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.
9 Answers 2015-07-12
I know this is a big area, both in terms of geography and time, but I have no idea what sort of legal systems existed in Africa before colonization. I assume Sharia was used in Muslim areas, but aside from that I have no idea. Did African legal systems resemble those in other areas at all? Were there lawyers, judges, juries, or similar roles? How did trials work? Were there written codes of laws and if so, who wrote them and how?
Anyway, I threw a bunch of different things in the preceding paragraph because I don't know much about this area or even where to really start. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
3 Answers 2015-07-12
In light of its strategic position with regards England
11 Answers 2015-07-12
2 Answers 2015-07-12
1 Answers 2015-07-12
1 Answers 2015-07-12
I haven't done much research but from what my friend is telling me, the Japanese got introduced to guns by the Chinese, developed it, then abandoned it. They didn't want to go back to it again, for peace reasons. But they still developed it. '
How were firearms introduced and developed?
Could it have happened that somewhere along the line, a development went wrong and then they decided to give up?
2 Answers 2015-07-12
I have a few questions about Carthage:
Who led the state, and how were they chosen?
Was there anything similar to the Roman senate?
Did Carthage directly administer areas in Spain, Sicily and the North African coast or were these areas more like client states?
1 Answers 2015-07-12
I'm reading Adam Tooze's The wages of destruction (after seeing it mentioned often in this subreddit and also here) and i'm halfway through.
Now, i read very often (sorry just memory, no sources) statements like 'The economy of Nazi Germany was not fully geared for war until 1942-1943' while, in the book, i read that Germany, before acquiring vast territories with the victory in the west of 1940, had serious shortages of raw materials and processing capacity (for example: moving resources through railroads from the coal mine to the factories) already before 1939. Therefore i cannot understand how, given the Nazi management at that time, the country could have produced more military equipment even when there was virtually no disruption due to the allies bombing in the period 1939-1942.
Hence the question in the title.
Thanks in advance for your time.
PS: I apologize if my question was already asked, could you be so kind to provide a link to the previous submission?
Seems that this problem is addresses by A.Tooze himself in the chapter 16 of the book. My interpretation of its point is: the economy before 1942-1943 was not full of inefficiencies, was just gathering the inertia for improving its output (the actions started year before started to pay off). Speer did improve some management procedures, but the increase of production was more or less expected. For example: (a) military products started to be more standardized and workers gets more used to produce them, therefore this increased the production (b) foreing/forced workers were treated relatively better and therefore their productivity increased (c) work shortages were offset by more and more foreing/forced labour. Still there were management disasters like new factories for producing thousands of powerplants for airplanes never really finished and so on.
2 Answers 2015-07-12
After the victory of Germany over French there must have been hundreds of thousands of POW in German captivity. Did Germany kept them imprisoned for the entirety of the war or where some released early? And if so, what were the conditions like compared with other nations POW?
1 Answers 2015-07-12
1 Answers 2015-07-12
Here's the passage in question:
"If your cavalry is not equal to the enemy's it is proper, after the ancient custom, to intermingle it with light infantry armed with small shields and trained to this kind of service. By observing this method, even though the flower of the enemy's cavalry should attack you, they will never be able to cope with this mixed disposition."
I'm not sure if this means "the youthful people of" the cavalry, as the phrase 'the flower of' seems to mean in other parts of De Re Militari, or "the greatest of their cavalry," or if this is a historically-used technical term for a particular part of the cavalry, like the front end or something.
Thanks for any replies!
2 Answers 2015-07-12
With controversy about the Confederate battle flag raging in the media and the public eye this seemed like a good time to ask this question. The issue of slaves in America was solved by the Civil War as it was impossible to legislate this problem out of existence. I'm certain many attempts were made to right this wrong however, so please educate me, how close did people actually come to freeing the slaves before Lincoln?
1 Answers 2015-07-12
I was reading through a 1960s book of etiquette and this little fact was in there and it seemed interesting but also somewhat suspect. The title pretty much says it all but essentially was doffing a hat a continuation of knights having to raise their helmet visors to talk properly? Personally I'd have thought that helmet visors went out of fashion too far before the right sort of hats and caps were commonplace.
3 Answers 2015-07-12
The question could also include other oversized weapons in ww2
1 Answers 2015-07-12
Today, anybody can go into a pharmacy and buy a convenient test and find out within a few minutes whether they're pregnant or not. Before such convenient tests were developed, how did people in, for example, 1700s England, find out they were pregnant, and how early would they be in the pregnancy before finding out? I'd imagine it would mostly have to do with periods, but assuming that the woman would for some reason not be able to tell through that method, would there be any other methods for testing for pregnancy?
Thanks for your time!
1 Answers 2015-07-12
Every war has soldiers that deal with it under different names (shell shock, etc), but it doesn't seem like anyone's really taken it seriously until Iraq/Afghanistan were in full swing. I'm just imagining roman soldiers having to deal with the psychological after effects of the types of battles they were in.
1 Answers 2015-07-12
1 Answers 2015-07-12
I heard in a TV show the other day that, upon hearing of the first V2 that hit London, he said that "the rocket worked perfectly, but landed on the wrong planet." This sounds highly artificial and I doubt he actually said that (or rather the German translation of it), but it made me think; did he actually support the Nazi regime? Did he actually want to see the allies destroyed, and support Nazi ideology, or was he just using it as a means to experiment with rockets/being forced to do it?
1 Answers 2015-07-12
1 Answers 2015-07-12
My knowledge of Roman history is a bit shady. More would be a good place to read up on the topic?
I should mention, my knowledge is only shady from the reign of Augustus onwards.
My interest is in primarily what happened and how it affected Europe and the wider world
1 Answers 2015-07-12
Cost as in financial, not "it cost them their life" or along those lines
1 Answers 2015-07-12