How economically diversified would the Kingdom of Kongo be in the 15th century - what portion of the population would be involved in specialized jobs, versus how many were farmers? Were farmers primarily subsistence farmers, or operating more in a market? How big were the cities, and how urbanized was the society?
2 Answers 2015-12-22
Are there particular geographic, philosophic, religious, or political reasons that successive empires, (Ming, Qing) were able to inherit such large swaths of land? Or were they constantly fighting to put down rebellions?
2 Answers 2015-12-22
2 Answers 2015-12-22
Apologies if I am not too clear, you may use England and Norway as an example of what might have happened in such a scenario.
2 Answers 2015-12-22
I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and they refer to "the crushing depths". At what point in history did people make this association? It seems to me, like "the cold of space", like something that people a few centuries ago would have no knowledge of.
You can feel the pressure on your eardrums from a deep dive, and I'm sure it feels very much like high pressure to a modern diver. But would people who didn't have any experience with high pressure recognize it as such?
I can also imagine ancient people dropping some object down that would get crushed and seeing the results, but someone would have to think to lower the right kind of object down to the right depth, and understand what happened to it.
On the other hand people are clever, so given evidence, I could certainly believe this association was made even in antiquity. So I'm interested in the first recorded reference of the "depths" being "crushing", or something similar.
Thanks!
1 Answers 2015-12-22
For example, is it even plausible that societies much more highly "advanced" existed long before the early ancient societies that we're aware of, but due to some sort of "global catastrophe", their civilization and all of the achievements were lost to time? I'm not talking about advanced on terms with our society today, but somewhere close to the first ancient civilizations we are aware of.
1 Answers 2015-12-22
Been reading about the battle of Cannae, but couldn't find any mention of war elephants during the battle. Did Hannibal keep them in reserve? Had they all been lost already?
1 Answers 2015-12-22
1 Answers 2015-12-22
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I am somewhat sure that in the WW1 era, a Lord in service would salute a superior officer. But what was the case for eras when Lords had more political or temporal power? For example, would they salute a commoner appointed by their king as a general in charge of them?
1 Answers 2015-12-22
What's the first evidence of people saying "I think the future might be like this", as we get in the 1920s-30s etc., giving predictions for what e.g. new technologies might mean for civilisation?
I'm not thinking about Nostradamus and soothsaying/seer-like predictions for specific events, but instead suggestions of predictions for changes in society, perhaps driven by technological developments, perhaps driven by societal progression.
This perhaps assumes that the civilisation doing this thinking does not assume it's the peak of humankind's civilisation. (Please note I'm not asking an alternate history question, but instead asking what is actually documented about contemporary views of the future)
If this only started happening fairly recently (e.g. in the 1920s-30s, or perhaps Victorian times), did people write in any meaningful way about whether things would be different 2, 3, or 5 generations after their time, or was the expectation for much of history that the only things that would change would be who was ruling, rather than societal shifts within that?
1 Answers 2015-12-22
Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.
Today’s trivia comes to us from /u/throwaway_lmkg!
Yet another AskHistorians picnic, but the food this time somehow has that not-so-fresh feeling… Canning, dehydration, salt-curing, pickling, smoking, all the historic ways of making food last longer, please share any interesting things about preserving food in history, any time, any place.
Next week on Tuesday Trivia: Our last thread for 2015 has a helpful message for our health after the various winter holiday binge opportunities: eat your vegetables!
8 Answers 2015-12-22
I've run across various arguments that drugs were made illegal in order to discriminate against minorities, e.g. laws against opium meant to discriminate against Chinese laborers, laws against cocaine and heroin meant to discriminate against black people, laws against marijuana meant to discriminate against Latinos, etc. In other words, the government couldn't make it legal to simply pick on a given ethnic group directly, so they initiated anti-drug laws to give them leverage over a given population.
For one example of this argument, see the documentary film "The House I Live In," which features a historian (Richard Miller) arguing that US drug policy has its roots in racial discrimination.
I don't doubt that there is some validity to the narrative that drug laws are used to discriminate, but I'm curious about whether racial factors were the primary motivator behind formulating US drug laws, or whether US drug laws happened to be a convenient tool for racists who worked in local law enforcement. Thanks.
2 Answers 2015-12-22
This may seem idiotic but Siam sounds a lot cooler than Thailand, not sure why they changed their name.
2 Answers 2015-12-22
I was reading about Werner Voss's last dogfight and found a passage that said that one of the British aces disengaged to change the magazine in his Lewis gun. Did they carry extra magazines? Were these strip or drum magazines (different guns are designed with different magazines, but I assume that either drums or strips were preferred for air combat), and what was their capacity? Where did they store them?
I know that WWII planes often only carried enough ammo for something like 20 seconds of sustained fire, which considering the range of WWII planes isn't very much ammo at all. Given that WWI planes only had a range of around 100-150 miles, carrying extra ammo almost seems like an unnecessary weight for the plane.
