As far as I can understand, The Age of Enlightenment began in Europe after the Renaissance. The Renaissance according to my understanding was a period of time where many of the arts (and the sciences) were reborn, and then the enlightenment happened and after that the industrial revolution, etc etc.
Why it didn't happen 2000~ years ago? I mean as far as I can understand the technological different of the year 1700 wasn't that ahead of this in the year 100.
1 Answers 2020-02-01
Happy Black History Month! This month we'll be partnering with /r/BlackPeopleTwitter in a celebration of Black history, Black historians, and significant events and people in American history. Throughout the month, we'll be releasing special editions of our weekly digest highlighting questions and answers relevant to the month (thanks, /u/gankom!) and doing occasional special features. First up, the history of Black History Month!
Through congressional acts, the United States has designated 9 commemorative months:
Unlike the other commemorative months brought to the attention of Congress by organizations and groups, African American History Month (also officially known as Black History Month) was shepherded into existence by the work of one historian, Dr. Carter G. Woodson. He announced the first Negro History Week in mid-February 1926, a week selected to hit the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth on February 12 and Frederick Douglass’ on February 14. The week was celebrated in various ways across the county for decades, culminating in a group of college students from Kent University advocating for federal recognition in 1970. In the initial declaration, President Ford said:
With the growth of the civil rights movement has come a healthy awareness on the part of all of us of achievements that have too long been obscured and unsung. Emphasis on these achievements in our schools and colleges and in daily community life places in timely perspective the benefits of working together as brothers and sisters regardless of race, religion or national origin for the general well-being of all our society.
So, that, in a nutshell, is the history of Black History Month: A Black historian established a week of commemoration in 1924. The idea spread, leading to a federal recognition in 1970 and expansion into an official commencement month in 1975. However, this is Ask Historians, where we’re never content to give a 2000 character answer when there’s a 10,000 character answer waiting in the wings. Eventually, we’ll get to Dr. Woodson’s work, but first, some context setting.
Large, collective, organized celebrations by Black Americans have been a part of American history for centuries. Before the Civil War, free Black Americans routinely held rallies and conventions to both advocate for liberty for enslaved people and celebrate their communities. On June 19th, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation became official, Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas. His arrival, in effect, meant all remaining enslaved people were free, the last of the traitor resistance was squelched, and the Civil War was officially, officially over. Juneteenth celebrations were, and are, held across the country to memorialize the date.
Which is to say, by the time Woodson brought about Negro History Week, there was a solid foundation for celebrating Black Americans’ community and milestones. Without getting too much into Reconstruction (an older question on the topic if you’re interested), by the end of the 1800s, the theme of “separate but equal” had emerged in the American political and public sphere. White Americans were, in theory, fine with Black American success, as long as it was separate and apart. A 1892 Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, made the sentiment official, despite overwhelming evidence it wasn’t happening and there was no reason to think it was actually going to happen.
In most places in America, reality was closer to “separate and wildly unequal.” However, there was at least one major exception that relates to Black History Month: high schools in Washington, D.C. Due to a variety of factors and personalities, DC followed through on separate but equal and funded a Black high school at the same rate as the white high schools. While other cities and towns were more likely to lag on hygiene and construction upgrades to Black schools, DC built schools for both groups of students that were modern, clean, and well-resourced.
Meanwhile, despite the notion of “separate but equal”, graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were often passed over for jobs by white employers in their desired career fields because of racism and all it entails. This meant there was a large pool of highly educated, deeply thoughtful and talented Black adults available to staff DC’s Black high school. And this is where we find Carter Woodson in the 1910s - teaching Spanish, French, and American history to Washington DC’s Black youth at Dunbar (also known as M Street) High School.
Born in 1875, his parents were born in slavery and became sharecroppers following the Civil War. He and his siblings worked the land and it took until his 20s to earn his high school diploma. He graduated from Berea College with a degree in teaching and administration and worked in the Philippines for several years. When he returned to the states, he was hired at Dunbar. The historical record presents a few different versions of how exactly he ended up there (recruited versus applied) but Dunbar was the perfect place for an educator with his talents and vision.
