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1 Answers 2016-06-19
There are tons of articles on the internet about Prussia, however I am struggling to understand the following basic questions -
a) Was Prussia a country, nation, or a region ?
b) Did Germany exist alongside Prussia ?
c) If yes, why did the Germans agree to an Unification with Prussia ?
Thanks a lot.
1 Answers 2016-06-19
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.
2 Answers 2016-06-19
What is it about Versailles that some of the most important Treaties happen to take place here ?
1 Answers 2016-06-19
According to Wikipedia, the first European war to break the Thirty Years' War's record of eight million casualties was WWI. How come the Thirty Years' War was so much bloodier than other wars of its era?
2 Answers 2016-06-19
As I understand it (and forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm not from the US), the 2nd Amendment was created so that there would be a standing army of the people to combat threats from outside (like the British) and inside (like a tyrannical government, or a military coup). However nowadays it only seems to be exercised by private gun owners, and organised militia groups are rare and generally frowned upon in a stable country like the US. I guess I'm asking if the right always extended to private individuals, and whether this wording has been contested.
4 Answers 2016-06-19
3 Answers 2016-06-19
As titled. Did anyone read the tea leaves, and predict the first world war? Or was it a total surprise?
1 Answers 2016-06-19
Were they not trained in trigger safety?
Is trigger safety some sort of newer concept?
Were these just propaganda pics and finger on the trigger looked cooler?
2 Answers 2016-06-19
Edit: I forgot to add this to the title, but I mean in America.
Were they commonplace, or rare/expensive? Would most people know how to operate them? If not around then, what time could they be considered universal?
1 Answers 2016-06-19
In context of this comment.
1 Answers 2016-06-19
While researching about this, I found that some websites seem to use both names interchangeably, while others imply they are completely different peoples. What exactly is the difference between the two, and what is it that causes this confusion?
1 Answers 2016-06-19
2 Answers 2016-06-19
Wondering if there are good introductory texts on the Baltic Crusades, preferably not a dry one.
1 Answers 2016-06-19
On Monday I asked if there was any interest in an AskHistorians book club in which we all get together to read an academic journal article or book chapter from an edited volume and then discussed it. To my great surprise there was an overwhelming positive feedback to this idea. I hope the interest is still high as we take the next step forward by starting a trial run on our book club. As part of this trial we will be going with a two week format to start with (1st Sunday, submissions; 1st Wednesday, announcement; 2nd Wednesday, discussion; 2nd Sunday, submissions)
This topic is to ask for submissions for journal articles or book chapters from our community. Anyone can submit, you do not need to have a flair. Please limit one submission per person. And please refrain from submitting entire books as our time frame does not allow it.
Topic
Any submission must be related to history. We have a wide variety of flaired users from fields such as archaeology to linguistics to medicine to music. Let's use it to our advantage. As long as the submission pertains to understanding the past, it is open for the book club. We are trying to broaden our horizons and understanding of the past and that must include seeing the past through a different lens. So do not frett if your submission comes from a medical journal, a music theory journal, or an edited volume by Mesoamerican archaeologists, it's all welcome. If it isn't, someone will kindly let you know. So if you want to submit something on Stonehenge, or changes in letter choice for recording indigenous languages during the colonial period, or advancements in medicine in the late 1700s, or experimental recreation of ancient music, go for it.
Article information
Included in your submission must be the author or authors, the title of the work, the journal/book, year, etc. If using Google Scholar, there is an easy and handy Cite tool which gives a variety of options for citations. You can easily copy/paste that for your submission. My preference is MLA, but it will not be strictly enforced.
Accessible
Any journal article or book chapter must be accessible to the community, preferably through a link. The easiest way that I’ve found to do this is to use Google Scholar. As I’ve shown in this example, when searching for articles there is sometimes a link off to the right in which you can access the article or chapter for free. This is the link you must include in your submission, not a link to the journal page. I will be monitoring submissions to let anyone know if their links fail, but since I am based in the US my access could be biased. If anyone finds a broken link, please let me or the submitter know so that it can be fixed.
Abstract/Summary
Along with the link please include the abstract from the journal article or a written summary for the article/book chapter. This is to give us all an idea of what the article/chapter is about so that we can make a semi-informed vote.
