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{ "a_id": [ "cstgvln" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "First, I don't think we can say for certain that the priest told Alexander that we was the son of Zeus, or that Alexander himself fully embraced such a claim. But in any event, [Plutarch's account](_URL_0_) states:\n\n > But Alexander, in a letter to his mother, tells her there were some secret answers, which at his return he would communicate to her only. Others say that the priest, desirous as a piece of courtesy to address him in Greek, \"O Paidion,\" by a slip in pronunciation ended with the s instead of the n, and said \"O Paidios,\" which mistake Alexander was well enough pleased with, and it went for current that the oracle had called him so.\n\nPaidion = my child\n\nPaidios = child of Zeus\n\nSo Plutarch's unnamed sources seemed to think that the priest spoke Greek, albeit without a complete mastery. \n" ] }

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[ [ "http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/alexandr.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmo1zd9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I heard her give a (completely preposterous) interview on NPR that made me question her credibility, and I posted a question here as well. I got linked [to this review by a flaired user](_URL_0_) that is similarly unkind.\n\n > All complaining aside, I only got this off the library new books shelf because I thought there might be some eunuchs in it, and there were, so not too bad on what I was looking for. But this book was a sort of epic revisionist dick-riding of Cixi, which I was not totally expecting, nor did I think anyone would ever write. Cixi gets a rough ride in traditional historiography of China, and I’m sure she wasn’t as totally evil as she gets made out to be, but she also wasn’t a dang national hero like Chang seems to want her to be. There is for sure a very interesting story to be told about her life, but it is not in this book. If you would like to watch an author casually handwave away murdering family members as not a big deal and totally reasonable in circumstances, plus some really clumsy writing, you might get a kick out of this book. But otherwise pee pee doo doo, this is a bad book, don’t read it.\n\nSeems like she's a novelist who's taken to writing nonfiction because she has an axe to grind, not because she has done any novel research on her subjects. I think even if you accept that traditional historiography is biased heavily against Cixi, and her gender is definitely a part of that, it's very hard to square documented facts with a totally revisionist, entirely positive portrayal of her actions." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2413mj/saturday_reading_and_research_april_26_2014/ch2jyl9" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8cutzz" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Because by displaying it in stanza form you get the closest representation of how it would have \"sounded\" when a scop preformed, for example, Beowulf. It is much harder to read the poem when it is simply a block of text because it is difficult to get a sense of the metre and the pacing. It is like reading a book without any punctuation at all- difficult and jolting. The most important facet of a poem like Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon is the fluidity and emotion, which depend on being able to easily read it. The stanza system is there to emulate the skill of the scop when preforming and as such is necessary. " ] }

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[ "http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesura#Old_English", "http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_vitellius_a_xv_f132r" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dtkr9lx" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "This is the Trans-Atlantic or Mid-Atlantic accent, which was affected by East Coast elites and some actors to make them sound more cultured - that is, English without straight up doing an English accent. [This post](_URL_1_) has some information from /u/grantimatter about how people put on the accent. [This podcast](_URL_0_) has an interview with a linguist who talks more about it." ] }

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[ "https://www.c-span.org/video/?152565-1/franklin-d-roosevelt-state-union-address" ]

[ [ "https://www.npr.org/2016/11/25/503361303/atlas-obscura-explores-roots-of-the-so-called-mid-atlantic-accent", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ic1ch/how_prevalent_was_the_midatlantic_accent_in_the/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckdlrvz" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "hi! I'll leave commentary to others, but FYI, this isn't a unique suggestion: there's also a TV documentary *[How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin](_URL_5_)* (2009, dir. Leslie Woodhead); it aired in the USA on PBS. Woodhead subsequently published a book *How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution* (2013) Bloomsbury. You can find several [film](_URL_0_) & [book reviews](_URL_4_), an [interview with the director](_URL_8_), and the film itself online. There are also other bands or genres that have [given credit](_URL_9_).\n\nAnyway, you may also be interested in these posts, which touch on the Beatles in the USSR\n\n* [How did people in the USSR feel about the Beatles' \"Back in the USSR\" when it came out?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Was \"Back in the U.S.S.R.\" popular in the Soviet Union? (x-post from r/AskReddit)](_URL_6_)\n\n* thread in [The Clash were often referred to as \"The only band that matters.\" What do you think were the most political significant acts of the 60's, 70's, and 80's and why?](_URL_7_)\n\n* a minor comment in [Was there a punk subculture in the Soviet Union?](_URL_2_)\n\n* a minor comment in [Wednesday AMA: Russia and the Soviet Union.](_URL_3_)\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://beatles.ncf.ca/kremlin.html", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1olmzs/how_did_people_in_the_ussr_feel_about_the_beatles/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fb02b/was_there_a_punk_subculture_in_the_soviet_union/ca8mcth", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b42v1/wednesday_ama_russia_and_the_soviet_union/c93jbpz", "http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/20/beatles-soviet-union-first-rip-iron-curtain", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515155/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gy0d2/was_back_in_the_ussr_popular_in_the_soviet_union/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f54og/the_clash_were_often_referred_to_as_the_only_band/ca7apdz", "http://www.thirteen.org/beatles/video/qa-with-leslie-woodhead-director-of-how-the-beatles-rocked-the-kremlin/", "http://www.musicfilmweb.com/2011/08/cold-war-music-films-beatles-depeche-mode/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fhaz58s" ], "score": [ 1602 ], "text": [ "Diplomatic personnel are generally afforded extensive protections in the case that the country they represent ends up at war with the country to whom they are accredited. In the case of Nevile Henderson and those supporting the British mission to Germany, after a state of war between the UK and Germany came into effect on the morning of Sept 3rd he was directed to make one more official communication regarding the seeking of assurances that the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which banned gas and chemical warfare, would be respected. \n\nThe next morning a special train was arranged by the German government for the 30 men and 7 women (plus two dogs), and the British were assisted in getting to the station by American diplomats who had taken the role as semi-official intermediaries. They were taken to Rheine, where they were held for a day to ensure that their German counterparts had similarly been provided safe passage from London, and on Tuesday afternoon they were taken across the Dutch border. Passage was arranged from Rotterdam, with the party arriving in Britain on the evening of Sept. 6th.\n\nThis, again, was fairly standard and the experience of most diplomats at the outbreak of war in this time, although it wasn't always so easy. In comparison to the few brief days and only brief holding that Henderson experienced, the American mission to Japan led by Joseph Grew took over half a year before they reached friendly ground, interned in Japan for months before arrangements were finally made for the exchange of them via neutral ships - along with a number of American civilians who had been in Japan as missionaries or on business - for their Japanese counterparts. And although the diplomatic personnel had been essentially 'just' imprisoned, many of the civilians released, having been suspected as spies, alleged various tortures they had undergone prior to repatriation.\n\n* Grew, Joseph C. *Report from Tokyo, a message to the American people, by Joseph C. Grew, United States ambassador to Japan, 1932 to 1941.* Simon and Schuster, 1942.\n\n* Henderson, Neville. *Final report by the Right Honourable Sir Nevile Henderson, G.C.M.G., on the circumstances leading to the termination of his mission to Berlin, September 20, 1939. Presented by the secretary of state for foreign affairs to Parliament by command of His Majesty.* London, H.M. Stationery Off., 1939." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cuu43yj", "cuuarzv" ], "score": [ 38, 6 ], "text": [ "This is kind of a tough question, because I'm not sure whether to address this as an anthropology question (with interesting animal behavior to look at) or a historical question. Since this is /r/askhistorians, I'm going to have to say first that the earliest historical records from Mesopotamia are about crops (and trade and all kinds of stuff). So, it makes sense from a historical perspective to say that farming is the oldest profession.\n\nFrom an anthropological (prehistory) perspective, it's kind of difficult to tell exactly how much prostitution was going on. But in an interesting [paper](_URL_1_) I saw ages ago (internet time, I guess), we can see chimpanzees exchanging meat for sex (and other things, like support in social conflicts). There was also an [experiment](_URL_0_) (ctrl-f \"something else happened during that chaotic scene\", but the whole article is interesting) a while ago where a researcher taught some capuchin monkeys how to use a coin system and saw one of them exchange \"something that looked like a coin\" for sex \"out of the corner of his eye\", and it never happened again, so I'm not sure about that.\n\nAll of that is to say, that humans ***may*** have participated in prostitution before historical records existed. I would argue, though, that in order for prostitution to be...well, prostitution, that there would have to be an exchange of material goods (meat/berries/shiny rocks/whatever) or services (protection, I guess?), and therefore \"professions\" such as hunting or foraging would, logically, have to exist before prostitution became viable.", "I read a book by Austrian sociologist and anthropologist Roland Girtler about prostitution. He argues that prostitution, if defined as a profession is not the oldest occupation. He does not automatically consider the exchange of sex for material advantages to be prostitution; e.g. it could happen within a marriage or between acquaintances. For Girtler the defining characteristic of professional prostitution is anonymity. Thus he concludes that prostitution requires the existence of *cities* with large enough populations so that not everybody knows everybody else. Or to put it in a somewhat breezy way: You won't have a brothel in a small village where there's always an old neighbor watching the people on the street.\n\nIn the end it's all a matter of definitions." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/monkey-business.html", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663035/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ct7m7io" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Incans and Mayans are Native Americans. Do you mean specific tribes in what is now the US?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckc6lvf" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "...Not to speak out of turn, but for many societies there is still a stigma to being born out of wedlock, or at least for parents to have a child out of wedlock (it may not necessarily follow the child into adulthood)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3om6cr" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Common law was developed in England after the Norman conquest, essentially by English judges. It's a collection of legal principles taken from centuries of opinions and scholarship written by English judges suited in the context of England. \n\nCommon law countries across the world are almost always former colonies of England (and later Britain or the UK). The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India etc. were all colonized by Britain and had the English law system imposed on them. Continental European countries that had no association with England had no reason to adopt English common law. In fact, some regions that were influenced by both continental European countries and the UK have a mixed system, for example, Quebec in Canada (French and British), or South Africa (Dutch and British).\n\nThe civil law legal tradition in continental Europe did not originate from Napoleon. It was first and foremost influenced by Roman law, in particular, the Corpus Juris Civilis compiled under Emperor Justinian. In the late Middle Ages and beyond, there was a renaissance of Roman law. It was first centered in Bologna in modern Italy, where scholarship based on Roman law spread across Europe, and a community of scholars, known as the jus commune was developed.\n\nIn continental Europe, ideas such as natural rights, the separation of powers, and nationalism eventually culminated in separate legal codes in different countries and a rejection of the jus commune. The Napoleonic Code in France was an epitome of this movement. Other European countries, influenced by both the Napoleonic Code and the centuries of Roman law scholarship before Napoleon, would eventually promulgate their own national codes, the most prominent of which is the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch.\n\nI am not to familiar with the development of Austrian or Scandinavian law, maybe someone more familiar with those can answer how those countries' legal systems came about.\n\nEverything I wrote came from this book:\n\nMerryman, John; Perez-Perdomo, Rogelio. The Civil Law Tradition, 3rd Edition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America. " ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1y6ajr/why_was_england_the_only_germanic_nation_to_keep/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3av0fn/what_is_the_difference_between_common_law_and/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dx9ithr" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "I think the two events you are comparing are hardly comparible apart from the fact that you could see both the GDR and Nazi Germany as anti-clerical. But the development during and immediately after WW2 is relevant to what you might seek:\n\nThe Catholic and Protestant Church organization had an ambivalent and complex view on Hitler and National Socialism. On the one hand parts of the official Church organizations operated under the premise \"the enemy of my enemy is my friend\" meaning that their hatred and also fear of Communism meant supporting that part of Hitler's ideology that so strongly opposed Communism. This also led to Church members being forbidden to even join the Social Democrats/Socialists even though there were Christian members among them already. But that might for another answer.\n\nEspecially the Protestant Church was not a big fan of the Weimar Republic and democracy at all. They still saw themselves as a state Church representing the natural order meaning a monarchy determined by Gottesgnadentum like before World War I. And they were very quick in giving their blessing for the Invasion of Poland and France since in their view it was the duty of a Christian to be a loyal soldier to your country and being a soldier was in their eyes one of the highest forms a German Christian could achieve. In a way you can read this the same way why the old aristocratic officer and military class supported Hitler, they dreamed of a return to the \"good old days\". The Catholic Church was not so quick in blessing the soldiers or the operation in general but they did hold services for the fallen for example.\n\nBut and that's an important But: Quite a few Church officials from the Catholic and Protestant Church saw National Socialism more skeptical. First of all Hitler had already passed legislation against the Churches and made no secret about the fact that he wanted to \"overcome\" (eg. get rid) of them. And certain clerics asked: If we are so scared of Communism and their prosecution of Religion, why aren't we scared of the Nazi movement which likely could go down the same road? \n\nLike with many things in relation to the Third Reich you also need to take into account that views and opinions changed during these 12 years. One changing point for many Christians was the Euthanasia program (T4) which was strongly opposed even by some Church officials who previously had openly and strongly supported Hitler. \n\nSo, in the end you could end up with people like Heinz-Eduard Tödt who was awarded the Ritterkreuz in the Wehrmacht but was also a professor of theology and who struggled with his idea of faith, his service for the regime, his Churches' idea of duty and the horrors of war. \n\nAfter the war the Church was not always self critical but there were noteworthy bishops and Christian organizations that were self critical about their role in World War 2 and Hitler Germany, some doubts were already raised in 1946 and 1948 and some of them even acknowledged the responsibility in the Holocaust very quickly. \n\nAnd this of course meant that the protestant Church in GDR in the 1980s was a very different organization than in 1933. Their self understanding was pretty far away from getting Hohenzollern back on the throne.\n\nThe peace movement (Schwerter zu Pflugscharen) or loose organisations like Kirche von Unten were also rising up in the light of 40 years of the very discrimination that the Churches were afraid of in the 1920s and 1930s - though certainly different in quality between Stalin and Walter Ulbricht. For example the Protestant Church sometimes existed in a kind of almost limbo in GDR. Of course the Stasi had their eyes on them, but especially in the larger cities pastors could offer spaces for free discussions or \"subversive\" youth movements and musicians within the Church buildings which lead to interesting situations like Punk concerts in Churches in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg.\n\nBut even here you probably need to differentiate between different factions within the Church. \n\nSources: \n\nLutz Lemhöfer, Gegen den gottlosen Bolschewismus - Zur Stellung der Kirchen zum Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, published in \"Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion\" By Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfram Wette, 1991\n\n\nHeinz Havemeister, Ronald Galenza, WIR WOLLEN IMMER ARTIG SEIN Punk, New Wave, HipHop und. Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990, 2010\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fj3k1u0" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Perhaps because there was never really a need for such a radical regime like fascism in the U.K. We see in Germany - under the Weimar Republic - mass amounts of hyperinflation, different governments on a yearly basis, political and social standoffs. Germany was really going through a crisis of identity too, especially after the war. So fascism would have been an attractive political ideology for many Germans in desperate need of a better life. (Apologies I'm not too knowledgeable about Spain and Italy)\n\nIn comparison Britain were doing relatively well compared to some of their European neighbours. They were thriving economically during the roaring 20s and were reaping the rewards after WWI. Furthermore, especially after the Olympia Rally in 1934, the BUF were generally seen as violent thugs, attacking anti-fascists and Jewish people on the streets of London - which tremendously halted their support and isolated their following. The British press also played an important role, as, most notably the Daily Mail and Lord Rothermere, withdrew open support for the BUF, causing the public opinion regarding Oswald Mosley to decline and turn sour. The U.K. Government also banned the 'blackshirts' political uniforms and effectively made it harder to protest for the BUF (Public Order Act 1936).\n\nIt seemed people never really took the BUF seriously, they were viewed as a thuggish cult run by an eccentric Mosley. The Guardian writes \"Mosley’s hope that political disorder would eventually precipitate a crisis that would sweep him into power.\" But this political crisis never happened, and as WWII broke out the public just sort of..forgot about him..\n\nJust a thought. Again, apologies for not knowing much about Spain or Italy, hopefully someone else can help you on that front!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dbpwd5l", "dbq60qq", "dbq6fw8" ], "score": [ 71, 367, 3 ], "text": [ "Also, I have to ask. How possible is it that we can deduce the intentions of structuring the first amendment as such? It seems like its easier to find out why those freedoms were included in the Bill of Rights than it is to find out why they were placed in the first amendment, right?", "To best answer this question it is important to look at the origins of the Bill of Rights and the ideological anti-federalist sentiment that inspired the collective document. You have to remember that following the completion of the Constitution in Philadelphia in September of 1787, the Constitution was disseminated to the states for review. In what is perhaps the most comprehensive view of the ratification process, *Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788,* Pauline Maier analyzes the debates that took place in the individual states. While some states, notably Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia, were quick to ratify the document, debate in other states was heated and hotly contested. Following New Hampshire's ratification of Constitution in June of 1788 the Constitution became the governing document of the United States and convinced the conventions of both Virginia and New York to ratify days later. The last of the original thirteen colonies, North Carolina and Rhode Island, ratified the Constitution in 1789 and 1790 respectively. The Framers of the Constitution dictated that the states needed to ratify or reject the Constitution unedited. Despite these demands, a majority of the states ratified the Constitution and attached a list of suggested amendments that they believed would protect individual liberties of the citizens of the United States.\n\nThese proposed amendments were supported by a group of people who have been collectively referred to as the \"anti-federalists,\" a term coined by their Federalist detractors. In his work *The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America 1788-1828,* Saul Cornell demonstrates that the \"term anti-federalists\" obscures much more than it illuminates. Nineteenth and early twentieth century historians tended to write about the anti-federalists as if they shared a common set of gripes concerning the Constitution. In reality, however, the anti-federalists were drawn from all social classes of the post-Revolutionary population. Anti-federalists included elites, who shared much in common with the elite Federalists, a class of middling people, and a group Cornell refers to as \"plebeian\" who held most egalitarian views. However, Akhil Reed Amar argues in his article \"The Bill of Rights as Constitution,\" The main objection that most anti-federalists shared was the belief that the Framers had taken the \"skimming principle\" too far. In their eyes, Congress was far too small, susceptible to the influence of an aristocratic elites, and therefore, less trustworthy than locally elected legislatures. Although we are tempted to view the experiences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as validation that the First Amendment was written to protect the rights of minority voices, Amar argues, “The historical reality is that the First Amendment was written to protect the rights of popular majorities… against a possibly underrepresentative and self-interested Congress.”\n\nTherefore, the collective First Amendment, which included freedoms of religion, press, speech, petition, and peacefully assemble, were linked together in order to protect the voices of popular majorities, specifically the emerging Republican party of 1790s who would succeed the anti-federalists as an organized party. The amendment specifically restrains Congress from restricting individual freedoms because most anti-federalists viewed Congress as the least likely to reflect the majority will. Finally, the tactic of linking all these rights together was a measure to ensure that they were accepted. Madison’s initial bill that became the First Amendment also included the right to trial by jury and an equal protection clause that were defeated in the senate. Though these measures would eventually become amendments themselves, trial by Jury as the Sixth Amendment in 1791 and equal protection only after the Civil War as the Fourteenth Amendment, they were defeated in the Senate in its original format. After striking these portions, the First Amendment was accepted in December of 1791.", "How can this be answered?\n\n- Are there previous attempts to formulate similar rights?\n\n- Are there treaties that theorize about this?\n\n- Are there documented discussions about this?\n\nI'm not talking in theory, neither am I talking about the theory and practice of history - I am asking about the materials available for this specific question. What materials could this be based on?\n\nEDIT: or are there simply too many sources for this?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cojcyme", "cojr1oa" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "The camps were in range of the bombers (with perhaps a reduced payload for the camps furthest to the east) but the fighters may have struggled to escort them all the way to the target and back (and unescorted American bombers were savaged during daylight raids in '43). Collateral damage would have been a consideration, but a small one. Hitting particular buildings in a camp would have been quite difficult. It was done with medium bombers in [Operation Jericho](_URL_0_), but that required a low-level approach that was anathema to heavy bombers at the time. [Make sure to read this recent answer](_URL_1_) by /u/estherke. I can give you more information on targeting rail lines below.\n\nThe truth is that WWII bombers were largely ineffective against rail lines.\n\nThere are a number of reasons for this. The first is that WWII bombers were not accurate enough to reliably hit a rail line. Keep in mind the very nature of a set of rails--they are a ribbon of infrastructure mere feet wide that snakes through the country. Now we add the difficulties of WWII bombing that resulted in most bombs ending up nowhere near their intended target. Specific factories were often missed by the bombers tasked to destroy them, and there were many times in which entire cities were missed by the bombers. The 'solution' to this difficulty was to send more bombers (again, at great expense) so that you could drop more bombs in the hope that one of those bombs would hit its target. This was somewhat effective.\n\nThere were operations undertaken against German rail lines. Most prominently, they were targeted as part of the 'Transportation Plan' prior to D-Day. As reconnaissance during the war indicated and surveys after the war confirmed, there was some success for a time. Rail lines, if targeted with large numbers of bombers, could be disrupted--but only for a short time. But unless a bridge or viaduct was somehow heavily damaged or destroyed (something only 'tallboy' and 'grand slam' bombs very late in the war had any real chance of accomplishing), the railroad would be repaired in short order. Basically, most of the time the trains were able to roll through the targeted area in 24 hours. This is partly due to the aforementioned difficulties in targeting rail lines, but the Germans also had dedicated forces to repairing railroad damage. In addition, these units would compel local people to assist in the reconstruction of the rail line. Further, outside of bridges and viaducts railroads are basically piles of rocks and gravel with a little wood and steel beams on top. This means that low-tech solutions were perfectly suitable to fixing the damage caused by relatively high-tech instruments such as heavy four engine bombers equipped with every modern piece of equipment. German railways only collapsed extremely late in the war, basically when every other service had also shut down and the government had effectively collapsed. (Christian Wolmar covers this quite well in *Engines of War*)\n\nIn the final analysis, rail lines could only be cut on a tactical basis. Within a matter of hours repairs on a damaged line could be completed, so to ensure that a rail line was not used it would have to be retargeted multiple times. This meant that the bombers could not be used to attack other targets that were also deemed worthy of their attention. So, to target the railways leading to the death camps, bombers would have to undergo great risks (at great expense both in money and men) repeatedly (because the Germans had great success in repairing rail lines within hours) to even have a chance at success, and other targets would have to be neglected. So the Allies generally focused on other targets rather than try to cut any rail line, much less a rail line leading to any of the camps.\n\nWolmar also discusses the resilience of German railroads. While there was considerable damage done to German railroads, Wolmar contends that the evidence shows that disruptions to railroad traffic were much less than expected. In particular, he cites a report from civil defense workers sent to Germany after the war to study Germany's railroads. Damage to tracks and controls was usually limited geographically, and tended to not be the subject of repeated attacks in a small area. So the German response was to suspend traffic for a few days and use alternate routes. Apparently, there were many such alternate routes in Germany, though I do not know if there were the same options available near the concentration camps that were mostly in Poland. Also, the Germans had few \"triangular junctions\" that allowed traffic to move if any one of the three sections were damaged, so their resilience is even more surprising.\n\nRadar is also credited for allowing train traffic to continue despite air raids, as the trains kept rolling until there were planes in the immediate area. Further, trains were not stopped for single aircraft, as the gain was seen as being worth the risk. Also, slave labor and other manpower was used to repair the damage from raids, allowing the lines to be rapidly reopened. Wolmar cites a raid on a railroad yard in Hamm as an example. It was hit by more than 1,300 bombs on April 22, 1944. Six thousand workers were used to get repairs underway, and the trains were rolling through the yard in less than 24 hours. Within six weeks the yard was back to nearly full capacity. If you combine this with the camouflage efforts to simulate damage to operational tracks, you can see that it was difficult to stop the trains. \n\nWolmar does give some credit to the 1944 campaign to attack the railroads directly. He admits that damage was extensive, but says that the disruptions were more attributable to administrative problems than to the damage itself. He highlights the inability of the Allies to target viaducts and train tunnels until the rather late introduction of the \"Tallboy\" bombs. \n\nSo, attacks on the railroads would have definitely raised the cost of transporting victims to concentration camps, but it may not have been able to bring the trains to a halt. German rail service was remarkably resilient to Allied bombing, and when damage did occur it was often repaired quickly.\n\n(multiple edits for formatting)", "While capability is one reason that military leaders initially gave against bombing the camps, as /u/Domini_canes suggests, a much more important reason has to be considered a political one - leaders argued that the best way to help those in the camps was to defeat the Nazis as quickly as possible. By that logic, diverting resources to bombing the camps or their supply lines was counter-productive. American leaders also worried about propaganda victories by the Germans should Allied Air Forces bomb the prisoners in the process of destroying the camps. There has always been speculation that latent antisemitism was at least partially responsible for this view, but for obvious reasons, there is very little hard evidence that that was the case. \n\nBy mid 1944, when the United States had the ability to reach the camps in Poland and Silesia, they argued that it was almost exclusively the diversion of resources that was the problem. This shift was necessary simply because previous US bombing raids had shown that there was, indeed, capability to take out the camps, for certain, if not the railway lines leading to them. The raid on the IG Farben plant at Buna (literally next to Auschwitz III Monowitz and about a half-dozen miles from Birkenau) is an example of just such a bombing. \n\nNone-the-less, American leaders refused to divert any resources towards ending the genocide that - to be explicitly clear - American leaders were well aware of in relative detail, including the basic operation of the gas chambers. Exactly *why* those American leaders decided not to intervene will probably never be known.\n\nSources: USHMM [1](_URL_1_), [2](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uypif/why_did_the_allies_not_do_one_bombing_raid_on_a/" ], [ "http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005182", "http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008041" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2j5il7" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Yes, absolutely, it's just you've come across a map with a quite nonsensical, and utterly false definition of Armenia as a country, i.e. as in a historical geographical region. \n\nAny pre-genocidal map that covers the area and has geographical labels will likely have Armenia labeled over the area around Lake Van. I can give a few examples although it does like a bit of a redundancy to do so given the ubiquity of Armenia across historical maps:\n\n* _URL_0_, Tabula Rogeriana, Muhammad al-Idrisi, 1154 \n* _URL_2_ Johann Baptist Homann, 1724.\n* _URL_1_, Guillaume de L'Isle, 1721.\n\n > Considering the claimed geographical range, why is there so little recorded interactions between \"historical Armenia\" and the Umayyad/Abbasids/Seljukes or any other known civilization? \n\nArmenia existed as an emirate with that exact name under the Umayyads and the Abbasids, in an area stretching across the Armenian Highland. It existed as a marzpanate of the Sassanian Empire prior to that, and as an independent kingdom or vassal state across that same area prior to that. \n\nTo be able to answer the question meaningfully, where do you see such little interaction with historical Armenia and these empires? For example, the geography book *Hudud al-Alam* (tr. Minorsky pp. 142-45) considered \"Azerbaijan, Arrān, and Armenia as the pleasantest of all the Islamic lands\", demonstrating that it was certainly understand as a country within the Islamic world.\n " ] }

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[ "http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/assets/4612767/turkey_armenian-deportations_720px_map.jpg" ]