1 Answers 2015-12-22
Specifically, I'm referring to the idea seen in the Last Temptation of Christ, that Judas was the best buddy of Jesus, and simply playing a necessary role that both were in agreement on. And consequently, that he isn't the great betrayer, but actually quite noble in a sense.
I recall that there is a Gnostic "Gospel of Judas" that was found, which follows a similar vein, so there were clearly people early on in Christian thought who expressed the belief, but I'm assuming it was heretical and stamped out, or at least driven underground, so I'm mainly curious on whether this viewpoint on the role of Judas had any predominant proponents, or was debated at least, in the the Medieval Period, or at least, after the point when the Catholic Church established itself in the late-Antiquity, and before the Enlightenment.
2 Answers 2015-12-22
2 Answers 2015-12-22
Hello historians,
I'm British and curious about how England and later Great Britain rose from being a small island kingdom in the 1600s to become one of the dominant powers of the 1800s. To my mind the Spanish already had a huge head start in colonisation, as well as significant holdings in Europe outside of Iberia, and should have crushed English attempts to expand. How did it come to be that after 200 years Great Britain came to claim Spain's old position as the leading world power?
1 Answers 2015-12-22
"It would be rather hard for me not only because roman period is not my area of expertise as historian but because most of my reading on the topic was in russian. As far as I can understand the problem most of modern research speaks about ranged combat as primary form of combat for legionaries.
Firstly I must note that I speak mostly about classical marian legions and their pre-marian predecessor. Late roman military is pretty different beast.
And it is very much logical - scutum as a shield is not very good optimised for a melee combat in close formation. It is too large and restrictive. In the same time it is perfect for a defense against projectiles in close formation. Gladius as a sword is also suboptimal choice for melee combat in close formation as the only target you can attack with it is one straight before you. You cannot really help a comrade next to you with gladius without breaking formation. And you can do this with a spear or even with a longer sword. The next point is that leg protection is very much rare for legionaries. And leg protection is really fucking important during melee combat in close formation (yes, even with a large shield at hand).
Therefore as far as I can tell romans perfected the traditional "barbarian" way of fighting - throwing stuff and obscenities at the enemy untill he was ready to break and charge to finish him afterwards. There is no melee combat at all if such tactic was performed pefectly. Also this solution is best for citizen militia types of armies becasue it is far less training intensive than greek or macedonian hoplite formations (and reason why pre-marian triaries were considered as elite reserve troops).
Sergarr said: ↑
You'd have to bring a lot of evidence, because the only time legionaries used pilas in melee (that was specifically noted as an unusual usage of the weapon) was in freaking Parthia against cavalry. The only time.
Of course pila weren't their weapons of choice for melee. It was a ranged weapon and throwing stuff at the enemy was a main form of combat for legionaries. Such manner of fighting was common for many contemporary societies and romans as I already said perfected it by creation of formation which was nigh invulnerable to enemy skirmish tactics. By this they practically forced the enemy to charge them or break away. Also this is a major reason why roman perfomance in direct combat against actual heavy infantry wasn't so stellar.
Sergarr said: ↑ Also for heavy skirmishers they've surely paid a lot of attention towards freaking TOWER SHIELDS and heavy armour. Doesn't seem like the stuff that synergies well with the "throw javelins" battle-strategy.
It synergies very good with such strategy. Tower shield is not good in melee. Too large and uwieldy. In the same time it is perfect for protection against projectiles. Heavy armor is very much capable to reduce casualties from enemy throwing weapons and therefore ensure the favorable casualty rates. In fact "heavy skirmisher" is a best answer to enemy skirmishers if you do not have enough of proper cavalry. Sounds familiar?
HolySeraph said: ↑ About the only units that could be considered have the sword as their primary weapon are the Rodeleros and maybe certain cavalry is all I can think of off hand. But then this is outside my 'expertise'.
Rodeleros weren't a "unit" per se. They were type of soldier inside a unit. And weren't succesful much on battlefields. They are mostly known because Macchiavelly and his roman/citizen militia fetish."
I'm a bit curious on this theory that the roman legionaries were actually heavy skirmishers rather than what movies usually depict them.
I found this comment in this website.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/what-was-the-nature-of-roman-infantry.333407/
2 Answers 2015-12-22
Was there less casualties due to friendly fire? Did they more, or less, hit their intended targets? Or was it all the same as the ones in WW1?
I would surmise using only a compass and a map would be difficult to use in situations such as a war. So I would like to also know what sort of instruments were used during both world wars.
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For example, if someone invented a new pottery wheel for his pot factory, could a competitor simply copy his invention?
Or if a certain play was a big hit, could another playwrite simply copy the original characters and produce a sort of "unlicensed" sequel?
1 Answers 2015-12-22