I've found references as far back as FDR. The interesting thing to me is that the root word "progress" is quite nebulous; one person might call a policy "progress" and another another might disagree. My impression is that post-FDR democrats are more likely to advocate for (what I'd call progressive) change than Republicans, so it follows that the left is associated with progress. That said, when and more importantly WHY did that change become associated with progress on the national political scene?

In the novel Nutmeg of Consolation there's a ship that was deliberately submerged for months because it was "infected", then hauled up and refitted.

Is this a real practice and if so which ships were so treated ? It sounds like an incredible undertaking, just imagining how many men hauling on ropes even with a forest worth of blocks for mechanical advantage.

Capstans, is that it? Ratchets plus pulleys ?

I've seen it discussed before that the ideas of nations and race are relatively recent developments in the grand scheme of human history. As I understand it, even lines on a map are problematic in capturing how polities of the past actually operated.

Now, recognizing that something like this will vary wildly over time and space, how might a member of a specific culture group such as the Greeks or Germanic tribes consider themselves relative to their neighbours? Would they see it through physical differences such as appearance or clothing, or through a political lense like the Lords or King they served? Would it be based on language? Food?

As an example, how might a medieval Englishman or classical Greek describe the difference between them and their neighbours? Or am I entirely off and it is so varied as to be an unanswerable question altogether?

I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for the list of English and British monarchs, and it's kinda weird that only Victoria and Elizabeth II appear painted with their respective crowns. Pretty much none of the kings have their crowns.

As a matter of fact, it seems like most kings aren't painted with crowns at all, including those of France. I look up George III on google and almost none of his images feature a crown, just ermine and copious amounts of tassels. Why is that?

I wonder how it was perceived by the occupiers and if the collaboration regime tried to use it as a mean to appease or please them. Especially knowing the crucial link between Petain and the allied victory in WWI.

I realized the lead pencil was invented fairly recently (18th century), what did people, specially artists, use before then? I'm certain I've seen many earlier art pieces that seem to have been done by some sort of pencil. If someone could tell me more about writing and painting utencils in general I'd really apreciate it.

I work at a railroad museum and we have in our collection a US Army hospital car, but we're not sure where/when it was actually in service. We believe it was built in 1945, and according to conflicting info it was either used in WWII (imo doubtful due to date of construction) or the Korean War or both.

It's designated US car #89436, but our own museum website is the only result for that search term on regular google.

I know that at the time that the Caliphate was beginning to expand the Romans and the Persians were exhausted and spent in terms of money, men and morale, having been at war from 572 to 591 and then again from 602 to 628, but Sassanid Persia was essentially gone after the Battle of Nahavand in 642 while the Romans (ie the Byzantines, but I’ve read that is an incorrect term to describe the Roman Empire after it’s capital was moved to Constantinople and Greek replaced Latin as the primary language) held on after their loss at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636, the conquest of Egypt etc. and for much of that time, until 1071 they remained a great power.

This is surprising because it seems that the Persians did better for themselves than the Romans in their last war, and that the Persian state was much more functional than Rome with its constant civil wars, governmental intrigue and perpetual threat of invasion into the Balkans and Greece by Slavs, Huns, Avars, Goths etc and so one would think that it was the Sassanids who would have been better positioned to put up resistance and hold on for some time.

I'm a first year PhD student writing my dissertation about the history of military photography in the First World War. I have a solid grasp on the military historiography side but my advisors want me to assign my research broader resonance in the wider study of visual culture — an area I'm unfamiliar with. I've been reading the literature like crazy but continue to struggle with the more abstract concepts of photographic history. Here's where I'm stuck:

To what school of thought does my research belong?

There is so much nuance in photographic historiography that I can't nail down where my work would contribute. "Photography as document?" "Photography as evidence?" "Photography and meaning?" I'm lost. Am I approaching the categorization of this lit incorrectly?