[ [ "http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/TabulaRogeriana.jpg", "http://www.worldmapsonline.com/images/1whistoricmaps/1w-wo-mide-1721.jpg", "http://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:gmd:gmd7:g7620:g7620:ct001334/full/pct:25/0/default.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f6un6xu" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "\\[Also answered over in r/AskHistory\\]\n\nThe Jacobite risings were collectively focused on restoring the Stuart monarchs to the throne of the Three Kingdoms of Britain and Ireland. Though often portrayed as a conflict that pitted Scotland against England, the reality was wholly different. Rather, it was the epitome of a civil war in an international context that sharply divided regions, faiths, and families against one another through a century of military struggle and political jockeying.\n\nFurther to the point, there was no 'English cause' at play, but by 1745, a violent reaction from the British government under the Hanoverian George II was organized to put down the rising for good after dealing with three major military episodes since the Glorious Revolution in 1688-9. The British 'cause' was focused on preserving the parliamentary Union of 1707 and ensuring the longevity of the Presbyterian kirk in Scotland, and plenty of Scots fought in the British army against the Jacobite threat to support those aims.\n\nScotland itself was hardly united against the British government, as only a little over 1% of the Scottish population actually took up arms in the Jacobite army during the 1745 rising. Jacobitism remained an international movement through its hundred years of existence, and though it drew the majority of its military and civilian support from Scotland – and while most of the Jacobite-related battles were indeed fought in Scotland – it was but one facet of a much larger tableau played out amidst the War of Austrian Succession and beyond. France and Ireland were deeply involved, and there were also Welsh, Spanish, Flemish, and Italians present in the Jacobite army of 1745-6.\n\n/u/Von_Baron's post furthers a number of myths about the movement's composition and cause. The dissolution of the Union was only one motivation that drew Jacobite attention, but it is important to note that while Charles Edward and his father dangled this (amongst many other things) to attract support, the regnal union between England and Scotland had been active since 1603 and the Stuarts fully intended to claim the entire kingdom. In short, it was never only going to be Scotland, and they made this clear repeatedly – hence Charles Edward's insistence on crossing the border after the capture of Edinburgh and the victory at Prestonpans in September 1745.\n\nLikewise, the Jacobite army did not consist mostly of Highlanders, though troops from the Western Highlands were some of the first supporters in the early autumn of 1745 and they provided the foundation of Jacobite military might. The majority lay in the non-juring Episcopalians from the north-eastern Lowland counties of Scotland, including Angus/Forfarshire, Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and Morayshire. Lowlanders did not, simply by their nature, tend to side with the British government; the vast majority of Britons – both English and Scottish – were by then in favor of the Union and supportive of the established Hanoverian government.\n\nLike any civil war, it was set against an intensely complex backdrop, and people tend to participate or abstain from participating in such conflicts due to a variety of factors. I explore this topic in my doctoral thesis, 'Spines of the Thistle: The Popular Constituency of the Jacobite Rising in 1745-6', which specifically deals with the plebeian participants, and includes themes of recruitment, motivation, and demographics. The thesis is available as a [free download](_URL_1_) in the University of St Andrews digital repository.\n\nWith regard to further reliable reading on the history of Jacobitism, I have recently written up [a list of 'essentials'](_URL_2_) on my research blog, Little Rebellions. I encourage you to have a look and see if anything strikes your fancy. And feel free to ask any further questions you might have!\n\nWith best wishes,\n\nDr Darren S. Layne \nCreator and Curator, [The Jacobite Database of 1745](_URL_0_) \n(recently of the Institute for Scottish Historical Research, University of St Andrews)" ] }

