It seems that after enough failures this serious flaw in every single attempted offensive would be obvious, and if these generals were spending months preparing for major offensives, they would have at least attempted to develop plans and means to move up their guns to reinforce successes. If they were aware of this serious flaw, did they attempt to find ways to make their guns more mobile, and why did these attempts not work?

Or was there a widespread inability of leaders to understand that these breakthrough attempts would inevitably fail because they could not move up their artillery? Was this a blind spot?

It was clear that Stalin was in charge after the exile of the United Opposition in 1927/28, and he unofficially had control over all of the Members of the Politburo, as most of them were his "puppets". I have some questions around the power of Stalin and the post of General Secretary. Was the General Secretary viewed as the formal head of state as Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev held this post during their power? If so, why was Lenin never the General Secretary in the early 20s? Did Stalin set the precedent of Secretary being the leader? If the Secretary was not the head of state, who official leader of the Soviet Union while Stalin was in the Secretary post?

This is quite a general question, and I'm going based off my own education.

Back when I was in school I learned about the European Empires (Rome, Britain, etc) of course, but I also learned about the Middle East and Far East Asian Civilizations (especially Mesopotamia and China).

Now, I DID learn about Egypt, but I'm moreso referring to later civilizations, such as the Mali and Songhai Empires.

Am I too pessimistic in thinking it is for racist reasons where don't learn about them? Did you learn about them?

I am reading some historical fiction. In Viking times it was normal to take slaves from conquered lands. In the UK there were lots of slaves from within the UK. (Irish,Scots,Saxon etc) When and why did this change? When I search for the abolishing of slavery I can only find much later references to slaves sent away to America- not household slaves (thralls) from the UK. Thanks

I’m wondering what some European perspectives on the hyper-heterodox Taiping Christianity were. I know there were extremely active missions in China, and that these precipitated the Taiping. Were the missionaries enthusiastic? Did they feel like the rebellion vindicated their efforts or constituted a legitimate (in their eyes) branch of Christianity?

I just wanted to first say this sub is a gold mine of great info. And I have recently began searching it for answers to questions I have had and I've found other mods talking about the "un moderated past" and how some old answers may not be as reliable and to report them to mods if you find them.

How long ago are we looking at? I've found answers to questions from 8 years ago that I've found helpful but don't know if they're 100% true.

And sorry mods I would have used modmail but i just wanted to post so everyone would know going forward.

So, I got this assignment for my ethics class in high school. I'm not looking for anyone to solve my assignment, just point me in the general direction I should be digging into. Teacher wasn't really helpful when I asked for guidance and with the research I did, would things like John Paul II "accepting" the theory of evolution or Pope Francis "allowing" atheists to go into Heaven be considered a liberal element?

Please help with some some guidelines because I hate half-assing shit. I want to make this look good.

Especially considering mail was the primary means of armor until the 12th century, why do slings seem to have vanished? Was it a gradual loss during late Antiquity that simply continued into the Middle Ages? Where were slings in the 6th-11th centuries?

Edit: What’s perhaps even more puzzling to me is that the same phenomenon happens in parallel in the Middle East. Were the same causes present there or is my understanding incomplete?

You see this is in movies and shows all the time. You have a bunch of archers releasing their arrows all at the same time. But why? Why not just firing at will? Was it because seeing a volley of arrows flying towards you was more intimidating, or something entirely different?

Despite sitting on mountains of oil and having arable farm land in anatolia, you would expect that the ottomans would atleast industrialize their major cities like Tsarist Russia did in the years pre-luding the bolshevik revolution. So why didn't it happen?

question as noted above. It seems that throughout American history, there was a rapid push for mass social movements espousing egalitarianism for minorities, only to be pushed back soon after due to some fear of altering the status quo. Why is that the case? The Republicans could've easily implemented the Reconstruction Amendments but just gave up all of a sudden due to some innate racist undertones IMO. Is this representative of the trend of rolling back equality measures for minorities in fear of breaking down the reign of the WASP mentality (ie. failure to expand bill of rights to slaves and annexed territories? Shortly after Reconstruction's changes to the system, Jim Crow arose, and it seemed all was back to square one, essentially rendering Reconstruction useless. Let me know your thoughts.

I have seen many costume dramas set in England, France, Russia, New York in the 1700s and 1800s with hat-less women. I thought that well into the 20th century modesty demanded that women of most social classes wear head coverings of some sort. Am I wrong in this? Were there decades of head coverings, and decades without, was it regional? Was it similar for men?