For reference, my dissertation studies the evolution of military photography in the British army on the Western Front from 1914-1918. 'Military photography,' in this case, includes official photographs and reconnaissance photographs, not so much amateur photographs.

If the history gods could show mercy on my wretched, wretched soul and bestow me with some guidance from the historians of Reddit, I think I'd cry.

Thank you for your time.

David Graeber and David Wengrow in their book The Origin of Everything make the claim that Europeans that have had the chance to experience both stateless/decentralized micro-state society and European society, almost exclusively chose the latter. Their evidence for this came from largely the Algonquian linguistics area's interaction with Early colonial Europeans, USA as Canada and the Yanomami, but the impression I have gotten from the few stuff I have come across tangentially related to that is largely that Hunter-gatherers and decentralized Agriculturalists who still heavily depended on hunting and foraging to supplement their economy just had a very very hard time adjusting to full Agricultural and/or Industrial society.

And that people Kidnapped into a society when they were children also aren't the best comparison as well, they might be as socialized into Ameridian society as Ameridian children and have little memory of what ever socialization occurred in Western society before they joined Ameridian one.

The relevant Quotes, which if you're not interested in reading, you can just skip it to the Last Paragraphs

Over the last several centuries, there have been numerous occasions when individuals found themselves in a position to make precisely this choice and they almost never go the way Pinker would have predicted. Some have left us clear, rational explanations for why they made the choices they did. Let us consider the case of Helena Valero, a Brazilian woman born into a family of Spanish descent, whom Pinker mentions as a ‘white girl’ abducted by Yanomami in 1932 while travelling with her parents along the remote Rio Dimití. For two decades, Valero lived with a series of Yanomami families, marrying twice, and eventually achieving a position of some importance in her community. Pinker briefly cites the account Valero later gave of her own life, where she describes the brutality of a Yanomami raid. What he neglects to mention is that in 1956 she abandoned the Yanomami to seek her natal family and live again in ‘Western civilization,’ only to find herself in a state of occasional hunger and constant dejection and loneliness. After a while, given the ability to make a fully informed decision, Helena Valero decided she preferred life among the Yanomami, and returned to live with them. Her story is by no means unusual. The colonial history of North and South America is full of accounts of settlers, captured or adopted by indigenous societies, being given the choice of where they wished to stay and almost invariably choosing to stay with the latter. 28 This even applied to abducted children. Confronted again with their biological parents, most would run back to their adoptive kin for protection. 29 By contrast, Amerindians incorporated into European society by adoption or marriage, including those who – unlike the unfortunate Helena Valero – enjoyed considerable wealth and schooling, almost invariably did just the opposite: either escaping at the earliest opportunity, or – having tried their best to adjust, and ultimately failed – returning to indigenous society to live out their last days.

Among the most eloquent commentaries on this whole phenomenon is to be found in a private letter written by Benjamin Franklin to a friend: 'When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness.'

In his (1782) Letters from an American Farmer J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur noted how parents, at the end of a war, would visit Indian towns to reclaim their children: ‘To their inexpressible sorrow, they found them so completely Indianized, that many knew them no longer, and those whose more advanced ages permitted them to recollect their fathers and mothers, absolutely refused to follow them, and ran to their adopted parents for protection against the effusions of love their unhappy real parents lavished upon them.’ (cited in Heard 1977: 55–6, who also notes Crèvecoeur’s conclusion that the Indians must possess a ‘social bond singularly captivating, and far superior to anything to be boasted of among us’.)