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[ [ "http://jdb1745.net/about.html", "https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/8868", "https://jdb1745.net/littlerebellions/ten-essential-works-on-historical-jacobitism-1-academic/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dyntnj7" ], "score": [ 33 ], "text": [ "I [answered a question earlier today](_URL_0_) about why the Italians struggled to advance despite their numerical advantage, in which the answer was that the Italian/Austrian border is blanketed by the Alps Mountains, and trying to move the frontline that was full of risk for the offensive party.\n\nWith the northern borders of the front remaining static for the duration of the war due to neither party wanting to risk a general offensive through the Alps, there was only a single route for either army to advance into Austria or Italy respectively, and that was the Isonzo River Valley, a small chokepoint between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea. [This picture](_URL_2_) shows the only opening of flat land on the Italian/Austrian Border was between Monfalcone and Gorizia.\n\nWith the Alps Mountains and the Isonzo bottleneck both favoring the defender heavily, the Austro-Hungarians only had to concentrate the bulk of their forces on defending that small 30-40 km stretch of the Isonzo River and take on the Italian advance. There's no room for flanking or maneuvering around the chokepoint, it's just a simple meat grinder as one side pushes forward and the other holds.\n\nIn the greater context through, this isn't so much as the narrative of the Italian army struggling against a more powerful enemy like the question is implying, but more of a slugfest between two equally footed enemies with Austria-Hungary breaking first, as both sides suffered immensely from this extremely narrow front, with the Italians suffering 2.1 million total casualties while the Austro-Hungarians suffered 2.3 million in Italy. In the end, the Italians dealt more damage to Austria-Hungary than the Russians or Serbians by accounting for over 60% of their total casualties, and dealt the killing blow that shattered the Austro-Hungarian military entirely at Vittorio Veneto.\n\nIf there is criticism to be made as to Italian performance in the war, the main problem was indeed poor leadership; which aligning with many memes in history circles, the main Commander, General Luigi Cadorna was a man stuck in the times of the Napoleonic Era in terms of tactics and disciplined his armies harshly, blaming low morale for their shortcomings. After his sacking and replacement with Armando Diaz, the Italian Army had the improved leadership they needed to reverse the disaster at the Battle of Caporetto.\n\nThomas Nelson Page was the American Ambassador to Italy during the war, and recounts the Italian efforts of the war in [\"Italy and the World War\"](_URL_3_) which is a good read.\n\nFor the military casualty figures, I got those from [\"Statistics of the military effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914-1920\"](_URL_1_) of the Great Britain War Office." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hqb0i/when_italy_joined_ww1_on_the_side_of_the_entente/dyn9j1c/?context=0", "https://archive.org/details/statisticsofmili00grea", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So%C4%8Da#/media/File:Slovenija-reke-soca.png", "http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/Italy/PageTC.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cxu4krb", "cxu53fy", "cxuabyg" ], "score": [ 130, 100, 14 ], "text": [ "The lighter pieces like \"Scorpions\", small ballistas, were deployed on battlefields if the situation and terrain permitted. Their role was more to demoralize and annoy an enemy (particularly \"barbarian\" units) from long range rather than to inflict serious casualties. The were small enough to be relatively portable and quick to set up.\n\n*Source: Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army*", "It was indeed!\n\nI am not a military historian, so perhaps someone with more knowledge can elaborate, but pre-modern artillery was certainly employed in field battles, though much more rarely than it was used in siege operations.\n\nAlexander the Great famously used catapults to protect a river crossing at the [Battle of Jaxartes](_URL_0_) because they had a longer range than bowmen. This is (supposedly) the first instance of field artillery being used this way, but I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of that.\n\nCaesar also used siege engines mounted on his warships to help secure a beachhead during his invasion of Britain in 55 BCE:\n\n > When Caesar observed this, he ordered the ships of war, the appearance of which was somewhat strange to the barbarians and the motion more ready for service, to be withdrawn a little from the transport vessels, and to be propelled by their oars, and be stationed toward the open flank of the enemy, and the enemy to be beaten off and driven away, with slings, arrows, and engines: which plan was of great service to our men; for the barbarians being startled by the form of our ships and the motions of our oars and the nature of our engines, which was strange to them, stopped, and shortly after retreated a little.\n\n-- Caesar, *Commentarii de Bello Gallico* 4.25\n\nThe Roman and Byzantine armies also used smaller versions of ballistae in various forms, including the *scorpio* and chariot-mounted carroballistae, in field operations. Here's a particularly graphic description from Procopius, if you're in to that sort of thing:\n\n > And at the Salarian Gate a Goth of goodly stature and a capable warrior, wearing a corselet and having a helmet on his head, a man who was of no mean station in the Gothic nation, refused to remain in the ranks with his comrades, but stood by a tree and kept shooting many missiles at the parapet. But this man by some chance was hit by a missile from an engine which was on a tower at his left. And passing through the corselet and the body of the man, the missile sank more than half its length into the tree, and pinning him to the spot where it entered the tree, it suspended him there a corpse. And when this was seen by the Goths they fell into great fear, and getting outside the range of missiles, they still remained in line, but no longer harassed those on the wall.\n\n-- Procopius, *The Gothic War*, XXIII\n\nI hope that answers your question! In general, artillery were far more useful in siege operations than field engagements, but pre-modern military commanders could be a pretty inventive bunch.", "The earliest use of artillery in pitched battle dates to 353 BC. The Phocian Onomarchus drew his Macedonian enemies into a narrow place ringed by a horseshoe of hills, on which he had placed stone-throwing artillery. Once the enemy army came into range, their lines were disrupted by a shower of stones, and they fled. This unnamed battle was the only major setback in the spectacular military career of Philip II of Macedon.\n\nUnfortunately, the only source for this battle (other than an unspecified mention in Diodorus of Sicily, *Library of History* 16.35.2) is the very late and questionable testimony of Polyaenus (*Stratagems* 2.38.2)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8qdatc" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Anaxagoras (~450BC) is the earliest record of someone suggesting that the sun is a star, and that the stars other than the are merely much farther away from the sun. What you're suspecting about people believing silly things like the stars are angels is a fallacy introduced by enlightenment thinkers that pre-enlightenment thinkers were so primitive as to think that the world is flat and all that nonsense.\n\nOf course, if you're asking what common (uneducated) people thought they were, you might have a much different answer than that.\n\nAnyways, as far as I know, various other theories floated around for centuries. I think it wasn't really until probably around the time of Newtonian Physics (~1700AD) that we were really able to begin to actually test any of them, though, although I could be mistaken about that." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmwwkuk" ], "score": [ 33 ], "text": [ "Hey, I'm actually translating a Anthropology paper about it right now from Korean to English. I can't cite the source (the author is an Anthropology professor at Jeonnam University) because it hasn't been published yet. However, I can give a few details. \n. \n\nThe issue of 'comfort women' (at least in South Korea) wasn't really common knowledge until the women who experienced being 'comfort women' for the Imperial Japanese troops started coming out about their experiences in 1991 (yes almost 50 years after the end of the war). Because of this, it wasn't widely researched until most of the so-called 'comfort women' had already passed away, making the collection of primary sources difficult (I'm actually translating a small collection of their testimonies for this paper). \n. \nThat being said, it is estimated that between 80,000 to 200,000 women were 'comfort women' and of those, 80% were Korean women. In the early stages of the 'comfort women' project, the Imperial Japanese troops hired, kidnapped, or tricked Korean prostitutes into becoming 'comfort women,' but this led to a spread STDs. Knowing that the Japanese troops started kidnapping 'young virgins,' women and girls [the women interviewed for the paper I'm reading were kidnapped or tricked and were aged between 13 and 19] raised with a conservative Confucian ideology who were 'saving themselves' for their future husbands. The majority of 'comfort women' were these young virgins, and for them, to lose their virginity before having a husband was a great shame. \n. \nI do not have the exact numbers, so I can't answer your question fully, but many women did return home after the war. However, virtually all of them kept their experiences a secret due to the shame of being raped. Obviously, this trauma affected the majority of 'comfort women.' Of the 16 women who gave their testimonies for the research I'm translating, only 4 got married, 2 got divorced, two had children, and one was still married with children. \n. \nI don't know what ostracization they may have faced from their communities, but they largely maintained their identities as 'comfort women' secret. As mentioned before, the issue of comfort women wasn't widely known until about 1991; this speaks to how much shame the women felt about their past experiences. Most kept their secret even from husbands, siblings, and especially from their children if they had any. \n. \nSorry for how poorly I wrote this post, it's 4 AM here and I should really be in bed but I decided I should probably answer this. The research I'm translating lists several sources, most of which are in Korean and none of which I've actually read, but I will put some of them here for reference. \nOogoshi, Aiko -- (2000) \"Activities of Japanese Feminists and the Tribunal in Japan? Military Sexual Slavery\" in Democratization Movements and Women, Gwanju: May 18 Institute. \nYang, Hyunah -- (1998) \"Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism. Sexuality, and Silencing\" in Elaine H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi (ed.), **Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism**, New York: Routedge [This book is in my history of Korean nationalism course's syllabus and my professor said the chapter on comfort women in this book is essentail, I haven't read it but it seems rather well-cited]" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f1mva0m" ], "score": [ 38 ], "text": [ "I suppose the short version is that because, by the time of independence, English was the primary spoken language. \n\nIrish was in decline in the 19th century, in terms of speakers. Some scholars regard it as a minority language by that point, while others see the Famine as the major turning point. The oft-cited 1841 census Ireland recorded over 8 million inhabitants, with only 4 million of those being Irish speakers, and by the 1851 census (post-famine) only 23% of the population reported that they could speak Irish. \n\nThe reasons for the decline of the language are still discussed in scholarship to this day, one of the reasons usually given is that when the National Schools were established in the 1830's, Irish was not included in the curriculum and the medium of education was English. This, of course, doesn't account for only half of the population speaking Irish by 1841, and I personally think we can't underestimate the effect of English being considered a \"prestige\" language: after all, the result of English colonisation was that the majority of wealthy landowners were English, or even English speaking. Irish had increasingly become less \"advantageous\" than English and I don't think we should be surprised that parents were encouraging of children learning English, and discouraging their children from speaking Irish. Especially after the Famine, there was a cultural perception that Irish was associated with poverty, as it was the rural (and often Irish-speaking) poor who were affected the most by the Famine. Another famous example is that of the Maamtrasna murders, in which three Irish speakers were wrongfully convicted for murder because they spoke no English, the courts functioned through English and they were not given a bilingual lawyer. Irish was marginalised, and it wasn't seen as beneficial to be used, and potentially dangerous. \n\nSo, by the time we reach the creation of the Constitution, we have the majority of the population as English speakers, and not all of the Republican leaders were Irish-speakers. There was initial enthusiasm for implementing for Irish infrastructure, but with the outbreak of civil war and the fact that it would involve forcing the majority of the population to learn a second language, I don't think we can be too surprised that the politicians opted to run things through English. \n\nI have a bit of a hodge-podge of sources, as off the top of my head I can't think of anything that discusses this single question in particular depth, but the history of Irish has a lot of really great sources. \n\nArticles such as Antain Mac Lochlann's \"The Famine in Gaelic Tradition;\" Erick Falc’Her-Poyroux's \"The Great Famine in Ireland: a Linguistic and Cultural Disruption;\" Séamus Ó Buchalla's \"Educational Policy and the Role of the Irish Language from 1831 to 1981\" are all great.\n\nIn terms of books obviously Pádraig O Fiannachta's *Milis an Teanga* but that's clearly not accessible to English speakers. I believe John O'Beirne Ranelagh's *A Short History of Ireland* gets into it some. \n\nAs for Maamtrasna, Margaret Kelleher's *The Maamtrasna Murders: Language, Life and Death in Nineteenth-Century Ireland* is pretty good." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3iy9kr" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This answer can take a book to answer, [and does](_URL_0_). But, long story short, it has to do with the introduction of sedentizing technology and institutions from Western Europe. The advent of crops, farming methods, colonists (particularly during the Carolingian era) and technology resulted in more people in central Europe settling down to engage in farming; and where farms form, communities tend to gather, which in turn become towns and cities.\n\nThe decline in the nomadic lifestyle of many of the germanic tribes also goes a long way in explaining why people in central europe formed cities. Basically, Eastern Europe ran out of people to send west. With each successive wave of migrants, the previous inhabitants had been displaced, with no one being able to stick around long enough to form cities. It was only around the 6th-7th century that migration became more sedated; to the extent that it was no longer necessary for inhabitants of central europe to flee across the Rhine every few decades in fear of a new eastern menace. \n\nAny additional details would be appreciated; feels like there is a tranche of details being seeped under the rug with that explanation. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=45065" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckftc8h" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "You might find something interesting in [this thread from a month ago](_URL_0_) -- my first post there mentions one incident relating to Troy during the Persian Wars, in fact. [Herodotos 7.42-44](_URL_1_) is the relevant primary source. I don't want to repeat myself, but do feel free to ask follow-up questions." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cy1pl/when_did_the_romans_lose_troy/", "http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh7040.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d45k22i" ], "score": [ 77 ], "text": [ "I think the best example would have to be [Lee Kuan Yew](_URL_0_) of Singapore. Despite implementing certain harsh/autocratic rules and suppressing political dissent/opposition the economic success of Singapore during his time as prime minister is legitimately staggering. Under his leadership it went from a colonial holding, merged with Malaysia, then split from them and despite being a tiny, heavily dependent (for food/water) city-state went on to become one of the richest, safest, most developed countries in the world. \n\nNot that I personally agree with those politics, but its hard to argue with that level of success, if its done right (and under the right conditions) benevolent authoritarianism can definitely get shit done." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/lee-kuan-yew-s-singapore" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chbt5p9" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "A good bit of your question [has been answered before](_URL_0_) if you'd like some back-reading! Safe to say yes those eunuchs did fill different roles based on their race, and I might even be able to spin a decent argument that they were somewhat different genders. \n\nNow that you've made me think about it, truth be told I don't know for sure if black/white was a direct translation of the Ottoman terms for them. However, I think it was, because Western European travelogues (which were directed at home readers) would sometimes take the time to assure their readers that the white slaves were \"not really white.\" " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ydf1s/what_sort_of_roles_did_eunuchs_fulfill_in_the/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbrwcuq" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "To answer a little bit about the relationship between Rome and Greece, you can take into consideration that \"Greek\" flavored colonies had sprung across nearly the entirety of the Mediterranean in the Archaic Period of 800 - 480 BC. \n\nThis of course includes the Italian Peninsula. One of the earliest Greek settlements was at Ischia, an Island off the coast of Naples. A permanent settlement was established here around the years of 770 B.C. As you can see Greek influence in Italy has a long pedigree. You can read some more about this in The Beginnings of Rome by Tim Cornell.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "co02bp2" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "There already is an ongoing discussion about this\n\n* [What truth is there to the claims on historical archery made in this video? why did archery die out as a military specialty?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk" ]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tf9f3/what_truth_is_there_to_the_claims_on_historical/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbtll5i" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Could you clarify, do you mean when did humans start treating water? Because water is generally drinkable." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck5sa32", "ck5sntd" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "That's actually quite easily answered. There simply are some ancient sculptures that still today feature some traces of the original colouring. Take for example [this](_URL_0_) archaic statue of a young woman or [this](_URL_1_) portrait of emperor Caligula (especially the eye on the right side). In some cases methods like illumination with UV lamps can reveal even more of it.\n\nBut there are also literary records that tell us about the practice. For example Pliny the Elder relates in an anecdote about the famous sculptor Praxiteles that the artist liked those of his works best that were coloured by the painter Nikias (naturalis historiae XXXV, 133).", "Sometimes ultraviolet light can reveal faint traces of paint. Not sure this type of answer is allowed here, but Khan Academy has a good basic introduction to this idea [here](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/140/flashcards/270140/png/peplos_kore1349982214103.png", "http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Original-head-of-Caligula.jpg" ], [ "http://youtu.be/7UsYHo5iarM" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dsmr6uz" ], "score": [ 53 ], "text": [ "Probably the most useful primary source for day to day relations between the Latins and local Muslims is Usmah Ibn Munqidh. His autobiography contains the line \"Among the Franks are those who have become acclimatized and have associated long with the Muslims. These are much better than the recent comers from the Frankish lands. But they constitute the exception and cannot be treated as a rule.\"\n\nHis autobiography contains several interesting anecdotes, an important one is a story he relates of one of his associates, through a mutual friend, being invited to dine at the house of an old Frankish knight. The knight, seeing his Muslim guest isn't eating, tells him not to worry, as he never eats Frankish dishes, employing instead an Egyptian cook. Later in the same entry story Ibn Munqidh distinguishes between the knight, who his man understands perfectly and a group of Frankish women, who he could not.\n\nIbn Munqidh makes no mention of translators in his stories, but neither does he mention a common a language. I am therefore not comfortable asserting for definite how these communications took place, but the impression I personally get is of a shared language. Whilst I’m sure translators played an important role in the Crusader States it isn’t hard to imagine some more open minded people on both sides, especially those with commercial interests in Latin held cities like Acre or Antioch learning the language.\n\nAnother story; this is one of my favourite anecdotes from the period. Whilst, as I discuss in the next paragraph, it's worth taking Usmah with a grain of salt, this incident is still worth reading. This story comes from a man named Salim, who worked in a bath house owned by Usmah's father. A Frankish knight came into the bath house and snatched off Salim's loin cloth and was shocked to discover he had shaved his pubic hair. The knight, thinking this was a great look, insisted that Salim shave both him and his wife. Now, is this story almost certainly made up as a way to depict the Franks as crass and lacking propriety? Oh yes. Does that make it less entertaining? Oh no.\n\nNow, as with all medieval sources, we shouldn't take Ibn Munqidh totally at face value; \"get a load of this c-razy story my friend told me about those weird Franks!\" isn't exactly iron clad. But even the least generous reading, where he's essentially repeating gossip is significant, because even that reveals a world were interactions between Franks and Muslims had become normalised enough to become a genre of popular story. \n\nFor what it's worth, I'm personally inclined to believe the story of the Frankish dinner as he mentions by name a man he claims to be important in Antioch \"There was in Antioch at that time al-Ra'is Theodoros Sophianos, to whom I was bound by mutual ties of amity. His influence in Antioch was supreme.\" So there is probably some kernel of truth to the story at least (or, alternately, he's just name dropping to make it seem more plausible).\n\nHow willing you are to believe Ibn Munqidh's stories (as I've suggested, some are plausible, some not), has bearing on the topic of language - in humorous anecdotes with little or no factual basis, translators become an unnecessary literary detail. Nevertheless the world that Usmah Ibn Munqidh shines a light on is one where communication between Franks and Muslims has become relatively normalised where commerce is a regular occurrence and friendships are possible. That much I don't believe is made up.\n\nSources:\n\n[Usmah Ibn Munqidh, Autobiography](_URL_0_)\n\n[F. Gabrieli, 'Arab Historians of the Crusades'](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/usamah2.html", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=amWLAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%22Salim!%22+he+exclaimed.+I+came+toward+him+and+he+pointed+to+that+part+of+me.+%22Salim!+It%27s+magnificent!+You+shall+certainly+do+the+same+for+me!%22+And+he+lay+down+flat+on+his+back.+His+hair+there+was+as+long+as+his+beard.+I+shaved+him,+and+when+he+had+felt+the+place+with+his+hand+and+found+it+agreeably+smooth+he+said:&source=bl&ots=XIml0rK2jU&sig=mwMm6w0IUXwJMlZ1aSTe490HA8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiivdji39XYAhWQbFAKHe1JC-gQ6AEILjAA#v=onepage&q=%22Salim!%22%20he%20exclaimed.%20I%20came%20toward%20him%20and%20he%20pointed%20to%20that%20part%20of%20me.%20%22Salim!%20It's%20magnificent!%20You%20shall%20certainly%20do%20the%20same%20for%20me!%22%20And%20he%20lay%20down%20flat%20on%20his%20back.%20His%20hair%20there%20was%20as%20long%20as%20his%20beard.%20I%20shaved%20him%2C%20and%20when%20he%20had%20felt%20the%20place%20with%20his%20hand%20and%20found%20it%20agreeably%20smooth%20he%20said%3A&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fffohjj" ], "score": [ 26 ], "text": [ "So, right off the bat, what Tesla was proposing to do is impossible. It was a semi-reasonable thing for him to suggest, given the incomplete understanding of electromagnetics available at the turn of the 20th century. u/GrunkleCoffee has a good, brief summary about the physics of why it can't be done.\n\nTo answer the qustion in the post title, Edison had nothing to do with the failure of Wardenclyffe. Tesla scammed (imo) JP Morgan into giving him the initial funding for Wardenclyffe (he told him it's purpose was for long distance radio broadcasting). That was a cool thing to do, because fuck JP Morgan, but Tesla's promise to send a radio signal across the Atlantic within 8 months of receiving the money did not occur (and Marconi beat him to the punch on that, anyway). So Morgan, having seen no tangible results from what was a small side-investment, did not continue providing funds into a project that had already been superseded. Over the next few years, Tesla was able to get funds from additional sources, but never enough to finish the facilities. Eventually the project was abandoned as Tesla vanished from the public eye and began his descent into being a total crank who claimed to have built a death ray for the Allies to use in WW2 (which was, in fact, a box full of junk electonics that didn't do anything)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6550gb", "c655cqv", "c655nh7", "c65kmap" ], "score": [ 15, 5, 6, 4 ], "text": [ "My general rule of thumb is this; whatever our modern thinking on the matter is, the world was not divided into 'races' up until relatively recently. People were aware of differences in skin tone, you'd have to be, but it was never how people were categorised.\n\nSo, I tend not to apply the term 'black' to any culture or civilization. Knowing the skin colour of a group of people doesn't change anything about them; I mostly mean this in a positive sense, in that we should be completely blind to it when looking at the history of cultures. The achievements of a culture are not lesser based on their skin colour. But it also provides you with no extra information anyway. It's like finding out that Iberians commonly had green eyes- it changes pretty much nothing about examining their culture.\n\nI therefore always object to any civilization being described as 'black', particularly ancient ones. Similarly, I won't accept a civilization described as 'white'. I generally work in terms of cultural groups and linguistic groups. So for example, I have read works that talk about the Parthians (an Iranian people related to Persians and others) being black, and I reject them completely out of hand; the premise is flawed.\n\nOn a similar note, directly connecting darker skin to an identity linked to Africa is one of the most ridiculous things. It is highly likely that Jesus, if he existed, would have had quite dark Mediterranean skin. That in no way links him to Africa.\n\nEgypt is a harder one, because it did have connections to Sub-saharan Africa. One of its dynasties came from Nubia, which is roughly where the northern half of Sudan is today. The irony is that Nubia had been a semi-Imperial possession of the Egyptians for centuries by that point, on and off. If we're talking about connections to Africa, then Egypt does have plenty of them. If we are talking about ethnically and linguistically, they shared more with Arabs, Bedouins, Jews and even Assyrians than Sub-Saharan Africa.\n\nGenerally speaking, I've found that afrocentric theories concentrate on artistic interpretation. For example, the Olmec-Africa connection has been 'evidenced' by Olmec statues having 'African' features. Because as we all know, human statuery is always representative and is never exagerrated in any way. Sarcasm aside, if the evidence boils down to 'that art sort of looks like it's of Africans or came from Africa' then it's an incredibly flimsy connection.\n\nIn the case of Egypt, we have hard archaeological evidence of both the Nubian kings ruling Egypt and of Egyptian-style building in Nubia. That's an example where there is enough evidence to provoke a debate.\n\nIn my experience, you draw the line at any explanation that relies exclusively upon artistic interpretation. If there is direct evidence of material culture being transferred, that's a different story. In addition, the word 'black' in modern terminology does not just mean 'dark-skinned'- it has racial, cultural and appearance-based connotations beyond that of skin colour. In my opinion, it should therefore never be used as a historical descriptor of a person or culture.", "You really shouldn't fret over this sort of thing. You're looking at this like it's a giant scale that needs to be carefully balanced - not too much of this, not too little of that - when it isn't a scale at all. If one found the evidence for (to give a ridiculous example) all of Einstein's discoveries having originated directly from some obscure, highly advanced precolonial village just outside the Aztec empire and their preserved writings were simply pillaged later by him and his colleagues, and one's evidence for this is corroborated by other historians and vetted through critics and it's eventually concluded that this is the best possible interpretation of events...should we deemphasize it in order to keep everything in balance, lest we become \"Mexicocentric\"? \n\nThat sounds a bit too *Harrison Bergeron*-ish for me.", "Everything Daeres says about racial identity in the ancient world is true, but at the same time, I like the logic that W.E.B. DuBois threw down 100 years ago: 1. White people say that Black people have contributed nothing to world civilization. 2. In the United States, under the \"one-drop rule,\" only people with 100% European ancestry are white. 3. Therefore, if we apply this racial categorization to the Old World, the Egyptians were Black, Jesus was Black, etc. So DuBois very cleverly pointed out the hypocrisy of Eurocentrists who would argue that the Egyptians \"didn't count\" because their skin tone was never quite dark enough to qualify. I'm just saying that while it's always a good idea not to impose modern-day racial assumptions onto ancient peoples, we also have to be careful not to provide ammunition to those who continue to assert that people \"of color,\" people with certain genetic characteristics, have never done anything important. Because this is the central pillar of scientific racism.\n\nSo I guess I would say that knowing the skin color of a group of people is extremely important, given that many people in the modern world ignorantly assume that skin color and other superficial genetic characteristics are major causative factors in world history.\n\nBut yeah, at the same time, there is no evidence that the Olmecs were of African ancestry, and huge piles of counterevidence proving that they had indigenous origins.", "Mary Lefkowitz and others have very astutely refuted the Afrocentrist paradigm of (most famously) Martin Bernal when they've shown that all he--and many other Afrocentrists--does is invert the old paradigm. Instead of nothing of value being in Africa, or coming from Africa, now to them EVERYTHING comes from Africa. But it's rooted in the same faulty idea: \"Africa\" is \"Black,\" there is one \"African\" essence, and it's all part of an immutable set of identities that project into the present day. Have a read of *Not Out of Africa* and other such works in the so-called \"Black Athena\" controversy. They're well worth reading over. I side with the classicists, but also recognize that there is a tendency to dismiss the possibility of sub-Saharan influence and interaction being important. But Bernal et al are not the answer. Turning over the paradigm requires jettisoning the assumptions that underlie it, and the Afrocentrists aren't willing to do that. They're being profoundly presentist." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "deiqf05" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Shakespeare's contributions to the English language have been exaggerated. When dictionaries first started being drafted, especially the Oxford English Dictionary, a lot of words were credited to Shakespeare as first known usage. But just because he was the first known usage available to them doesn't mean he was really the first (and, to be fair, there was never a time when the drafters claimed that was the case.) Modern computer analysis of contemporary works are regularly reducing the number of words thought to be coined by Shakespeare. Those studies also contradict the idea that his vocabulary was unusually large. It was a verbose age and Shakespeare's vocabulary seems to be about on par with his contemporaries. \n\nOf course, Shakespeare used the same plots as many of his contemporaries so it's not odd that he used the same words. It's what he did with them that was amazing. \n\nThat being said Shakespeare's unusual ability to craft words was noted by contemporaries. He was not held in awe as he would be later but it was certainly noted that he was unusually talented. Ben Jonson gives a criticism of Shakespeare that many high school students would share (that maybe he could have done with *fewer* words.) But in doing so he admits that the people who knew him were amazed by his ability to put pen to paper and craft these wonderful words without having to edit himself. \n\n > I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, **that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line.** My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand,' which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, **wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped.** 'Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. **His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too.**\n\nAll emphasis added. Jonson is responding to what he suggests is common praise of Shakespeare's wit, ability to draft \"gentle expressions\" and general ability with the language. That certainly suggests that the people Jonson are referring to knew there was something unusually good about Shakespeare. And Jonson, himself, concedes he had exceptional wit but he didn't have to use all of it every time. \n\nHe was also the second playwright to be honored with a folio collection. The first was Ben Jonson who sought his folio collection himself. Shakespeare was dead when his was done. Meaning he was the first playwright of the Elizabethan/Jacobean era that his contemporaries decided must be preserved. \n\nIn his eulogy to Shakespeare Jonson also notes that \"[a]nd though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek\" (Jonson can't help but throw in a small burn there) he would rank Shakespeare above the greats of Roman and Greek culture and Britain triumphs because of him. It's a eulogy but Jonson was competitive and jealous as well as reverential of Shakespeare as well as very grounded in the classics. He probably didn't really mean His conceding that Shakespeare's works rank among that greats of Greek and Roman literary achievements is significant. He may be exaggerating slightly as was does in a eulogy but, at the same time, this comparison means *a lot* to someone like Jonson. \n\nSo, his contemporaries wouldn't have had our awe for his language. Because his language wasn't nearly as unique as we have been lead to believe. But that he was doing incredible things with those words was acknowledged on some level. At least among the few in the theater world. \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7sszug" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Formed or actually used? The Italians formed one in 1936 against the Ethiopians but the Ethiopians didn't attack it at the Battle of Shire. They were defiantly used against cavalry as late as 1884 (and possibly later)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cenz6w7" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Good question. Several reasons:\n\n1) Theatre organs were widely used to accompany silent films during the golden era of silent movies of the 1910s-1920s. After 'talkies' replaced silent movies, practically every movie theater got rid of their organs, which were now obsolete. The organs were purchased relatively cheaply by churches, musicians, museums, and sometimes radio stations. However, they were quite big and clunky, and fell out of fashion the same time the Hammond electric organs were produced.\n\n2) As an instrument, the electric organ is quite versatile. The first Hammond organs, released in the 1930s, were pretty cutting edge for their time, and were really the first mainstream electric instrument. You can achieve a wide range of tones, timbres, and effects such as chorus and vibrato with the multitude of drawbars. The ability to sustain the notes (ie, pressing a key and the note ringing for a long time) in addition to controlling the volume of them with the volume pedal made them well suited for suspense and drama shows in order to emphasize tension. As radio was on the cutting edge of communication at the time, it makes sense to me that people involved in the industry would want to be using the cutting edge technologies in music as well. Additionally, organs - like pianos - have a wide musical scale (61 notes I believe) that makes them better equipped than, say, a guitar or a violin for solo performance. Not to mention that the bass pedals on an organ - something pianos don't have - allow the player to sound \"big\" by allowing every extremity on the human body to play notes/chords simultaneously. Freeing up the left hand from playing the bass notes and having the two keyboards stacked - compared to the linearity of a piano's keyboard - allows for different musical possibilities. \n\nI own an old Hammond organ from the 1960s, and these things are really incredible instruments - they were built to last, they sound very cool, and they don't really require much maintenance. \n\nPianos, on the other hand, don't really have the tonal and atmospheric versatility that organs have. They take up more space, they are significantly more expensive, and they require regular maintenance. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fj90i6m" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "There are some good monographs that can point you to some primary sources... Most sources are archival and not easily accessible however. Although there are a number of transcribed primary document collections that do have some sources useful for this topic.\n\nFor the early period look at Schwaller's *Generos de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico*. For the middle to late colonial period look at Cope's *Limits of Racial Domination*. You might also be interested in Vinson's *Before Mestizaje* and Restall's *Black Middle*. For the religious underpinnings of race see Martinez's *Genealogical Fictions*." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ch1k9ds" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Are you asking about the screw as a simple machine? (e.g. olive presses and C-clamps?)\n\nOr the screw as a fastener?\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ey92c13" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "For the Roman Empire:\n\n1. *SPQR* by Mary Beard - Summarizes the period from roughly 100 BC to 200 AD in-depth, but Beard takes much more of an interest in what this period was like for the average Roman citizen, which reflects well throughout this work.\n2. *Soldiers and Ghosts* by J.E. Lendon - In a nutshell this pretty effectively serves as an overview of the history of battle from the 5th Century BC to the 4th Century AD. A good introduction and overview, tackling things ranging from how battles were fought to PTSD in soldiers.\n3. *Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia* by Gregory S. Aldrete - Aldrete covers far more than Mary Beard's *Pompeii* which focuses on well, Pompeii specifically.\n4. *Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order* by Christopher Furhmann - This is an excellent book on how the military and civilian populace interacted in day to day life.\n5. *Invisible Romans* by Robert Knapp - A fantastic book on the members of Roman society often overlooked, like Slaves, etc.\n6. *The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History* by Patricia Southern - A solid overview of the Republican and Principate Roman army.\n7. *The Roman Imperial Army* by Graham Webster - hands down the best single book on the topic I know of, even if a bit dated (1998, so 20 years old now).\n8. *Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome* by Leslie and Roy Adkins\n\nSome of these are more expensive than others so I hope this selection has enough variety that you can find what you're looking for in an affordable price range.\n\nNote - I considered 284 AD (the beginning of the Dominate) the cutoff for \"Classical Antiquity\" here. So I didn't include any books on Late Antiquity or the next 1000 years of Roman history (the \"Byzantine\" period).\n\nHopefully someone can help out with Classical Greece - it's not my area. There's also Classical China (where I can recommend one book - *Trade and Expansion in Han China* by Ying Shih Yu), and the rest of the Mediterranean (Persia, Carthage, etc.) too." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dwpfjd9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Quite a bit happened, the Battle of the Marne in particular is a very large battle. Could you perhaps narrow the scope of the question so that we could better determine the kind of answer you’re looking for?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d8kqdv9" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Roger Faulques is the man you're looking for, and the French never 'sent' him, or any other Legionaries in anything resembling an official capacity. After the Second World War, and even more-so after Indochina, there was a surfeit of skilled legionaries that had served their term of service (minimum of 5 years - Faulques served from 1944 till early 1961...I can't find an exact date, but it seems he was mustered out in January of February of 1961 and by the end of February or early March was in the Congo.\n\nAs for Faulques, his list of decorations is extensive. He was awarded the Legion d'honneur as a general recognition for his 16 years of service and his extensive service (awarded on 19 July 1960). As for other honors, he received a bronze star to the 1939-1945 War Cross for bravery, as well as stars to the service medals for Indochina, and Algeria. He received five wound medals, from Indochina, including one in 1948 in an ambush, and again in 1950 during the ambush and massacre of the French refugee column on Route Coloniale 4.\n\nHe gained another 3 citations for actions during his service in Algeria. This brings him to a total of 11 commendations, which is quite a feat, especially given the nature and quality of the commendations (many of his commendations being of the silver grade and for bravery or actions under fire).\n\nIt is a rather impressive list, I'd say, but I can't speak as to whether he's the the \"most decorated\" as du Gaulle stated in that conversation with Tshombe, though they certainly would be well above average.\n\nHis participation in front line activities during Indochina isn't exactly uncommon for the type of conflict that Indochina was, without front lines. But he did participate as he did, in part, because he came up through the ranks, as an enlisted corporal in the Free French Army in WWII, and thus used to leading from the front, both by his background, as well as necessity due to the nature of the war in Indochina.\n\nWhile his personality would thus suggest he would have been at the front at Jadotville, he was not. This was for two reasons. Firstly, Algeria, and the fact that as a battalion commander by this point, he was managing large forces, organizing intelligence and anti-partisan activities instead of leading in the field, though he did go out on various depopulation missions to deny the partisans and guerrillas any bases of operations. Because of this high-level experience and extensive decorations, he was an obvious figurehead and leader of the mercenaries, at large, in Katanga. His numerous and serious wounds (a wound to his foot suffered in 1948, as well as bullet wounds to his shoulder, chest, left elbow and right leg, suffered in 1950 at the debacle on Route Coloniale 4, as well as several others endured in the four years of fighting that followed until the French withdrawal in 1954) also likely ensured that his front-line participation, as portrayed in the movie, was very unlikely simply on account of physical difficulty.\n\nThe mercenaries sent by France were officially unofficial. By this I mean that there was an official military delegation sent by France to serve as advisers to the Katanga government and were supposed to train and guide the Katangese forces. However, the mercenaries that served as the bulk of the meat of the French commitment went, more or less, in a semi-organized individual effort, privately recruited and organized by the Katangese, or the CIA, or the mining operations, and not through an officially approved process by France. This can be seen by the timing of everything: 1 July, 1960 - Congo becomes independent from the Belgians. At once, Katanga declares independence. On 14 July, Lumumba begs the UN for peacekeepers to put down the secessionists in Katanga. On 16 July, Faulques is amongst those legionaries and other soldiers that were demobilized by the French Army since 1 July that were then sent, under the understanding that they would continue to serve in an unofficial capacity to serve as ostensibly deniable assets to protect French international interests, in Katanga. The timing, I would think, certainly would speak for itself, as he went to organize and lead the mercenary forces looking to support Tshombe.\n\nHowever, he was not present at Jadotville directly as portrayed. Faulques from what I've been able to find seems to be more of an organizer than anything else, and but one of many notable commanders. Most of the men you're familiar with in this vein (Denard, Schramme, Hoare, and others) were leaders from the front: leading their company or battalion-sized White contingents directly while organizing and guiding the native forces. Faulques, if we are to use his later (brief) involvement in Yemen as an indication, seems to be more of an organizer at this stage, a staff-officer (which would match well with his rank of *Chef de Bataillon* upon leaving the Foreign Legion as part of its French Army officer corps), and not a direct field-commander. Indeed, according to Christopher Othen, in *Katanga 1960-63: Mercenaries, Spies, and the African Nation that Waged War on the World*, Faulques was \"recently installed as chief paracommando instructor\" upon his arrival and goes on to suggest that most of Faulques' interactions with other mercenary leaders took place primarily in the comforts of various officers' clubs and the area around Élisabethville, where Tshombe had created his capital for the breakaway Katanga province. Faulques was an overall commander, organizing the strategy of the mercenaries and liaising with the gendarme and other native forces: \"Faulques established teams, jabbed at maps on the walls, and allocated targets...Faulques was keen to capture an Irish camp near Jadotville run by 42-year-old Commandant Pat Quinlan\" (Christopher Othen. *Katanga 1960-63*).\n\nThe commander of the mixed force of Belgian settlers, local Katangese, and French, Belgian, British, Rhodesian and South African mercenaries on the ground was Michel de Clary - a Frenchmen, yes, not nearly as decorated as Faulques. That said, he was nearly as active on the front as Faulques seems to be portrayed in the film, with de Clary \"stalk[ing] through the bush trying to boost gendarme morale, claiming that victory was near\" (Othen). And it was de Clary, not Faulques, as portrayed in the film, that conducted the negotiations and then eventually accepted Quinlan's eventual surrender on the fifth day of the siege.\n\nInterestingly, when finally the whole Katanga thing rolled over and Faulques and many of his mercenaries went home, Faulques was able to clear himself of any charges for illegal recruitment and foreign service, and indeed went on to serve abroad again and again on behalf of the French government, including in Yemen, Nigeria (in Biafra) and elsewhere on behalf of both French and later British interests; even though many other mercenaries of lesser renown were arrested and imprisoned.\n\nIn short, the character in the film, while he is based in terms of background and history, in large part on Faulques, his actual participation more clearly mirrors that of de Clary. The only problem with using de Clary, for the film makers at least, is that in my research he's only ever mentioned in connection with Jadotville, and doesn't seem to have much of a background prior to this, nor much of a career of note as a mercenary after, whereas Faulques has somewhat greater name recognition. De Clary is just a name attached to this event, as it were, and doesn't make for as good a character in a film.\n\nNow, as the the organization of the French mercenaries as a \"PMC\" as we'd call it. No, not so much. They came over not as units, but individually, banding together as they did largely just for the conflict at hand, though many of them did stay together and continued to serve as a unit - many of the mercenary forces that served after Katanga, whether in the Congo after 1964, or in Rhodesia, Biafra, Angola, and elsewhere, were formed in some small part by a core of mercenaries that had worked together in Katanga and South Kasai.\n\nAs for where the modern PMC came from...the first \"real\" PMCs came about as part of the standardization and desire for greater control by various governments of the chaotic mercenary networks of of the 1960s, with the first attempts at giving war a corporate face coming out of KMS and Watchguard International. They were largely covert companies created through joint ventures of former SAS operators and the British Treasury and Foreign Office, in part due to the international backlash of the catastrophe that was Katanga, South Kasai, and the Simbas in the first half of the 1960s. So no, French forces weren't, at this point, part of a \"PMC\" as we understand it today. You could consider, prior to Western involvement in the Yemeni Civil War, that most mercenaries served in the model of the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War: that is, 'volunteers' given special leave or retirement from elite units in the military (the Foreign Legion being one of them), with the understanding that they will serve on behalf of their home nation in a foreign land in the service of that foreign country; thus creating a situation of plausible deniability, where the original country can say that these are the actions of individuals, not official government policy.\n\nEDIT: Edits made for grammar and clarifying a couple points, rewording or elaborating slightly where I noticed there was a slight lack of clarity." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cuof44p" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "One keyword that may help if you don't already have it is 'evaders'. German nationals who escaped Germany were iirc semi-officially referred to that way by the Allied armed forces." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cj5rqdc" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "To add on to the excellent general overview given by user/ShadesOfLamp, I would add that western Europeans were probably the best heavy cavalry, and possibly heavy infantry, in the world at this time. The Muslim writer Bahā'al-Dīn reflects on their ability to shrug off multiple arrow impacts by dint of their combination of mail and padded and/or felt armor.\n\n > ...drawn up in front of the cavalry, stood firm as a wall, and every foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them... I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks.\n\nThey were viewed by Byzantine and Muslim sources as hotheaded, impetuous, and ferociously brave, but \"uncivilized\", and various digs were made at their dress, manners, morals, and hygiene. The Byzantine princess Anna Comnena marveled at the strength and ferocity of a charge of Frankish knights, saying that \"a mounted Frank is irresistible; he would bore his way through the walls of Babylon.\"\n\nThe downside to this is they tended to be slower than Muslim armies, which contained relatively few heavily armored horsemen and infantry, and could wearied by them. Here's an example to demonstrate this weakness, this time from Joinville.\n\n > ...and whilst the Turks were fleeing before him, they (who shoot as well backwards as forwards) would cover him with darts. When he had driven them out of the village, he would pick out the darts that were sticking all over him; and put on his coat-of-arms again... Then, turning round, and seeing that the Turks had come in at the other end of the street, he would charge them again, sword in hand, and drive them out. And this he did about three times in the manner I have described." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ci9xs29", "ci9zf90" ], "score": [ 13, 5 ], "text": [ "So if I were to leave this question alone for a while you'd probably get a lot of answers about how the Roman people were tired of a century of civil war and how they decided that an absolute ruler who at least made a show of being a supporter of Republicanism was a fair price to pay for peace. Which is sort of true, but not really. That's a very antiquated view, from before Syme's work on Augustus right before WWII, and it's an idea that's starting to be revived unfortunately. The reality is that they had no choice.\n\nFirst of all, there's a lot that's different between Caesar and Augustus. Caesar wanted to be number one, sure, but he was fine with leaving his rivals alone if they accepted that he was in charge. Octavian's career was spent brutally annihilating anyone who dared challenge him. Furthermore, Caesar was a great deal less brutal than Octavian had been. Caesar defeated his enemies in battle and forced them out of the senate, but Octavian? Octavian massacred a force of dissenters at Perusia, wiped out Sextus Pompey's troops, crushed Lepidus' aspirations, and annihilated much of northern Italy. Not to mention the fact that his proscriptions were by far the largest proscriptions in Roman history, much larger than Sulla's famed proscriptions. I wrote a writeup [here](_URL_0_) that more or less answers your question, but I'll add to it as well. See, Octavian controlled the entire army (and all its veterans, scattered throughout settlements he had given them in Italy and undoubtedly ready to rise up if anyone spoke out against him), and after the War of Actium he personally controlled the entire east as well, since most of the provinces and cities were forced to swear personal loyalty to him. Furthermore, Octavian personally controlled all of Caesar's old conquests, and he controlled Italy as well. How did he control Italy? Well apart from the proscriptions and the outright massacres of his enemies in Italy, his actual legal power over Italy began shortly after he defeated Sextus Pompey and exiled Lepidus, when the senate (under duress) granted him tribunate sacrosanctity. That meant that he, like the tribune of the plebs, could not be killed and it granted him an enormous amount of power, since he could claim to be acting as a tribune (even though he wasn't actually a tribune). This alone made it difficult for the senate or magistrates to speak against him, along with the fact that after Caesar's wars there were few people left in the senate who were not Caesarians or rather despicable upper-class thugs (which are not mutually exclusive--Caesar had a difficult time policing his supporters, many of which were rather wealthy lowlives), and after Antony's defeat of the last Republicans and the proscriptions and massacres of political enemies there were even fewer left in the senate who weren't complete supporters of Octavian and Antony, or just cowards. Octavian used his political influence gained from his defeat of Pompey and from his new powers to cleanse the senate, essentially forcing many of them to leave or go over to Antony. But what really nailed the coffin was Octavian's actions just before the War of Actium. Before setting sail for Greece Octavian, with the help of the army, forced every community in Italy to swear him an oath of loyalty. Mind you, not to swear an oath to Rome, or the state, or anything like that. A *personal oath of loyalty to Octavian alone*. This was unprecedented, and forced through purely by force of arms and by the fact that there was no one in the west left to stop him (and to be honest it's debatable whether Antony at this stage had any chance at all--in any case his victory would have resulted in his replacing Octavian as supreme tyrant, nothing more). He continued on, however, by surrounding the Curia with his praetorians and ordering the senate to swear a similar oath of loyalty to himself and to grant him extraordinary powers. Who was going to stop him? It's primarily because of his brutality early in his career that afterwards Augustus went to such great lengths to establish a front of legitimacy (going so far as to commission poetry and great works of art, rewrite the laws to emulate the stuffy stoic laws of the earlier part of the Republic, pretending to be just a private citizen, inventing the First Triumvirate, and blowing the threat to Rome by Antony and Cleopatra into a much bigger deal than it probably was)", "I'd like to add a short remark on top of the above answer because I feel that your question is grounded in a misunderstanding of the situation. When Octavian won at Actium in 31 BCE he was immensely powerful. Yet, it took 4 years before he was offered the title of *Augustus*, why? Well, while /u/XenophonTheAthenian calls Octavian's way of waging power \"brutality\", I call it cunningness. He realised that by giving up the power at the very day the civil war was over would just lead to more riots and uprisings. Instead he stablized the empire before graciously (if you will) attempting to hand power back to the senate. \n\nThis is seen as one of the greater moves Octavian made during his life, simply because it implied that he viewed the senate and the republic as greater than himself. The senate presumably realised the absurdity of the situation, but nonetheless appreciated the move and in return offered Octavian the title *Augustus*. Augustus repeated this ritual several times during the next decade. \n\nSo in essence, the senate only offered him this absolute power because he already had it, they didn't give up anything they had but through the simple act of backing Octavian, the senate remained a power in Rome - at least ostensibly." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/231imy/did_the_romans_know_that_their_republic_was/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dq88ats" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It mostly depends on which President pardoned the turkey, since it is a relatively recent (1980’s and onwards) informal tradition, thus since answering this question properly would break the rules I am unable to answer it, for those wishing to find the answer to the question I suggest use of an internet search provider to find the information.\n\nIt should also be noted that some historians might take offense at this question because it is not historically relevant in any meaningful way to which I would say poppycock, history is a study of humanities shared experiences throughout the last several millennia and since this is part of the human experience it is relevant to ask this within a history sub and for it to be treated as a serious question(and thus also under the constraints of the rules of this subreddit)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d0pyepb" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Timeline range? I would also narrow geography given how many subcultures there are in any given cities." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9q1c6e", "c9q61bw" ], "score": [ 12, 4 ], "text": [ "The wall was more of a line than an absolute barrier. It was for traffic control as much as it was for military purposes. Granted, it was a barrier, always staffed while the Romans held Britain, but there is a lot of evidence that families inhabited the towns near the wall. For what its worth, about 20 years after the better known Hadrian's Wall was built, the Antonine wall was built farther north in Scotland. So, no to one of your questions, Hadrian's Wall can be called one frontier, but the line of control fluctuated, and it was not the final frontier while Britain was Roman. \n\nThe line between \"civilized\" and \"barbarian\" is a hard line to fix. Frontier areas are almost always a mixture of the 2 factions separated by the line. In other words, Caledonians who had a lot of contact with the Romans became Romanized, and the Romans who lived in Britain often took local wives. Very few borders actually define anything but a line of control. As you approach the German border in France, the language changes, and besides speaking Alsatian, for instance, most locals also understand/speak German and French. ", "There is a great deal of evidence pointing to interaction (both friendly and hostile) between the Romans and the Picts north of Hadrian's wall. In fact, there are more remains of Roman military camps in Scotland than anywhere else. The \"border\" of the Roman empire was constantly shifting, and Scotland seems to have been no exception. The Roman military presence seems to have continuously moved forwards and backwards across Scotland until the eventual abandonment of the British Isles. A magnificent book on this topic (if you can find a copy) is Rebecca Jones' [*Roman Camps in Scotland*](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Camps-Scotland-Rebecca-Jones/dp/0903903504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367388881&sr=8-1&keywords=roman+camps+in+scotland" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch8apea" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "For the most part, yes, surviving copies are probably at least tenth-hand. Typically they will have been copied several times through the Mediaeval and Renaissance periods, and presumably copied a similar number of times in antiquity. Most Greco-Roman texts are known from 14th-to-16th-century manuscripts; if we're lucky, we have some earlier ones too. The most important task once you've got your manuscripts is to work out the chain of dependence between them.\n\nA trivial counter-example would be non-literary papyri (letters, accounts, contracts, etc.): these are of course autographs. But I guess that's not the kind of thing you're thinking of.\n\nI'm not *aware* of any literary papyri that date to within the lifetime of the text's author -- that doesn't mean there aren't any, of course. The nearest misses among *published* texts that I can think of are the following. In each case there's a few decades' uncertainty in the date of the papyrus and/or the original text.\n\n1. The Derveni papyrus, which dates to ca. 350 BCE plus or minus a few decades, and is a copy of a philosophical tract written probably in the 420s/410s BCE.\n2. P.Oxy. 4943, a copy of the lost quasi-novel of \"Diktys of Crete\": the papyrus dates to the first half of the 2nd century CE, and the text was written no earlier than 66 CE (and probably after 82 CE).\n3. The Rylands papyrus of the gospel of *John*, which also dates to the first half of the 2nd century; the date of the original text is hotly disputed of course, but again, it can't reasonably be earlier than the 80s CE.\n\nWhen you get into Byzantine texts, we've got a fair number of manuscripts written in the author's own hand or with annotations in the hand of a well-known author -- people like Photios and Arethas (9th century).\n\nInscriptions are another area where you can guarantee a text's contemporaneity with a well-known historical figure. This includes Bronze Age records in Egyptian and Hittite archives. These can include semi-literary inscriptions, since many Greek inscriptions are in verse: the earliest example I know of is *Inscriptiones graecae* I^3 784, a hexameter (epic) inscription which commemorates Athens' victory in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, and which records its dedication by Kallimachos of Aphidnai, one of the two Athenian generals in the battle." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cim2d51" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Rifles were standard issue during the Civil War, with the 1853 Enfield and the 1861 Springfield being the most common issued. You are correct that rifles are more accurate and have significantly greater range, however, this was rarely factored into the tactics of the day. It was common for an attacking force to begin the assault with one round loaded, get into firing range, and then charge. The intent was to close the distance as rapidly as possible to limit the advantage of defensive artillery, however until the gap was closed the defenders had the advantage of continuing to fire upon the charging force leading to consistently higher casualties among attacking forces throughout the war.\n\nIt was not until after the Civil War that there was significant adjustment of infantry tactics away from the Napoleonic Warfare. Emory Upton led a group that published a new manual for infantry tactics in 1867, entitled *A New System of Infantry Tactics, Double and Single Rank, Adapted to American Topography and Improved Fire-Arms* which intended to take advantage of the range and accuracy of the rifle. The Army incorporated these as standard doctrine fairly quickly. Upton also recommended a series of other changes to the way the Army operated, including fixing personnel management and supply but these were ignored, which contributed to Upton committing suicide in 1881. The Army would ultimately encompass many of those changes in the lead up to the Spanish American War." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7fjhc3", "c7fjn3q" ], "score": [ 9, 3 ], "text": [ "When Hannibal was crossing the alps to invade Italy he came across an insurmountable rock fall blocking his only path forward. According to Livy and wikipedia \"By Livy's account the crossing was accomplished in the face of huge difficulties.[27] These Hannibal surmounted with ingenuity, such as when he used vinegar and fire to break through a rockfall.[28] \"\n\n", "It's about Hannibal's march across the Alps, where he is said (by Livy, I think) to have used fire and vinegar to break through some rock(s) in his way.\n\nedit: [source](_URL_0_) Livy's *History of Rome* book 21, section 37 and thereabout." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/livy/Livy21.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckltomx" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Jefferson was hugely influential in this arena, but it's by no means just a Thomas Jefferson show. Jefferson, Madison, and to a lesser extent Washington all had a hand in institutionalizing religious pluralism in America. \n\nLet's get **Washington** out of the way first, as he is easiest. Washington's influence, as in many things, was more symbolic and moral on this issue than institutional. A good summary of the view he adhered to as the first President is in this [oft-quoted letter](_URL_5_) to the Jewish community of Rhode Island: \n\n > The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.\n > \n > It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, *the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,* requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.\n\nSimilarly, in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, Washington [obliquely referred to a God](_URL_4_), a \"Lord and Ruler of Nations,\" but did not define that God. This is characteristic of many of Washington's observances and letters, which refer to Providence, or in similar terms to a generic monotheistic faith. These broad references would have been compatible with any of the major American faiths, and with the nation's pluralistic character. (Chernow: *Washington, A Life*)\n\nNow to **Madison** and **Jefferson**. Though legal arguments and the decisions that result from them may often suffer from an over-reliance on the technicalities of language, on the subject of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court quite regularly engages in an in-depth review of the history of religious freedom in America, and those decisions are a good starting point for any discussion of the influence of these two thinkers. \n\n~~I'll come back and expand on that shortly -- but this will get you started.~~ \n\n*Everson v. Board of Education*, 330 US 1 (1947), describes at length one of Jefferson and Madison's major accomplishments: the Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty. This was enacted in response to an attempt to continue a tax levied in Virginia to support the state Church. As *Everson* explains:\n\n > Madison wrote his great Memorial and Remonstrance against the [tax]. In it, he eloquently argued that a true religion did not need the support of law; that no person, either believer or non-believer, should be taxed to support a religious institution of any kind; that the best interest of a society required that the minds of men always be wholly free; and that cruel persecutions were the inevitable result of government-established religions. Madison's Remonstrance received strong support throughout Virginia, and the Assembly postponed consideration of the proposed tax measure until its next session. When the proposal came up for consideration at that session, it not only died in committee, but the Assembly enacted the famous \"Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty\" originally written by Thomas Jefferson.\n\nThis, the Court goes on to recognize, is the immediate predecessor of the modern First Amendment. \n\nHow broadly the Amendment sweeps is another question, and it continues to be litigated today. Madison and Jefferson are often cited in support of extremely strict anti-establishment views. Dissenting from *Marsh v. Chambers* (463 U.S. 783 [1983]), in which the Court held that prayer intended to \"guide\" the legislature did not constitute an \"Establishment of religion,\" Justices Brennan and Marshall argued that: \n\n > Even before the First Amendment was written, the Framers of the Constitution broke with the practice of the Articles of Confederation and many state constitutions, and did not invoke the name of God in the document. This \"omission of a reference to the Deity was not inadvertent; nor did it remain unnoticed.\" Moreover, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, during their respective terms as President, both refused on Establishment Clause grounds to declare national days of thanksgiving or fasting. And James Madison, writing subsequent to his own Presidency on essentially the very issue we face today, stated:\n > > Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?\nIn strictness, the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. \n\nThe last quote is drawn from Madison's \"detached memorandum,\" which [discusses at length](_URL_3_) his views on religion. In some ways the strict view endorsed by the two has not survived. But it demonstrates the continued influence of the two framers. \n\nOne other point on Jefferson bears mentioning. It's often noted, correctly, that in negotiating with the Barbary pirates, Jefferson endorsed a treaty [declaring that](_URL_0_) the United States was \"not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,\" and bears no enmity towards Islam. One might reasonably ask whether either Jefferson (or the Senate that ratified the treaty) believed that tenet, or whether it was just politics. In any event that specific declaration was protested, and later [superseded](_URL_2_).\n\nIn summary, Jefferson and Madison both strove to establish a society defined by religious pluralism. They were chary of *any* explicit reference to religion, and this led directly to the modern First Amendment. But there are competing traditions -- which you can find reference to in the majority decision on *Marsh* -- and while important to it, Jefferson and Madison are not the whole story of political faith in America. \n\nThis is a superficial view of the importance of some of the framers of the Constitution. For a more in-depth take you might consider picking up/borrowing Noah Feldman's book, [*Divided by God*](_URL_6_), which goes at length into the history of religious debates in America. The book is reviewed and summarized [here](_URL_1_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp", "http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2005/08/the_state_of_the_churchstate_debate.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli#Article_11", "http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions64.html", "http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html", "http://www.tourosynagogue.org/index.php/history-learning/gw-letter", "http://www.amazon.com/Divided-God-Americas-Church-State-Problem/dp/0374530386" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dmik0xv", "dmiu5t1", "dmiynng" ], "score": [ 24, 5, 24 ], "text": [ "Just a friendly reminder to everyone that the title says \"*Ancient* Egypt is described as the longest continuous human civilisation\". There is no need to point out that Ancient Egyptian culture and society did not persist until the modern era; that is implied by its name. The reference here is to the civilisation that flourished from the late fourth millennium BC to the Roman conquest.", "What is meant by \"human civilization\"? Coming from the perspective of North American indigenous communities, I would have to disagree. Dene culture and languages have continuity going back to the ice age, with oral histories and shared cultural practices going back that far. Central coast cultures, while having many changes, have oral histories going back to the end of the ice age, although again there has of course been development and change within that period, and they have also been living in the same areas, some times with the same villages going back close to that long.\n\nBoth of the examples I gave are examples of people who have not really been invaded, and whose way of life has been changed only very slowly, as their cultures are quite conservative in terms of resource use, and prize highly the effective management of food supplies. Egypt likewise was a river culture, with a lot of careful management. Many other cultures from the European/Middle Eastern world had a lot more change going on because of things like the salination of land, the destruction of forests for farming/olive growing, and massive immigrations from other regions.\n\nIt's highly likely that some of the longest lasting cultures are ones like the bushmen, whose culture has not been subject to changes in leadership or political upheavals, or even serious climate change. this means that most civilizations with a lot of heavy material culture (massive buildings, etc.) are actually less likely to be long lasting *because* of the possibility of centralization, the the resulting possibility of that \"pyramid\" toppling.\n\nIn egypt at least, even when those systems *were* toppled, the realities of largescale river agriculture meant that something took it's place right away and there was some continuity.", "I'll begin with two quotes by Thomas Schneider, who addresses this topic to some extent in his article \"Foreign Egypt: Egyptology and the Concept of Cultural Appropriation\" (*Ägypten und Levante* 13: 155-161). \n\n > As J.D. Ray put it: \"Most of the standard histories represent Egypt as self-contained, isolated from its neighbours in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, and rather static. Perhaps many of us would prefer to see it that way; after all, it is simpler.\" According to this view, Ancient Egypt, cut off from the outside world, unlike the topographically open cultural landscapes of Syria or Mesopotamia, was able to develop and flourish on its own and consequently stuck to the traditions of its historical identity.\n\n > ...This image of an Egypt that prospered only because of its isolationism and was characterized by a high degree of stability also incorporated 19th century theories which maintained that more recent stages of culture merely assimilated older ones, in a process termed metaphorically “legacy.” This concept influenced much historiography on Egyptian civilization, among others John A. Wilson’s *The Burden of Egypt* (1951) which is based on that central theme of traditionalism and marginalizes the fact of innovation. A straight line leads from here to the opinion that “no decisions of mankind were ever made in Egypt” such as maintained by Karl Jaspers in his philosophical concept of an Axial Age.\n\nSchneider then points out that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. \n\n > After Joachim Spiegel’s severe criticism of the prevailing vision of an Egyptian traditionalism, several Egyptologists of the second half of the 20th century have emphasized the contrary point that Egypt offers much evidence of inner dynamics. In their eyes, these dynamics brought about considerable diachronic change in Egypt, at times to such an extent that Egypt as a whole was redefined and restructured. At the beginning of his survey of Egyptian history, Erik Hornung deconstructs the old image by reminding the reader of the “ongoing,\noften stormy changes behind this rigid facade”. Especially noteworthy is a recent judgment by John Baines, which represents the very opposite of the older dogmatic view when he claims that “change\nwas of the essence in Egyptian culture as in others.”\n\nAny study of Egyptian society over time must therefore account for the delicate balance between continuity and innovation in Egyptian society. \n\nTo begin with continuity, many elements of Egyptian society remained more or less constant over time. Egyptian ideology required the presence of a king to rule the country, and this king served as the mortal link between people and the gods. There were periods in which multiple kings or a women ruled Egypt, of course, but those did not change Egyptian royal ideology. Another constant was the importance of agriculture, which always remained the backbone of the Egyptian economy. The regular inundation of the Nile provided rich alluvial soil, and Egypt became a prized portion of the Roman Empire for its grain production. The ancient Egyptian language has a longer documented history than any other language and survived until at least the 17th century in the form of Coptic. \n\nNevertheless, there was considerable innovation in Egypt over the centuries. I'll outline just a few below. \n\n* Language: Old and Middle Egyptian are rather similar. It's standard to learn Middle Egyptian first, and then one can pick up Old Egyptian fairly quickly. The Egyptian language shifted markedly from Middle to Late Egyptian, however. Late Egyptian is an analytic language rather than synthetic like Middle Egyptian; in other words, it separated its morphemes into separate words. Among other changes, the use of possessive pronouns rather than possessive suffixes becomes common, and articles are used for the first time (e.g. *pA* and *tA*, \"the\"). \n\n* Script: The Egyptians are most famous for their hieroglyphs, but they also used a cursive form of hieroglyphs for papyrus and writing tablets. Hieratic shifted over time; originally it was written in columns, but during the Middle Kingdom it changed to rows. Whereas the Middle Kingdom letters of Heqanakht and the *Debate of a Man and His Ba* are written in columns, for example, the *Tale of Two Brothers* (New Kingdom) is written in rows. P. Berlin 3022, a copy of the *Tale of Sinuhe*, is transitional and uses both rows and columns. Hieratic split toward the end of the New Kingdom into two even more abbreviated and abstract scripts, Demotic (north) and Abnormal Hieratic (Theban area). Demotic became the standard administrative script of the 1st millennium BCE until the use of Greek in the Ptolemaic period. In the first or second century CE, Egypt began using Coptic, essentially ancient Egyptian written with the Greek alphabet and modified Demotic characters. Hieroglyphs remained fairly consistent over the millennia, but they did experience innovation; the temple texts of the Greco-Roman period are particularly complex and use many new hieroglyphs as well as incorporating old hieroglyphs in innovative ways. The most (in)famous of these is the \"Crocodile Hymn\" from the Temple of Esna, [written almost entirely with the crocodile hieroglyph](_URL_0_). \n\n* Government: As I noted above, Egypt was typically ruled by a king (Egyptian *nsw*). Under the king was the vizier (Egyptian *TAty*). Originally there was only one vizier in Egypt, but the vizierate was split between Upper and Lower Egypt in the 18th Dynasty. This simultaneously made administration easier and limited the power of the vizier(s). During the Old Kingdom, it was princes and other members of the royal family who held the key positions in the government. Gradually, however, elite but non-royal Egyptians began to acquire positions of power, and by the 5th Dynasty, even the vizier could be non-royal. This weakened the king's hold over his officials, so it was not uncommon for kings to marry their daughters to high officials to secure their loyalty. The administrators of the districts (nomes) of Egypt increasingly acquired power, and with the fragmentation of Egypt at the end of the Old Kingdom, nomarchs ruled as veritable kings within their nomes. Although rulers from Thebes were able to reunify Egypt, the nomarchs remained remarkably powerful in the Middle Kingdom until Senusret III broke their power in the 12th Dynasty and reorganized the administrative structure of Egypt. Egyptian government changed again in the 18th Dynasty; some old offices and titles fell out of use, while new offices like the King's Son of Kush were created.\n\n* Religion: The popularity of gods in Egypt fluctuated over time. Some of the most prominent gods of the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom gradually disappeared over time (e.g. Merneith), whereas other gods rose rapidly in prominence (e.g. Amun from the Middle Kingdom onward). Gods from Nubia and the Levant were incorporated into the Egyptian pantheon; Ramesses II named one of his daughters Bint-Anat (\"daughter of the goddess Anat\"), and Papyrus BN 202 and Papyrus Amherst IX contain a tale of Astarte and the Sea. Temples to the gods became more grandiose over time; whereas the pyramids and pyramid temples were the most impressive stone structures of the Old Kingdom, by far the most impressive stone constructions of the New Kingdom were the beautiful divine temples of Karnak, Luxor, Medinet Habu, and so on. Whereas temples remained largely inaccessible to most Egyptians, a New Kingdom innovation in temple architecture called the contra temple (or Chapel of the Hearing Ear) allowed commoners to interact with the gods of a temple. Indeed, there was a rise in personal piety during the New Kingdom, particularly the 19th Dynasty, and Egyptians began to interact with the gods directly through graffiti, letters, stelae, and offerings. Egyptian priests acquired more power during the New Kingdom until Egypt was split between a king in the Delta and the High Priest of Amun in Thebes during the 21st Dynasty. The creation of the offices of the God's Wife of Amun and the Divine Adoratrice, typically assigned to female members of the royal family, allowed the king to regain some control over the priesthood and curtail priestly power. Finally, the Amarna period, though short-lived, contained numerous religious innovations and was a remarkable experiment in henotheism. " ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4247/34039227824_e20394428c_b.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d8aqovq" ], "score": [ 26 ], "text": [ "There's a lot of evidence that Gerry Adams was not just in PIRA, but that he was a high up in the organisation.\n\nSeveral former PIRA members have named Adams as having been a senior figure in PIRA in the 1970s and 80s. \n\n* Sean Mac Stiofáin, the first Chief of Staff of PIRA, named Adams as having been part of a PIRA negotiating team that met with then British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw in London in 1972 (Sean Mac Stiofáin, *Memoirs of a Revolutionary*, pp.278-279)\n\n* Brendan Hughes, a hunger striker and former member of PIRA's Army Council (it's ruling body), organised Bloody Friday in 1972 in which 27 bombs exploded in Belfast city centre in around 80 minutes and [has named Adams as being the commanding officer of PIRA's Belfast brigade at the time](_URL_2_). \n\n* Delours Price, convicted of bombing the Old Bailey in London in 1973, in a 2012 interview [named Adams as her commanding officer while she was in PIRA, says that he was responsible for 'the Disappeared', and says that he approved a PIRA bombing campaign in Great Britain](_URL_4_). \n\n* Peter Rogers, who was sentence to life in prison for the murder of a Garda in Wexford in 1980, says that [Adams ordered him to transport explosives to Great Britain two days before the murder](_URL_0_). \n\n* Sean O'Callaghan (who was PIRA's OC Southern Command at the time), [listed Adams in court as having been at meeting of PIRA's Revolutionary Council in 1983 and meetings of PIRA's General Headquarters staff in 84 and 85](_URL_1_). \n\nAs well as this, [Adams was a representative of PIRA](_URL_3_) at a meeting with the British government at the home of the head of the Red Cross in Derry in 1972. [Photos also exist of Adams wearing the PIRA's 'uniform' of a black beret at the funeral of a PIRA commander in 1971](_URL_6_) (see about 1/3 down the page). While interned at Long Kesh in the early 1970s Adams wrote articles for the republican newspaper An Phoblacht under the pen name 'Brownie' (he claims a number of writers used the same name, but other PIRA members referred to him as Brownie at times) in which he stated \"Rightly or wrongly, I am an IRA volunteer\" (more information on the 'Brownie' link can be found in 'Man of War, Man of Peace' by David Sharrock and Mark Devenport, who is currently BBC Northern Ireland's political editor, with excerpts quoted [here](_URL_5_))" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/gerry-adams-gave-order-to-take-explosives-into-britain-exira-man-30054022.html", "http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/informer-identifies-iras-top-personnel-26191795.html", "http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/tape-accusing-sf-boss-gerry-adams-of-death-squad-role-to-air-on-tv-28566652.html", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2601875.stm", "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/10803439/Old-Bailey-bomber-Dolours-Price-accused-Gerry-Adams-of-being-behind-the-abductions-of-The-Disappeared.html", "https://sluggerotoole.com/2007/05/07/gerry-adams-was-never-in-the-irawas-he/", "http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27232731" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eqqwd2d" ], "score": [ 189 ], "text": [ "While racial science existed and tried to identify people according to biological features, they a.) were never successful unsurprisingly and b.) it was never the basis for actual discriminatory policy in the Thrid Reich, except in cases where it was clear beforehand that people belonged to a discriminated group, such as with the \"racial\" studies of Roma and Sinti.\n\nThe process of how the Nazis identified who was Jewish involved methods of state administration and denunciation. \n\nTo begin with, by the time the Nazis took over power in Germany, many European countries including Germany had already developed and employed powerful tools of how to administer their populace. This included the census where starting from the first full-scale German census in 1895 the entire population of the country was counted (with subsequent censuses in 1910, 1933 and 1939) and which included questions about each household's confession. It also included the so-called *Einwohnermeldeamt*, a state agency in Germany where not only vital information on the citizenry (births, deaths, and marriages) are registered but where German citizens had and still have to register where they live and which religion they belong to. The development of this is strongly tied into how citizenship developed in continental Europe and to the fact that from the early 19th century forward, the population of various German territories were required to have what was known as the \"Heimatschein\" resp. \"Heimatrecht\" (home certificate resp. home right), which was a document that was intended as proof that you were an inhabitant of a certain village/town and that was often a prerequisite for such things like opening a business etc.\n\nAs I mentioned these things had already been in place when the Nazis took power and provided them with ample information on who was practicing the Jewish religion and who was not. Because of the Nazis' definition of Jewishness that exceeded religious practice into the realm of what the Nazis imagined race to be however, this was not enough for them. Passing the so-called Nuremberg laws in 1934 the Nazis defined a person to be a Jew if he/she had more three or more Jewish grandparents, with people with two Jewish grandparents being considered \"mixed race\". In Germany every person was (and still is) required to own an identification document. In order to obtain such a document (or e.g. apply for a job) one had to supply an \"Aryan certificate\", meaning a list of one's ancestor going back to the grandparents and listing what religion they practiced. Should this document show that one's ancestor were Jews, one was officially registered as a Jew with that being marked in the official documents a person had to carry.\n\nAdditionally, official organizations in Germany and elsewhere were legally required to keep lists of their members and this extended of course to Jewish organizations like sports clubs, social clubs and a various assortment of other clubs and organizations. These records were seized by the Nazis and used to create lists of Jews.\n\nSo even if you lied on one form or to one person, hiding that you or your ancestors were Jewish would require extensive forgery of already existing records with the census taken before the Nazi take over of power, with the Einwohnermeldeamt where all citizens of Germany were registered from birth, with every job application and with potentially existing records from clubs and so on and so forth. While not completely impossible, this proved a task impossible for the vast majority of people in the face of the Nazi measure implemented to ensure this wasn't happening.\n\nAnother factor is that where such records did not necessarily exist or were sparse like in some areas of the Soviet Union, the German occupation and authorities also relied heavily on denunciation by neighbors and other parties. Within these as well as other territories, the German authorities weren't exactly skiddish about making a mistake in terms of who they were rounding up and shooting. In Poland and the USSR there was a large local concentration of Jews to begin given the nature of the Pale of Settlement (the territory in which Tsarist Russia had allowed Jews to settle) where many villages were either almost entirely Christian or almost entirely Jewish and in the cities, local informants who let the German authorities know who was Jewish and who was not (something you would have known about your neighbors before the Germans came) played an important role.\n\nIn face of all of this, \"racial science\" played no essential part in identifying who was Jewish for the Nazis." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dq1ybsb", "dq200b5" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "There is Geoffrey Parker's *Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century* which covers these years. As Yale's publisher's blurb states:\n\n > Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides – the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread. A global crisis extended from England to Japan, and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa. North and South America, too, suffered turbulence. The distinguished historian Geoffrey Parker examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s. Parker also deploys scientific evidence concerning climate conditions of the period, and his use of ‘natural’ as well as ‘human’ archives transforms our understanding of the World Crisis. Changes in the prevailing weather patterns during the 1640s and 1650s – longer and harsher winters, and cooler and wetter summers – disrupted growing seasons, causing dearth, malnutrition, and disease, along with more deaths and fewer births. Some contemporaries estimated that one-third of the world died, and much of the surviving historical evidence supports their pessimism. \n\n", "You might try the *Cambridge Histories* first. They're too expensive for personal use, I would say, but they have the *New Cambridge Modern History* and they recently released a *Cambridge World History* that is more thematic in scope. If your public library doesn't have them, just hit up a local university library. If they have digital access to them, you can download chapters on campus with a guest log in and email them to yourself. I bring this up because you want to learn as much as possible.\n\nThe key suggestion I would make in using these is to *look in the bibliography* spend just as much time in the biblio as skimming the text. This is a research tip that I think too many undergraduates don't realize is the best way to do research. It becomes a huge web of sources for you to explore. You won't need to come to askhistorians askng scattershot questions, you'll be able to do it for yourself :). " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e7tmfg5" ], "score": [ 39 ], "text": [ "Tolkien's influence on the field of fantasy was considerable, because he sold so widely, inspired such a devout fandom, and had so many imitators especially during the American fantasy paperback boom of the 1970s. It is not an overstatement to say that he was highly influential in the depiction of elves, orcs, and dwarves (right down to the name of the latter) in *Dungeons & Dragons* and elsewhere - u/itsallfolklore talks about that in [J.R.R. Tolkein single-handedly created our modern conception of staple fantasy races such as Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs. Are his versions based on earlier legends, or did he invent them wholesale?](_URL_0_), which is worth reading, and we both touch on Tolkien's dwarves in particular in [Had the legendary \"dwarfs\" of Western Europe been associated with Jews before Tolkein (or possibly Wagner)?](_URL_3_).\n\nI say all that as prequel because it's important to emphasize how influential Tolkien has been to understand what fantasy was like before he really \"arrived\" - by which I mean when *The Lord of the Rings* hit paperback, more than anything else. I'm also going to recycle part of an [older answer](_URL_2_) here to address the main part of your question:\n\nAround the turn of the century there were several more-or-less simultaneous developments in fantasy in various nations. In the United Kingdom, you had writers and works like Arthur Machen's *The Great God Pan* (1894), William Morris' *The Well at the World's End* (1896), M. R. James' *Ghost Stories of an Antiquary* (1904), and Lord Dunsany's *The Gods of Pegāna* (1905); in the United States writers like Robert W. Chambers' *The King in Yellow* (1895), L. Frank Baum's *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz* (1900), and Edgar Rice Burroughs' *A Princess of Mars* and *Tarzan of the Apes* (1912); in France you had Guy de Maupassant's \"Le Horla\" & \"L'Homme de Mars\" (1887), many scientific romances by Jules Verne, Gaston Leroux' *Le Fantome de l'opera* (1910); in German literature Franz Kafka, Gustave Meyrink - especially *Der Golem* (1910), and Hanns Heinz Ewers, etc. - and these were just a handful of the most prominent writers that were working in fantasy or fantasy-adjacent fiction. Some found book publication, others had more success with magazines - in the United States, especially, the 1910s saw the beginning of pulp magazines, which became the main market for a very American breed of fantasy fiction, spearheaded by writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith in the 1920s and 30s.\n\nBut none of these writers were creating in a bubble, so to speak. English works by Dunsany, Machen, William Hope Hodgson, etc. were being consumed by American audiences, and are cited in the fiction and letters of Lovecraft & other American writers, and to a degree this is true on the reverse - American stories and pulps were repackaged and published for UK, Canadian, Australian, etc. audiences. The American pulp *Weird Tales*, for example, had both British and Canadian versions during the 1930s and 40s, and many American fantasy stories from *Weird Tales* were packaged in the *Not at Night* anthologies and sold in Great Britain - there was an interruption in this kind of trade during the World Wars, due to embargoes and paper shortages, but it picked up again immediately thereafter.\n\nSo too, translations of fantasy and related works from English to other languages and other languages into English were fairly commonplace. If we look at H. P. Lovecraft's seminal essay [Supernatural Horror in Literature](_URL_1_) (1927 version) for example, devotes Chapter VI to \"Spectral Literature on the Continent\" and wrote:\n\n > On the Continent literary horror fared well. The celebrated short tales and novels of Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776–1822) are a byword for mellowness of background and maturity of form, though they incline to levity and extravagance, and lack the exalted moments of stark, breathless terror which a less sophisticated writer might have achieved. Generally they convey the grotesque rather than the terrible. Most artistic of all the Continental weird tales is the German classic Undine (1811), by Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. [...] But France as well as Germany has been active in the realm of weirdness. Victor Hugo, in such tales as Hans of Iceland, and Balzac, in The Wild Ass’s Skin, Séraphîta, and Louis Lambert, both employ supernaturalism to a greater or less extent; though generally only as a means to some more human end, and without the sincere and daemonic intensity which characterises the born artist in shadows. It is in Théophile Gautier that we first seem to find an authentic French sense of the unreal world, and here there appears a spectral mastery which, though not continuously used, is recognisable at once as something alike genuine and profound. Short tales like “Avatar”, “The Foot of the Mummy”, and “Clarimonde” display glimpses of forbidden visits that allure, tantalise, and sometimes horrify; whilst the Egyptian visions evoked in “One of Cleopatra’s Nights” are of the keenest and most expressive potency. \n\nSo the germination and development of fantasy literature was really an international affair, with many different influences contributing to the development of fantasy in different markets. However, not all writers receive the lasting fame and impact on literature as others. The impact of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories and H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos is not to be understated as an influence on fantasy, but their impact was largely limited before the boom in paperback fiction in the 1960s and 70s brought them to print in a wider market. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis scored success with *The Hobbit* (1937) and *The Lord of the Rings* (1954-1955), and *The Chronicles of Narnia*(1950-1956) respectively, which overshadowed other important but less widely-read authors like American author Poul Anderson, whose novels *Three Hearts and Three Lions* (1953) and *The Broken Sword* (1954) proved so influential on designer of *Dungeons & Dragons* Gary Gygax and British writer Michael Moorcock, whose Elric series owes much more to Anderson than Tolkien. Gygax' own \"Appendix N\" in the *Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide* (1979) gives a good idea of the kind of influences at work on what we today consider contemporary fantasy:\n\n > Inspiration for all the fantasy work I have done stems directly from the love my father showed when I was a tad, for he spent many hours telling me stories he made up as he went along, tales of cloaked old men who could grant wishes, of magic rings and enchanted swords, or wicked sorcerors and dauntless swordsmen. Then too, countless hundreds of comic books went down, and the long-gone EC ones certainly had their effect. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror movies were a big influence. In fact, all of us tend to get ample helpings of fantasy when we are very young from fairy tales such as those written by the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang. This often leads to reading books of mythology, paging through bestiaries, and consultation of compilations of the myths of various lands and peoples. Upon such a base I built my interest in fantasy, being an avid reader of all science fiction and fantasy literature since 1950. The following authors were of particular inspiration to me. In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommend all of their fantasy writing to you. From such sources, as well as any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!\n\n- Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN SWORD\n\n- Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST\n\n- Brackett, Leigh\n\n- Brown, Fredric\n\n- Burroughs, Edgar Rice: “Pellucidar” series; Mars series; Venus series\n\n- Carter, Lin: “World’s End” series\n\n- de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al\n\n- de Camp & Pratt: “Harold Shea” series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE\n\n- Derleth, August\n\n- Dunsany, Lord\n\n- Farmer, P. J.: “The World of the Tiers” series; et al\n\n- Fox, Gardner: “Kothar” series; “Kyrik” series; et al\n\n- Howard, R. E.: “Conan” series\n\n- Lanier, Sterling: HIERO’S JOURNEY\n\n- Leiber, Fritz: “Fafhrd & Gray Mouser” series; et al\n\n- Lovecraft, H. P.\n\n- Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al\n\n- Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; “Hawkmoon” series (esp. the first three books)\n\n- Norton, Andre\n\n- Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III\n\n- Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al\n\n- Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al\n\n- St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS\n\n- Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; “Ring trilogy”\n\n- Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al\n\n- Weinbaum, Stanley\n\n- Wellman, Manley Wade\n\n- Williamson, Jack\n\n- Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; “Amber” series; et al\n\n > The most immediate influences upon AD & D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. For this reason, and for the hours of reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend the works of these fine authors to you.\n\n– E. Gary Gygax, *AD & D Dungeon Masters Guide* (1979) 224\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4f91zc/jrr_tolkein_singlehandedly_created_our_modern/", "http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/92v5hl/what_is_it_about_the_uk_or_even_england_that/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bkwml/had_the_legendary_dwarfs_of_western_europe_been/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqi5vez" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This is, indeed, a contentious topic, and has been for quite some time. The reality is that Poles, generally speaking, did not support the genocide, and a great many helped Jews escape it.\n\nHowever, there is some indication that not as much was done as could've been, particularly in the Polish resistance. Apart from small sections that focused on it particularly, the Polish resistance did not care very much about stopping the Holocaust in progress. They never made any serious effort to attack the death camps, for instance. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began and ended without large-scale support from Poles, even though they would themselves have a separate Warsaw uprising months later.\n\nReally, a big problematic part of the legacy is that the above tends to be very fiercely opposed in some Polish circles. In the 80s this debate got into Polish newspapers and things got very victim-blamey very quickly (as well as diminishing the extent of Jewish suffering, so as to make it comparable with that of Poles, or to co-opt it). So besides the actual debate on what Poles did during the Holocaust, there's debate on what sorts of narratives are acceptable and not among Poles when talking about the Holocaust (i.e. \"why do you Jews hate Poles so much?\", which isn't really the case. Or whether or not it's appropriate to talk about Polish antisemitism in the context of the Holocaust, or to act as though Polish and German antisemitism were completely unrelated phenomena).\n\n > And now a more philosophical question--certainly, there was anti-Jewish sentiment in the Soviet Union before the Axis invasion. It's doubtful anyone would accuse Ukrainians or Belarussians (or modern Belarus or Ukraine) of complicity in the Holocaust, due to the brutal nature of the Nazi occupation and many other factors, even if at the village level people were turning over their neighbors. Is there any reason occupied Poland should be held to a different standard? Is there a case against Poland more substantial than say, France, which has admitted to handing over Jews during their Nazi occupation?\n\nThis is actually sort of backwards. Ukraine and the Baltic states were *far* more complicit in the Holocaust than Poland was. When the Nazis rolled into Vilna the first massacre was by Lithuanians. A lot of camps and mass shootings were at least partially staffed by Ukrainian collaborators, which wasn't really the case with Poles. But for some reason debate on the Polish role in the Holocaust has been much more significant than in Lithuania or Ukraine.\n\nThere are a few possible reasons for this. First, Poland had the largest Jewish communities in Europe, and the death camps were located there, forcing Poles to come to terms with what happened in Poland (even if they don't think they had anything to do with it) to a greater extent than other countries. But I think the big one is that WW2 and various Nazi war crimes gets really caught up in Polish national narratives in a way I've not seen in those other countries. For many Poles the narrative of the Poles being oppressed and resisting the Nazis has a lot of emotional appeal, and the notion of another group being *more* victimized at the same time in the same place without the help of the Polish resistance (though with the help of many Poles) complicates that.\n\nSomething like this flares up every few years, and it's usually interesting and a bit bizarre. The fact that this happens has more to do with how the Holocaust is viewed in different countries than the actual history that took place." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ceiybie", "cej3grx", "cej4nrg" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "Hello! I welcome you on your adventure into Soviet History! I am commissar /u/Facepoundr and will be glad to tour you around the wonderful Soviet Union.\n\nActually, I am going to forward you to look at our book list which is found [here.](_URL_0_) Or if you're not the clicking type I will quote what I wrote for the Wiki I just linked to. \n\n > A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891 - 1924 by Orlando Figes (1996) is an incredibly broad, well-researched and well-written book covering almost every facet of the Russian Revolution from its roots in the late empire to the Bolsheviks' attempt to create a new communist society. It's also extremely long due to the amount of content and detail it covers.\n\n > Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization by Stephen Kotkin. The book takes the building of Magnitogorsk, an industrial city built from scratch, as a way to show how people learned to \"speak Bolshevik\" and thus both survive within and use the regime; thus it complicates hugely the usual top-down view of the Soviet Union.\n\n > Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick. The tome for the fall of the Soviet Union. This New York Times reporter goes into detail about the collapse of USSR with depth, but also with a human aspect. A must read.\n\n > Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum. A harrowing book about one of the worst aspects of Soviet society; the prison work camps known as the Gulag. Applebaum seeks to clear the untruths and reveals the more vivid account of the Gulag's inner workings.\n\n > Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Anthony Beevor. A good reading account of the Battle of Stalingrad during WW2. Beevor does a great job describing in detail the way Stalingrad was won by the Red Army, and what they had to go through to achieve that victory.\n\nFurthermore, I you have any specific topics you can ask them here or submit it in a new thread. Also, I don't know if a single person can learn all about the Soviet Union. I have been studying Soviet and Russian history for close to 8 years on and off, and I have not been able to really scratch the surface of all the inner workings of the Soviet Union and every possible subject. However, do not let that discourage you. In fact, I think it sets Russian History apart being that it is not a simple story, instead it is widely complicated, incredibly nuanced, and one that changes rapidly. I would quote Winston Churchill who said \"Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.\"", "Welcome to the club buddy :-) \n\nI'm not historian, I'm just some high school dropout, community college degree having Joe Schmoe who's always loved history. I passed three classes in all my high school years (two PE's and a keyboarding, I was a bad kid) but I damn sure read the history textbooks cover to cover as soon as I got them. Just love it. \n\nSo a few years ago, for some reason, like you, I became infatuated with the Cold War. Almost everything I've read since has been related to that. My big go-to are biographies. So with that said, I'm going to recommend the three I started my journey with and enjoyed immensely. Hopefully you'll enjoy them the same: \n\n[\"Lenin: A Biography\" by Robert Service](_URL_1_) \n\n[\"Young Stalin\" by Simon Sebag Montefiore](_URL_0_) \n\n[\"Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar\" by Simon Sebag Montefiore](_URL_2_) \n\nIf you do end up reading those, be awesome if you kept in touch and let me know how you liked them. Also to recommend any other books you may read and enjoy. It's not easy finding people I can bore with Cold War talk. ", "I took a USSR class in college and have some books I can recommend you.\n\n* Magnetic Mountain\n* The Myth of the Eastern Front\n* Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More\n* A History of Modern Russia\n\n\nI would highly recommend \"The Myth of the Eastern Front\" if you want to learn about USSR and WW2. It is an amazingly interesting book about the topic and it shows how USSR was seen during and after the war in America. \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books" ], [ "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/826564", "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133487", "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/282108" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d06xcll" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "This is a question more suited for r/linguistics. In any case, you may be referring to the [θ](_URL_0_) phoneme used in certain parts of Spain. \n\nThere is no conclusive explanation as to why this is used there or precisely how and when it arose. What we do know is that *it is not a lisp* (which means to mispronounce the [s](_URL_3_) sound—Castilians have no problem pronouncing this sound). Simply put, hundreds of years ago Castilian had more sounds than today, two of which ([dz](_URL_4_) and [ts](_URL_1_)) are thought to have merged and developed into the modern θ sound. (Notably, sounds are always in a state of flux in natural spoken language, which can bring about things like the [Great Vowel Shift](_URL_2_)). Spanish in the Americas has been greatly influenced by dialects that do not have this θ sound, hence it is not found there.\n\nInterestingly, many people do not think about the fact that English has this phoneme (as well as Icelandic, old Germanic languages, Greek, Cornish, Welsh and many other languages)." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_affricate", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_fricative#Voiceless_alveolar_sibilant", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_alveolar_affricate" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7f059u", "c7f098r", "c7f3lvh" ], "score": [ 6, 16, 2 ], "text": [ "\"Manchu\" refers to the people of far northeastern China. They were a light agricultural, at times semi-nomadic (but far more settled than the steppe peoples to the west) culture group. The region is largely forested. Like many other \"inner asian\" groups, the Manchu were always on the chinese periphery, and only came into the greater chinese historical picture 900 years ago.\nTheir first major action in Chinese history was to form the [Jin Dynasty](_URL_1_ in north China, which lasted about 100 years before being wiped out by the Mongols. \nThe Manchus grew in number and power in the 17th Century. They were united under the military leadership of [Nurhaci](_URL_0_), who started them on a path of expansion that ultimately resulted in the Qing dynasty of China. This was accomplished because the Ming were in deep internal crisis, and turned to the Manchu armies for support against internal rebellions. Once the Manchus reached Beijing, they took over. They rapidly became the largest, most populous and arguably most successful (until 1800 at least) chinese empire in history. Although they became deeply sinified, the Manchus maintained at least some of the appearance of being separate from the Han Chinese. Many also maintained close ties to their home region (manchuria), many in government returning there after the Qing fall (1911). \n\nHope this helps.", "Manchus, also known as Jurchens, are a group of nomadic people who lived in modern day Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. (Some in Liaoning too) They had formed quite [a significant empire](_URL_1_ in the 12th century until the Mongols arrived. \n\nAfter the Mongol invasion in 13th century, Jurchens/Manchus were split into many different clans in Manchuria until 17th century. They were often times a minor nuisance to both Korea and Ming dynasty China, and would often times raid bordering cities for food.\n\nThings change around 17th century however, as Nurhaci, chieftain of Aisin Gioro clan, united all Jurchen clans into one state (called later Jin to distinguish from previous empire). There are many factors that leads to this, one of the major part being Korea and Ming Dynasty China being significantly weakened due to [Imjin war, or Japanese invasion of Korea](_URL_2_ that happened just decades prior, as well as numerous dissension, rebellion and corruption that plagued Ming Dynasty at the time.