1 Answers 2015-01-08
The article in question - http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/xmongol.htm
I ask because, while it seems to make sense on the surface, I don't know much about the Abbasid Caliphate, nor sociology, nor much of any of the social sciences when related to such an event - furthermore, Dutch is a Natural Scientist, and this is a paper on history, as such, even though he may be correct, I immediately question his authority on the matter.
3 Answers 2015-01-08
It makes sense that Germany would need Poland - they had former German territory and were of strategic importance in the case of war with the USSR. But why did Britain and France care?
2 Answers 2015-01-08
Dear historians,
I'm having trouble pinning down the factors as to why 1830 is such an important date. Agriculture has been revolutionised and Britain is heading into the early railway age - so it's not the railways quite yet is it?
Done a bit of reading and mechanisation in textiles is a big thing, powered by steam instead of water mills.. Iron production shoots up with coal powering everything and Britain moves into "free trade" from mercantilism.
I'm having trouble with pinning down why exactly it is seen as a turning point, feeling a bit out of my depth so any help would be appreciated.
Edit: Perhaps it is because of social consequences?
Edit2: http://richardjohnbr.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/why-did-economic-change-occur-in.html was a good read but created more questions than answers!
3 Answers 2015-01-08
While watching a segment on Museum Secrets, claims were made that the overall Crusader efforts of the Third Crusade were largely successful despite the loss of Jerusalem to the Islamic side. Is there a missing angle to this period I am missing?
1 Answers 2015-01-08
I was pondering in my insomnia last night how the entire culture and way of life of tribes such as the Lakota were entirely different before the arrival of the horse into North America.
It made me curious how the horse expanded across the continent, and how those cultures initially reacted. I recall in a conversation that the Aztec word for horse is essentially "large stag" or large deer, as that was the way they could understand it in linguistic concept. Was this similar in other NA tribes?
Additionally, I've heard both that the horses introduced were either traded across the vast trade networks of the continent, as well as wild herds were re-domesticated by tribes, which was more true?
How did these tribes also adapt the horse into their mythologies about their world?
4 Answers 2015-01-08
1 Answers 2015-01-08
2 Answers 2015-01-08
Was there just not enough "cash" to matter? I know there were private land owners other than kings and rulers.
1 Answers 2015-01-08
It is my understanding that dowries were expected and sometimes legally required in the medieval period, but modern Europeans no longer hold this custom. When and why did this change happen?
2 Answers 2015-01-08
Anecdote: At a party, my roommate mentioned casually that people in Greece and the Balkans are white whereas Turkey and the peoples of the Eastern Med are not. I asked him what he thought about the fact that Greeks had been in Anatolia for a long time, and that the Ottoman empire controlled large parts of southeast Europe, and he basically said the dividing line was Islam. So then I asked him about Georgia, and without much hesitation, he said Georgians were not white. I mentioned that they were Christians, and he ended up saying "you have to draw the line somewhere."
Anyway, that got me thinking: how did these peoples conceive of themselves? Was it important to say, Greeks, to label themselves white and Turks as non-white? I'm mostly interested in the 19th century, though I'd like to hear about the 20th century. 18th if it's relevant. I'm not sure how old the concept of whiteness goes back.
1 Answers 2015-01-08
Remember when we did this in October?? Ohhh how time flies, especially when you are tardy on the census results. We’ve also had a pretty big bump in new subscribers in the last few weeks (hello new people!) so, as with most demographics efforts, it’s out of date before you publish it. But here we are! Let’s talk about the state of the subreddit as we keep crawling into 2015!
The previous survey results so you can see how this toddler has grown.
#Community at Large
Total responses for this round: 4377, we left it up for about 48 hours so that’s a “snapshot” sample, so not a true census, but we were looking for a sample.
The most populous demographic continues to be the stereotypical redditor - a 20-25 year old male, living in the United States, who is earning a bachelors in a non-historical field, or working in a non-historical field. But we have a little variety!
Map of where we all live. This is an interactive choropleth made with Fusion Tables, if you click on a country you can see how many people reported in from there. A screenshot if you need a lower tech option.
The youngest age reporting in was 13, and the oldest was 68. Last year the youngest people were 12 so I like to imagine it’s the same kids here and they had their birthdays.
Employment results, 46% of respondents are students!
A whopping 88% of the people here have been here more than 3 months, and 47% have been here more than a year. This is a pretty big increase in old-hands from last time, and I don’t want to get all weepy and “We couldn’t do it without youuuu” but really, this is the most cheering result in the entire survey and the one that helps me personally feel like I’m doing something worthwhile with my free time: that people come here, and like it enough to stay for such a long time. So, really, a sincere thank you for your continued custom, AskHistorians regulars.
(Also a small apology to whoever rightly pointed this out in one of the text boxes - I did not include any option for retired/emeritus in the employment question, which was definitely an oversight and will be corrected in the next round.)
#What We Like and How We Like It
In a sweeping victory that will surprise no one, AskHistorians really likes European, Roman, and military history. (Theoretically the hottest questions would be about Roman military strategy in Britian?) Some surprise for the religious flairs in their noble white robes coming in at a solid number three for fan-favorite!
