I'm doing research for a historical fiction novel where one of the settings is a plantation in Virginia in the 1720s (near Hampton). There are so many books, movies, etc that include colonial plantations but I'm having a difficult time finding primary sources exclusively on plantations. The closest ones I can find are things like documents on tobacco prices in New Jersey or London, but nothing about the plantations themselves. Any suggestions as to where I can look?
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or was it all just political? It seems like quite a war to wage for politics alone, so I'm wondering if there were any other hard benefits to having Afghanistan in their sphere of influence. Could it have been partly topographical in nature?
Edit: It seems the Soviets were aware of the significant mineral resources there but I'm having a hard time understanding how anything aside from copper would have been critical to them.
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I am very confused.
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In the US at least, we're used to the idea that your bootcamp drill instructor is going to insult the recruits, yell loudly, and generaly play mind games.
How far back does this go? Would new recruits to the union army have endured insults every every kind? What about in Europe? etc?
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Did soldiers in medieval times get PTSD after battles? Is there any acknowledgement of it back then?
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I'm in the UK. One of my children is studying history at A level together with maths and sciences. What careers are open to students who have an interest in both history and science?
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I can't remember if i read or heard this piece of information but apparently the two bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not what caused the Japanese to surrender but instead it was Russia's involvment after the end of the european campaign. Any truth to this? Any insight is appreciated
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I ask because I'm reading the Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley and I'm wondering how accurate it is?
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I am working on a hobby project, and all my research has shown a pretty varied number of uniforms worn by the Nationalist Chinese in there war against Japan. Some of them are grey, some khaki, and others a light grey/blue.
Which uniform would a regular infantryman be wearing during, say, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident? What was the most common uniform worn throughout the war?
Would they be carrying a large number of flags, similar to IJA soldiers?
Additionally, would most troops be wearing a regular uniform, or would many be irregulars dressed however?
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After years under martial law and the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, how did the change to a 'nornal' government go?
For example, did any policies or ideas made under the martial law government stick around?
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Or during the Crimean War.
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I was wondering if a noble would take his family's crest and modify to fit him more personally, (i.e. family crest has a loin, he replaces it with a dragon, different color lion, etc. etc.) or was he stuck with the family crest until he did something of note?
Could he make a new crest and split off into his own branch of the family?
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I am vaguely aware that trolls as described in Norse folklore were NOT hundreds of feet tall, as certain works of literature have it - I also know 'troll' was sometimes used as a euphemism for a pagan, someone who was not Christian, though this was presumably later, once Norse-speakers had largely been converted to Christianity. What role did trolls really play, what did they look like and what did they act like?
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I saw this article (http://ukrainianweek.com/History/33990) which talks about using penal batallions as more or less cannon fodder.
"'These units were of great use to commanders,' claimed Mykhailo Kliuchko, a one-time officer of penal battalion 322. 'On the one hand, they maintained at least some semblance of discipline in the army. On the other, the officers could check whether their decision was correct, by using “cheap” cannon fodder. For instance, an officer had an order to seize a strategic landmark. How could they find out the military force of the enemy located there? The officer instructed the commanders of a penal battalion or two, or sometimes a squadron, to go on a nighttime reconnaissance patrol. Nobody cared about any losses suffered by the squadron.'"
'Basically, the life of a common soldier was of no value on the frontline or for commanders. Nobody thought of us as people,' Maksym Voronkov, a retired colonel, reflected in 1989. In the summer of 1943, he was the commander of a reconnaissance unit with infantry regiment 128, later downgraded to a regular soldier in a penal battalion. 'Is there any other way to interpret the attitude of the top commanders that threw use against the enemy units that were 8-10 times larger? They knew we would all die, but still sent us there. The Germans would shoot at the penal battalion soldiers and thus reveal their positions. Then, our artillery would hit them. Of course, our army lost less people after such patrols but wasn't the price too high?'
Also from here (http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29529)
"Throughout the Cold War in Europe Soviet tactiocs reamined virtually unchanged from the mass assaults of WWII.
Soviet tactics now substituted the second rated units of the Warsaw Pact and it's own 2nd rate units for the penal battalions of old, but the goal remained constant - to force the enemy to take casualties and expend vital ammo by throwing lesser units at them. The cost in men and equipment of the units sacrificed in this fashion was not a consideration.
When the enemy was deemed sufficiently weakened by this throw-away tactic, massed forces of armor and mech infantry were to assault the weakest point, hoping to force a breakthrough that could be exploited.
Per Soviet doctrine, units which needed help were denied it; all aid and support went to the unit achieving breakthrough - none went to units being crushed by firm resistance. This was a policy designed to waste lives and units on a massive scale.
While the NATO forces, predominantly American, used the tactics of the sword, using highly selective strikes to slow down and undermine the enemy, the Soviets planned for the tactics of the sledgehammer, conducted without finesse or regard for casualties - only overwhelming the enemy counted for anything.
The Soviets learned little from war against Germany, and even less from the tactics of the Allies. When the Soviets went to war in Afghjanistan, they lost in large part because they were unable to adapt to new tactical requirements on a battlefield where massed assaults and overwhelming force accomplished nothing."
Did the Soviets really still use frontal assaults straight into machine guns in this manner through the war? Didn't they think to maneuver around them? Did they not care about their soldiers' lives? This seems like the opposite of the American and British tactic of trying to spend as little human life as possible.
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Having trouble simply googling this, I can't really imagine what it must be like for someone who thought the world was flat to see whole valleys of grass moving in sync with the wind.
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Being named a "knight" is considered an honor in the UK. When did the British Crown stop granting it as a military honor, and start granting it as an artistic honor, and why?
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Were there any private wars in rome essentially? Say wars over an estate or roman provinces fighting eachother for land?
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Hi Reddit! My father had been given this old book many years ago. It seems to be a Swiss Medical Surgery Book from 1711. Can you tell me a bit more about it?
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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.
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