\n\nNurhaci's son [Hong Taiji](_URL_0_) changes the name of Jurchen state to Qing, and quickly invaded and submitted Korea under him. (As well as some Mongol clans) From there Qing's conquest of Ming Dynasty was inevitable as Ming Dynasty was falling apart from the inside from rebellions and corruption. Qing would then go on to become the biggest Chinese Dynasty in the history of China.", "If English Wikipedia article is too difficult to read, go to left hand side change the language to Simple English. The article will be much easier to read. \n\nTo add on already great info provided by others. \n\nThe heart Manchu power was the eight banners. Banners were original tribal organization that served as economic and military unit for Manchu. When Manchu conquered china the banners army served as elite army unit stationed at various places. Half of the banner army was stationed in Beijing and other half stationed at various strategic places in china. Manchu kept tight control of the military. For early and middle part of the dynasty most of the top military commanders were banner men. It was with the massive civil war in mid 1860 did we see the rises of ethnic Han Chinese commanders. \n\nFor the government ministry, Manchu largely adapted the existing Ming institutions. The innovation Manchu introduced was there were two person at head of each ministry: one Manchu and one Han minster. Can you guess who was the senior minster?\n\nNeedless to say the emperors were always Manchu. \n\nEdit: your best bet is to google Qing dynasty. There will be a lot more information. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurhaci", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Dynasty_(1115%E2%80%931234)" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Taiji", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Dynasty_(1115%E2%80%931234)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_(1592%E2%80%931598)" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ct7dwy3" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "This question is exceptionally problematic--not because of the nature of the question at all, but because of the nature of the word \"state\"/\"nation state\"/etc. among various anthropological circles. \n\nThe first solid study of the development of the state is Elman Service's *Origins of the State and Civilization*. Published in the 60s, Service espoused an evolutionary model of statehood, suggesting that states evolves directly from lesser developed social structures like \"Big Man\" kin groups. This is problematic because no society develops strictly along evolutionary lines. Throughout his book, he discusses each of 6 (if I remember correctly) pristine, primary states in various locales throughout the globe. The oldest, however, seem to be either in East Asia and/or Mesopotamia (e.g., Sumeria, Babylon, Akkad, etc.).\n\nNorman Yoffee's highlights an important thought in his *Myths of the Archaic State* -- noting that \"it doesn't much matter what we call things, as long as we explain clearly what we mean, and as long as our categories further research, rather than force data into analytical blocks that are self-fulfilling prophecies.\" (p. 1). \n\nYou see, the problem with much scholarship surrounding early state formation (and all the more so surrounding so-called \"pristine\" or \"primary\" states like Egypt or Mesopotamia) is that too often, the definition of 'state' has driven the interpretation of the data, rather than the data driving the descriptive conclusions. \n\nYoffee, however, seems to suggest that the earliest state type social groups were in ancient Mesopotamia. Of course, he also spends a decent amount of time discussing origins of the state and civilization in East Asia (namely, China)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d65ri39" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Because they had an alternative: the atlatl. It is a dart thrower, made from a narrow piece of wood usualy the length of a forearm with a 'hook' on one end and some form of grip on the ither (some have leather loops, some have shaped the wood to easily hold it). By extending the length of the arm it bettered the distance and speed a dart could be thrown. In my experimental archaeology class my professor told me that during a tryout on the efectiveness of the weapon a dart went straigt through a car door. So basically they did not need the bow. There are pros and cons to each: and atlatl is much faster to make, and if you need to wait for a long time you could keep it ready to throw with minimal effort, needs only one hand and is particularly adapted for large open spaces. The bow is much easier to use on forested areas, has a greater accuracy range (though often lesser strenght upon impact) and can be used while moving. For further reading i recommend Hutchings and Bruchert's article Spear Thrower Performance: ethnographic and experimental research and Zelia Nuttal's The Atlatl or Spear Thrower of the Ancient Mexicans (this is an older piece but Zelia is the mother of mexican archaeology and i love her)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cf8oijk" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I'm not really going to be able to help unless you're specifically interested in the history of medicine, but I wanted to make sure you've checked out the [History of Science section on the wiki's book list](_URL_0_). It leans a bit Western, but it is a place to start." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/culturalhistory#wiki_history_of_science" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwa9gzz", "cwasqr2" ], "score": [ 86, 3 ], "text": [ "He wasn't Soviet, but you may be interested in the story of Li Cunxin. He grew up in Cultural Revolution-era China, and was trained as a ballet dancer at Madame Mao's School for the Arts. In 1979, at age 18, as both one of the best dancers at the academy and a prominent member of the young Communist party, he was chosen to go to America as part of a student exchange program with the Houston ballet.\n\nWhether you can call him a \"spy\" is iffy. He was not a trained spy, and certainly did not go digging around for state secrets or anything. But he was instructed to observe everything about American life and report on it once he got back. Party officials were especially looking for things they could use as propaganda fodder: poverty, crime, things that showed the evil sides of capitalism.\n\nLi was in fact floored by the standard of living he saw in Houston. Everyone had a car. When he needed new ballet tights, his host took him to the mall and went on a shopping spree that totaled his entire family's living expenses for six months back in Qingdao. And the concept of freedom of speech flabbergasted him. He claims that one night at a bar, his friend went on a rant about how terrible President Carter was, and he spent the rest of the night looking over his shoulder waiting to be arrested.\n\nLi went back to China and reported on what he'd seen, embellishing all the dirty stuff to appease his superiors in the Party. But after seeing the difference between the CCP's propaganda and the actual American way of life, his faith in Communism was shaken. Over the next year it was destroyed. He wanted to go back to the US, to continue the exchange student program. But Party officials denied his request and stonewalled him at every turn. Finally he caught a lucky break when one bureaucrat went on vacation, and the guy filling in hadn't seen the \"ignore this kid\" memo. His second trip to America was approved.\n\nTo America he went, and in America he stayed. His year-long battle with the Party's bureaucracy had destroyed his faith in the Communist Party, and he had a budding romance with an American girl. So when the time came to return to China, he refused. He married the girl and requested asylum in the US.\n\nUnfortunately, he made the very stupid decision of entering the Chinese consulate in Houston to explain his actions. They locked him in a cell and interrogated him. They thought that the CIA had coerced him into betraying his country, or some similar nefarious plot. Unfortunately for them, the Houston Ballet has some very powerful patrons, including then-Vice President George Bush. Li's defection and subsequent detention started a minor international incident, and the FBI surrounded the consulate. After 21 hours the Chinese released Li, but they revoked his citizenship. He wouldn't see his family again for almost a decade, when diplomatic tensions between the two countries eased and his parents were allowed to visit him.\n\nLi tells his story in his autobiography, *Mao's Last Dancer*. It was made into a movie in 2009. It was pretty decent if you like ballet movies, but if you care about the historical and political details I'd recommend the book instead.", "Though not an exact match to your question, Albrecht Dittrich aka Jack Barsky was a Soviet spy who had a kid here and decided not to return home when instructed to. If I recall correctly, he told his handlers he had contracted AIDS. [The US program 60 Minutes did a story on him in May 2015.](_URL_0_)\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-kgb-spy-jack-barsky-steve-kroft-60-minutes/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eiunkqh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Sorry, we don't allow [\"example seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). It's not that your question was bad; it's that these kinds of questions tend to produce threads that are collections of disjointed, partial, inadequate responses. If you have a question about a specific historical event, period, or person, feel free to rewrite your question and submit it again. If you don't want to rewrite it, you might try submitting it to /r/history, /r/askhistory, or /r/tellmeafact. \n\nFor further explanation of the rule, feel free to consult [this META thread](_URL_1_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22example_seeking.22_questions", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nub87/rules_change_throughout_history_rule_is_replaced/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d3qe3d7" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "*A Woman in Berlin*, an anonymous memoir later attributed to journalist Marta Hillers, is essential if you're curious about this topic. As you might imagine, this is not a comfortable read. She and her neighbors watch the war wash over them like a wave in April-May 1945. Little enough changed once their building became Soviet territory. They were bombed out and hungry, and that did not change until the fighting stopped. But civilians began fraternizing and finding common ground with their occupiers immediately, and fear gave way to relief in many instances. Of course for the women it turned into a nightmare, and the drama of the story centers on the author attempting to keep a Soviet Major as her boyfriend in order to ward off sexual assaults from lower ranking soldiers.\n\nOtherwise, life ground on. Rations were distributed, meals were shared. People drank. And as soon as was possible, people found their way back to old offices and began picking up the pieces. Actually, it is remarkable how soon people began going about their business again. \n\nIt is also a fascinating document of the sorts of rumors flying around Germany at the time. Notably, that Franz von Papen was flying back from Turkey to take over the government and negotiate with the allies." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czv75jo" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Sure, it would have been possible to write to different establishments telling of your impending arrival, but that's not how you would have gone about it.\n\nThe short answer is that you would have made arrangements upon your arrival, inquiring with the locals to find a suitable place to stay. You may have gone to a tavern to do so (which often doubled as inns), or maybe you just asked someone on the street.\n\nTake the example of someone like Benjamin Franklin. He made several voyages to England and France during the 1700s. The first occurred when he was 18 years old, when he went to London in order to buy some printing equipment for his business. He didn't have much money, and as it turned out, the governor of Pennsylvania (under whose guidance he had made the trip) hadn't followed through on a promise to make credit arrangements, and Franklin found himself stranded for about 18 months until he earned enough money to pay for a return voyage to Philadelphia.\n\nSo, at the start, Franklin and his friend James Ralph simply found a cheap place to stay, with no prearrangement:\n \n > [James Ralph and I] took lodgings together in Little Britain at three shillings and sixpence a week; as much as we could then afford. He found some relations, but they were poor, and unable to assist him.\n\nSource: [The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, page 58](_URL_2_)\n\nHow exactly they found their lodgings is not written about, but again, it would have been customary at the time to inquire at a local tavern.\n\nWhen Franklin returned to England in 1757, he went as a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Shortly after his arrival, he stayed with a widow named Margaret Stevenson on Craven Street in London, and spent most of the next fifteen years there. Her house \"had been recommended to him by some Pennsylvania friends, who had lodged there.\" ([Source](_URL_0_\n).)\n\nWhere exactly he stayed the first night he got off the ship is unknown, but as a diplomat, he would have written ahead, telling of his impending arrival, and would likely have had some counterpart in England meet him at the dock. His English counterpart would have made some arrangements for his initial stay before he had paid his visit to Mrs. Stevenson.\n\nMaybe more informative is exactly how within their own country people like Benjamin Franklin and John Adams made arrangements for lodgings when staying the night away from home.\n\nIn 1723, at the age of 17, Franklin relocated from Boston to Philadelphia. In his autobiography, he writes of his arrival in Philadelphia, and found his first lodging there by asking someone on the street:\n\n > I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul, nor where to look for lodging...Walking down again toward the river, and looking in the faces of people, I met a young Quaker man, whose countenance I liked, and, accosting him, requested he would tell me where a stranger could get lodging. We were then near the sign of the Three Mariners. \" Here,\" says he, \"is one place that entertains strangers, but it is not a reputable house; if thee wilt walk with me I'll show thee a better.\" He brought me to the Crooked Billet, in Water Street. Here I got a dinner, and while I was eating it \nseveral sly questions were asked me, as it seemed to be suspected \nfrom my youth and appearance that I might be some runaway. \n\n > After dinner my sleepiness returned; and, being shown to a \nbed, I lay down without undressing and slept till six in the evening, was called to supper, went to bed again very early, and slept soundly till next morning.\n\nSource: [The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 39-41] (_URL_3_)\n\nDuring the Revolutionary War, John Adams was often travelling throughout the country, staying the night far from home. As is evident in his letters to his wife, he wasn't planning sleeping arrangements beforehand, but was making them from town to town as he arrived there. \n\nOne such letter on a stay in Fishkill, New York, in 1777 starts out:\n\n > After a march like that of Hannibal over the Alps, we arrived last night at this place [Fishkill], where we found the utmost difficulty to get forage for our horses, and lodgings for ourselves, and at last were indebted to the hospitality of a private gentleman, Colonel Brinkhoff [Brinckerhoff], who very kindly cared for us.\n\n([Source](_URL_1_).)\n\nKeep in mind that John Adams was about as high profile a person you could meet in America at that time. He was a member of the Continental Congress, yet he was arriving in towns and making sleeping arrangements on the fly.\n\n**TL;DR**: No, you wouldn't book long term arrangements beforehand, nor would you send letters to individual establishments. If you were a diplomat or some higher up, you might have someone at your arrival point meet you, to whom you would have written beforehand. They would have taken care of your sleeping arrangements for the first few nights. From there, you'd make arrangements on your own. \n\nIf you were working class, you'd inquire about sleeping arrangements upon your arrival." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=N4TP_7dJVv4C&pg=PA233", "https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17770117ja&rec=sheet&archive=all&hi=1&numRecs=1356&query=May+none+but+honest+and+wise+Men&queryid=&start=1350&tag=text&num=10&bc=", "https://archive.org/stream/autobiographyofb02fran#page/58", "https://archive.org/stream/autobiographyofb02fran#page/38/mode/2up" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1nbg22" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I'm not informed on Franz Josef I, but I can answer for Wilhelm II! - I answered a similar question on his exile earlier.\n\n\nOn the 10th of November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II boarded a train of seven carriages to the neutral Netherlands, he settled first in a small village in the Utrecht province of the central Netherlands, this was where he issued his statement of abdication of the Prussian throne, as well as that of imperial Germany.\n\nWilhelm then purchased a country home, in Huis Doorn and moved there on May 15th 1920, following this, he was granted the right to move some 63 carriages of his belongings from his previous palace in Potsdam by the newly created Wiemar Republic.\n\nIn his memoirs, published in 1922, Wilhelm distances himself having any role in inciting war as well as defending his record of leading Germany. - He refused any real responsibility. \n\n\nSources:\nWeinert, Christoph (2007), Wilhelm II. – Die letzten Tage des Deutschen Kaiserreichs [William II – The last days of the German Monarchy]\n\nThe American Year Book: A Record of Events and Progress. 1919. \n\nHohenzolern, William II (1922), My Memoirs: 1878–1918, London: Cassell & Co, Google Books.\n\nMacdonogh (2001), The Last Kaiser: William the Impetuous, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson\n\n\"William II. of Germany\". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n(I probably forgot to include a fair number, I've lost them, so sorry!)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/world-history/kaiser-wilhelm-ii-early-years-exile", "http://www.huisdoorn.nl/en/visitors/opening-times-prices/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d71ca8j" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There isn't. Actually this is one of the most hotly debated questions in the study of Roman society. Especially in recent years there have been a number of scholars raising the question, which was often treated without much concern in the 20th Century, and coming to completely different conclusions. The question as it's understood now has its roots in Syme--earlier scholars examined the degree to which the Republic was democratic, but Syme's argument is the basis for the modern camp that holds that the Republic had the trappings of a democracy but was ultimately an oligarchy, and a relatively narrow one at that. Syme believed, though, that this was true of all ancient governments, arguing that in fact *all* governments are, when you boil everything else away, essentially just oligarchies. People like Brunt and Gelzer took it essentially for granted that the Republic was, though it maintained a pretense of popular democratic institutions, firmly in the control of the aristocracy, although Brunt was very interested in the idea of the people's exercising more political influence in the late Republic, through legal means or otherwise. More recently scholars like Fergus Millar and Henrik Mouritsen have appeared on the scene. Millar argues that the Republic, and particularly the late Republic, was fundamentally a democracy and that the aristocracy did not have much of a hold on the voting body at all. Instead of more or less obediently following the behests of the senatorial class and acting as extensions of aristocratic legislative squabbles the citizen body as far as Millar sees it exercised more political independence than they're given credit for, until by the late Republic they were basically totally able to assert their political influence at the expense of the senatorial class. Others who are more familiar with Millar may comment more, but he runs into some issues--Millar's not really able to explain the fact that the late Republic, which he considers to be the high-point of the democracy, was simultaneously the most corrupt period of the Roman state, and that in many ways the political power of the citizen body was being abused by all kinds of people rather than originating organically from the desires of the people themselves. He also has a problem with fitting the power of senatorial oratory, an issue that Morstein-Marx deals with--no matter how democratic the institutions of the Republic were, the power of oratory in influencing the voting body was extremely important, and there are a number of ways in which we can interpret the real influence of oratory. Mouritsen sort of pokes holes in both camps. He pretty definitively points out that patronage, while important, cannot reasonably have been as binding as it often has been thought (to step back to myself for a moment, I read an article by Ray Laurence a while back which argued that literally every person in the city was a client to somebody and that every member of the Republican city was a member of a *collegium*. There's an absurd idea if I ever heard one), thereby challenging the idea that the senatorial class basically mustered the citizen body through clientage as essentially personal political retinues of their own. But Mouritsen also challenges Millar's idea of the Republic as essentially democratic in nature--he points out that no matter how democratic the state was in name in practice our sources indicate that the people simply did not express their desires through legal channels, and that the assemblies simply did not have much real power. Mouritsen's very interested (which makes him pretty useful for my purposes) in the distinction between the idealized *populus Romanus* as some sort of monolithic entity and the socio-economic realities of the urban and rural poor, who often simply could not afford to take time off from their daily struggle for survival to participate in political activities. He's also got a discussion somewhere about how many voters various public spaces could actually hold--I'm not totally sure I buy this line of thought, but Mouritsen at least argues that it's vastly smaller than the massive public participation that Millar sees, and I think I'd agree with his ultimate point that elections, although theoretically representative of an enormous body, were really quite restricted to those who were able to come and who wanted to come, which Mouritsen thinks was really pretty small. I'll stop there before my own opinions start popping up--I'm generally inclined to agree with Mouritsen on most points--but you get the idea, that it's a question without a whole lot of straightforward answers and a lot of argument. Probably all of the people that I've mentioned are wrong--it's an awfully complicated question, one that doesn't lend itself well to simplification. But that's the gist of it, that classicists have no consensus on this point at all, except that pretty much everyone agrees that no matter how democratic it was for however many people, there was still more political liberty in the Republic than under the emperors." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ebjcwcn" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Just to add on to this question: why is it the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and why were the Hapsburgs so often called Archdukes? What was the difference between a Grand Duke, an Archduke, and a duke/king/prince? What was the level of consistency with which these titles were applied across the various monarchies around Europe? Was there a consistent hierarchy of prestige (i.e. was the title of Grand Duke \\*always\\* more prestigious than being a prince)?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cluzlqo" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I'm not a historian but as a physician, I can answer part of this question, and speculate about the prevalence of male pattern hair loss in other periods.\n\nYou're correct that balding (androgenetic alopecia) is less prevalent in Asian and African(-American) populations. \n\nAndrogenetic alopecia is less common in Asian and African-American men than Caucasians and also starts later in life in these populations. Estimates suggest that African-American men are four times less likely to develop androgenetic alopecia than Caucasian men. Approximately 30 percent of Caucasian men will develop androgenetic alopecia by age 30, 50 percent by age 50, and 80 percent by age 70. (Setty, 1972).\n\nBalding is considered an androgen-dependent trait that requires a genetic predisposition. Men with a greater number of family members affected by male androgenetic alopecia are at an increased risk. Nutrition, trauma, and infections are also relevant factors to consider, but I don't think these are as important today as they were in, say, Roman times. Males castrated during puberty did not develop androgenetic alopecia, though I can only speculate that castration was probably more common in Roman times, and in East Asian empires.\n\nIn summary, I'd say yes, but the major reason for the increase in prevalence is due to the fact that more men are living longer." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dza969k", "dzah9f3" ], "score": [ 1842, 54 ], "text": [ " > *Nigra sum sed formosa...* \n\n > Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon. Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother’s sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards.\n\nMedieval Christians much, much, MUCH preferred to turn the Song of Songs into an allegorical love story between Christ and the Church/the soul/his mother (no, really). But you can't get around the longstanding cultural bias in a society where manual labor meant time in the fields and the money/power not to labor meant time indoors: the problem that needed solving wasn't sunburn in itself, it was the aftermath.\n\nMedieval medical texts and especially the vernacular early modern ones that inherited medieval tradition for a wider readership are rich with remedies for sunburn, and for reducing brownness and freckles. But we need to be careful with these as a source. First, literacy rates even in 1500 would have been 30-50% in *cities*--pretty much negligible in rural areas. That's not to say urban dwellers had no need of sun protection--just for example, traveling took lots of time, since it was mostly on foot or at the speed of foot travel. (From about the 13th century, a wide-brimmed hat was part of the standard medieval pilgrim's \"costume\", but it's difficult to know whether that had a practical sunblocking *intention* or simply result.) But we're still talking the vast majority of the population would have had no access to the *Trotula* or *The\nHidden Treasures of the Art of Physick*. Second, we can't necessarily jump from prescription to description--just because a remedy is prescribed, does not mean it was practiced.\n\nHowever, when it comes to sunburn and anti-tanning cures listed in medieval and early modern texts, there are some signs that we are dealing with a tradition rooted in actual practice. Or rather, traditions. First let's look at the *Trotula*, a grouping of three texts from 12th century Italy attributed to the mysterious woman physician Trota. (Monica Green, THE scholar of medieval women's medicine, argues that Trota probably wrote the first of the three and the others reflect her teaching, presumably written by students or adherents of hers). *De curis mulierum* (*On Treatments for Women*) suggests for sunburn (\"adustio solis\") a remedy that consists of:\n\n* lily root\n* white lead\n* mastic\n* frankincense\n* camphor\n* lard (heated to liquification)\n* rose water\n\nBut the text doesn't stop with the recipe. It recommends what we might call \"off label\" uses for it--treating lepers' lesions, sun *block*, soap. That seems to point to some experience with it. More tellingly, though, *De curis mulierum* also provides some context for its use:\n\n > This is the ointment with which the Salernitan women anoint themselves for rivulets and floods [of tears?] made in mourning the dead\n\nIn other words, Trota points to a concrete cultural use of the remedy. Of course we're still taking her word for it, but it's a big step more concrete than a simple listing. And while this is the only remedy in the *Trotula* specifically for \"adustio solis,\" there are plenty of others on offer for \"whitening the face.\" Here, Trota and her students attribute some of these recipes specifically to *Muslim* women, not the women of Salerno in general.\n\nBut okay: white lead, frankincense...these are not mail-order items for your average European peasant. So let's look to some early modern texts--not necessarily formal medical treatises by university-trained physicians or even guild-trained practitioners, but household and remedy books. Often times these are compiled over time, sometimes by multiple people, sometimes specifically earmarked to be handed down to the next generation. In other words--they are *household* commonplace books, made and used within a family environment. (And importantly, when it comes to sunburn and wind-chafing they reflect a lot of what is in professional medical treatises). In these household books, we find A LOT of cures for exposure-related skin conditions: sunburn, tan, freckles, wind chapping.\n\nThese are often far more basic and, one might say, *accessible* than the remedies for sunburn and face-whitening mentioned by Trota. Generally, they consist of something added to water--like the scrapings of a wine barrel or glass, or readily available herbs instead of exotic spices. Ground-up seeds or nuts, or fruit (apples!) were other typical inclusions. And as with the one above, animal fat seems to have been used as a common thickener and soother.\n\nNow, these are 16th and 17th century texts, it's true. We unfortunately don't have the same source base in medieval. However, it seems reasonable that with significant uniformity among the types of cures in the texts along with the slow pace of change in both European agriculture and medical theory, the remedies for sunburn recorded by women like Mary Doggett reflect a tradition they inherited from their medieval ancestors, not one they invented.", "Follow-up question, how did they protect themselves from the sun?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccurcm6", "ccuu1x3" ], "score": [ 4, 9 ], "text": [ "I'm not a medieval historian, but I've read a bit about it because I'm interested, so here it goes:\n\nAs far as being painless, I suppose the only people you could ask are those who've been killed that way, and they aren't talking! I can tell you that it was considered a more \"dignified\" way to die and was usually reserved for privileged prisoners because it was considered to be more humane than a common hanging. This perception seems to have become common knowledge during this time period, most likely because hanging obviously took a lot longer to kill the condemned than did beheading. \n\nStretching your arms out was a way to indicate to the executioner that you were ready to die. Usually they would be mouthing a prayer to themselves to prepare their soul for death before they gave the signal. \n\nThe speeches asking the crowd to pray for the king are absolutely authentic. In fact some of the last speeches given by people executed on the Tudors are taken almost directly from the historical record. It's hard for us to imagine today, but loyalty to your king and to God were usually considered to be two halves of the same coin. They probably weren't counting on receiving mercy from the king at that point; in their minds, they were putting their \"best foot forward,\" so to speak, by showcasing their best qualities of loyalty to the God/king and imploring the crowd to follow their example and live good Christian lives. Another reason they would have asked the crowd to pray for the kind would be to try to ensure that their remaining family members did not suffer repercussions from their crimes. Having a family member as a traitor automatically made you suspect in the eyes of the king, so showing devotion to the king might have been a way for the condemned to attempt to limit fall out from their \"crimes\". If you've gotten to the end of season two, you'll notice how truly screwed over Ann Boleyn was, but she still professes her love of the king on the scaffold, which is historically accurate. Most likely she wanted to spare her daughter Elizabeth any further fallout from Henry's anger. ", "I can comment on beheadings during the Tudor period specifically. I do not watch The Tudors, so I cannot comment on the accuracy there, but I was told that Catherine Howard was depicted as urinating herself prior to the beheading. There are no historical records to back this up, but I'm sure it helped the audience feel sorry for the poor child. \n\nHistorically, it was reported that Catherine Howard appeared quite weak and timid and had to be assisted onto the scaffold. Contemporary reporters also comment on her bravery. She did not cry out in defiance of the king, but rather prayed to God, admitted her fault, and asked the crowd to pray for her (all standard execution speech procedure, and rather boring for TV drama). She paid the executioner, also standard practice. The executioner removed her head in one strike with an axe, the best possible beheading experience. \n\nCatherine was lucky. Tudor beheadings were most commonly carried out with an axe, and it sometimes took several whacks before the executioner could completely sever the head. It is commonly believed that Thomas Cromwell suffered a multiple hit execution based on commentary from chronicler Edward Hall, who wrote that Cromwell \"paciently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, whiche very vngoodly perfourmed the Office\" [Source pg. 839](_URL_0_). You can also read Cromwell's execution speech at that source, and compare it to what was delivered on the Tudors. \n\nIt appears there was some extended dramatization in the show with Cromwell as well. A rumor is going around the net, allegedly because of the show, that Henry paid an inept teenager to perform Cromwell's execution in order to ensure that it was painful. There is no historical evidence for this. The truth is, getting a good one strike beheading was kind of a coin toss.\n\nQueen Mary of Scots, who was executed under the reign of Queen Elizabeth Tudor, also suffered a multiple stroke beheading by axe according to contemporary witnesses. Here is a secondary source, which is a modern English translation of a primary source written by Robert Wynkfielde: [Source](_URL_1_)\n\nKnowing that a swift execution by axe was hit or miss (rimshot), Queen Anne Boleyn requested that a French executioner be summoned for her beheading. The French preferred beheading with a sword, and allegedly had a reputation for more swift executions (I say allegedly because I cannot immediately lay my hands on a source with a definite comparison. The reputation for better French skill was definitely there, but whether or not it was earned or propaganda, I cannot verify. My expertise is in Tudor history rather than Torture & Execution. There are several professionals in the latter who I'm sure could be more specific). Anne was beheaded in one sword strike.\n\nSo, the condemned were lucky if it didn't take several strikes to sever their head from their body. I imagine a multiple stroke beheading wasn't a pleasant experience, although one might get lucky and have the brain stem severed in the first stroke. Regarding how long the body is aware or feels pain, you might do better to ask in a medical subforum.\n\nKeep in mind also that beheading was only one of the ways that a Tudor citizen may have been executed. Beheading was usually reserved for the elite, and was one of the better choices (not that the condemned had a choice). Queen Mary Tudor was fond of burning at the stake, especially for heresy. Criminals might also have faced hanging or being drawn and quartered, and sometimes the super special combo. Other forms of punishment which may, or may not, have been carried out until death included public whipping, locked in stocks or a pillory, amputation of limbs or other body parts, branding with hot irons, pressing with stones, or boiling water. And there were various torture devices available as well. \n\nI agree with DakotaSky's statements that the condemned praised the King in order to seek mercy from God and also for their surviving relatives. It is common for the condemned to want to hold onto the beheading block in order to assist with stability, but this would risk the hands being severed during the execution, which was not part of a proper execution. The condemned's hands had to be removed from the block. If they could not hold them back themselves, their hands would be restrained behind them. It was not easy to balance one's head on the block without the assistance of the hands, so once the hands were removed from the block, the executioner usually swiftly proceeded before the condemned lost balance. Catherine Howard asked for the beheading block to be brought to her room the night before her execution so she could practice laying her head upon it (Source: Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, pg. 480).\n\nETA: Changed Oliver to Thomas. Dabbling in Stuart dynasty too much recently.\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.us.archive.org/GnuBook/?id=hallschronicleco00halluoft#5", "http://englishhistory.net/tudor/exmary.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d60zopo" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Not a contributor, just an armchair historian but I hope this answers part of the question. Donald W. Beachler wrote in \"Arguing about Cambodia: Genocide and Political Interest\" Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, Fall 2009, p. 214, 215: \n\n > \"Many of those who had been opponents of U.S. military actions in Vietnam and Cambodia feared that the tales of murder and deprivation under the Khmer Rouge regime would validate the claims of those who had supported U.S. government actions aimed at halting the spread of communism. Conservatives pointed to the actions of the Khmer Rouge as proof of the inherent evils of communism and evidence that the U.S. had been right to fight its long war against communists in Southeast Asia...\"\n\nBasically, some left-wing academics such as Noam Chomsky were hesitant to believe the claims being put forward about what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were doing, due to sometimes the nature of the evidence itself, but also because of their own biases. They hoped the Khmer Rouge would actually be a Socialist success story and affirm their beliefs about the flaws of American foreign policy in Southeast Asia at that time. Keep in mind that these scholars were not allowed to visit Cambodia and many if not all foreign journalists were expelled from the country early on. These scholars had also not spoken to any of the refugess or few foreigners living in Cambodia during that time. This led to what Sophal Ear called the \"Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia\" (STAV). To be fair to Chomsky, he did eventually start referring to the genocide as fact by the 1990s, and many other prominent genocide skeptics recanted their criticisms. \n\n\nPlease if anyone else more experienced in this subject wants to answer, do so. \n\n\n\nMods, please let me know if I need to change my comment or have broken the rules. \n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmgy1mz" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "This book answers your question for almost a century prior.\n_URL_0_\n\nIt is based on the first \"capitation\" of 1695, a tax paid per person based on their class. Not income or asset, but class. What does constitute a class? The fact that you are listed in it! It gives an idea of the \"social hierarchy\". Until the last minute, even the clergy almost got included. However the scale gives an idea of the distribution of wealth within society (each person is taxed according to their position). It has 22 classes and ranks within each (in total, 569 ranks). The tax evolved throughout the century so I don't know about the later one (this was an exceptional tax for exceptional times, so not a yearly one).\n\nOf course it is impossible to exactly gauge people's assets because each class has different ranks and from the ones where there are documents or where you evaluate their assets, the taxation is not progressive at all, it seems a bit random within a class. That tax is neither an income tax as Vauban argued for at the time and again, with the authors' evaluation, the ratio greatly varies (for example, in the first class, the highest income (the count of Toulouse, bastard of Louis XIV) and the lowest one - General treasurer of the Navy, their respective income varies from 1 to 83 (1.5 million livres for the Count of Toulouse, 18K of the general treasurer). The count of Toulouse is in several categories at once, being taxed as himself, and also in the second class as a marshal (he was the admiral of France which is where his fabulous income comes from since he got a cut of wreckage spoils) - who actually didn't have to pay as such, but they were listed as 2nd class. So that is definitely not an exact scale to judge income.\n\nThe book gives the highest and the lowest documented income in each class (mostly the public income - ie, military, civil servant, etc.). The tax was not based on that income but on whether your position was listed in a class (which shows that some positions were more than just income). The top earner in the first class, as already mentioned was the count of Toulouse. The lowest of the 22nd was guard receiving board and food at the navy arsenal, with an income of 120 livres a year. Income disparity in the 22nd is not so big (1 to 1.5)\n\nThe 1st class had to pay 2000 livres, the 22nd only 1 livre.\n\nThis does not give a percentage of the wealth divide, but it gives you an idea of scale. A lowly guard (that receive food and boarding gratis), which was in the 22nd class as well as sheperds, waiters and such, had basically 120 livres a year of income.\nThe most fabulously wealthy (the Bill Gates of the time) were earning 10,000 times that. Saint-Simon says in his memoirs, at the moment of the death of Monsieur (brother of Louis XIV), that his son, the duke of Orleans (future regent) inherited all his income. He thought that to be extravagant since he already got a lot, and I don't remember exactly but, he lists all the pensions and brings up the total, which is on par with what the count of Toulouse got, let's say 2 millions (1.8 IIRC). But those kind of income are literally a couple of people. The Prince de Conde, with the second income of the first class has 540,000 livres, three times less than the count of Toulouse. The top dukes are getting in the 100K's.\n\nIf we assume that waiters (whose income cannot be documented unlike the guard receiving board at the Navy Arsenal) got less than half of the latter's income, let's say 50 livres a year, and what the favorite son of Louis XIV got, we see a factor of 40,000. If we compare with the top princes and dukes, we get a factor of 2000\n\nNow put that in perspective today. In the US, a waiter probably makes 25K a year. How much does the richest of the richest, the number #1 of of the 0.01%, make? If we keep the same income divide as under Louis XIV, we get 1 billions. It probably is what Bill Gates makes if we include all the tax trickery (those people don't have much personal earnings, they always have a company for everything). If we compare with the average dude of top classes (the dukes and peers, who were just a few dozens) who would be the social equivalent of some top Wall Street investment bankers, we would get 50 millions dollars... \n\nI do believe that, if the difference between the #1 and the lowest of the low (in my example I took half of the lowest documented income) during Louis XIV's reign is probably on par with what we have now between Bill Gates and Jenny manning the drive-thru at a McDonalds in Nowhere, Indiana, I very much doubt that now there are only 50 people in the US earning more than 50 millions a year. So I would venture a guess that, the current US society, is more top heavy in income disparity than was Louis XIV's France.\n\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.fr/v%C3%A9ritable-hi%C3%A9rarchie-sociale-lancienne-France/dp/2600039856" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvojhgj" ], "score": [ 19 ], "text": [ "I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a historian; I'm a composer that has a strong interest in music history.\n\nThere was definitely a strong musical culture in ancient Rome. They had very strong influences from Greek musical culture, as Greek musicians traveled to Italy in huge numbers during the second century B.C.E., due to the destruction of Corinth and the conquest of Macedonia. These Greek musicians organized guilds, and they had enough numbers to organize public festivals for music and theatre. This importation of Greek musical culture had a huge impact on the musical culture in Rome.\n\nThere were definitely musicians that were relatively well-known by their contemporaries. Virtuosos are mentioned often by writers from ancient Rome. There were senators and even emperors (such as Caligula, Nero, and Hadrian) that were so inspired by these famous performers that they became amateur musician's themselves and even pursued instruction from their favorite performers. Nero was actually so confident in his musical abilities that he participated in musical competitions against famous performers. Some named performers are Terpnus (who Nero studied with while he was emperor), Diodorus, and Mesomedes, who was also well known as a composer.\n\nThere were many concerts in Roman life. As I stated earlier, there were massive festivals that were put on by Greek musicians that had moved to the Roman Empire. There were also contests that were frequently held that were established by Nero, who even participated in them. Roman writers mention that famous performers could be payed massive fees for singing Greek hymns and solos from theatrical works in a concert setting. Audiences were known to praise skilled playing and criticize inaccurate and messy playing. Large and extravagant concerts declined as the Roman economy declined in the third and fourth centuries, however.\n\nRomans clearly loved music, and had a huge musical culture (even if it mostly drew from Greek musical culture). There were definitely performers and composers with fame in the Roman Empire. Because there wasn't any way to record music for playback, concerts were the only way for Romans to witness their favorite performers play. Concerts were huge in Rome, at least while the empire was thriving. While all of this isn't perfectly analogous to our modern musical culture, they definitely had their own musical culture, and it was pretty important in Rome.\n\nSources:\n\nA History of Western Music, 9th Edition by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca\n\n\"Rome\" on Grove Music Online/Oxford Music Online by Günter Fleischhauer" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dyorloy" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This is not specific to Stalingrad, but to urban environments in general. \n\nMilitary conflict inside of a city is especially dangerous because of the cover and concealment buildings provide. Buildings are excellent places to hide (concealment), and if the walls are thick enough to stop bullets and debris, buildings can keep one from being injured (cover). \n\nA single person covered and concealed inside of a building can fire a weapon without being easily hit, so it's dangerous to leave enemy soldiers inside of any building. However, moving people into that building to physically dislodge them, requires running across open roads to get there (without cover or concealment), which is also dangerous and a great way to get shot.\n\nHowever, if you drop a bomb on the building first, everything is safer. Anyone inside the building is likely dead, or concussed or hurt; friendly soldiers can assault into that building with a smaller chance of being shot, and those friendly soldiers can then clear the building, as everyone inside is likely dead, etc.\n\nThe obvious downside of bombing buildings in a city, is that you don't know who is inside them. It could be enemy soldiers, or it could be a hospital or an orphanage. If bombing orphanages isn't a concern, bombing a building before capturing it is safer for the soldiers assaulting it; as long as you have bombs, and you're not expecting to use the bombed building afterwards.\n\nThe military benefits of bombing buildings before entering are: fewer expected casualties, and fewer enemy soldiers leaving the building to find a new building to strongpoint. i.e. significant military benefits\n\nThe possible penalties to bombing buildings before entering are: Bombs are expensive; it's potentially difficult to direct unguided weapons against a specific building in a large city, there's no ability to avoid killing civilians in that building, and you'll likely lose the ability to use that building afterwards. i.e. collateral damage\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d33w2sx" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "Hey. I'm a mod over on the most active Native American subreddit, /r/IndianCountry. I invite you to crosspost this over there if you want some more discussion on this. I'm sure some people would be willing to offer their viewpoint.\n\n(Note, I am only using Wikipedia to establish basic facts, not serious discussion. I will use actual sources for the bulk of the argument.)\n\n**Context**\n\nAs American settlers and citizens pushed further west, they encountered more groups of Native Americans among the Great Plains. In 1851, the U.S. government signed a treaty with several tribes of the Great Plains. [That is the First Treaty of Fort Laramie.](_URL_7_) This treaty established the [land claims of these tribes and secured them for the tribes.](_URL_6_) In exchange, forts were allowed to be built and settlers traveling west were not to be harmed. Unfortunately, contentions continued to rise due to violations of this treaty, competition for resources, and the discovery of gold. The United States did not enforce the terms of the treaty and this led to war between the tribes and the U.S., which includes Red Cloud's War from 1866 to 1868.\n\nTo end these hostilities, the U.S. formed another treaty with several tribes/bands, but this time, the treaty reduced the land claims and formed the \"Great Sioux Reservation.\" This was the [Second Treaty of Fort Laramie.](_URL_2_) This treaty legally confined tribes to a specific area unlike the previous treaty, but it did guarantee hunting grounds. [See this map here.](_URL_5_) Now this is where things start to get...messy.\n\n[Here is the treaty that was agreed upon.](_URL_1_) Look to article 11 where it speaks about these hunting grounds. This excerpt is what we're looking for:\n\n > . . .the tribes who are parties to this agreement hereby stipulate that they will relinquish all right to occupy permanently the territory outside their reservations as herein defined, but **yet reserve the right to hunt on any lands north of North Platte, and on the Republican Fork of the Smoky Hill river, so long as the buffalo may range thereon** in such numbers as to justify the chase. And they, the said Indians, further expressly agree:\n\n > 1st. That they will withdraw all opposition to the **construction of the railroads** now being built on the plains.\n\n > 2d. That they will permit the **peaceful construction of any railroad** not passing over their reservation as herein defined.\n\n > 6th. **They withdraw all pretence of opposition to the construction of the railroad now being built along the Platte river and westward to the Pacific ocean, and they will not in future object to the construction of railroads, wagon roads, mail stations, or other works of utility or necessity, which may be ordered or permitted by the laws of the United States.** But should such roads or other works be constructed on the lands of their reservation, the government will pay the tribe whatever amount of damage may be assessed by three disinterested commissioners to be appointed by the President for that purpose, one of the said commissioners to be a chief or headman of the tribe.\n\n > 7th. **They agree to withdraw all opposition to the military posts or roads now established** south of the North Platte river, or that may be established, not in violation of treaties heretofore made or hereafter to be made with any of the Indian tribes.\n\nThe tribes were allowed to leave their reservation to hunt the buffalo in certain areas, but the U.S. wanted to make sure that certain things would be protected, including their railroads. Why?\n\n**U.S. Policy and U.S. Army Policy**\n\nA general consensus is that there was no \"official\" U.S. government policy enacted that commanded the buffalo be wiped out. However, the events that occurred indicate that the exterminations were initiated by individual army officers and they enforced and encouraged a non-official policy. Evidence suggests, though, that there is a strong connection between official documents and personal letters and the slaughter of the buffalo herds. Let's consider...\n\nIn 1866, General William T. Sherman assumed command of the Division of the Missouri. This included the Great Plains. In 1869, he succeeded Grant as commanding general. Because of his war experience during the Civil War, Sherman understood the value of the railroads when it came to military strategy. These railroads were used by both the military and hunters to increase their hunting and resupplying capabilities.\n\nDue to the recent acts of war and violence, he was on guard concerning the Plains natives. In order to make sure they stayed in line, he devised a plan to make them submit. With the knowledge he had from the Civil War, he knew that he had to target the natives supplies - the buffalo.\n\nIn a terribly hand written letter to General Philip Sheridan on May 10th, 1868, Sherman writes:\n\n > [\". . .as long as Buffalo are up on the Republican the Indians will go there. I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of England and America there this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt, and make one grand sweep of them all. Until the Buffalo and consequent[ly] Indians are out [from between] the Roads we will have collisions and trouble.\"](_URL_3_)\n\nSherman's words give evidence to the fact the U.S. army routinely sponsored major civilian hunting expeditions to go after the buffalo herds, [which isn't secret knowledge.](_URL_10_) These U.S. military officials worked to supply individuals with the items required to [over hunt](_URL_8_) the buffalo herds with the eye of mitigating the \"Indian Problem.\" Another example comes from 1872 where Lieutenant Colonel Richard Irving Dodge brought three Englishmen to the frontier and they killed 127 buffalo - more than what would have been supplied to a brigade. This same officer made the statement in 1867:\n\n > [\"Kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.\"](_URL_9_)\n\nMilitary commanders permitted their troops to kill buffalo wantonly in order to do their part in resolving the so-call \"Indian Problem.\" Lieutenant General John M. Schofield expressed these sentiments in his memoirs. He said:\n\n > [\"With my cavalry and carbined artillery encamped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill of his food until there should no longer be an Indian in our beautiful country.](_URL_12_)\n\nActions advocating going after the food supply is even evident in the Army Navy journals. I couldn't find the exact one cited in the main article I am using for my source material (will be stated at the end), but [in the middle column of this issue of the Army Navy Journal](_URL_0_), it speaks about a commission making suggestions to civilize and bring Christianity to the Plains tribes and attacking the food supply is one way to weaken them in order to do this.\n\nArmy officers and regulars even used artillery to obliterate buffalo herds. Captain J. Lee Humfreville claimed that the soldiers at Fort Kearney fired cannons into herds to keep them out of the post. Major General D.S. Stanley said:\n\n > [\"...cannon were fired, men foolishly shot the poor beasts by the hundreds...and for a week the whole command was kept busy hauling carcasses into heaps and burning them.\"](_URL_4_)\n\n**Conclusion**\n\nSo after all this, what have we learned? As far as I understand, there was no mandate handed out from the a President to annihilate the buffalo herds. However, when you take a look at one in particular, Ulysses S. Grant, it is important to note that he was well acquainted with Sherman and Sheridan. I would not put it past him to turn a blind eye to their activities, for it seems clear that is what happened. The evidence here shows that despite no command being shot out of Washington, D.C. was happening, military officials took it upon themselves to resolve the \"Indian Problem\" and apply tactics used in the Civil War against the tribes in order to further subjugate them. This included targeting their food supply. It also included involving other officers and troops to do the same. It was the policy of the U.S. Army to murder the buffalo herds.\n\n**Source**\n\nIn addition to all the cited material above, I gained a lot of my information from this piece, [*The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883* by David D. Smits.](_URL_11_)\n\n**Edit:** A word." ] }