He had a well-stocked classroom, a supportive and encouraging principal in Anna Julia Cooper, the freedom to teach his students about their forefathers’ and foremothers’, and a salary on par with white male teachers at other high schools. Dunbar wasn't a vocational school; the curriculum and pedagogy was focused on college preparation. This meant students studied Greek, Latin, logic and rhetoric in addition to the modern curriculum of math, science, literature, and history. Woodson focused on eliciting thoughtful but clear and accurate responses from his students when he called on them without warning (an approach sometimes referred to as Socratic Seminar and is still used, primarily in law school classrooms, today.) Students were expected to answer questions on content from any adult at any time, a skill many of the adults around them saw as essential to survival in the halls of power dominated by white adults.
In Allison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School, she writes that Woodson told his students, “if a race had no recorded history, its achievement would be forgotten and, in time, claimed by other groups.” He taught students to claim their history and they would see him become the second Black man to graduate from Harvard with a PhD. And he did it while teaching full time. He established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, the 50th anniversary of emancipation. He published the Journal of Negro History, which is still published today. He secured funds for research and document preservation. He established, nurtured, and developed Black history, establishing it as a field of study that looked at all of Black American history, not just Black Americans' connection to chattel slavery.
It's often misleading to say that one person is the founder of a particular branch of history as typically, multiple people start talking about the same topic around the same time. So, there are usually several foundational texts and authors. Black American history, though, is Woodson. His fear, a reasonable one based on history books of the era, was that absent explicit and purposeful efforts to document and lift Black American history, the sheer size and force of white American history would overwhelm it.
He left high school teaching to work at the college level and advocated for Black history and historians until his death in 1950. He published pieces on the role of Black women in maintaining Black family legacies and stories and developed historical practices for studying slave schedules and records. He chaired conferences, wrote multiple books, and changed the conversation about who counts in American education.
At this point, it's also worth highlighting another significant event in February related to Black American history: National Freedom Day. Richard R. Wright, a contemporary of Woodson, lobbied the federal government to recognize today, February 1, as a momentous day in American history. On this date in 1865, Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery in the United States.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The creation of National Freedom Day in 1948, campaigning by young people, and Black History Week lead to the formal recognition of Black History Month in 1975. In his first commemorative statement following his inauguration, President Obama marked Black History Month in 2009 by saying:
The ideals of the Founders became more real and more true for every citizen as African Americans pressed us to realize our full potential as a Nation and to uphold those ideals for all who enter into our borders and embrace the notion that we are all endowed with certain unalienable rights.
It’s a reminder that Black History Month is one of the ways America acknowledges the hard and heavy work of moving us closer to the notion of “We the people.”
3 Answers 2020-02-01
5 Answers 2020-02-01
Today:
AskHistorians is filled with questions seeking an answer. Saturday Spotlight is for answers seeking a question! It’s a place to post your original and in-depth investigation of a focused historical topic.
Posts here will be held to the same high standard as regular answers, and should mention sources or recommended reading. If you’d like to share shorter findings or discuss work in progress, Thursday Reading & Research or Friday Free-for-All are great places to do that.
So if you’re tired of waiting for someone to ask about how imperialism led to “Surfin’ Safari;” if you’ve given up hope of getting to share your complete history of the Bichon Frise in art and drama; this is your chance to shine!
1 Answers 2020-02-01
1 Answers 2020-02-01
1 Answers 2020-02-01
I'm watching Netflix's Rise of Empires Ottomans and they totally skip giving any context to why Mehmed's father (Murad II) simply retired to leave his 13 year old son in charge.
1 Answers 2020-02-01
I'm Egyptian, and currently the weather in Egypt is considered quite cold for us, especially at nights. So, I was wondering why did the ancient Egyptian paintings on tomb walls and such always depict them wearing light summer clothes or even naked? Is it because of global warming? Did the weather patterns change that drastically from those times and they didn't have winters? Sorry for the formatting.
