My home of Bermuda is famous for a few things: shorts, that 2spooky4me eponymous triangle, and tax avoidance. But the biggest mark our tiny archipelago has made in the history books can be found in every marina across the globe: the Bermuda Rig.

The rigging allowed us, and subsequently the world, to sail upwind with precision around the reefs that claimed so many ships in years gone by. The design was so transformative, within a few decades of its popularisation, King Charles II would soon be sailing one.

A poem published by John H. Hardie in 1671 described Bermuda's boats such:

With tripple corner'd Sayls they always float, About the Islands, in the world there are, None in all points that may with them compare.

I've always been curious to know what the wider implications of the Bermuda Rig were in the world of sailing, beyond piracy and competition. Did the ability to sail upwind alter shipping routes, or naval war strategy?

I'd love to learn more about my island's sailing heritage, especially with the America's Cup World Series coming to our shores this October.

As an artist and hobby-historian, I have been trying to find a way to access some academic databases (specifically Early English Books Online http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home ) to view high-resolution scans of very old books and manuscripts. Most seem to only be available to academic institutions. My local library doesn't have a subscription to such an "obscure" catalog as this. Is there some kind of organization that assists the public in accessing these databases? Edit: I'm in the United States.

http://i.imgur.com/U8fEEie.png?1

Did English literature vocabulary really peaked in the early 1800's and why is there a dip in late 2000's

For other similar examples just write this in google

define blemish

define betroth

define rapine

define ravish

1. It removes human agency from being able to control the generalizations that Diamond is discussing.

2. It has racist tendencies despite it coming to egalitarian conclusions. Primarily by removing the agency of the people who were "defeated" by Eurasian civilization.

3. It uses cherry-picked data. This comment gives an example: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mkcc3/how_do_modern_historians_and_history/cm577b4 Particularly, the example of the Pueblos revolting against the Spanish.

4. It overstates the effect of technological advantage.

I've read many of these responses and had some questions because the examples provided didn't feel like they were very strong arguments against the hypothesis:

1. Perhaps human agency is either less important than we might think at determining which cultural group expands more successfully than another. How can one know that human agency is not on the whole less impactful than we might think or that it is not particularly impactful over very long periods of time such as the majority of human written history?

2. I'm even less convinced by this argument, how could arguing that geographical and resource advantages lead to racist conclusions? It seems far more racist to suggest that Eurasians just had better cultural ideas about how to lead a successful society than to say that they got lucky.

3. The linked comment's example doesn't seem to convince me of much. I guess I just don't see how it's relevant at all to the claim being made. The fact that the Pueblos were able to rebel for a time with vastly superior numbers doesn't seem to say much about the argument that Spanish technological advantage allowed them to impose their culture forcefully onto the natives despite what would otherwise be a huge disadvantage.

4. Many of the arguments against this point that I read was that technological progress has been hindered by regressive policies such as the banning of the crossbow by the Catholic Church or the technological isolation of the Japanese in an attempt to maintain the Samurai class. But these examples seem to be fairly minimal or limited in their scope either geographically or temporally.

I'm not really invested at all into the book as, like I said, I've not even read it. But I'm trying to understand the criticisms since they didn't seem particularly convincing to me. Then again, I'm not an anthropologist / historian so I don't want to put much stock into my intuitions here.

http://imgur.com/lvYsKf1

Previous Weeks

This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.

There was a comment in the Arlington fracking fluid blowout thread that sardonically mentioned overthrowing the Texas state government in response to a recent rule preventing cities from banning fracking within their limits.

Gee if only you lived in a community of well-armed people who idealise the traditional American attitudes of self-determination and anti-tyranny. And if only there was some kind of amendment to a document you held dear that could guide you.

This got me thinking - has there been any instances in the United States history where a state government itself was overthrown outside of an election? In this case, I am referring to an armed militia (or something similar) showing up and replacing the current state government.

This video described them being a serious thorn to Oda Nobugana and even controlling their own province.

This is my entry, first posted last Friday. So far, /u/Aerandir suggested (correctly) that it's Roman glass (and /u/Tiako was glad he didn't guess otherwise). I'd like to see if anyone knows anything more about these items though, because their function is at least as interesting as their form.

If no one can figure out the function, I'll pass it along to /u/Aerandir for identifying the historical context.