsored plans). This had two effects -- one, insurance, to cut costs, incentivized doctors to practice in offices. Second, these new insurers preferentially reimbursed towards specialty care, and doctors responded, with more and more specializing, leading to a dramatic drop in the number of GPs and PCPs by the 50s and 60s. All this led to the system we have today.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThat was a lot! So TL;DR: over the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century, GPs slowly transitioned from house calls to office visits. But house calls were never cheap (only a small amount of money because of inflation), and there were always a large number of people who either went to clinics (especially in cities), sought out lay providers, or used charity care.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHope that helped!" ] }

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[ [ "http://blog.hsl.virginia.edu/feebill/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2011/05/Fee-Bill1.jpg", "http://gi.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Medicare-2016-RVU-breakdown-Nov-20152.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d344iol" ], "score": [ 90 ], "text": [ "Perhaps this is the wrong question to ask, because both ancient Greeks and medieval Muslims engaged in studies which are recognizably scientific, and which were in fact the precursors of modern science. However, clearly science did develop differently in Europe than it did elsewhere in early modernity, so I'll give it a shot. \n\nIn this answer I'm relying heavily on Richard H Jones's \"For the Glory of God,\" which revolves around the question of the development of modern science. Jones's argument is primarily negative: he argues that for many years debate over the origin of modern science has centered around what's known as the \"dependency thesis,\" which argued that core Christian theological beliefs were the root of Western science. Advocates of the dependency thesis argue that Christianity postulated a benevolent, rational creator God who controlled the world, laying the groundwork for a belief in the clockwork universe -- a place in which cause and effect would reliably and consistently follow each other. Without a belief in God, there is no justification for an assumption that the universe is orderly; therefore, there is no justification for science. (This is related to Hume's argument that our idea of cause and effect is ultimately a result of custom, not rationality.) Christianity also features a linear sense of time and a natural world which exists on its own, without the ever-present influence of the divine. \n\nHowever, Jones argues, I think convincingly, that there are substantial problems with that narrative. The dependency thesis ignores the absence of scientific exploration before the twelfth century, and it incorrectly places Christianity at the heart of the naturalistic doctrines described above. Instead, Jones writes, \"Only after the introduction in the West in the 12th and 13th centuries of Greek thought as developed by Muslim natural philosophers did a 'new naturalism' become firmly planted -- one based on Plato's limitation of divine action to only the moment of creation\" (16). Also, the dependency thesis argues without much justification that Christian scientists must have been scientists because they were Christian. Men like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton were very religious and sought religious justification for their scientific work, but they weren't given theological marching orders. \n\nSo if Christianity wasn't responsible for the rise of science, what was? The biggest single cause is likely institutional support and the rise of the university in the 12th and 13th centuries. Independent centers of learning supported those with interest in natural philosophy and later science. In contrast, in the Muslim world, which had superior scientific and engineering achievements to those of the West in the 13th and 14th centuries, those kinds of institutions never formed, allowing conservative theology which opposed exploration of the natural world to dominate. Similarly, in China centers of higher education were tightly controlled by politicians who dissuaded scholars from scientific inquiry. Jones, then, essentially argues that it was the intellectual freedom created by the separation of the universities from the cathedral schools controlled by the church which allowed science to flourish. There are no doubt other substantial political and economic factors which influenced the development of science, but the key point to take away is that it was not an innate superiority of Western thinkers or of Christian culture which allowed science to flourish. In regard to natural philosophy and later science, European \"cultural and intellectual DNA\" were essentially borrowed from the Greeks, just like in the Islamic world." