By "point of reference" I mean a historic date that had enough significance to basic a calendar. Where there multiple calendars or a BC standardized calendar?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
7 Answers 2019-09-15
I know that the Battles of Khalkhin Gol (1939) was a complete defeat for the Japanese Empire, and they had a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union signed in 1941, but it seems like a good option.
1 Answers 2019-09-15
At the battle of Poitiers the Black Prince was able to successfully defeat the French forces there in addition to capturing the King of France, John II.
What I don’t understand is why the English decided to ransom the king back to the French. Surely with the French king they could demand the surrender of the French as a whole. It’s not like the English had done poorly prior either to warrant the French believing this was just a fluke. The English had made gains in Brittany, Calais and Gascony.
I’m assuming that the situation wasn’t as simple as I’m making it out to be, but that’s why I’m here to ask you guys.
1 Answers 2019-09-15
28 Answers 2019-09-15
Can someone present some of the basic aspects and premises of this problem?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
1 Answers 2019-09-15
1 Answers 2019-09-15
i really want to dive deep studying history, so i decided to start from the beginning, but i really dont know from where actually to begin
which books are the best to read, if i am barely in touch with the topic and where to continue afterwards, to really study in depth?
2 Answers 2019-09-15
To encompass as many answers as possible, what kind of interactions did Romans throughout their history say about the Saharan desert?
Was it well known and explored? Or too far from the Med to be a serious barrier to places farther south?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
It's 1991 and I just bought a house in Sarajevo, Bosnia with a typical mortgage through a retail bank. When the Bosnian War breaks out, the city is under siege for years. While most of my days are spent huddled inside concerned with food and gunfire, I haven't been able to send or receive any mail in months and the local bank branch is closed. The phones aren't working so I am ultimately unable to make any contact with the bank that issued my mortgage. Miraculously, I survive the war. As normalcy eventually sets in, would I be foreclosed on for missing years of mortgage payments? How were mortgage payments, outstanding debts, and other financial administration issues handled during and after the Bosnian War?
Edit: some clarification to perhaps help aid the answering:
assume I've sheltered in place, the house is not destroyed or abandoned.
assume I'm able to quickly resume mortgage payments, as well as make up some of the missed payments as soon as the war ends
One could reasonably answer this question with "well it depends on the terms of the mortgage" but as this is /r/askhistorians, I'm really asking what actually happened to most people in similar situations at this time. Answers describing mortgage debt during other 20th century wars may also be relevant.
1 Answers 2019-09-15
I always hear about HRE being a loose confederation of minor kingdoms (for lack of a better word). But wasn't middle age France much the same? Strong dukes often controlling the king? How did the HRE and medieval France differ and how where they same? Why did the HRE becomes a looser confederation of minor kingdoms than France?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
Most everyone alive today is aware that it's 2019 according to the Gregorian Calendar. Did the average French farmer in 1400 know or care that it was 1400 (according to the Julian calendar I think at this point)? Or was it more educated people who were aware or interested in such things?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
Because the New York state legislator could not decide how to choose electors, and two electors from both Virginia and Maryland abstained from voting, does this mean that technically George Washington’s election was not, in fact, unanimous?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
Watching movies and such where ships are brought along side of each other or chase each other down. How exactly is this accomplished if the wind is not in the ship’s favor? For example, the tv show Horatio Hornblower has a situation where a “fire ship” is sent into the British harbor at Gibraltar, how exactly is it propelled? If the wind decided to stop at that moment I guess the ship would just be dead in the water?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
Had ideas resembling evolution been posited before, either in the same era Darwin, or much earlier?
1 Answers 2019-09-15
1 Answers 2019-09-15
Not like totally absorb it of course, but more along the lines of the later personal union that Scotland and England had during the period before the Acts of Union. All I know is that were was a treaty signed at Haddington, but I don't know if it included a thing like Mary I's Treaty with Spain disallowing a union.
Any info is appreciated, I'm super curious about this.
1 Answers 2019-09-14
1 Answers 2019-09-14
Background and Knowledge: On Quora I came across some pretty bad answers from people of Afrikaner nationalist mindset (their account having disparaging remarks on Bantu people) that basically framed Bantu's as "colonists" like the British (who are also disliked by Afrikaner Nationalists) that invaded South Africa, which was meant for "white people" and that they were given rights despite that.
The problem is that doing research on the matter from sources done during the Apartheid (many claim revisionism after) the anthropology at the time ( DW Phillipson for instance) has Iron Age cultures of the Bantu present in the Limpopo at the 11th century as a late date. Likewise, the early laws and commissions that pertained to Bantu were all referred to as "Native", so it's obvious an "immigrant" perspective wasn't the standard view. This seems to be due to conflating the Cape region, the southwest, with the Southeast. While Azania (another area disputed by the same types I'ved seen) wasn't always thought to be a Bantu areas, metallurgy Archaeology assoicates Bantu people with habitation in the area since 1000 A.D
Finally, the matter of how they came into the Union. This timeline indicates that, like the Boers, Zulu and Xhosa populations were integrated as a result of warfare. The Zulu for instance in 1897 were annexed into Natal, though i couldn't find specifics on the Xhosa outside of being defeated in warfare somewhat after that.
What I do know is that this doesn't line up with "mass immigration" like with the Mfecane, which was well before the Union. This dispersal was more consequential, according to this graph, the Xhosa were only peripheral to the migrations and were a border against the chaos. They were already adjacent to Cape colony prior to this.
The only "migration" that this could be speaking would be movements from Bantu reserve spaces to Urban white areas AFTER being annexed or absorbed and prior to Land Acts being inforced. The only instances that really comes to mind are the Urban populations prior to translocation, as the trend prior to 1913 was either Blacks owning their own land and expanding ownership or renting land from whites.
And on the issue of "rights", technically from what I've read the logic of reserves and relocation to Bantustans were argued to maintain self-rule for Bantus at the time, the reality was that with the multiple "Native laws" done by the government and the laws made around it the migration of wage labour of Bantus due their lands being poor for extensive farming that they were used to, there wasn't much effort at all following those laws to maintain "self rule". They were really only allowed to make their own laws for their own lands, but that overshadowed the greater imbalance of control between the local and larger government.
Question: Does contemporary literature on events and laws match with my impression of Bantus being annexed into the Union versus simply "migrating" and designated as such?
1 Answers 2019-09-14
So, my french class has a cultural festival coming up at the end of October and our class was selected to talk about Lebanon. I'd like to talk about it's folklore, mythology and stuff, but I can't find much from reliable sources. So I'd like to ask: what are some myths, legends and mystical creatures from Lebanon? Also, what is their relationship with Saint George like? From what I read, his influence was spread from there, but I'm not sure how accurate this is. Thanks in advance!
1 Answers 2019-09-14
