Hello everyone,
With what's happening around COVID-19/Coronavirus/SARS-COV-2 continuing to occupy quite a lot of minds, we have noticed a decided uptick in questions related to pandemics and how they have been responded to historically. We already have a previous recent megathread on the topic with some great answers; I suspect this one won't be the last!
As with previous Megathreads, keep in mind that like an AMA, top level posts should be questions in their own right. However, while we do have flairs with specialities related to this topic, we do not have a dedicated panel on this topic, so anyone can answer the questions, as long as that answer meets our standards of course (see here for an explanation of our rules)!
Additionally, this thread is for historical, pre-2000, questions about pandemics, so we ask that discussion or debate about current responses to COVID-19 be directed to a more appropriate sub, as they will be removed from here.
From our perspective as historians, we feel it is important to stress that we can learn history, but we cannot learn simple lessons from it. Sure, history can teach some things by example that science can teach by experiment, like the merits of quarantine. But when we look at the big picture stuff, that notion goes out the window.
Fundamental to the modern study of history is the concept of difference, which the 19th century German historian Leopold Ranke famously expressed with the words "every age is immediate to God." What that means is that every historical event, process, society and system must be understood on its own terms. Everything has a unique context and must develop in ways that are specific to that context. The American, French and Russian Revolutions are all political revolutions, but their causes, course and consequences are completely different; how would we determine on the basis of these examples "what happens in a revolution"? As Max Weber argued, when we generalise about historical phenomena like "feudalism" or "family" or "revolution" or "pandemic" we are not observing the universal laws of history at work but creating patterns out of random facts by applying the conceptual frameworks we are interested in. This effort to make sense of things is important, but it has limits. If we are too eager to make many things into examples of one Thing, we're likely to gloss over crucial differences. If we look too hard for similar causes and outcomes we will be up to our necks in onfirmation bias, ignoring what the sources are really telling us.
What this means in practice is that historians usually don't presume to know what the next X will look like based on past examples of X. Too much depends on a context that has never been seen before. At the same time, too much of what we know about past cases depends on factors that were only relevant in those cases and do not apply in the here and now. Trying to separate the generally applicable from the unique and contingent is often simply not possible. Unfortunately, the extent to which the Plague of Athens, the Black Death and the Spanish Flu can teach us about the development and long-term effects of a pandemic in the modern world is extremely limited.
That said, people in the ancient world or the early modern world are still recognisably people, and we can recognise parts of ourselves in them. While we can't easily extrapolate from historical events to the present, it can be useful to look at the past as a guide to what about a current situation is uniquely 2020 and what is shared with other events. History is the story of us. We experience time as a progression of events; we come to perceive that there was a time before us. That people lived before us, some of whom we know, others that are strange. Our world is built on the things that they have said and done, and their story is our story. It is a story we want to know. Not necessarily for any particular practical purpose, although there can be practical applications of historical research and analysis, but because we want to know more about ourselves, how we and our world became as we are.
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The painting in question can be viewed here, and very clearly depicts a man and a woman indoors, clothed but with their bottoms hitched up to reveal their genitals. A third companion remains covered. What's with this?
The painting is part of a series of all 12 months of the year from a prayer book called Très Riches Heures painted by the Limbourg brothers for a Duke in France from 1412 to 1416.
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Chilean tactics in this war were innovative for their time, including amphibious landings, reliance on naval resupply, and fast-paced combined-arms warfare.
Did Chilean strategists come up with these ideas "on the fly", or were they planned ahead of time? Was there any major commanders responsible for seeing these tactics brought to effect? How did foreign militaries react to (or learn from) the successes of Chile's strategies in this war?
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I'm not sure if this belongs here, I tried posting on r/history first and it got removed and told me to come here, so have some sympathy... I’m an undergrad in college and I want to go to grad school... And I feel like I want to focus on colonialism and neocolonialism. I was just wondering what you guys thought some of the understudied areas of the discipline are and what to read about. I’m not asking you to find my focus, just looking for some ideas and inspiration... I appreciate it!
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As I've been self-isolating, I've been watching a ton of movies, and a lot of them happen to have medieval towns in Europe as their backdrop. I've been wondering a lot about how these cities were built, mostly the physical infrastructure and erecting of buildings.