Voting
Voting will run from now until Wednesday morning around 7am EST. Whichever submission has the most votes by that time will be chosen for us to read over the course of the following week.
Using the article from my Scholar example for our format example, the format should be as follows
- Headrick, Annabeth. "The Street of the Dead… It Really Was." Ancient Mesoamerica 10.01 (1999): 69-85.
- The name “Street of the Dead” used to designate Teotihuacan’s main avenue originates from a Nahuatl notation on a sixteenth-century map. Though this “story” is often deemed apocryphal, I argue in this paper that oral tradition preserved conceptual information that may not be archaeologically recoverable. Support for this position comes from comparative cultural analysis of Mesoamerican mortuary bundles as they are expressed in ritual and iconography. Crucial to this argument are the well-known stone masks of Teotihuacan. A case is made that the masks originally served as the faces of oracular mortuary bundles. The likely existence of mortuary bundles at Teotihuacan generates organizational models for the city in which lineage emerges as a fundamental element and suggests new insight into status differentiation and the iconography of power at Teotihuacan.
I’m not sure how mods want to handle comments, but let’s treat this as we would any AskHistorians topic with comments focused on the topic and not making jokes or insulting anyone. Please be kind and be courteous. And let’s take our first steps to a hopefully fruitful and informative new feature.
11 Answers 2016-06-19
All I hear about is separation between black and white. What happened with Mexicans?
2 Answers 2016-06-19
Is there no scripture for the Greek/Roman pantheon? Were Romans or Greeks concerned with a set-in-stone canon? Or was this left up to storytellers and tradition? What kept everything tied together?
1 Answers 2016-06-19
1 Answers 2016-06-19
Historians tell me that in medieval Europe, nobles customarily wore swords, and had no compunction about drawing them in self-defense. Also, medieval Europe had street-fights, brawls, and bandits, so even nobles and middle-class burghers sometimes had to defend themselves. In some cases, sumptuary laws limited the right to carry weapons, but they seem to have been primarily about pretending to be upper-class. The problem was not peasants with swords; the problem AFAICT was a peasant in expensive clothing might be allowed to behave like a noble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law
Historians also tell me I've gotten bad ideas from popular myths:
http://www.thearma.org/essays/TopMyths.htm
My question, then, is: what is the historical evidence that non-noble medieval European city-dwellers, such as cobblers and tanners and brewers, exercised their rights to self-defense? (I imagine someone has written a book about this already, and it's just a question of reading the proper book.)
I think seaports are the most interesting category of medieval cities for this question, because they probably had a lot of sailors in from out of town, which probably led to brawls.
Thanks in advance.
1 Answers 2016-06-19
I ask in regards to military strategy and the like. I read the story today about Norway supposedly upping it's border security against "unpredictable Russia" and it got me thinking about Russian winters vs. Canadian / American winters. Obviously it's further north than most of the United States, but would say a ground invasion of Russia be difficult for America? The only instance I can think of is Germany during WWII and the adage goes 'Don't invade during a Russian Winter.'
Has Russia ever been successfully invaded besides a couple edge territories / border cities / land?
2 Answers 2016-06-19
Apologies if this comes across as sort of a loaded question but it's something that's been bugging me. Some writers from the late 16th century like Roger Williams wrote that a musket with good powder was deadly at up to 600 paces, Humfrey Barwick recommended taking the first shot with a musket at around 480 paces and mentioned that gunmen knew how to estimate range of distant targets and adjust their aim to account for bullet drop. John Smythe on the other hand wrote that firearms were useless past 20-30 paces.
For the late 18th century, this article claims that the "point blank" of a musket was considered to be about 300 yards. Which seems to fly in the face of stories from that period of entire companies opening fire at 100 yards and missing every single shot, as well as claims that musketeers would hold their fire until they got within 50-100 yards of the enemy.
So I guess my question is what was the reality in combat generally like during the early modern era? Were these larger numbers just theoretical maximums widely ignored by experienced commanders, or would battlefields usually see armies firing volley after volley at extremely long ranges hoping to wear down the enemy? Did the average initial engagement range change over time between the age of pike and shot vs the napoleonic wars? Did range vary depending on how experienced the troops were, for instance more experienced gunnmen shooting effectively at very long ranges and less experienced ones being told to hold their fire?
Thanks
1 Answers 2016-06-19
