USA and Japan had carriers. Why not Germany?
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They have dynasties after dynasties, and emperors after emperors. But no one came out with the idea to think that they should have democracy or a republic. Why?
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This is the second book I've read about this fire. The first book referenced Steve Inskeep's research. I just finished Inskeep's book and he just mentions this event briefly in passing. I could not find any information about it online. Inskeep said during the 1824 campaign, Jackson's opponents created a pamphlet questioning the land dealings between Jackson and his associations regarding the transactions of former Native American land. Soon after the pamphlet was distributed there was a fire in the records building and the transaction records were destroyed. Inskeep did not provide many details about the fire. He said it occurred in a town named Florence, but did not provide the state or date of the fire.
Does anyone have any background or additional information about the fire?
1 Answers 2016-12-12
I'm reading the Sharpes series and they have talked about how in the British army an officer would normally buy a commission so to become a high ranking officer it was more a question of wealth rather than skill.
When did they change this system to the more meritocratic system we are used to today?
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Oliver Cromwell is often viewed as a tyrant by many, but considering that he ruled in a time of Absolute Monarchy, I find it interesting to ask how tyrannical he was compared to contemporary monarchs in other European countries, which often ruled as absolute monarchs.
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Hello,
I'll clarify this by saying quite simply as what point was the eventual fall of the Eastern Roman Empire a forgone conclusion? Was it when the Arabs invaded shortly after the peace between both the Sassanid's and ERE and they subsequently lost the Levant? Perhaps earlier? Or maybe even later than the Arabian invasion.
As always, thank you!
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It seems logical that indigenous buffalo would make more sense as a domestic animal. Not only is it probably more suited to the environment, and looks like it's got a bit more meat on it than a cow, but they existed in North America by the million when Europeans began settling in the continent.
Why did they instead go to the effort of shipping cattle over on sailing ships from Europe? And why in the hundreds of years since then have bison never really become a staple source of meat?
edit: Not sure who to thank in particular for all the excellent answers, so I'll just thank everyone here.
For anyone coming to the thread in the future, the one sentence answer is: wild bison are a bastard to domestic, and it would take generations of selective breeding to get them to be as convenient a source of domesticated meat as cattle are, so why not just use cattle.
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And if he did start that trend, was it common in nazi germany to trim your beard like Hitler or did people rather not copy him?
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If the main reason for the failure of the Winter War was incompetent leadership due to the purge, why did the Soviet army succeed against the Japanese?
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According to Wikipedia's article about Hans Bethe, who worked on the Manhattan Project,
When it [Gadget] was detonated in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, Bethe's immediate concern was for its efficient operation, and not its moral implications. He is reported to have commented: "I am not a philosopher."
On the other hand, Oppenheimer famously quoted "now I am become death, destroyer of worlds).
Some 10 years later von Neumann coined the term MAD, mutual assured destruction, and 15 years later Kahn wrote about "doomsday devices" in On Thermonuclear War. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I am interested in to what extent that development, that nuclear war would be a serious existential risk, was foreseen by scientists, military, and others, who worked in the Manhattan Project, and how they thought about the ethical implications of their work.
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I've read that choosing Tom Eagleton was a huge mistake that contributes to his defeat, but why exactly did he pick Eagleton? Only because nobody else would do the job?
And after he withdraws from the ticket, why did he pick Shriver?
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I've noticed this trend where people, when referring to historical figures from the geographical region that is Germany, will call them Germans, even if they ruled far before unification.
Things like referring to Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick the Great, or various Austrian monarchs as statespeople of Germany, or referring to the Hussars employed by Great Britain during the American Revolution as German.
It was always my understanding that there was no such thing as a "Germany," before Otto von Bismarck unified the lot of it. Is this a flaw in my understanding, or are such people using misleading terminology?
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Surely as a Calvinist he was not eligible to be head of the Anglican Church?
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I hope this post is right here, as I dont want to know about alternate history and I'm not sure if ELI5 would be a good place to get good answers for this. But if it's deemed incorrect here I'd be fine taking it there, if that's requested.
However I'd love for any answers to be rather....simple.
I know that China was in most regards ahead of Europe until the 1500s and at some point even launched expeditions but then pretty much "decided" to focus inwards.
Most of my knowledge of India at this time period comes from games like the Civ or EU-series, so I do know about the Mughals and the general political map around that time but not much more, which prompted me to this question:
Why didn't Indian countries create colonial empires/develop the technologies needed for those?
since the Indian subcontinent was divided into many small countries (that were most likely at war with each other as much as the Europeans) just like Europe and not a (more or less) centralized state like Ming China and I'd assume at least as technologically developed as Europe at that time, why didn't they "conquer the world"?
Was it simply that they had everything they needed by trading with east Africa and Indonesia/Oceania? I mean one of the primary reasons the Europeans set out was to find a way to India. So did India "already have a way to India" by being India and thus simply not need to sail out further than the Indian Ocean?
edit: Thank you everyone for your helpful replies :)
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Based on accusations of Russia's interference in the US election and their aggression against Ukraine a few years ago, I'd like to understand more about the country, it's past, and where it may be heading, particularly as it relates to the rest of the world.
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I was under the impression that arsenic has been used as a strong poison throughout history, so when I realized people could actually get arsenic from ordinary pharmacies (although the purpose of the buyer might also be inquired), I was flabbergasted. Why would arsenic even be allowed for sale in public? Is arsenic of some pharmaceutical use for people rather than just some long-standing poison?
