In the lecture The State: It's Historical Role he argues that the rise of centralized royal power at the end of the early middle ages caused a backlash in the major cities, which organized themselves into autonomous political units which were not governed so much by a top down civic governance so much as by cooperative relations between different social groups (particularly guilds). Worth noting that he is not saying this was a democratic utopia and he points to the way large sections of urban society were excluded from this, as well as the countryside writ large, but it is more part of his argument about the development of modern European states. To give a direct quote, apologies for the length:

It will be enough for me to say that round about the tenth and eleventh centuries the whole of Europe appeared to be moving towards the constitution of those barbarian kingdoms, similar to the ones found today in the heart of Africa, or those of theocracies one knows about from Oriental history. This could not happen in a day; but the seeds of those petty royalties and for those petty theocracies were already there and were increasingly manifesting themselves.

Fortunately the ‘barbarian’ spirit - Scandinavian, Saxon, Celt, German Slav - which for seven or eight centuries had incited men to seek the satisfaction of their needs through individual initiative and through free agreement between the brotherhoods and guilds - fortunately that spirit persisted in the villages and boroughs. The barbarians allowed themselves to be enslaved, they worked for the master, but their feeling for free action and free agreement had not yet been broken down. Their brotherhoods were more alive than ever, and the crusades had only succeeded in arousing and developing them in the West.

And so the revolution of the urban communities, resulting from the union of the village community and the sworn brotherhood of the artisans and the merchant - which had been prepared long since by the federal mood of the period - exploded in the eleventh and twelfth centuries with striking effect in Europe. It had already started in the Italian communities in the tenth century...

In many regions it many regions it was a peaceful development. Elsewhere - and this applied in general to Western Europe - it was the result of a revolution. As soon as the inhabitants of a particular borough felt themselves to be sufficiently protected by their walls, they made a ‘conjuration’. They mutually swore an oath to drop all pending matters concerning slander, violence or wounding, and undertook, so far as disputes that might arise in the future, never again to have recourse to any judge other than the syndics which they themselves would nominate. In every good-neighborly or art guild, in every sworn brotherhood, it had been normal practice for a long time. In every village community, such as had been the way of life in the past, before the bishop and the petty king had managed to introduce, and later impose on it, its judge.

Now, the hamlets and parishes which made up the borough, as well as the guilds and brotherhoods which developed within it, looked upon themselves as a single amitas, nominated their judges and swore permanent union between all those groups.

A charter was soon drawn up and accepted. If need be, someone would be sent off to copy the charter of some neighboring small community (we know of hundreds of such charters) and the community was set up. The bishop or the prince, who had been until then the judge in the community, and often more or less its master, could in the circumstances only recognize the fait accompli - or oppose the new conjuration by force of arms. Often the king - that is the prince who sought to be a cut above the other princes and whose coffers were always empty - would ‘grant’ the charter for ready cash. Thus he refrained from imposing his judge on the community, while at the same time gaining prestige in the eyes of the other feudal lords. But this was by no means the rule; hundreds of communes remained active with no other authority than their goodwill, their ramparts and their lances.

Leaving aside the orientalism and whiff of ethnic essentialism (which I swear is less racist in context), can this sort of movement be detected?

Also, can this be connected to what I have read about a "refeudalization" in the seventeenth century (which relates to what Kropotkin talks about later in the piece)?

​ ​Serge Gruzinski mentions that European sources at that time had difficulties grasping the Japanese political system (in "What Time Is It There"), which made me wonder how much scholars in Europe knew of Japan before the gradual isolation? I'd imagine that friars of the religious orders in Japan would have written about the region; maybe also some European merchants or politicians. Then again, it would seem that the Edo period would have cut short more in-depth knowledge, like that e.g. collected by the Jesuits in early modern China, which became widely known in Europe. Would also be interested in reading recommendations.

I've been reading some sources from early 17th century Mexico City (New Spain) mentioning Japan. A few events are usually mentioned, that are connected to colonial Mexico: - the dramatic death of Oda Nobunaga in 1582 - The martyrdom of five Franciscans of Nagasaki in 1597 (mentioned quite often) - and the two Japanese diplomatic missions to Mexico and from there to Europe in the early 17th c. So there was some partial information available in Mexico City at the time, probably through the Philippines trade, but surely in Europe as well.