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1poown", "d1pyfmx" ], "score": [ 17, 12 ], "text": [ "This might only be tangentially related but I was having a bit of a showerthought this morning about Patricia Crone (as you do), in that her greatest legacy to Islamic studies will be her radical source criticism, but at the same time almost all of her works have been attacked (including by me in this sub) for proposing revisionist alternatives that just seem implausible (Hagarism, Mecca and Medina not being where we think they are, etc) even given her methodology. \n\nBut what had me wondering is whether, if she had played it safe and simply challenged the sources without proposing radically revisionist alternatives, whether she would ever have actually shifted the [Overton window](_URL_0_) of consensus that the traditional sources were unreliable. Or would source criticism have remained a minor historiographical parenthetical despite previous doubts about the sources going back at least to Ignaz Goldziher.\n\nIn other words, is there historical value in being accurate on the one hand, but provocative enough to get attention on the other? I suspect there is, and I think that's very much reflected in the more strictly accurate approach taken by her student Robert Hoyland.", "Archaeologists have a unique relationship with earlier standards. Our research permanently destroys much of our subject matter, so we frequently rely on old accounts as our only source. It's a similar experience to reconstructing ancient texts from quotes in other sources. I've written a bit on this before, but we see this question of priority appear in some of the origins of modern American anthropological archaeology.\n\nAs early as the 1840s, the Smithsonian Institution took an interest in preserving the ancient ruins that dotted the American west. In 1879, this became the responsibility of a new Bureau of Ethnology. The Bureau released numerous excavation reports on mounds in the Midwest and South-central regions. I had to read some of these for a recent project, and they are monumentally dry. They are filled with tables and scientific drawings. It's a positivist approach that aims to preserve and report.\n\nThis project focused on the Mississippian collection collected by George Thruston, a local Civil War general turned socialist. He took up the shovel and screen after the war, and excavated some mounds on a nearby farm. The general drew frequently referenced the Bureau's reports when writing his own book on his excavations. Unfortunately, it is sparse in the raw data department. But it is filled with photographs, narratives, and, most importantly, interpretation. Much more so that the federal reports, it is an anthropological work. The artifacts feel used- so much so that they're no longer \"artifacts\" but tools, pots, and portraits. At a time wen many still doubted that Native Americans could have built the mounds, this was an important text. \n\nIn the present, the Bureau reports are far more helpful. We can't go back and re-excavate the mounds, so they're practically a \"primary-and-a-half\" source. But the priorities were not to \"know\" the past as much as they were to document the present state of things. In that sense, books from Thruston and others like him were \"better\" histories at the time in that they sought an accurate depiction using the resources available. \n\nYes, sometimes they were wrong, and monumentally so. The archaeological science did instantly mesh with anthropological narrative. I'm currently working with stuff from Arthur Posnansky, whose turn-of-the-century drawings of Bolivia's Tiwanaku are indispensable after a century of exposure has worn away softer sandstone monuments. Though his photos and records are tidy, he overstretches his interpretation. According to him, Tiwanaku (most of which was built 600-900 AD) was built 17,000 years ago by the ancestor of nearly every other American civ." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "caaorxb", "caau5qe" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "In your example, I'm assuming you mean a Native American fighting for the British (or some other colonial power) against his or her original nation. I'm having difficulty thinking of an individual example of someone *fighting* in such an scenario (but in the back of my mind I feel like I'm forgetting something obvious). However, a few non-combat examples do spring to mind. \n\nIn 1621, tension between the English and the Powhatan was high, and the new mamanatowick (paramount chief) Opechancanough devised a plan to attack the English, which involved poisoning the English leaders. To get the ingredients necessary to make the poison, Opechancanough had to receive a supply from the weroance (subordinate chief) of Accomac. The weroance instead informed the English that Opechancanough was planning something against them and the English took up a defensive stance. The attack was postponed until the spring of 1622, but once again native informants leaked information to the English. However, this time the warnings came from Powhatans of lesser rank, a man named Chauco and a boy whose name is lost to history, so the warnings were localized, last-minute, and didn't stop the attack, starting the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.\n\nAs another early example, there's the lead-up to King Philip's War. In December 1674, John Sassamon (Wassausmon) was serving as the Wampanoag ambassador to New England colonies and adviser to Metacomet (King Philip), Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy. As a Christian convert and Harvard graduate, Sassamon had close ties to the English colonists and when he learned of Metacomet's plan to attack the colonies, he informed the English. Metacomet was brought to trial but acquitted due to lack of evidence. Sassamon was found murdered shortly thereafter. The actual war wouldn't begin until the summer of 1675, however.", "There were approx. 