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For example, are there any foods, goods, language dialects, etc. modern to the region today, that can be attributed to the French occupation of Egypt (and Syria) from 1798 -1801?
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I've read plenty of descriptions and debates of Anne's appearance and how Henry's wounded pride - or her lack of sophistication - may have caused him to reject her and claim she wasn't the beauty Cromwell made her out to be.
But are there any sources that tell us what he claimed was wrong with her in terms of her appearance? I'm curious to build up a (distorted/fictionalised) portrait of the Anne of Cleves that Henry claimed to have been confronted with.
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Welcome to Monday Methods!
This week has seen several threads centering around such questions like why one popular view on the US Civil War does not line up with the known moniker of "the winner writes history" as well as an intense discussion surrounding hypothetical historian's believe in unyielding historical progress in 1900.
All these discussions brought up one crucial aspect not just of the study of history but also of the phenomenon of history in general, whether it is national history or our own private history as an individual: Narrative.
What is narrative (baby, don't hurt me...) in this case?
As a concept, it originate with a historian in the strong tradition of literary criticism: Haydn White. White in his book Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe writes that the writing of history is very similar to the writing of literature, whether in a primary source or in studying history in that they both attempt to tell a story; a story which has a plot. Basically, the idea is that whenever we write a book about history (leaving primary sources aside for now), we attempt to tell a story that follows a basic plot. When writing history, we pick a starting point and then an end point and in between these two points a plot unfolds. We tell the story of a historical development, which like literature tells the plot of something happening. This is the historical narrative we chose.
For example: Say, we want to explain the French Revolution. In order to that, we can start with the year 1789 and the meeting of the estates general and then go on to tell the story of what the historical figures we know to be of historical significance like Robbespierre, Danton etc. went on to do until Napoleon takes over. Or we can start with the ideas of Kant and other Enlightenment philosophers and see how they influenced the actual policy that transpired without going into details of the actors involved. Or we can tell the story of how the Revolution affected a Parisian cobbler. Or we can tell a story that doesn't focus on France that much but rather on Haiti, where the Revolution sparked another revolution. We also needn't stop with Napoleon but can include him as a product of the Revolution. Or we can stretch out the history of the French Revolution to encompass the whole century up to today because its influence still ripples through time by establishing in practice so many of the things we tend to see as the basis of a lot of our political systems today.
All these attempts to explain the French Revolution and its significance rely on the same set of basic historical facts but tell different stories. And prima facie and also on a second look, all these narratives are valid but framed differently - following a different plot. Even Richard Evans in his book In Defense of History in which he writes against the post-structuralist view of history that inspired by White asserts that all of history is nothing but narrative concedes:
We know of course that we will be guided in selecting materials for the stories we tell, and in the way we put these materials together and interpret them, by literary models, by social science theories, by moral and political beliefs, by an aesthetic sense, even by our own unconscious assumptions and desires. It is an illusion to believe otherwise. But the stories we tell will be true stories, even if the truth they tell is our own, and even if other people will tell them differently.
There are still ways to determine the validity of these narratives however. History being after all an empirical undertaking our narratives still need to posses an argumentative strength based on historical evidence and sources. We can tell the history of the French Revolution as a cultural one, an ideological one, a military one, an economic one, and one through the eyes of women, peasants or minorities. We can construct it as the a narrative of a conspiracy of the Reptilioids from space because for that we lack the evidence.
Also, it is one of the expressed purposes of our profession to argue these narratives and what they assert. A Marxist historian and a historian of ideas will have a heated debate whether the origin of the French Revolution will lie primarily with economic or with ideological factors. And one might make a more convincing case by being more all-encompassing or having better evidence but it is the very purpose of the profession to figure out which is which and engage in debate about that.
So far, so good. But there are also histories that are socially, politically etc. privileged despite the fact that their underlying narrative is not supported sufficiently by evidence. Or narratives that assert to be the only valid ones. Or narratives that have been rejected or criticized for asserting a normative standard. Certain narratives, especially those who seek to become socially, politically etc. privileged often tend to be used for a political purpose. /u/agentdfc e.g. summarized the use of a certain meta-narrative of Western history here in the context of how it was used by one Rep. Steve King in order to assert that white people contributed most to the history of civilization.
Narratives like the one implicit in King's assertion are narratives that have been criticized by historians by bending the facts to fit a political contribution and assigning a normative worth and by relying heavily on certain assumptions and premises that are not necessarily supported by the historical record. His framing of history is itself framed by a set of underlying assumptions and believes and its underlying intention is a certain political use.
That is to a certain extent true of all historical narratives but the good historian will challenge these with others as well as his own because these too, need to be historically contextualized. Another example: In the recent thread about the early 20th century hypothetical historian, quite the discussion materialized concerning the topic of historical progress. History can be told as a narrative of progress. In fact, it has been told as such often. But as historians it is also our mission to think about what progress means in 1900, in 1950, and today and what the underlying ideas behind what constitutes progress are and why e.g. technical progress is viewed as something that on a narrative level is viewed as good in our and past societies are.
This is where the discipline has progressed since the days of Ranke. While Ranke tought historians how to best tell their stories of history, the development in the meantime has taught and enabled us to tell the stories of why we tell the stories we write of history.
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im looking to do a small biography on him, due to the significance of the battle of castle itter (Where Wehrmacht troops fought with the allies to rescue french POW's) but i've so far been unable to find any information regarding his life.
If someone could help put me on the right track i would be greatful
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