1 Answers 2020-02-01
After all, it’s right there. Especially since there were major seafaring powers (Majapahit, Ternate, Tidore) in extremely close proximity, it seems illogical that they wouldn’t have found Australia. Do we have any documentation of potential encounters pre-Europe?
1 Answers 2020-02-01
Hi there. I am producing a podcast and this quote comes up. I am unclear from googling this for a lengthy amount of time if this is actually a quote from the infamous Watergate recordings or not, and if it is, what date or how one can find it. Can anybody help me out? I tried scanning several youtube videos of Watergate recordings but am really spending tons and tons of time for just a 10 second quote that may not even exist in this format. Thanks so much if anybody can help.
2 Answers 2020-02-01
1 Answers 2020-02-01
The high prevalence of people named Smith in Britain and its former colonies presumably attests to a large population of smiths at some point in time. Likewise, the large number of Müllers in Germany and Switzerland (also Melnik - miller - in Ukraine) would suggest that these places once had more millers than any other profession. If so, why should Britain have more Smiths than Millers, and Germany more Müllers than Schmidts?
My statistics were sourced here: https://mymodernmet.com/most-common-surnames-map/
1 Answers 2020-02-01
I don't really know any better way to ask this question, and I admit its pretty vague and airy, but to try and break down a bit I'm very used to reading about the history of Italy and that 'Italy' was really not a country or real nation state in the idealized sense at all when unification occurred, and arguably still isn't. Too divided in terms of things like language, economy, culture, history and political organisation there are major inherent issues with treating the peninsula as a singular entity with a common history and culture, that's what I feel like I hear a lot when I read historical discussion around this topic.
And yet, even still when I read about historical discussion around this subforum, and other places I presume are well informed about such things, 'Italy' still often gets used in a fairly generic and casual manner that would seem to imply a certain kind of unity shared across the different entities like Florence, the Papal States, Venice or the Kingdom of Sicily, people aren't having to constantly preface their answers with reminders about the limitation of the concept of Italy in first place. It also seems to be a concept that was well accepted among lots of people for centuries past, well before the rise of modern Italian nationalism, Shakespeare at least frequently mentions this generic notion of Italy, like this piece of dialogue from the Merchant of Venice:
You know I say nothing to him, for he understands
not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French,
nor Italian, and you will come into the court and
swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English.
He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can
converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited!
I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round
hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his
behavior every where.
The Holy Roman Empire had the Kingdom of Italy as one of its constituent parts, Barbarossa had his messy Italian campaigns, the French and Hapsburgs butted heads over the Italian wars, that kind of thing.
Would it be comparable to things like the current use of terms like 'Maghreb', 'Balkans' and 'Levant' to describe broad regions that have cultural and geographical elements that loosely bind them together? Or was Italy conceptualized as something more unified that that? I'm particularly curious about how southern Italy, Naples and Sicily, came into peoples perception of Italy since they seem to be much different from the rest of the peninsula.
1 Answers 2020-02-01
I’ve seen lots of quotes about him saying that he was “only fighting to save the Union and not abolish slavery”, but I’m curious if he was just saying that to appease the border states and privately thought he was fighting at least partially for ending slavery.
1 Answers 2020-02-01
The Conan stories are set in the Hyborian Age, which as I understand is supposed to be a semi-mythical past which existed prior to the "dawn of civilization", and the evidence of which was wiped out, surviving only in myth. It incorporates some "real" stuff, like Atlantean fables, and there are references to Arthuria too, as I recall, not to mention the Aryans.
This is fairly reflective of the common pseudo-historical thinking that is quite popular even today from known cranks like Graham Hancock. To what extent was Howard just looking to make up a fun setting for his stories, and to what extent does this reflect actual thinking and understanding that we would label today as pseudohistory/archaeology/anthropology etc?
1 Answers 2020-02-01
So in maritime Southeast Asia, I've heard that relatively advanced empires like the Srivijaya Empire and Majapahit Empire were founded, and they were able to found cities, built monuments, etc. However, the Philippines mainly consisted of very small polities consisting of not that many people, and even within those polities, control was decentralized. Is there any idea why an advanced civilization did not develop in the pre-colonial Philippines, unlike other areas of maritime southeast Asia? Was it just a coincidence, or did it have anything to do with geography or trade patterns?