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[ [ "https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924069759896;view=1up;seq=348;size=175", "http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/four/ftlaram.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fort_Laramie_%281868%29", "https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss39768.017_0007_0246/?sp=6", "https://archive.org/stream/personalmemoirs00stan#page/54/mode/2up", "http://ndstudies.gov/gr8/sites/default/files/zoomImages/Unit3Lesson4Topic2/Maps/1868-Treaty-map-optimized.jpg", "http://www.ndstudies.org/resources/IndianStudies/standingrock/images/1851treaty_lands_large.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fort_Laramie_%281851%29", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg/1280px-Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg", "https://books.google.com/books?id=V8NS5Iq6NxwC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=Kill+every+buffalo+you+can,+for+every+buffalo+dead+is+an+Indian+gone+-Colonel+R.+I.+Dodge,+Fort+McPherson,+1867&source=bl&ots=BZ7m2tv7hD&sig=1kaTGx4EwJFAwvcXyulDWAVZ-U8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-mrLVkK7LAhVX22MKHWoGCAgQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=Kill%20every%20buffalo%20you%20can%2C%20for%20every%20buffalo%20dead%20is%20an%20Indian%20gone%20-Colonel%20R.%20I.%20Dodge%2C%20Fort%20McPherson%2C%201867&f=false", "http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/american-buffalo-spirit-of-a-nation-introduction/2183/", "http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/habitat/documents2/Smits_The_Frontier_Army.pdf", "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2001.05.0131%3Achapter%3D23%3Apage%3D428" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbmbaut" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Follow up question: how crucial (if it really was, that is) was the mafia's role during the invasion of Sicily? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "doqp7aj" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not my field, but absolutely yes. This was what the Luddite movement was all about. Luddites were workers who went around smashing industrial equipment as, with each new refinement of engineering, fewer people were required to operate it, and the same output accounted for less employment.\n\n[A previous thread](_URL_0_) with an answer by u/zagreus9 that should start you off." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/30fgc1/what_is_the_history_of_the_luddite/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cd8sgok", "cd8sjzx" ], "score": [ 4, 10 ], "text": [ "In very brief terms, Britain feared what they understood as Prussian expansionism in Europe and beyond. The British sought to protect the product of what had been years of aggressive expansion across continents, that which they claimed Germany hoped to achieve. What is even more discomfiting is that Imperial Germany's invasion of Belgium came to represent a moral case for war against Germany (See for instance Adrian Gregory's *The Last Great War*, 2008). The international image of Belgium as a brutal colonial power *par excellence* changed very quickly. That historians continue to address the causes/reasons for war in 1914 suggests how unclear and often contradictory they are. ", "The Lusitania claim should be easily shown false on the face of it. The ship sank in May, 1915. The US didn't declare war until April, 1917. If the US had intentionally sent the ship to her death for an excuse to join the war... why would they then wait two years? (I've heard people say that the British wanted it sunk to sway American opinion. That at least makes slightly more sense, I guess, but it is still a pretty baseless conspiracy theory as far as I'm aware)." ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/Pacifism/comments/1pwu1z/rethinking_german_pacifism/cd8bu8q?context=1", "http://www.reddit.com/r/Pacifism/comments/1pwu1z/rethinking_german_pacifism/cd8c3zu?context=1" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "d55mxun", "d569jak" ], "score": [ 129, 17 ], "text": [ "[This older thread](_URL_0_) might be worth a look.", "There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding this question and many answers flying about so I will attempt to bring it all together. As with all borders in Europe, this is a complicated topic so I will try to keep it as simple as possible while touching on all the important issues which led to the modern borders. The main factors which have influenced the changing shape of the borders have been ethnic, religious and cultural divisions, political interests, and wars. \n\nWhen talking about borders and geography in general i find that seeing a map is much more effective than trying to visualize it in your head. \n \n[Map 1 - Modern day Croatia.](_URL_7_)\n\n[Map 2 - The Kingdom of Croatia.](_URL_0_) This is roughly the area that was controlled by King Tomislav 910-915, the first King of Croatia.\n\n[Map 3 - Kingdom of Croatia in 1102.](_URL_5_) This date is important as the last King died without an heir, leading to a personal union with Hungary which lasted until the end of WWI.\n\n[Map 4 - Croatia in 1526.](_URL_2_) The green on the map shows the Ottoman advance into modern day Bosnia, the red is the territory controlled by Venice. The Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) is an independent state from Croatia at this point. The Ottomans would continue to advance into Europe. The Austrians created the [Croatian Military Frontier](_URL_4_) as a defense against the Ottomans (the map jumps ahead but the frontier was created in 1553).\n\n[Map 5 - Croatia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1918](_URL_6_) Notice that there are 3 names, Hrvatska (Croatia), Slavonija (Slavonia) and Dalmacija (Dalmatia). This was known as the Triune Kingdom as the 3 separate kingdoms together formed the Kingdom of Croatia. The King of Austria was also crowned as the King of Croatia. \n\nThe 20th century is very messy.\n\n[Map 6 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes](_URL_8_) After WWI and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the Slovene and Croatian lands join the Kingdom of Serbia to create a unified kingdom with the Serbian King as the monarch. This map shows the division of territories, banovinas, within the new state. \n\n[Map 7 - The Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1929](_URL_9_) The Banovina of Croatia is formed to incorporate the Hercegovinian lands where the majority of the population was Croatian while Srijem, where the majority was Serbian, is given to the Dunavska Banovina. This was done as the Croatians wanted to unify Croatian lands within the Kingdom, along with wanting more autonomy. \n\n[Map 8 - The Independent State of Croatia (NDH)](_URL_3_) This was a fascist puppet state created by the Nazis. This was the most extreme and terrible form of Croatian nationalism. The territory claimed by the state was similar in size to the territory in Map 2 of the Kingdom of Croatia. The fascists promoted the idea that these were Croatian lands and that they must be under Croatian control and populated by Croatians. Notice that there is no Istria and several major coastal cities which were under Italian control. \n\n[Map 9 - The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia](_URL_1_) Within Yugoslavia there were 6 federal states and 2 autonomous provinces. The state boundaries were finally official drawn up and they resemble closely todays borders. \n\nI wont go into the modern war as that is a topic of its own and this has already gotten pretty long and maybe a bit off topic. Croatia still has many border disputes with its neighbors. Slovenia to the north, with Serbia along the Danube (there is even a micro nation which claimed a small piece of land that neither Croatia or Serbia claimed), with Montenegro in the south and with Bosnia regarding some peninsulas near Neum. Understanding the historical context of the area is essential to understanding why these issues are important and shows how far back they go. " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hny4x/why_is_croatia_shaped_like_a_v/" ], [ "http://www.croatia-in-english.com/images/maps/tomislav.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Former_Yugoslavia_Map.png", "http://www.croatia-in-english.com/images/maps/1526.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/NezavisnaDrzavaHrvatskaDistricts1943.png", "http://i.imgur.com/iwCIh.png", "http://www.croatia-in-english.com/images/maps/1102.jpg", "http://www.croatia-in-english.com/images/maps/aus-hung.jpg", "http://www.ezilon.com/maps/europe/croatia-maps.html", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Banovine_Jugoslavia.png", "http://proleksis.lzmk.hr/slike/BanovinaHrvat.JPG" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch9stl1" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The Revolution was broadly supported by the Hungarian population. It was more nationalist than either socialist or capitalist. It was more anti tyranny and pro liberty than either socialist or capitalist.\n\nThe students who started the revolution published a list of demands. These demands included: free elections for officials by secret ballot, the end of central planning of the economy, a return to traditional Hungarian symbols (army uniforms for example). More open and transparent courts and judicial decisions.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe revolution (at least in its inception) was more pro-liberty and pro-democracy than either socialist or capitalist. It also had a nationalist element." ] }