If you like to answer questions here and think brevity is the soul of wit, think again, because in AskHistorians the readers like it loooong. A small surprise that people respond more favorably to citing print sources than ones that are available online.
Ever feel like telling someone asking a seemingly superficial question to just google it? Well the good news is you don’t need to, because 81% of question-askers said they had googled their question first or done more extensive research. Only 19% of people come to us first. (Google’s percentages posted here are of the entire amount of survey respondents and not just the people who answered that question, so they are wonky.)
#The Women
Women are doing about the same here. Women came in at 16% of the survey respondents, last survey had 15% women, which is not a statistically significant increase.
The average AskHistorians woman is 27 and is more likely to hold an advanced degree than the general population (15% of women holding a graduate degree, 10% of general population) and about as likely to have flair (2.7% of women have flair, while 3.1% of the general population have flair, which is not a statistically significant difference.) Women are slightly more regular readers, but less likely to comment regularly. (5.7% of women comment once a month or more, compared to 12% of the general population.)
So, some of these findings are admittedly a disappointment. Ladies, how do we get you to participate more? You’re older, more educated, and around more, so what would you like to see?
#The Flairs
The few, the (perhaps overly) proud, the flaired…
The average age of the flaired responders is 28, 15% women, 85% men (so a genderly fair selection of our general population), and total of 65% have formally invested in history, either they are undergraduate history students, graduate history students, or have completed a bachelor’s or graduate degree in history. The most populous group seems to be history graduate students (presumably answering questions about what Romans thought about tornados to distract themselves from their theses). 19% of survey respondents work in academia or a non-academic historical field, but most earn their daily bread in non-historical employment.
Last survey had 4.3% of the respondents flaired, this time was 2.9%, which is a statistically significant decrease in flaired users. So this is something of an open secret as it’s observable to anyone who cares to do a little math. The mod team has been concerned for a few months that our flaired user group is not growing in tandem with the sub overall. We are of course still adding flaired users, but as a percentage of the overall subreddit they are not growing at the same rate as new subscribers/traffic rates, and, as with any volunteer community, many people join and later fade out as their interest wanes, so we need a steady influx of more flairs.
So, any thoughts on the flair system are welcome below, but a general reminder that you only need to meet two core requirements to get flair here: 1) know what you are talking about and 2) don’t be a jerk. We don’t care where your knowledge comes from, you don’t need to have a degree in history, be an “actual historian,” or email us any “proof” of anything. Heck you can even be an entity of pure historical knowledge refracted into a cube, like /u/Daeres.
#Customer Satisfaction
The average quality ranking of answers was 5.5. This is mostly because 25% of respondents said their question did not receive any acceptable answer. The mod-run Flair Alert system (where a mod sends a PM to flaired users when a question has appeared that might interest them) has been recently relaunched to try to get more questions in front of the right eyes and hopefully answered. If you’re interested in getting your own alerts please check out this post on how to use IFTTT to hack AskHistorians!
#The Future of AskHistorians:
90% of the surveyors took the optional survey part where we quizzed you about the future. As that was mostly text boxes (yes, multiple mods have read ALL THE FREE TEXT you guys put in, including the compliments, insults, suggestion to record the podcast naked {/u/400-Rabbits of course already does so}, and the recommendation to invest in cryptocurrency), I’m just going to post the results of the simple poll question: What project should we do next?
You guys want a better booklist - and we agree! And currently in the works is a fully-searchable, subject-tagged, color-coded, Goodreads-integrated, 35% recycled material, Fair Trade Certified AskHistorians booklist. So stay tuned. :)
11 Answers 2015-01-08
I read recently that the Gallipoli Campaign in WWI came to be seen as a "baptism by fire" in Australia and New Zealand and helped create and soidify the national identities of the two nations. What sort of national identities existed before the campaign? To what extent did Gallipoli and the resulting "ANZAC" ethos push or catalyze the movements for independence? What other factors played a role?
1 Answers 2015-01-08
This week, ending in January 08 2015:
Today's thread is for open discussion of:
History in the academy
Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries
Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application
Philosophy of history
And so on
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
2 Answers 2015-01-08
Were there ever assassination attempts by the CIA or MI6 on Hitler? Would killing him even be effective? If there were no attempts, why?
2 Answers 2015-01-08
I'm currently reading a book about the bear and its symbolic meaning in western culture, from the Paleolithic until the modern era. The author suggests that although many archaeologists deny the existence of a Paleolithic bear cult, the discovery of symbolically arranged bear remains in caves, widespread cave paintings of bears in numerous poses and portable art featuring bears or made from their bodies indicate that such a cult probably did exist.
The author then describes commonalities between bear-deities and veneration of the bear by Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and Baltic peoples. He seems to implicitly argue that these traditions were survivals from an ancient and pre-historic bear cult. I don't know enough about pre-history to formulate my own opinion about the former argument, but the latter seems pretty speculative and unlikely.
So, can any archaeologist or pre-historian help me out here? Is there convincing evidence for a pre-historic bear cult? Am I right in thinking that it is incredibly unlikely that veneration of the bear continued from the Paleolithic until the High Middle Ages?
1 Answers 2015-01-08
1 Answers 2015-01-08
Roman soldiers are always depicted in pictures and drawings as armored. How close is this to reality?
4 Answers 2015-01-08