2 Answers 2020-02-01
Hi, I'm a student in a rhetoric course in college, and, as we've just started the semester, the professor has been giving incredibly vague assignments to test our chops. In this case, we were told to write a five-page persuasive paper "about religion in modern conflicts in the Middle East". I'm just now starting my research, but can anyone give me some (academic) sources to get going in the right direction, as well as any essential reading on the subject? I need 15 sources minimum, so even minor sources are welcome. It's also for an uneducated audience and I'm an uneducated writer, so just the basics is appreciated. I've also got five days to do my research, so I'd prefer shorter papers over large novels.
Points I'm thinking of focusing my research on:
Thank you in advance.
EDIT: Please remember Rule 4 on this subreddit! I don't want this thread to be deleted.
2 Answers 2020-02-01
Recently I've learned from reading 1492 by Charles C Mann that's Europeans actually didnt have a technological advantage over American Civilizations, their armor was better than steel(All conquistadors switched to Incan textile armour over steel), Horses were not effective and natives adapted rapidly(Killing them in gorges, and in Meso America horses became useless as the men developed pikes and formations to trap them, after the first battle horses shock factor was gone and could no longer route Indians), and guns were less effective than bows / slings which could shoot over 100mph in the Andes. In most ways the Americas seem to be more advanced than the old world.
Was it really just Germs and Luck that lead to the overwhelming victories Spain had in the New World?
1 Answers 2020-01-31
In fiction you have a lot of warriors that are depicted fighting on the front lines in multiple battles, killing dozens of people each time. I wonder how much this actually happened in real life. I feel like arrows, fatigue, pure number of multi-directional opponents, and just luck, would make it impossible for even the most skilled warriors to survive for long. Were there any reputable sources confirming warriors that fought many battles and defeated hundreds of opponents? Also I am not talking about modern warfare with guns.
1 Answers 2020-01-31
In history's totalitarian regimes (i.e. Nazi Germany and USSR), how much would an average person be punished for criticizing the government?
Would it depend on the prominence of the protestor or the degree of protest?
Is it similar to what happens today in Russia?
2 Answers 2020-01-31
Hello! Im not sure if this is the best place to be asking, but I will try anyways. Im going to making a tabletop RPG campaign set in a post apocalyptic post WWI setting, after a deadly zombie outbreak began only a few months after the war ended. Obviously, im going to need a list of bullets that were used in civilian/military weapons. If you could also tell me what those bullets were used in (bolt rifles, LMG's, revolvers, etc) I would greatly appreciate it. The setting would be in the ruins of London.
To narrow it down further: I dont need every service round, I really just need the most common ones. I also dont need every civilain bullet. Again, just the most common ones. Any weapons development ended (weapons development as in the invention of new cartridges and guns) ended in roughly of June 1919 (when the outbreak really began to pick up steam and start to affect the world as a whole).
If this is not the appropriate place to ask, I apologize. Simply tell me, and I will take this down. If I need to narrow this down further, or clarify some things, please simply ask, and I will do my best to do so. Thanks in advance.
Footnote: American weaponry would still be available to the survivors of the United Kingdom as during the later stages of the infection (the outbreak began in the U.S) the U.S basically evacuated to the U.K, bringing a majority of its surviving military and equipment with them.
2 Answers 2020-01-31
I read somewhere that it goes back to the Christian obsession with "pure blood" during the Reconquest of Spain, like proving that there were no Moors or Jews in your family history. Another source said it goes back further, to the Visigoths. Thank you in advance for any responses!
1 Answers 2020-01-31
Hi, I’m an undergrad interested in Atlantic history. I’d like to pursue more formal research projects before grad school but I can’t leave the US due to my immigration status. What libraries and archives would you recommend?
1 Answers 2020-01-31
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It seems to me that with British ability to take any point on land and with their naval supremacy, they’d be able to capture any munitions factories on land and prevent any smuggling of arms by sea.
1 Answers 2020-01-31