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

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demands_of_Hungarian_Revolutionaries_of_1956" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cix3kh0" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "First things first, that article is honestly a little bizarre. The author goes a bit off the reservation when it comes to speculation, especially near the end. It's an interesting read but I have some serious issues with his priority when it comes to trusting sources as well as his willingness to make rather reckless assumptions. The author clearly has a good knowledge of the sources and discusses them pretty well, I just dispute his priority in how he ranks their accounts and I think he becomes overly speculative as the article progresses. \n\nIf we're talking within the context of the Crusades then the cannibalism at Ma'arra is the only confirmed case we have. The Gesta Francorum and Raymond of Aguilers, both of whom were present at the siege, make mention of it in passing. Fulcher of Chartres also claims it happened but his account differs and he wasn't present at the siege. The Gesta says:\n\n > some cut the flesh of dead bodies into strips and cooked them for eating.\n\nPeter Tudebode says basically the same which is unsurprising since while he was also an eyewitness his chronicle nearly exactly mirrors the Gesta (or possibly vice versa..or possibly both are from a lost third source, this gets debated a lot). Raymond's account is a bit longer but amounts to mostly the same thing. Raymond adds in that the cannibalism was fairly public and that it caused much disgust with some people. \n\nSome sources claim that there were other cases of cannibalism during the First Crusade, which the article is quite supportive of. Several later chronicles, including William of Tyre, place acts of cannibalism at Antioch and there is some contemporary mention of the need to avoid cannibalism during the siege. Whether there was actually cannibalism or not at Antioch is very hard to say, we don't have anything I would consider rock solid evidence that it happened but it wouldn't be completely shocking if it had. Antioch was a very long siege and featured a non-zero amount of starvation. \n\nAnna Comnena attributes acts of cannibalism, baby eating to be specific, to the People's Crusade but we should be pretty dubious of her. Her chronicle, actually a biography of her father, was written well after the events of the First Crusade and her perspective is pretty biased. Also her account is a little unbelievable sounding and has no supporting evidence from other accounts. \n\nOne thing to keep in mind when discussing the actions of Crusading armies, especially in the First Crusade, is that there was a huge number of noncombatants accompanying the crusade. The call to crusade had huge popular appeal and lots of people packed up their things and left to follow the armies heading to the east. These people would have been the first to suffer in times of limited resources like at Antioch or Ma'arra. The earliest sources don't say who ate the flesh of the Muslims but it's more likely that it was the peasants accompanying the Crusade than it was the Knights. Especially in the case of Ma'arra, when food wasn't as hard to come by as Antioch, the Knights would generally have been able to afford to eat actual food. That said we can't be certain that knights didn't commit acts of cannibalism since our sources are relatively vague. You could argue that the vague-ness actually supports it being the peasantry since sources like the Gesta didn't really care about the peasants that much. Raymond includes more detail but was also notably more in touch with the common man of the Crusade. That's pretty much pure speculation though. \n\nEssentially the reason for the eating of Muslim corpses was that the Christians were starving and when you're starving on a campaign you get desperate. There is a line of medieval chronicles, started as far as we can tell by Guibert of Noigent, that argues that the cannibalism was all an elaborate ruse to terrify the Muslims and that nobody actually ate any corpses. He also describes a class of peasantry present on the crusade and ranked beneath all others called the Tafurs. These were essentially the poorest of the poor on the Crusade and Guibert manages to imply that they did the acts of cannibalism while stating that the acts were fiction. The existence of the Tafurs and their history is a pretty disputed topic as far as I know but I'm no expert on them. \n\nI'd be inclined to say that the cannibalism happened and that Guibert was simply making excuses. For one thing Guibert puts the pseudo-cannibalism before the fall of Ma'arra, Fulcher also does, while the eyewitness sources all place it after the fall of the city. Faking cannibalism to scare your enemies after a siege makes no sense. \n\nIt's worth noting, although I'm not very familiar with it, that there were other cases of cannibalism during the Middle Ages all resulting from cases of extreme deprivation mostly around sieges. The article you linked also makes a big deal of the handful of cases of cannibalism from the Old testament and in the works of Josephus. The author overestimates the familiarity the average Crusader would have had with these sources, in my mind anyway, but they do exist as a sort of precedent. \n\nThanks for the link to the article, by the way, it was an interesting read even if I disagree with his overall thesis. I do find the history of the writings and re-writings of the chronicles of the First Crusade surprisingly interesting. :)" ] }

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[ "http://fhs.dukejournals.org/content/31/4/525.abstract" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "edyg1ry" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Which Charles II?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chr9sk1" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Hello, fellow history student! The USSR beat Germany. There is no doubt about it. Germany came very close to overwhelming Russia. I read that if they had captured Moscow, the Russian state would have collapsed. And it would have been captured had the German forces not been sent south to fight the bulk of Soviet forces. So I think that Germany had the ability to take down Russia, but a series of blunders led to their ultimate failure and loss of the majority of their best forces. I do believe that Hitler's ultimate goal was taking over large parts of Eastern Europe and that he was not interested, at least initially, in long term dominance of Western Europe.\n\nAlthough I know that my fellow Americans and I like to overstate our role in the war, I think the lend lease program is one factor that is often ignored." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmbdmjz" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "They used both..\n\nThey used customary for length and distance, but used metric for other non customary units. \nFor example .. Electrical units, volts, ampere, and watts are metric units.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ecuc8ti" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Settlers.\n\nNo, really. That's the single most useful distinction to start with. White settlers got legislatures, constitutions, and fundamental legal rights. Non-settlers, variously 'natives,' 'indigenes,' 'aborigines,' or any of the other epithets used to describe an existing population, did not.\n\nFurthermore, both could and did exist in the same place. If one looks at the treatment of non-Europeans within settler colonies like Canada (unified mostly in 1867), the colonies of Australia (unified in 1901) and New Zealand, you can see a tiered, hierarchical, dictatorial, 'othering' mode of rule and management used in India or non-settler Africa at work there too. Likewise, if you look at settler colonial rule in Africa, especially South Africa, you see that for the settlers many of the same kinds of local self-rule and legislative structures existed as did elsewhere. People of European, and particularly Western European, origin were not subject to the rather extractive rule by fiat (and violence) that others were, but when they were present in numbers they also demanded and obtained a formal voice in their interests. \n\nIn the 19th century, this distinction between groups intersected with ideas of race and civilization in virulent ways, to the point that settler populations were on the whole *more* brutal to non-'whites' in their midst than were imperial authorities. Such settlers obtained preferences, legal rights, and entitlements that were denied or wrested from existing populations. Colonial holdings like the East Africa Protectorate (Kenya particularly), when settlement schemes put enough Europeans on the ground, could also convert into settler-dominated entities. As in Cape Town, or Livingstone (N. Rhodesia), or anywhere else, devolving 'responsible government' or other elements of self-rule was both a demand from settlers and a way to lift the burden of rule off of the imperial treasury and its services. \n\nAt the same time, for Europeans in other non-settler British colonies, they still had privileges and legal rights / expectations that not all possessed; the controversy over Indian judges in the 1880s (the Ilbert Bill issue of 1884), whereby enemies of liberalization of political rights for Indians raised the specter of Indians judging Britons, is perhaps emblematic of how unacceptable it was to even suggest it. The British, in particular, were fond of divining native law and legitimacy in order to cordon off certain groups of Africans as 'tribes' and thus separate them, and rule over them through some sort of identified leader. (Achebe evokes a fair bit of this in his *Arrow of God*, a worthy read if you have a chance.) This gave every person a place, in colonial eyes, and the few Europeans remained privileged. But British imperialists were also quite careful to avoid acting too blatantly in the non-settler colonies, so they ruled indirectly where they could via local leaders they guaranteed, and upon whom local complaints might devolve. They also were wary of handing over non-settler colonies to settler ones; looking back to Hyam's (now very old) *Failure of South African Expansion* and a few other treatments of the dream of a single South African dominion to the Zambesi, one point that comes up is that both 'modern' and 'traditional' leadership agreed on one point relative to entities like Bechuanaland/Botswana and Swaziland/eSwatini: handing them over to South Africa would lead to widespread rebellion, not to mention direct legal challenges that the Tswana (Bechuana) leadership, at least, had won in the past (1895/6). Basutoland (Lesotho) had in fact fought a war against a settler colony (the Gun War, 1880-81) to prevent full absorption by the Cape Colony and the alienation of land for white settlement; throughout, they made clear that they were still loyal to Britain. They got their way with the restoration of Protectorate from London in 1884, which is why Lesotho exists today. Heck, that's a big part of why all of those countries exist. \n\nSo yeah, settlers. One may add their economic domination via legal sanction and special connection to global markets, their tendency to interfere even more intimately with African social and cultural dynamics (or those of any non-European people wherever they were), and the almost bestial level of violence that accompanied resistance to them, which one sees in settler responses to First Chimurenga in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) movement in Kenya, and so on. Of course, in those, the imperial authorities were quite happy collaborators.\n\nSo although I am not exactly sure what you mean by 'colonial structure,' the major distinction between those you name (and allowing for the complexity of 'Africa') is the presence of significant, permanently-transferred European populations, upon whom key rights solely accrued. India did not have this (although there were some settlers, and their story is a bit strange), nor did most of sub-Saharan Africa, although as time went on many in Asia and Africa would clamor for the same rights and representation in a fundamental challenge to the colonial monopoly on power, and in settler colonies, the unity of that power between empire and settler.\n\n[edit/addendum: I suppose I'd toss Lorenzo Veracini's *Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview* in here as a start, although the whole Settler Colonial Studies project has some controversy that swirls around it. But there's a lot of work on settler colonialism that gets at the insecure yet genocidal nature of the thing in a variety of places, including the USA.]" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqp2wov" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_):\nOur users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_1_). \nYou can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_homework", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y7f8f/meta_schools_in_a_brief_reminder_of_our_homework/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjj4tz8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The answer is no. Leo Tolstoy was considered part of the Soviet canon for novels along with other classical Russian writers like Pushkin and Chekov. Tolstoy had the advantage of not only being banned or censored by the tsarist government, but also was a pioneer in realism as a genre which meant that Soviet cultural authorities painted him as a pioneer for the state-supported genre of socialist realism. The 1979 *Great Soviet Encyclopedia* entry on Leo Tolstoy concluded that \n\n > Tolstoy’s realism was nourished by Russian national traditions, which it in turn helped reinforce, but it has a universal scope as well. His realism had a strong influence on early Soviet literature, and to this day has constituted for Soviet writers one of the most important and vital aspects of the Russian literary heritage.\n\nAlthough the state sponsored the classics of Russian literature, there is also considerable evidence that there was a popular push from below to read these novels and poets, especially during the Stalinist era. During the mass literacy campaigns a particular Russian word came into being: *kul'turnost'*. While it translates into \"cultured\" it emerged with multiple layers and positive meanings about a person's bearing and attitude (one colleague of mine described the closest analogue in English is \"a gentlemen and a scholar\"). For many Soviet citizens, having read Tolstoy was considered a sign of an educated person and a personal accomplishment. \n\n*Sources*\n\nBartlett, Rosamund. *Tolstoy: A Russian Life*. Boston [Mass.]: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. \n\nFitzpatrick, Sheila, editor. *Stalinism New Directions*. London: Routledge, 1999. \n\nLakshin, V. Ia. \"Tolstoy, Leo.\" Entry in *The Great Soviet Encyclopedia* 1979 Edition, Accessed: _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/leo+tolstoy" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fckrrsh" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Now this is a really good question!\n\nBefore we get going I'll say there are some excellent books on the Treaty of Versailles / Paris Peace Conference and what the allies were trying to achieve but the best ones, to my mind, are:\n\n1919: The Peacemakers by Margaret Macmillan\n\nand\n\nThe Balance of Power by Peter Jackson\n\nThe reason why I like this question is because it's not something that in of itself is the topic of historiography but is more about the viewpoints of historians themselves and that's always interesting.\n\nHowever, it also means that an answer for it could be hugely lengthy so to make it more manageable I want to cut it down a little bit to help narrow the focus.\n\nFor example; there have been numerous moments since 1919 that I think historical consensus towards the Treaty of Versailles would be very different to how it is today. Obviously the lead up to the Second World War would produce certain viewpoints, the 1960s and the work of Fritz Fischer might produce others. So to help us out I'm just going to focus on 'now' (for convenience say the last 10 or so years).\n\nI also have to say that I am not an impartial participant in answering this question because I'm an active historian in the field of First World War studies and I have my own viewpoint on Versailles and how I teach it to my own students etc.\n\nBut with all of the above said I would say there *might* be a consensus towards the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on the outbreak of the Second World War but it's not in the manner that might be expected.\n\nTo add some context, I've been a member of the International Society for First World War Studies (_URL_0_) for over a decade and in that time (at conferences, reading material in the field, conversations with other members etc) I've never heard any historians really strongly espousing the view that the Treaty of Versailles was so harsh/punitive that it either made the Second World War inevitable or was itself a direct cause of the latter conflict.\n\nThe reasons for this are, I think, complicated. Firstly because, by our nature, historians today tend to veer away from placing too much emphasis on something that happened 20 years before the Second World War began. Without delving into counter-factual history; a lot goes on in those 20 years and, had some of them gone differently, events may have changed. For example; the Treaty of Versailles did not cause the Great Depression originating out of America. But that financial crash did greatly impact Germany's economy and election results in the years that followed. Is it perhaps not fair to say it had a greater impact than the Treaty of Versilles in elevating the Nazi Party to power? Whenever the economy in Germany diud well the Nazis got less votes in elections. When the economy did badly their vote share increased.\n\nFurther to this is also the idea that the Treaty of Versailles should not have been punitive or harsh. That the allied powers had made a clear error in seeking to punish Germany for the conflict. Much of this often hangs on the 'War Guilt Clause' which seemingly placed all blame on Germany and was an affront to their national pride. Even this clause though is deeply misunderstood. It is popularly considered a blunt tool to insult Germany with but, in reality, should be viewed almost as an admission of liability in an insurance claim form. Germany could not legally be forced to sign reparation without admitting they'd caused the car crash (for want of a better metaphor).\n\nFurther to this; why shouldn't the Treaty have been punitive or harsh? Certainly the French point of view at Paris was that Germany (then Prussia) had invaded them in 1870-71 and annexed significant portions of their country, taken reparations and inflicted a humiliating treaty. They had then returned in 1914 seemingly with the aim of doing much the same again. The French view was that the only way they could be kept safe was to dismantle the German military and to then bind the German state in legal ties (enforced internationally) which would prevent them from making war again.\n\nThis position was at odds with the American hope for a League of Nations in Europe and a democratically restored Germany, and the British hopes of a punished Germany who could still be useful as a trading partner to help rebuild the British economy.\n\nThe Treaty of Versailles didn't actually satisfy any of these parties and the French in particular were left with the feeling that the Treaty was nowhere near punitive enough and would only enflame Germany's sense of being wronged without actually impacting them longterm and preserving French safety.\n\nAnd here is where we may actually arrive at our historians' consensus. It was not that the Treaty of Versailles was either too lenient or too harsh - it was that it was never properly enforced in the interwar years.\n\nIf you consider the 3 main parties at Paris; America, Britain, and France (Italy became increasingly sidelined and were furious when it turned out their promised gains from the 1915 Treaty of London weren't going to be provided) - America didn't ratify the Treaty (Wilson couldn't get it through Congress and they made a seperate peace with Germany), Britain made new trade deals with Germany but did not participate in military reprisals when Germany violated the treaty, and France who did undertake actions against Germany in the Ruhr (with Belgium) in 1923 but was often left unsupported internationally when Germany committed violations.\n\nAny Treaty that is to be punitive at some level carries the threat; 'do this or else...'. In the inter-war years, however, it rapidly became clear to Germany that there was no 'or else' to really be worried about. France could not do much by itself and the rest of the previous allies didn't want to risk a second war. This situation would eventually evolve into the appeasement process towards Hitler in the 1930s.\n\nIf there is indeed a form of consensus among historians towards the Treaty I suspect it is based around this idea that the articles of Versailles were never properly enforced upon Germany. At the end of a war you can eitehr rehabilitate an enemy or crush them; Versailles didn't do either of these things. What it did do however was instil an aggrieved sense of victimisation in Germany that was never properly checked. As Germany then became more flagrant in breaching the Treaty and fully rearming this sense of being wronged was a powerful propaganda and recruiting tool. \n\nIt was now far too late for the allies to redo that which they had not adequately done in the first place." ] }

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[ "https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-treaty-of-versailles-on-hundred-years-on/" ]

[ [ "https://www.firstworldwarstudies.org/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cstg2ey", "cstgcdk" ], "score": [ 4, 8 ], "text": [ " > Obviously there is bias but this would truly change all of recent history if it is correct.\n\nAs a general rule, things that claim to \"change all recent history\" are usually false. Sure, new things about history are discovered not infrequently, but things that actually change perspective about a huge chunk of history really massively are quite rare. It's much more common for something to be crackpottery than for it to be legitimately earth-shattering. And if it were earth-shattering it would probably not come out in the form of a documentary.\n\nAnyway, I've not been bothered to actually watch it, because I know it to be Nazi drivel, and I have better things to do. Everything I've ever read about it indicates that it's a movie interested in antisemitic garbage of various sorts, and whitewashes the Nazis. Basically, not something to be bothered with. Minimizing the number of Jews killed is standard Holocaust denial stuff, which is of no interest to serious historians (except those who study genocide denial and the like) and is not supported in any way by facts.", " > > stating that the amount of Jews killed was only a fraction of the usually stated 6 million.\n\nIf a documentary, especially by someone with no academic credentials states something like this it's pretty safe to assume it falls under the holocaust denial cottage industry and has little to no credibility.\n\nThe holocaust is one of the most well documented atrocities in history, largely because the Nazis themselves were obsessed with bureaucracy and keeping records. Numerous eye witnesses, including high officials, were interviewed after the war and testified to the scale and extent of the atrocities.\n\nThe ultimate reason why a small number continue to keep up the denial is because 1) the mere existence of the holocaust points to far right politics (at least in Europe and to a certain extent the Muslim world) as illegitimate, and denying the holocaust is a convenient answer 2) an appeal to second option bias: it usually appeals to the idea that mainstream scholarship is corrupted and that the speaker is an island of truth and 3) A kind of emotional appeal among political fringes (both far left and far right) to the idea that US and Britain are basically evil and whoever fought against them can't have being too bad.\n\n\nThis thread addresses some pretty common denial points:\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1n3vwo/do_holocaust_deniers_have_any_valid_points/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7zvbl1", "c7zw7t1" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Unless you get incredibly lucky, I doubt anyone is going to be able to ID this regiment, as it could really be any Scottish oriented group. Without colour, you cannot make out which Clan/unit the tartan is associated with and the rest of their uniform does not carry distinguishing marks (lack of a headdress makes it exceptionally difficult). Finally, it could also be a Canadian regiment, as we had at least a couple Scottish regiments of our own in WW1.", "As u/Comahawk pointed out, the absence of distinguishing features on the tunic or tartan, compounded by the fact that Highland-clad regiments were raised throughout the empire, makes it difficult to pin-down which regiment these two fellows belonged to. \n\nDo you have any background on the photograph, or where you found it? " ] }

