Before the French Revolution, when a state was faced with social-economic problems such as famine, usually, it would be followed by a peasant revolt that demanded better treatment, or, a pretender from a rival noble family of the established dynasty using the outraged masses as a tool to overthrow the king. But this was not the case in the French Revolution, for instead of a simple huge peasant revolt it was a revolution that was first of it's kind that torn the entire old order. Why is that? If we looked at the situation of Europe at the time, it seemed that the republics like Venice and the Netherlands weren't doing well at all compared to their absolutist counterparts(Except for France of course), so why is that amidst the states of enlightened of absolutism, republicanism became so widespread to the masses when it was such a new concept for most of the French at the time, and that the French Revolution was what it was, and not the aforementioned usual peasant revolt or pretender rebellion?
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I recently learned about an ancestor of mine was kept as a slave by the Iroquois in the late 1600’s. He was a teen from somewhere in the British Isles and was essentially rescued (“bought”) by a Frenchman who had also been in slavery with the Iroquois, but was now an ambassador to them. Made me wonder how often this was occurring?
Edit: For those who are looking for context. The Frenchman who rescued my ancestor is documented in the book “The Story of Joncaire”
2 Answers 2018-12-15
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1 Answers 2018-12-15
Burritos are Mexican, Gyros are Greek, Shawarmas are Middle Eastern (like the Lebanese kind). A friend used to tell me about meat crepes in Egypt, but I dunno if they count or not. A lot of the wraps are made with pita bread or lavash and also noticed that the meat is usually prepared with a rotisserie setup. So, is there a similar point of origin of where the food initially showed up?
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For example; I live in the UK, I fly to America over night, leaving on a Monday, I land on a Tuesday as per the calendar.
When and how was this global agreement made?
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I watched Zulu yesterday and heard about the British defeat at Isandlwana. Exactly how powerful were the Zulus? Did they simply overwhelm the British there or did they actually adapt and defeat them that way? I saw that they used old muskets and rifles to skirmish before they sent their warriors in, which seems quite smart to me.
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I recently saw a graph tracking the appearance of the term "the Holocaust" in newspapers and it looked like it wasn't widely used until the late seventies. I was wondering why that was. Was it a question of knowledge and facts surrounding the Holocaust becoming more widely known? Or a question of changing narratives around WWII? Or something else?
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I have seen several videos claiming that both Germany’s war on Russia and Japan’s war on the US were in a strong sense unwinnable. These often present their evidence using data (e.g. manufacturing data) that at least appears to have been public at the time of or before the wars (here talking fronts of WWII, of course). This being said, why would any of the axis powers have got involved in these wars in the first place? What were the factors that lead to either of Japan or Germany being convinced it had any hope in its respective wars?
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Is there a royal bloodline? I apologise for my ignorance but when Britain et al decided to draw up the Arab world did they just appoint rulers to cheiftans that were complient/helped them out
Edit - ww1 not ww2
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It didn't last long cause he died in 1922, but for me the real kicker was that at the time he won both elections, he was sitting in jail
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As I understand it, the Soviet Union was supposed to work on a system of nested democracy, called Democratic Centralism. However, Stalin (to name one example) is nearly always cited as a dictator.
My question, then, is how did Stalin maintain dictatorial powers, and also did he ever lose votes?
Additionally, if Stalin was in fact a dictator, as I suspect he was do to the appearent consensus on the matter, are there good primary sources that illustrate it, or at least sources beyond accusations of bias? I know some people who would want to argue the point.
1 Answers 2018-12-15
I'm watching a documentary on the history of early civilization, and a lot of emphasis is being placed on Mesopatamia's move towards agriculture and animal domestication as a necessary seed for large-scale settlement. The narrator keeps implying that wheat and barley were the bedrock that civilization was founded on, and that without the environmental confluences that allowed these grains to flourish in the valley (and some amount of cosmic luck), we might still be tribal.
But, I know rice in the Yangtze valley, and maize in Central Mexico, were of equal import to the economies and civilizations there as grain was in the Mesopotamian valley.
I've seen maps that place Neolithic revolutions on a timeline, generally moving east from Mesopotamia across several thousand years, but these maps don't seem to indicate whether this knowledge moved with human migration patterns, or whether the people settled these areas and then independently developed agricultural practices.
I guess this is a big question, as the fertile crescent is often called the Cradle of Civilization, but... Were there multiple cradles? Or can all this really be traced to one region?
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Napoleon Bonaparte was close enough to the battle to see the battle and give orders. It was already risky then due to artillery fire (eg Marshal Lannes died due to cannon fire) but he still did so. Nowadays the notion that generals lead from the front seems absurd due to the dangers inherent to modern military warfare. When did the danger of leading from the front outweigh the advantages?
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I’m curious to know how we adapted a big fat man sneaking into our homes and eating food and giving presents. How is this so?
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I was wondering if either side profited from the incident. Is it even fair to say that one side "won the incident"?
1 Answers 2018-12-15
In the tv show Atlanta, a character called Darius states that "Chinese people are short 'cause of Genghis Khan"; he says that if people were shorter than either Genghis himself, or a stick that he had (I'm unsure which), then they were executed...and that because of this "Chinese people are short".
Is this true? Can anyone clarify?
Thanks in advance.
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