Not only was the scale of warfare (the literal number of men involved) seemingly much smaller but instances of major atrocities seem much less frequent than in most other regions or periods.

An example being the willingness to ransom valuable captives instead of executing them. Another being the seeming lack scorched earth tactics seen in both Asia, and antiquity.

European war was certainly bloody and violent, but am I wrong to think that it was remarkably less brutal than most other large scale warfare in human history?

It seems like a kiva would be perfectly suited for gathering rainwater and not being able to drain that water out. Even though some Great Kivas had ledges raised up at the circumference above the surrounding ground, I've read that most Chaco-style kivas were flush with the ground. Also, in the Western U.S., I can't imagine roofs had fronds or anything like that to do a really effective job at being watertight. Did they use skins or something?

It is also claimed that USSR citizens had a higher caloric consumption than American citizens.

Is this true ?

So I lived in China for the last 5 years and always looking for new and interesting history. I know lots of history was destroyed in the Great Leap Forward and the cultural revolution. So my questions are as follows.

1. Were there some villages so remote or so inaccessible that they were untouched by those two major events.
2. Do any of those villages have anything worth seeing?

We always hear about enigma and how it was cracked by the allies but never how allies got their messages around

I was curious if they received a hero’s welcome or were they treated poorly like soldiers returning from Vietnam. Additionally, were there any British defections at the end of the American Revolution? Would the Americans have been open to a British soldier defecting and making a life in the colonies?

I recently listened to Mike Duncan's podcast about it and it really got me interested in reading more about it.

Hello! I am reading into metalworking and how it developed and where the source materials came from. But I am a bit unsure how to I have to understand it. I was reading that iron can be found at a surface level as a part of other materials. Is the amount of those sources enough to have a culture using it for daily life and warfare, or were mines necessary to get enough iron in antiquity? I am especially interested in the Roman Period, say 400BC and also ancient Greece and China/India during the same time. One could also include Alexander's Empire. Did they build mines into mountains to get it, and if, how? What where the tools they used?

What was the Empire’s view towards assimilating minorities(aside from killing them)? Did it change as their territories for smaller? Were there financial incentives for conversion/assimialtion(I’m assuming there were legal benefits)?

As a layman I have often heard that slavery was responsible for the South being behind the north, that it benefited the few and not the larger economy and so on.

However, I was just reading a book where Francis Fukuyama acknowledges and then dismisses these arguments. The relevant quote:

There has been a prolonged and often bitter debate among historians over the economics of North American slavery. Some have argued, along with a number of slavery critics prior to the Civil War, that the practice was an economically inefficient one that could not compete on equal terms with free labor, and would have died out on its own under free-market conditions. A number of Marxist historians have argued that the Civil War itself was driven not by moral considerations concerning slavery but rather by a competition between free and servile forms of labor. On balance, however, it would seem that right up to the time of the Civil War, slavery-based plantation production was a fully competitive form of economic enterprise and that per capita incomes in the South began to decline relative to those in the North only after the war and the abolition of slavery

I'm curious to see if there's any historical consensus on this topic. Was the per capita income in the South not declining until the end of the war? Was slavery at no risk of "dying out" due to being uncompetitive?

Thanks

I've read about the claims of human sacrifice in the Aztec territories reaching the dozens of thousands PER YEAR. How can this be possible? There are claims that 80.4K people were sacrificed in 4 days?! Even crunching the numbers, that would account to about a person every 5 seconds? We are talking about full heart extractions every 5 seconds. Seems impossible to me.

I've also read about some of the archeological evidence, but could archeologist be mistaking some of these sites for regular burial sites? Can they be overestimating the number of sacrificed individuals by also counting normal burial sites? Or burial sites for their fallen warriors?

What about the hundreds of thousands of remains from people that perished from disease and the fall of Tenochtitlan? What did the Spanish do with them?

To me, it seems like allegations of sacrifices were exaggerated by the Spanish for obvious purposes. The Mesoamericans just seem to be way out of line, when it comes to the practice of Human sacrifice. Everywhere else, it's a few dozen or hundreds, except in Mesoamerica, where dozens of thousands were sacrificed in days?

I don't mean to insult anyone's work or expertise. It's just a doubt that I have.

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