Because of the technology progress made in between the 1980s & 1910s I would have thought the warfare would have been much more like WW2, The Russian Civil War, the 6 day war, the Yom kippur war, the Korean war, South African border war or at least the Greco-Turkish war among many more contemporary wars. Maybe even wars that were fought slightly later than the Iran-Iraq war like the Persian Gulf war, Iraq war, Syrian civil war, or the breakup of Yugoslavia.

I realize that it would be very difficult to accurately estimate this but I’m curious around how much of economy went to the military budget.

As I understand it, Arthurian legend took off in France during the High Middle Ages largely due to the Brythonic heritage of Brittany, where even dukes bore the name Arthur and there are many cultural references even today. There were other ties in that period due to personal union of England, Wales and much of France under the Normans and the ‘Angevin Empire’.

So there’s certainly a connection. But I do get a bit confused as to how French writers came to focus so often on these still somewhat foreign legends: even Brittany was semi-independent for much of this time and the Bretons of Lower Brittany still largely spoke Breton, not French. The most famous sources, like Chrétien De Troyes and other trouvères who contributed so much to the Arthurian cycle, like Robert de Boron, Wace, etc., were not Breton: Wace was a Norman and even born in Jersey, but the others were from quite Far East, and part of a tradition that was chiefly influenced by Occitan troubadors, who had more focus on Charlemagne, and other influences from Greco-Roman or Biblical tradition. Where did this massive genre from a quite separate and largely quasi-independent part of the country come from?

I knew a man who served on an aircraft carrier during WW2 as a member of an anti-aircraft gun crew. He mentioned several times that most gun crew members were killed or wounded as a result of friendly fire from other ships in the battle group during air attacks. When a Japanese plane attacked, everyone opened up on it and it was extremely dangerous if they came in low. He also said the Japanese would purposefully come in between the carrier and the escorts know the carrier would probably be hit. He said he was aboard the Essex. Are there any articles or shows about this ?

Typical of contemporary countries in late 17th to early 19th centuries (earlier too, but then we're getting into feudal-like structures which are their own type of complexity), Britain made a big deal out of being a 'gentleman' as opposed to 'common man'. Gentry were eligible for government posts, were commissioned as Army and Navy Officers (whereas a common man would virtually never rise above enlisted or NCO). Gentlemen were exempt from humiliating punishments such as flogging, and overall were considered of entirely different social standing, almost a different citizenship class.

However, when compared to contemporary countries like France or Spain, which had a strict formal nobility system with a clear distinction of being of noble vs common birth, Britain had an extremely limited formal nobility. In Britain (due to stricter inheritance laws if nothing else), only those with formal titles such as Earl or Duke were considered 'nobility', far too few to fill the ranks of 'gentlemen' required to serve in civic and military offices. The idea of 'landless, itinerant noble', the basis of romances such as by Cervantes or Dumas, is not really a thing in Britain. A British peer, by definition, owned land, and would presumably be either busy running it or serving in Parliament (or as a senior General), rather than making a career as some 2nd lieutenant in a non-elite regiment.

That does, however, make the question of 'gentleman' a rather fluid one, compared to a continental fellow, who either was or wasn't a noble by clear-cut virtue of birth. What made a British gentleman? Being born in a manorial household? Having a certain amount of money? Having a university education? Being the younger (or illegitimate) son of a Peer? If someone of 'low birth' self-educated and made a fortune in commerce, would they be entitled to calling themselves a gentleman? What about his own sons?

The definition might have remained fluid (e.g. "you were a gentleman if other gentlemen considered you their peer, and we can leave it at that"), if not for the rather rigorous limitations the title (or lack thereof) conferred on its holder (going back to things like political appointments or military commissions). Surely, with such obstacles, people of means (however acquired) had a vested interest in being recognized as gentry in order to socially advance, and there would need to be some specific criteria of what being a gentlemen actually meant for purposes of such recognition.

As a bonus, if a British gentleman travelled in Europe (e.g. on a Grand Tour, or even trying to serve in a foreign country's military, which wasn't too uncommon at the time), what criteria would those other countries use (like France or Spain, which, as mentioned, had a very strict birth-based rules of who was and wasn't a noble) to determine his social eligibility? Which kind of British visitor would be considered by Continental nobility as 'one of them', and which one wasn't?