So something I've noticed is that a lot of towns tend to have a very similar aesthetic across the board, or at least all the buildings seem to be made of the same materials. You know what I mean; the wood exoskeletons of the Tudor style, the stucco of cities like those used in Game of Thrones, the light walls and red/blue roofs of Mediterranean coastal cities.
I know in their infancy, villages were made up of houses that families built themselves, grouped closer and closer together as cities grew. And I know that at some point, they grew into cities as we know them today; relatively uniform city blocks, roads, plazas, rows of connected buildings separated only by internal walls. But how did this happen? Were they all built at the same time? Was there purposeful city planning going on? Did they build buildings one at a time, but always out of similar materials?
Then once those buildings were built, did people just start to buy/rent them? Were they all empty until tenants came in? Were there medieval zoning laws?
If you need more specific questions, let me know! I hope I explained my confusion well enough.
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No, not talking about the jelly donut misconception (though if you want to comment on it for additional context, go for it.) I mean, why did call himself a Berliner? What is the historical context? If it was about solidarity, it would make sense to say general things about supporting Berlin during the Cold War, but instead, he effectively said he was a citizen of Berlin. Did he have a personal connection to the city? Do we know who came up with the idea of him saying this? Did he or his admin know how well the people would respond or understand why he said?
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Hello all, I've checked the subreddit rules and can't see anything against this so hopefully it is in fact allowed. I've recently got back into Napoleonic stuff and am looking to expand my book collection amid a quarantine. I'm interested in military history but I can't find any good books on this topic in regards to the Napoleonic Wars. I'm currently reading "The Spanish Ulcer: The War in the Peninsular" by David Gates so anything in a similar vain would be appreciated. Thanks!
1 Answers 2020-03-25
Dear fellow redditors
I have got this one picture of my great grandfather who was a german soldier in WW2 wearing a uniform. However I don't know anything about his service like what branch he was in, what rank he had and so on. If you know your way around german WW2 uniforms and want to share some of your knowledge with me, please contact me :)
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From what I manage to understand, Georgia by 1220 was amassing troops to join the 5th crusade when the mongol scouting mission led by Jebe passed by and destroyed all these troops, but why did Georgia even agree to join a crusade? Wasn't Georgia an orthodox christian country at the time (if not, when did that change?)? Shouldn't they be pissed at the Catholic Church after the 4th Crusade? What did the Pope offer George IV to convince him to join (or what was the georgian king expecting to gain by joining)?
All the information I managed to find on places like Wikipedia about the topic is very much on the basic level.
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Titanic took 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink. To compare to other maritime disasters of that era, the Lusitania took around 20 minutes. The Empress of Ireland took 14 minutes. Titanic's sister ship, Britannic, took an hour.
After Titanic sank, it still took the Carpathia well over an hour to arrive. All in all, from the collision with the iceberg to the arrival of the Carpathia, it was over 4 hours, well beyond the mere minutes other comparable ships took to sink. What led to this belief that ships would be ready and waiting for rescue when that was clearly not the case?
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Greetings. There is a passage in the Book of Acts where Paul escapes torture because they discover he is a roman citizen and has rights. This made me think: how could someone prove their citizenship? How did he prove he was a roman citizen? He said he was from birth, and the magistrate who was talking to him said that he himself bought it with a lot of gold, but, how could you prove your citizenship?
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Jeannette Rankin was elected in US Congress in 1917, while the Nineteenth Amendment who gave women the right to vote, passed on 1919, and was adopted on 1920.
My question is: Did Jeannette Rankin not vote for herself?
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Thinking about pursing a career in history but dont really understand what kind of work there is to be done. Outside of teaching, working in museums what are some ways historians make an income or a living?
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So, I've been told that before the era of full plate armor, you would almost always want to go into battle with a shield, yet there is a lot of imagery of medieval soldiers with huge two handed pikes and no shield in sight. Were these formations only used later with plate armor, did they have shields or pavises or something, or did they just head out without shields?
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It may sound a silly question but given their lenghts of 18-22 feet ive never understood how a sarissa could be used offensively. I understand to some degree the hammer and anvil tactic wherein the companion cav would hammer the foe onto the anvil of the spears but..... At 22 ft how does one thrust this spear? How is there any momentum behind it? Short of a large horse running at full tilt towards the iron spike and being impaled by its own force i just dont get it how it works as a weapon
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