13,000 native americans fighting alongside the British in the Revolutionary War - the Iroquois confederacy itself was split on the matter, and members of the Mohawk tribe in particular fought on both sides. I can't find anything on particular battles where Mohawks fought against other Mohawks for example, but I imagine if they were on opposing sides there was a good chance they might meet on the battlefield somewhere. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "de7br91" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "Hindi in the Devanagari script is the official language of India. English is merely an additional official language. \n\nConsequently both of your questions are built on a false assumption. English is not *the* official language and a regional language *is*. \n\nHere is the governing constitutional provision straight from the Government of India's Ministry of Home Affairs' Department of Official Language's website:\n\n > _URL_0_\n\n > **Article 343. Official language of the Union-**\n\n > The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devnagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.\n \nMy apologies to the moderators if this comment does not meet the subreddit's standards for top level responses but I'm presuming that when a question is based on a misunderstanding the same standards need not be met. \n" ] }

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[ [ "http://rajbhasha.nic.in/en/constitutional-provisions" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca3q07s" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Dollar comes from the German thaler, which was an Austrian silver coin which became a de-facto standard coin over much of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle-East from the era of Empress Maria Theresa during the 18th century. \n\nThe fact that Spain brought in massive amounts of silver from the new world in the 17th century meant that gold more or less disappeared from circulation. Ducat gold coins (originating in Venice, but copied elsewhere) as well as French gold francs and gold Louis d'Or:s and English sovereigns were bought for their face value in silver and melted to be sold for their gold value, which was greater than the silver value.\n\nThe increase of silver meant that monetary transactions became possible even for small trade in inexpensive goods, and the need for a silver coin to replace the ducats became increasingly obvious. The Spanish thaler, or dollar, the 8 reale coin (famous as piece of eight among pirates and privateers plundering Spanish ships and towns) became standard in the western world, while the Austrian thaler became standard in central Europe, north Africa and the Middle East. In the English world, the shilling continued to be the standard.\n\nAs I understand it, the American government based their currency on the Spanish thaler (often referred to as dollar) which was in wide-spread use over Latin America and common in North America as well.\n\nInteresting about the spread of the Maria Theresa Austrian thaler is that of about 245 million coins minted, about 20% ended up in Ethiopia and became the country's *de facto* currency. Before ww1, the Italians had the mints (still in business) in Austria mint 23 million thalers 1892-1897 for them to use for their business in Somalia and invasion of Ethiopia 1896. Before the Italian invasion of Ethiopia 1935-1936, the Italians bullied the Austrians to let them use the still present Austrian mint in Venice to mint another 19,5 million thalers to use for bribes and buying supplies in Ethiopia.\n\nWhen the British came early 1941 to drive the Italians out of East Africa, they brought with them 18 million thalers minted at a copied mint in Bombay." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7ujjgz", "c7unkqq", "c7uojnm", "c7upj6v" ], "score": [ 6, 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Bede's *Ecclesiastical History of the English People* would be a good place to start if you are looking for a primary source. I read portions of the Penguin translation in my Medieval Christianity undergrad class, and it was accessible for the most part to me. Hopefully someone with greater knowledge can give you a better overview than I could about good secondary sources. ", "You'll find some helpful recommendations in the [European Middle Ages^1 section](_URL_0_) of the AskHistorians Book List (as found in our sidebar).\n\n*1. The Dark Ages is now usually referred to by historians as [the Early Middle Ages](_URL_1_).*", "I really liked \"The Inheritance of Rome\" by Chris Whickham _URL_0_\n\nFrom what I recall, it doesn't cover Britain much. It does however give you an idea of what life was like during the middle ages, and also covers the mechanics of how the Roman Empire slowly fell apart . Its a bit of a heavy read, but that shouldn't deter you if you are on this sub. ", "[Barbarians to Angels](_URL_0_) by Peter Wells is good...it talks a good bit about Britain, but covers western Europe in general. It is definitely a revisionist work, arguing for a far more robust and \"illuminated\" \"Dark Ages\" than often assumed, based largely on material evidence. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/europebooks#toc_4", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Middle_Ages" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Inheritance-Rome-Illuminating-Dark-400-1000/dp/0143117424" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Angels-Dark-Ages-Reconsidered/dp/0393335399/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357858169&sr=1-1&keywords=angels+to+barbarians" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c68uoqy", "c68vbcj", "c68yloj", "c68zoqq" ], "score": [ 4, 47, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "Most Japanese, and also most Germans and Italians who had recently migrated, were usually upstanding American citizens who were targeted out of racism. They had homes and businesses to go back to, and they didn't want to jeopardize that by rioting.", "My family members that were interned chalk it up to the [\"Shikata ga nai\"](_URL_0_) mentality. Shikata ga nai can be roughly translated to \"what can be done?\" or \"What can I do?\" My family saw it as a tragedy, but an inevitable one, so they went along with it. They weren't particularly happy about leaving their property and possessions behind, of course, but they went along with it.\n\nAlso, there were still incidents inside the camps. While most of the \"troublemakers\" were sent to Tule Lake or Justice Department facilities, there were still a few who advocated loyalty to Japan. Most of these people were Japan-born or had received education in the home country.\n\nAs for loyalty towards the nation, there are quite a few different views. No one entered the camps knowing what would happen. Some thought that they would be interned for months, others for years. Some people though that they would be deported, and others thought that they might be killed. Many in my family (born citizens) had some faith that America would do the right thing. Others did not. Some people left the camps feeling that America had, in the end, done right by them. Others, who had entered the camp optimistic, left the camp feeling betrayed. Some people voluntarily departed for Japan. What I'm trying to say is that I doubt that people didn't resist thanks to loyalty. It's more likely the understandable uncertainty and fear mixed with a certain cultural apathy to produce a relatively undisturbed internment.\n\nThe end of the internment didn't happen all at once. My grandparents moved to Cleveland from the camps in early 1945. They were still restricted from entering the west coast, but they were released nonetheless. If the entire contents of the War Relocation Authority camps were released at once, more chaos might have reigned, but the departure of Japanese from the camps was relatively staggered.\n\nThe least smooth part of the process was the reintegration into society, especially in some places where the Japanese had hardly been welcome even before the war. A lot of farmers in California's central valley sold their properties at great loss before entering the camps, not knowing what was going to happen. Some land was squatted upon or simply seized. At the time that the Japanese were let out of the camps, propaganda-fanned racism was rampant.", "There were these [Japanese loyalty questionnaires.](_URL_0_) They were primarily instituted by agencies like the War Relocation Authority, the Provost Marshal General’s Office, the Japanese American Joint Board, and the Western Defense Command to investigate potential male Japanese-American recruits from these camps, who requested entrance into the military. This twenty-eight-question form that the War Relocation Agency created was expanded from being strictly a military method and eventually required all Japanese-American detainees to complete this form while behind bared wire fences in 1943, provoking controversy and concern among the detainees. \n\nEssentially, it attempted to investigate each detainee’s background, which included his or her labor records, education, reading habits, and knowledge of Japanese and American cultural. The questionnaire exclusively asked each male internee two controversial questions known as question 27 and question 28. In question 27, internees where asked whether he was willing to serve in the U.S. military and, in question 28, to renounce loyalty to the Emperor of Japan. Answering “no” to question 28 automatically gave detainees a black mark on their record, which not only disqualified them from joining the military; it barred them from leaving their internment camp. They didn't want to get themselves in trouble, as they saw their status in America slowly deteriorating to the point where they were considered the enemy.\n\nThey interned Japanese citizens had developed a sense of fear of the world outside their camps, as the hostility of the nation after the war was vocal and well accepted. Many Japanese-Americans preferred the camps to what they would experience back in society, not knowing what kind of reception they would receive.", "The [Niihau Incident](_URL_0_) contributed to the idea that the Japanese-Americans may still hold loyalties to Japan over America." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment#Loyalty_questions_and_segregation" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvf8hya" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but are you trying to find parallels between a very specific event in China, and a supposed trend throughout all of US history? Or are you just asking if the US has ever followed anti-intellectual policies for the same reason that China did during the Cultural Revolution? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "edx5vuc", "ek27p7v" ], "score": [ 12, 4 ], "text": [ "When I was doing some archival research at a former state hospital, the thing that made is tricky is that these sorts of claims are based on notes such as ‘reason for admittance’. For example, one person was listed as ‘kicked in the head by a horse’. Obviously, they weren’t admitted because they were kicked by a horse, but they suspected the kick led to whatever got them admitted to the hospital. This was a common format for forms at the several hospitals whose records I looked at from that era and so when you see a claim like that is good to consider it through that filter. In general, the reasons for admittance written down is often vague and unreliable. While there were definitely different standards then, it’s not quite like it first appears usually. ", "I can't speak to European asylums, but I can give you a little information as to asylums in the United States. By the mid nineteenth century, Dorothea Dix had been campaigning in various states for asylum reform, seeking better treatment of patients. As a result, a lot of states passed new laws and built state-funded asylums which were open to patients. These laws would have varied from state to state, but the laws gave guidelines to the admittance process. A lot of the records from the 20th century aren't available because of laws related to privacy, but the records from the late 19th century are available, so I'll tell you what I know about the asylum I've been studying in the hope that it can give you some insight into what admission and patient demographics were like in the late 19th century.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI've been studying some state asylums in Ohio, and in the 19th century, this is what the admissions process was like. If someone was believed to be insane, they were brought before the court. A physician had to fill out an affidavit certifying the patient was insane. The affidavit from the physician asked the following: “First, that the patient is free from any infectious diseases and vermin. Second, the age of the patient, and a concise history of the case. Third, the duration of the disease, dating from the first symptom. Fourth, the supposed cause of the disease, whether it is hereditary. Fifth, whether the patient is subject to epilepsy. Sixth, whether the patient has made any attempt to commit violence on himself or others. Seventh, the medical treatment pursued in the case, as near as the same can be ascertained, to which the witness shall add any other information or circumstance known to him, which may tend to throw light upon the subject.” The judge would deem the patient insane. The court documents were then sent to the asylum's superintendent, who would respond with whether the patient could be admitted and when. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nAs far as the reasons for admittance, the records can at times be vague, and even some of the men's records can be bizarre compared to what we would consider reasonable now. I've seen a lot of women admitted for issues following childbirth, for issues related to menopause, \"disappointment in love\", and \"family troubles\", but a lot of the cases of love and family matters listed in the record set I'm looking at are listed as having harmed either themselves or others. Certainly women were perceived as different in terms of what caused their mental illness, but the state-funded asylums weren't overflowing with women. The Athens Asylum admitted 152 men and 145 women in 1877, 99 men and 113 women in 1878, 106 men and 67 women in 1879, and according to the report, a total of 929 male and 892 women total as first admissions between the asylum opening in 1874 to the beginning of 1880. While I won't claim that this system was great with women, what I'm getting at here is that the numbers are close to equal for male and female patients, so they're not skewed to mostly hold unruly women.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSources:\n\n(All of these are pulled from the Athens Mental Health Center Collection, maintained by the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections.)\n\n \"An act to provide for the uniform government and better regulation of the Lunatic Asylums of the State and the care of Idiots and the Insane,\" Acts of the State of Ohio v. 53, Athens Mental Health Collection, Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, OGA 1.13 \n\n\\-Inquest of Lunacy Records, Series 1.1.\n\n\\- Fourth Annual Report of the Athens Hospital for the Insane, to the Governor of the State of Ohio, for the Year 1877, p. 9\n\n\\-Fifth Annual Report of the Athens Asylum for the Insane, to the Governor of the State of Ohio, for the year 1878, p. 17\n\n\\-Sixth Annual Report of the Athens Asylum for the Insane, to the Governor of the State of Ohio, for the Year 1879, pg. 57\n\n & #x200B;" ] }

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[ "https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/oct/02/socialcare.genderissues" ]

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