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[ "http://i.imgur.com/rxicohn" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cpv310y" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "At the outset, I want to make a distinction that seems minor, but turns out to be quite a big deal. \n\nIn your question, you seem to be assuming that *trans-saharan trade* means a person in Carthage/Tunis/wherever gathering up items, and travelling with these items all the way across the desert to reach the Niger. Let's call this style \"direct trade\".\n\nBut, in some instances a trader from Carthage will only bring his goods a short distance into the desert to the first oasis, let's say at El Oued. He trades his goods to a local merchant at El Oued, maybe for some slaves, then he goes home.\n\nNow, the people in El Oued can't really use all of the items that the Carthaginian used, and the local merchant realizes this and decides to head south to the next oaisis at Toggourt, and trade some of these Carthaginian items. \n\nRepeat this process several times, and eventually items travel from person to person, oasis to oasis all the way from Carthage to the cities and villages on the Niger river. And as it happens, the trader in Carthage has no idea that his goods ended up so far from home.\n\nThat process of trade is called down-the-line trading.\n\nSo you are partially correct that *direct trade* does not occur before about 700 AD. However, digs at Kissi in Burkina Faso have discovered glass beads produced in the Middle East and brass jewelry, all have been dated prior to the 8th century.^1 \n\nTo the issue of how early did this trade begin, it is fairly hard to answer. The best answer I can give is that there is strong evidence of indirect exchange across the Sahara in the Roman era, at least by the 2nd century AD.\n\nThere is reason to believe that indirect trade across the Sahara *could have* occurred as early as the 5th century BC, based upon petroglyph inscriptions of chariots that exist in the Fezzan region of southern Libya and the Air massif of northern Niger. However, no pre-roman artifacts have yet been located in sub-saharan contexts so far.\n\n----\n\n1 _URL_1_\n\nAlso relevant is Timothy Insoll's [the Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa](_URL_2_) which deals with the \"chariot track\" petroglyphs across the sahara on pp 209-211.\n\nGraham Connah also talks about the petroglyphs in [African Civilizations](_URL_0_) on pp 142." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=TV-0AaV_4EsC&pg=PA142&dq=sahara+chariot+tracks&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1osYVYKBAbT8sATl0oD4DA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://afriques.revues.org/1145", "https://books.google.com/books?id=frC8SAu9QxQC&pg=PA209&dq=sahara+chariot+tracks&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1osYVYKBAbT8sATl0oD4DA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dmrlwnf", "dmrobyx" ], "score": [ 1276, 19 ], "text": [ "Essentially, Pol Pot's (and his CPK Center circle of powerholders') aim was to make what Chinese communists had attempted before them:a\"great leap forward\", meaning a forced, sped-up transition ~~of an agrarian society into an industrialized one.~~ into an agrarian state that would yield enough goods to be self-sufficient. Industry was supposed to be just existant to support agriculture. \n\nA main, if not the biggest, influence of Khmer Rouge ideology was Maoism. This can be seen from the way the Khmer Rouge implemented production plans that were to be achieved and rigorously enforced. The Khmer propaganda even copied Chinese rhetoric, stating that their \"workers are engaged in an unceasing offensive aimed \nat a very spectacular Great Leap Forward. \" [1]\n\nThat ideology, for the Red Khmer, came at a very high cost: Being an economy that relied heavily on rice production and export, the Khmers first aim was to establish that sector as their base of national self-sufficiency. This part of their ideology, however was rooted in economic tradition, as well as nationalism [2]\n\nThe consequence of this trail of thought, paired with a strong anti-intellectualism [3] was that Cambodia was to be transformed into an agrarian economy (even more than before) by expelling the 'bourgeoise' class from the cities into the rural areas and forcing them to work in the fields, leaving a massive shortage of employees/workers for the industrial sector. In addition, the Khmer dismantled the already existing industrial sector to free up work force. \n\nSo basically, this Endgame of the Khmer Rouge was to create a self-sufficient at the core communist nation (but with many influences outside of communist ideology, such as nationalism, khmer traditions, and some others), with the main source of income being an excessive production of rice. The revenue from their exports was then to be used to start and further industrialization. [4] \n\nHowever, due to their genocidal persecution of all kinds of minorities, as well as an Infrastrukture incapable of supporting the massive extensionnof farming rice, yields, and thus money, were usually scarce and it didn't really come to much economic growth under the Khmer Rouge. \n\nAnother factor, which i left out here, because i don't have sufficient sources, is the economic burden of constant war with Vietnam. \n\n[1] Radio phnom penh Broadcast, quoted in: Ponchaud, François: \nCambodia. Year Zero, New York 1977, p. 109\n[2]rice: Etcheson, Craig: The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, Boulder 1984, p. 29; nationalism: Etcheson, p. 52.\n[3] Jackson, Karl: The Ideology of \nTotal Revolution, in: Jackson, Karl (Ed. ): Cambodia 1975-1978. Rendezvous with Death, Princeton 1989, p. 71.\n[4]Chandler, David: Brother Number One. A Political Biography of Pol Pot, Boulder 1999, p. 116.\n\nHope this helped.\n\nEDIT: I rephrased my first paragraph after the many input comments, correcting a mistake concerning the focus on agriculture. Sorry for any misconceptions prior to the edit.", "Was there any history of the Khmer people turning on each other, or stoking long-term resentments before the revolution? It seems unthinkable that they would inflict such cruelty against their own people without a precedent. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dq9a61s", "dq9d0kp", "dq9h2jc", "dq9idls" ], "score": [ 54, 22, 401, 51 ], "text": [ "Follow up question, did the prisoners affect the gender ratio and female population among the indigenous peoples of Australia? ", "Follow up question, when women were shipped over for the first time, what infrastructure and aspects of daily life had to change? ", "The first fleet of convicts to Australia in 1788 was very much designed to be the foundation of a workable, on-going colony. Governor Philip asked for a very specific and particular set of convicts to come to Sydney, and he wanted a proportion of females for a variety of reasons. Mind you, officers on the journey being able to trade rum for sexual favours from female convicts (which occurred) was *not* what he had in mind. Neither were the orgiastic scenes on the first night people were let off the ships in Sydney Cove. \n\nInstead, he wanted young-ish women who were strong and capable of working - the huge majority of the women were between the ages of 16-35. However, what survives of records of women on the first fleet is that more than half the women were recorded as domestic servants, while other common trades of women on the First Fleet include milliners, glove-makers, shoe-binders and oyster-sellers (according to Robert Hughes, this was basically a fairly accurate overview of the jobs available to working class women at the time). 14 women were recorded as 'unemployed', and some of these may have been prostitutes, but prostitution itself was not a transportable offense - these women had been sentenced for crimes like theft and fraud. \n\nThat said, Sydney in the late 18th century was a very male-dominated place, and it still had quite skewed gender ratios in the late 19th century (indeed, the first year in which the Australian Bureau of Statistics records more women than men is *1979*). Of the 11 ships in the First Fleet, 4 were carrying female prisoners. Of the 780 convicts, 193 were female. Additionally, the administrative presence that sailed to Sydney - seamen, military men, administrators, etc - comprised an additional half a thousand or so (who brought with them 46 women and children, one of whom passed away and nine more of whom were born en route). This means that the First Fleet was only about 15 percent female. Broadly similar ratios were present on the Second Fleet in 1789 and the Third Fleet in 1791.\n\nIn terms of the colony overcoming this and getting back to a balanced gender ratio, this took some time, and basically relied on the ability of the female population of white Australia to outcompete the skewed ratio of convicts by pumping out babies, as it were. Free settlers started arriving in Australia from 1792, and towns established by free settlers had somewhat more normal demographics (e.g., Adelaide in South Australia was founded in 1836, and was based upon eight ships' worth of free settlers who were (allegedly) healthy and of good moral character who were given free passage to Australia), but were still quite male-dominated.\n\nAccording to the 1828 census of New South Wales - the first full census of the colony - of the 36,598 people in Australia at that point, only 24.5% of people in New South Wales were female. Additionally, only 23.8% had been born in the colony; presumably that free-born quarter of the population played a role in the gender ratio becoming somewhat less skewed. Later, once the Australian colony was somewhat more established and free settlers and Australian born people started to be the dominant presence in the colony rather than convicts, the gender ratios began to normalise. \n\nBut very slowly. Convicts were transported to Australia up until 1868, though the transportation of convicts became rarer after the 1830s. But even after that - partly because of all the men who had come to Australia as solo free settlers to try their luck in gold rushes - there was still something of a gender imbalance in New South Wales in 1891, when official records reported 594,448 men, and 515,350 women. And it actually wasn't until 1979 that you get a census year where the Australian Bureau of Statistics records more women than men in Australia, though the difference between the number of men and women in Australia was relatively small by World War I.\n\n(Edit: you should also read /u/coolmatt69number1fan's post below, which elaborates on gender ratios amongst Australian free settlers in the 19th century in much more detail than I do here)\n\nSources: \n\n* Robert Hughes, 1985, *The Fatal Shore*\n\n* Thomas Keneally, 2009, *Australians: From Origins To Eureka*\n\n* [First Fleet Online at the University of Wollongong](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014, *Australian Historical Population Statistics*](_URL_0_)", "The gender ratio was skewed in favour of males for a very long time, but this didn't inhibit the development of the colony because labour/settlers were primarily sourced from elsewhere through various means.\n\nFirstly, penal transportation only ended in 1868, but it had dropped off in the late 1820's/early 1830's anyway, by which point migration, either free or indentured, became the dominant source of people. The initial settlement was dependent upon convict labour, but it didn't just end there. \n\nBut immigration didn't solve the gender imbalance, either - for example, in 1867, arrivals in Victoria amounted to 27,242 - 18,941 males and 8,328 females. Worse yet, many of the women who migrated were already married and arriving with ther husbands, so they didn't offer much in the way of prospects for local men. The women who migrated individually were generally young, unmarried, and primarily employed as domestic servants. Their status as domestic servants made them less likely to get married until they were older, as it wasn't to the advantage of their employers to have them marry and leave. Apart from the obvious fact that women at the time didn't have nearly the autonomy of men, Australia was sold as a land of opportunity where a man could work his way to prosperity and independence, owning his own land, etc, a life path that was mostly closed to women.\n\nThe Australian colonies were acutely aware that they couldn't grow of their own accord. Around the time that transportation began dying down, most of them organised their own assisted migration programs. Essentially, recruiters/advertisers would try to entice people in England, Scotland, Wales, and to a lesser extent Ireland, to migrate to Australia with their passage paid. This along with unassisted migration (which, while also dominated by those previous sources, also included sizeable contingents of Germans and other non-English speaking European peoples) essentially kept the colonies afloat despite the gender imbalance.\n\nSome colonies also had additional ways of attracting immigrants. For example, Victoria had a land selection program where pretty much anyone with the money could rent-to-buy farmland from the crown for relatively affordable prices. Victoria itself was such an attractive destination for migrants that 77% of migrants were unassisted, compared to 30% or less in other colonies such as NSW and Queensland.\n\nAs an example of how this gender imbalance would manifest - Thomas Hird was a land selecting farmer in the northern Victorian Gannawarra farming region. He had immigrated to Australia in 1872, aged 15, and by 1877 his father had bought him his own farmland. Thomas became a very rich farmer, prominent in his local community, yet he didn't marry until 1895, aged 38. The woman he married was *23*, which is significant because she was the Australian-born daughter of settlers who had arrived in Gannawarra right around the time that Thomas and his family had. Thomas had worked his way up from being given his own plot of unworked land to being a prominent and wealthy sheep farmer & community leader, having enjoyed that status since his mid-late 20's, yet even he didn't get married until he was almost 40. By the time he got married, the ratio had become less pronounced (for example, it was about 1.3:1 in Castlemaine, also in the north of Victoria), but during his early years working his land it would have been quite a bit worse. It's reasonable to assume that less fortunate men in the community would have had even more difficulties finding a wife.\n\nThe social problems with the gender ratio can be seen in a lot of the anti-Chinese sentiment in the 19th century, especially during the gold rush - the Chinese were 'stealing jobs', but right up there with that concern was that they were 'stealing *women.*' But in terms of pure economic development, it wasn't much of a problem due to immigration. Immigration was hardly uniform across the years, having up and down periods, but over the decades it was the primary driver of population increase.\n\nBy the time of federation, the gender imbalance was regularising, but was still pronounced - 1,977,928 males and 1,795,873 females in 1911.\n\nSources: \n\n1911 Census\n\nThe Argus, 12 June 1868\n\n\n\nRobin Haines and Ralph Shlomowitz, ‘Immigration from the United Kingdom to Colonial Australia: A Statistical Analysis’, Journal of Australian Studies, 16/32 (1993), 43-52.\n\nRichards, Eric, ‘How Did Poor People Emigrate from the British Isles to Australia in the Nineteenth Century?’, Journal of British Studies, 32/3 (1993), 250-279.\n\nFahey, Charles, ‘The Free Selector’s Landscape: Moulding the Victorian Farming Districts, 1870-1915’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Design Landscapes, 31/2 (2011), 97-108.\n\nFahey, Charles, ‘The Wealth of Farmers: A Victorian Regional Study 1879-1901’, Historical Studies, 21/82 (1984), 29-51.\n\nPatricia Grimshaw, et al., Families in Colonial Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985).\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3105.0.65.0012014?OpenDocument", "http://firstfleet.uow.edu.au/objectv.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbyzwl3", "cbz2d3k", "cc0178v" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Please clarify, your question doesn't make any sense to me.", "presumably you're asking if the English word \"orange\" first referred to the colour or the fruit, and not whether the colour orange existed somewhere (e.g. in a flower, on a lizard) before the first orange tree grew. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it was the fruit: _URL_0_", "According to Chamber's *Dictionary of Etymology*, the English word *orange* denoting the fruit entered the language first (around the year 1380 we see *orenge*) which via Old French and Latin come from Arabic *nāranj* (from Persian *nārang*), ultimately from Sanskrit *nārāngas* \"orange tree\". The English word \"orange\" refering to the color is first recorded in 1542, originally in attributive use, i.e *orange hue*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ecric5u", "ecrk4hp" ], "score": [ 27, 13 ], "text": [ "This is a quirk of the US federal government that's fairly recent. You see, before the early 1980s, the Government continued to operate in the absence of a budget. (The act that creates the national park system, for example, doesn't contemplate its closure just because the Congress can't pass a budget on time.) But there's also something called the Antideficiency Act, which bans the federal government from spending money that hasn't been budgeted. Carter's attorney general, Civiletti, chose to interpret the existing Antideficiency Act statute as the controlling one, so, no budget, no operations except for \"essential\" employees. \n\n(In theory, Congress could permanently ban shutdowns by revising the Antideficiency Act to automatically renew previous appropriation levels in the absence of a budget, but that's a tangent. Likewise, a new attorney general could issue an opinion saying that the previous rule controls, because the legality of the shutdowns has never been tested by a court.)\n\nAnyway, the widespread misery that a shutdown causes means it was weaponized as a political tactic by the hard right, something not possible in other types of governments. (Famously, the Clinton Administration shutdowns in 1995-6 were caused by Speaker Newt Gingrich's intransigence over social programs.) In the Parliament of the UK, a failure to pass a budget bill results in a general election, full stop, and the last year's budget is used automatically, so there is no such thing as a shutdown. ", "I can't comment on America, but in Britain, no it hasn't happened, because the way the government worked was different.\n\nIn the US system, the government is split into different parts that must cooperate in order to function. If they can't agree, there's no funding for the government.\n\nThe UK government does not have different wings of government in the same sense as the American one does. It does have a seperate judiciary, but there's no split between executive and legislature, and since the early 20th century the Parliament Act allows the House of Commons to ignore the House of Lords with the government's permission. \n\nThus, there's no situation comparable to America, where different parties might control different parts of the government.\nIf the Prime Minister ever lot a majority in the House of Commons, then MPs could vote for a Motion of No Confidence, forcing an election. Certain votes were considered \"Confidence issues\", which means if the government lost them, it's like a vote of No Confidence. This included funding bills. Thus, if a Prime Minister ever failed to pass funding for that year's government, there would be an election to create a new government which can pass a Budget.\n\n(Historically. It's a little different now due to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, but this is how it worked for most of the 20th century.)\n\nA number of governments have fallen to Votes of No Confidence, but this rarely occurs during a Majority government; it would require politicians to vote against their own party, and if they are unhappy with their leader, they have historically preferred to vote for a new leader and keep power as the majority party (something that's much more difficult in America; Republican Congressmen can't easily replace a Republican President, etc.)\n\nIn the 20th century, there were three times a government lost a vote of No Confidence, but none of them were over Finance Bills. They were all Minority governments. Two were relying on third parties (the Liberals) to prop them up, and collapsed when the Liberal party pulled its support. The other one collapsed almost immediately as they didn't have a third party's support.\n\nUnlike the 20th century, in the 19th century, there were a few times when governments with working majorities lost votes of No Confidence (the last time was in 1895), due to division within the government over certain issues. Inability to pass Finance Bills and fund the government was rare, but did happen in 1885, forcing the resignation of the Liberal government and the coming to power of a new Conservative government.\n\nTldr; The way the British political system worked historically meant that if a government was ever unable to pass a funding bill, there would be an election. As the government only needs to control one House to pass a Finance Bill, this hasn't happened since the 19th century, and even then it was rare." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ehsgq4c" ], "score": [ 24 ], "text": [ "There is no evidence that dinosaur bones gave rise to or are the reason why people have believed in dragons. That is merely speculation, but it is typical of the type of speculation that is commonly asserted to explain supernatural beings: British fairies are a memory of small inhabitants before more modern British people arrived; trolls are cultural memories of encounters with Neanderthals; mermaids are misunderstood observations of manatees, etc. \n\nTraditions about supernatural entities do not need to be spawned by real things, and indeed, there is no evidence that folk belief even works that way. Carl Wilhlem von Sydow (1878-1952) long ago proposed that beliefs in giants were the consequence of deductive reasoning: that large rock is out of place, therefore it must have been thrown there by a really big creature; that structure seems beyond the capacity of people to build, therefore, a giant must have built it. Although I am the acolyte of von Sydow's student, I freely acknowledge that those who criticized von Sydow for this idea - put forward with no proof - are completely correct.\n\nErich von Däniken published his [Chariots of the Gods](_URL_0_) in 1968 using much the same logic, and here we see how these things unfold in much the same way but in a modern context: he looked at structures like pyramids in the Old and New Worlds, and he claimed that since \"primitive\" people could not have built them, that they must have been built be extraterrestrials. These structures did not create a belief in UFOs and little green men. Instead, the belief in these extraordinary entities was used to explain something extraordinary in our world. The process is exactly the opposite of dinosaurs caused people to believe in dragons. Instead, the process follows the opposite path: people believed in dragons and when they found fossils they interpreted them with their existing beliefs.\n\nNo doubt a fossil of some gigantic beast may have put wind in the sail of stories and beliefs in dragons but that is not say that the fossil caused people to begin imagining and then to believe in the existence of dragons. Something similar occurs with the discovery of flint arrowheads in Britain: these are often interpreted as evidence of fairies, but the reverse was not the process: people did not find the arrowheads and then \"back into\" a belief in the fairies. Tradition doesn't work that way, and tradition does not need a \"seed\" from reality upon which to grow a tradition. \n\nThere is something terribly unsatisfying about what I have written - which is why your question is asked in /r/AskHistrians about once a month: as a folklorist I can tell how the belief in dragons did not begin, but I cannot tell you how it, in fact, DID begin. That's terribly frustrating, but it is a fact. People believe in things and they pass down those beliefs and traditions to subsequent generations. We simply don't know when those beliefs started or why, and the answer to that question is no doubt buried in a murky prehistoric period, so we are not likely to be able to understand the creation process. Even with our example of the belief in extraterrestrial visitation of the earth, which emerged largely in a modern setting, there is a lot of speculation as to why this became a popular, widespread part of modern folklore. Some suggest that it is a modern adaptation of belief in fairies and elves (who leave peculiar circles, abduct people, disappear in a flash, appear as strange lights at night, and are often thought to be small and associated with the color green). But that, too, is unsatisfactory. Different factors can fold into beliefs as they pass through time and adapt to new circumstance, but this is not a chemistry experiment, and we cannot scientifically determine the parts and replicate the experiment. Humanity is too complicated and too often too opaque for that.\n\nA great source on dragon traditions from the point of view of a folklorist is Jacqueline Simpson's British Dragons (London: Batsford, 1980)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d0uo1ul", "d0uvc10", "d0uxgym" ], "score": [ 94, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "So first, lets cover the name of China. Or rather the more important question of what's \"Chinese.\" \n\nThe difficulty of this, as evidenced by quite a lot of historians is that the \"China\" we call today, really doesn't exist until the Qing Dynasty. For example, the Qin and the Han Dynasties don't actually occupy quite a large portion of what the geographical borders of China are. While the Tang at a certain point stretched all the way to the Tarim Basin.\n\nNot to mention that China itself has had quite a difficult time in determining who's \"Chinese,\" for probably the entirety of its existence. Solutions like the separating the people as \"Han and 55 Ethnic Groups\" have at best been..mildly successful. At any rate, prior to the Tang-Song usage of Zhongguo or \"中國\" was not commonly found in texts contemporary to the time until near the end of Tang.\n\nInstead we see \"hua\" or 华 used much more commonly. In other words, the notion of \"middle kingdom\" or \"zhongguo\" really doesn't exist until much later *after* the Qin Dynasty. As for \"Han\" people. This I'll probably leave to more knowledgeable members. However I will posit that the reference to \"Han-Ren\" or \"漢人\" is rather complicated considering that the idea of a \"Han Person\" most likely emerges as a reaction to the existence of the negative. That is to say, \"漢人\" probably doesn't emerge until *after* the Han Dynasty as a qualifier for identity. Though it very well may have existed if only because of the expansionist policies of the Han against the Steppe people.\n\nBut back on the notions of China. The usage of \"Hua\" or 华 are still prominent, though most prefer to use \"Huaren\" or 华人 or \"Zhongguoren\" \"中國人\" today. What's interesting though is that the Cantonese term for \"Chinese\" is \"Tong-yan\" or \"唐人,\" a direct reference to the Tang Dynasty. \n\nThe word \"China\" in English on the other hand, is an even weirder term. As \"China\" is a foreign designation from the little I've gleaned from /u/bitparity. So as far as its origins it most likely doesn't have any basis in the Qin or Han Dynasty.\n\nThe differentiation between the people and the land however I would argue, most likely begins at the end of the Tang Dynasty and solidifies itself during the Song. Considering the rather dramatic loss of territory at the end of the Tang and the Northern Song Dynasty, poetry and literature (including Maps from the Song Dynasty) indicate that there was at the very least a sentiment of irredentism. A feeling of wanting formerly lost territory (in this case by the invading Khitans and Liao People) that formerly \"belonged\" to them. As a result we see the term \"zhong-guo\" being used in much of the literature pertaining to the territory of the Song, especially in relation to the \"outer\" or \"lesser\" territories. From at least the literature there definitely was a stigma and \"Song-centric\" view that existed, perhaps due to a loss of territory, but perhaps due to specific classifications that were made during the Tang.\n\nWhich brings me to one potential reason as to the promulgation of the term \"漢人\". Though I am unable to explain the context, I am however able to provide an explanation as to its widespread use during and after the Tang. Marc Samuel Abramson in *Deep Eyes and High Noses: Constructing Ethnicity in Tang China* suggests that despite the cosmopolitan nature of Tang China, there were still many different classifications of foreigners. In the case of the Tang, this included Uighurs, Turks, Sogdians, Liao, Xiongnu, Iranians among many other cultures. Incidentally all of the aforementioned were described as distinctly different, generally uncultured and disparagingly compared to beasts. Though perhaps not entirely new as the Han described the Xiongnu as \"horse people\" and \"wild and unkempt\" with \"bad manners\" whereas the Tang applied those descriptions to other Steppe tribes, among a slew of rather unfavorable descriptions there is however a rather interesting component to this. According to Abramson, and Edward H. Schafer's *Iranian Merchants in Tang Dynasty Tales* the comparison to non-human objects also carried an implication that culture, as well as definition necessarily derived from upbringing.\n\nThat is to say that the Tang considered \"bad manners\" and culture to be a integral part of classifying what was and was not \"Han.\" Perhaps more pertinent to the point was that the nativism of claiming \"Han\" by the Tang Dynasty was most likely impossible to prove. After all a span of 4 centuries would have very much eroded lineages or at least obscured them. On the other hand, these classifications of \"Han\" by the Tang also implied that \"Chinese\" was not necessarily defined by appearance. In a few descriptions, there were people who *looked* \"Han\" but *acted* unlike what the Tang conception of \"Han\" was, implying that appearance was accompanied by culture. Likewise, Tang writings considered foreigners who acted with Tang mannerisms and culture decidedly \"Han.\" Though they may still disparage on appearance, culture seems to have played a part of it.\n\nThis classification becomes much more important by the Song Dynasty. Considering the rather insular nature of Song politics and worldview we then see the aforementioned development of the term \"Zhongguo\" or \"Middle Kingdom.\" As mentioned before, the insular feelings of the Song very much places both \"Zhongguo\" and \"Han-ren\" as important identifiers especially with regards to foreign policy as their of dealing with the Khitan and Liao tended to be colored by resent as the Song paid tribute to keep invaders from invading their territory. What we see from the tribute system and the political rhetoric advanced echoes what the Han had used to justify annual tribute to the Xiongnu during the reign of Emperor Wu, which was that the \"Five Baits\" would \"pacify\" the \"barbarians.\" The Song applying that similar rhetoric towards the Northern Conquerors added a component of those tributes perhaps \"sinicizing\" the Northerners. Indeed considering that much of the lost \"Song\" lands were still administered through Chinese bureaucracy, there may have been a rationale behind the rhetoric. However because of the retention of Song bureaucracy within those conquered lands, the idea of \"Han\" culture retaining itself would lead to an affirmation that there was an innate from birth difference and cultural superiority with those who fell under the \"Han\" category.\n\nSources:\n\n1. Edward H. Schafer, *Iranian Merchants in Tang Dynasty Tales*\n\n2. Marc Samuel Abramson, *Deep Eyes and High Noses: Constructing Ethnicity in Tang China*\n\n3. Michael Nylan *The Rhetoric of \"Empire\" in the Classical Era in China*\n\n4. Paul S. Ropp *China in World History*\n\n5. Assorted Song Dynasty Era Maps that were photographed.\n", "The etymology of China is far from settled. According to the Oxford English Dictionary:\n\n > Not a Chinese name, but found in Sanskrit as *Chīna* about the Christian era, and in various modified forms employed by other Asiatic peoples. In Marco Polo *Chin*, in Barbosa (1516) and Garcia de Orta (1563) *China*. So in English in Eden 1555. (The origin of the name is still a matter of debate. See *Babylonian & Or. Recd.* I. Nos. 3 and 11.)\n\nThere is reason to be skeptical about the oft-repeated derivation of China from Qín 秦, the first unified imperial dynasty of China. According to Nicholas Ostler in *Empires of the Word* (2005), the Sanskrit *Cīna* चीन \"applied mainly to the area of Tibet, though also on occasions included Assam and Burma (Sircar 1971: 104–5). China as a whole was known to the Indians as *Mahācīna*, 'Great China'\".\n\nSircar, D. C. (1971), *Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India*, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.", "I have also heard that the name \"Zhongguo\" didn't actually originate as meaning \"middle kingdom,\" the derivation that's commonly (traditionally?) attributed to it. Is that true? Can anyone speak to the source and diffusion of the name, as well as those of the current popular understanding of it as \"middle kingdom\"? This may be a better question for another subreddit, but I like this one for its rigorous standards for answers." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dfgvl54" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "So one reason would be the fact that those doing the initial colonising/land grabbing were Companies. Take the early colonies in America for instance: there were two different Virginia Companies which had the crown' s permission to go and claim land in the virgin territory. These companies were chartered by James I but they were owned by private stock holders. So they were interested in the commercial value of the land, not in setting themselves up as New World aristocracy." ] }

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