‘Alas! Alas!’ wrote James Willard Schultz – an eighteen-year-old from a prominent New York family who married into the Blackfoot, remaining with them until they were driven on to a reservation – ‘Why could not this simple life have continued? Why must the … swarms of settlers have invaded that wonderful land, and robbed its lords of all that made life worth living? They knew not care, nor hunger, nor want of any kind. From my window here, I hear the roar of the great city, and see the crowds hurrying by … “bound to the wheel” and there is no escape from it except by death. And this is civilization! I, for one, maintain that there is no … happiness in it. The Indians of the plains … alone knew what was perfect content and happiness, and that, we are told, is the chief end and aim of men – to be free from want, and worry, and care. Civilization will never furnish it, except to the very, very few.’ (Schultz 1935: 46; see also Heard 1977: 42)

Some possible explanations they gave without just going "Ameridian lifestyle just better"

Many who found themselves embroiled in such contests of civilization, if we may call them that, were able to offer clear reasons for their decisions to stay with their erstwhile captors. Some emphasized the virtues of freedom they found in Native American societies, including sexual freedom, but also freedom from the expectation of constant toil in pursuit of land and wealth. Others noted the ‘Indian’s’ reluctance ever to let anyone fall into a condition of poverty, hunger or destitution. It was not so much that they feared poverty themselves, but rather that they found life infinitely more pleasant in a society where no one else was in a position of abject misery (perhaps much as Oscar Wilde declared he was an advocate of socialism because he didn’t like having to look at poor people or listen to their stories). For anyone who has grown up in a city full of rough sleepers and panhandlers – and that is, unfortunately, most of us – it is always a bit startling to discover there’s nothing inevitable about any of this. Still others noted the ease with which outsiders, taken in by ‘Indian’ families, might achieve acceptance and prominent positions in their adoptive communities, becoming members of chiefly households, or even chiefs themselves. 32 Western propagandists speak endlessly about equality of opportunity; these seem to have been societies where it actually existed. By far the most common reasons, however, had to do with the intensity of social bonds they experienced in Native American communities: qualities of mutual care, love and above all happiness, which they found impossible to replicate once back in European settings. ‘Security’ takes many forms. There is the security of knowing one has a statistically smaller chance of getting shot with an arrow. And then there’s the security of knowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply if one is.

Now I am no expert in anything but I'm historical stuff I have read, about interaction with Europeans and non-state or decentralized micro-state peoples I haven't really gotten the impression of Graeber and Wengrow. I have come across the case of "The White Head Hunter", a White Australian that got integrated into a Solomon's Islands community and rose to relative high ranks but by his own account he fled as soon as he had the chance, by the historical record of him after that, he never returned and intentionally avoided the Island and from the summary of the native account of him he was quite remembered fondly so it's not like he ran due to bad blood.

And it seems to be counter evidence against the suggestion that Europeans stayed in such societies due to being more able to climb the social hierarchy or being treated better.

However, the Chief of that society had cohesive power which Graeber and Wengrow claim was absent(or near that) in the societies South Western Canada and North Western USA that he focused on.

Other random examples I have come across are less ideal to the comparison, mostly being ethnologists, traders, missionaries and explorers completely cut off for decades to the outside world and Inculturating into a stateless or decentralized society and while not ideal examples, they also do generally return to European society when they had the chance, without any coercion. These examples are British explorers in East Africa, Dutch missionaries among the Khoi-San and European traders(French, Basque) in the early colonial Americas.

Do you think Graeber's and Wengrow's argument that Europeans that have had the chance to experience both stateless/decentralized micro-state society and European society, almost exclusive chose the later is cherry picking, largely exclusive to the conditions of early Colonial USA and Canada or quite common and the random info I came across has been filtered by a society promoting it's own Western Civilization?.

Satraps each ruled a piece of land within the empire, but what happened when they didn't agree about their own inner borders? Did they always just go to a higher Satrap to decide, or to the emparor if needed? Or did it happen that fights broke out between Satraps in order to redefine their own borders?

During the cold war both US and the USSR developed nuclear warheads with a yield that reached megatons but now almost every nuke in their arsenal have a yield of a few kilotons with the most powerful of them reaching a few hundreds of kilotons. Is there any particular reason why they renounced using those powerful weapons in exchange of the weaker ones?