My question is, what did the Russian people make Vodka out of before they got their hands on that sweet spuddy goodness? Beetroot? Alco-borch or something? Cos Russia been there for ages, right? But we've only been looting, I mean exploring south America for a couple hunnit years or so. Just curious. Thank you for your time.
1 Answers 2021-03-31
I'm writing a novel and there is a scene where a merchant sailing ship in 1603 runs into a storm. They are taking heavy waves at the bow and leaks start appearing between the seams. How would they react to this situation? Besides pumping which I have already included.
1 Answers 2021-03-31
Let’s say it’s 12th century England or France to narrow the question. How do I, as a non noble, become a professional soldier and not tied to the land? How do I join a retinue and become a paid member of an aristocrats circle or soldiers?
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In the UK, it’s a head turner if someone says they only passed their driving test via automatic. My friend let me drive his sports car which was automatic. It was great. How come this means of driving is so dominant in the US?
1 Answers 2021-03-31
It seems clear to me that there are plenty of parallels between the Exodus story and the plight of the pre-Civil War Black population. Enslaved in a foreign land, overseen by cruel masters who "...embittered their lives with hard labor, with mortar and with bricks and with all manner of labor in the field; any labor that they made them do was with hard labor" (Exodus 1:14).
It also seems to me that this was not lost on those alive in the 1860s. The song "Go Down Moses" seems to be the most obvious connection. Even Jews were contemporaneously drawing comparisons between Moses and Lincoln after he was assassinated.
Now, I understand that "why did X not happen" is quite difficult to answer. So perhaps this is better phrased as, "If Christianity was the religion of the oppressors, why did postbellum American Blacks become Christians instead of Jews, with whom you'd think they'd've more strongly identified?"
1 Answers 2021-03-31
during Operation Barbarossa?
3 Answers 2021-03-31
I just finished Ken Follett's novel The Evening and the Morning, about life in Anglo-Saxon England CE ~1001-1006.
While war is not in the forefront of the story, it plays a major role in the background. One thing that struck me, was that there was zero mention of the Fyrd, or any sort of conscription. Only soldiers seem to be called out to do any fighting. Is this realistic? Wouldn't most males be required to serve in some extent?
1 Answers 2021-03-31
I often hear the argument that every single German soldier was a Jew hating facist because Rommel once refused a order and he got a way with it and therefore any WW2 soldier could easily refuse to fight and get away with it
I think that one of the most successful generals may get away with more than a simple private ....
What's reality?
I am a German boi in the 40s and I get the order to fight but I refuse to.... What happens next
Is it the same thing if I already enlisted and I refuse to execute civilians?
1 Answers 2021-03-31
Everything seems to have gone online today, but what I’m curious about is if the spanish flu had a similar effect.
Did everything go radio? Did sending letters get popularised? Was the spanish flu a catalyst for many companies to change their business model? Did tvs get popularized?
1 Answers 2021-03-31
The concept of the USSR planned economy fascinates me. How would a young person coming out of school get a job at a place like a grocery store to begin with? Was there any free agency involved in getting a job, or was that determined by things like tests? After getting a job, how practical was it to change careers or positions? Say a grocer wanted to become a barber, or something.
1 Answers 2021-03-31
So to make a long story short I suffered a brain injury in roughly the middle of 2016 and as a result I can't retain anything I read. I can physically read the words but I can't retain any of the information from the books. However, my love of history is still very much alive. I'm hoping to find some good recommendations for YouTube channels I can follow because it's much easier for me to retain information when I've heard it rather than read it. If this is the wrong subreddit for me to ask this question mea maxima culpa, but I'm hoping that a subreddit dedicated to history will have a number of channels it can plug letting me know of content I could consume to better educate myself. Thank you in advance for your answers and have a wonderful night/day depending on where you live!
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I’m wondering for these Muslims who lived at an awful distance away from Mecca: did they go do hajj there? If so, how expensive and long were the trips back and forth, and what route did they take?
1 Answers 2021-03-31
America was founded in civil war against the British empire, and our first post-revolution war was fought against the British, Britain and France were both roughly supportive of the Confederacy during the civil war because of their reliance on cotton (distant Turkish laughter), and the English and French have been fighting each other for so long you might think it was the official pass time for them all to meet up in Normandy and pound the tar out of each other.
Then we get to World War 1 and suddenly the three of us are all the bestest friends you ever heard of, unquestioningly having each others back basically up until and including today. So what happened in the 50~ years between the American Civil War and the Great War to patch up our long history of stabbing each other?
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In America and probably the West in general a lot of people see the caste system as a static hierarchy made up of five classes (varnas) that is thousands of years old and entirely justified in Indian society by the Hindu concepts of karma and samsara. Taking Hindu classes as a kid, I was taught that Hinduism, specifically in the Bhagavad Gita, does not justify it and that it was a product of elites like the Brahmins wanting to take advantage of theology to legitimize their status or climb the ranks. Essentially they were using religion to justify a societal evil like American slaveholders using Christianity to justify slavery and racism. I am sure that the truth is a lot more complicated than either of these narratives, especially since they don't explain how other countries on the subcontinent also have caste systems, even the Muslim majority ones, and that followers of other religions are included in the system(s) and neither really explain where and how jatis fit in nor how things are in the modern era.
1 Answers 2021-03-31
So i like to study vikings but i can't find the reason they even began becoming a thing. Most of the viking stuff i know is from the middle of the viking era such as Ivarr the boneless
1 Answers 2021-03-30
I was reading about the Guangzhou massacre and the death toll was at ~100,000. What percentage of Canton's population were foreigners, especially Persians and Arabs? Are there any estimates?
1 Answers 2021-03-30
Camel caravans have long populated the image that we have of Muslim world, but I've recently learned that, up until Roman times, they weren't as commonplace and/or as important as they became after the Arab conquest of most of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century.
One of the scholarly sources that have taught me this is the paper "From Baghdad to London: The dynamics of urban development in Europe and the Arab world, 800-1800", which states that the Arab world focused much more on overland trade than sea trade, with most major Muslim cities being located quite inland compared to the former Roman metropolises, like Cairo in Egypt (in place of Alexandria) and Damascus in Syria (instead of Antioch):
For cities in the Muslim world we do not find this: the sea coefficient is negative, implying that location at sea does not give cities a clear advantage over their landlocked counterparts: indeed, the really big Muslim cities such as Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Cordoba are inland (Istanbul is a notable exception here, but it became a Muslim city only in 1453). Also Muslim cities with good access to roman roads are not larger than others. In contrast, being a hub of caravan roads has a strong positive effect pointing to the importance of transport on camel-back in the Arab World.
Instead of old Roman roads or ports, caravan hubs became an indicator of prosperity. Sea trade only mattered in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean being a relative backwater for the Muslims:
This appears to have been less the case in the Arab world. Indeed, the Arabs largely replaced the predating Roman system with one of their own, founding many new cities from scratch. As a result, the effect of Roman roads and of (arch)bishops is much smaller (and insignificant). Instead, we see a strong influence of caravan hubs indicating the importance of trade via caravan trails (linking Africa to as far as India and even China) that gained in importance after the Arab conquests. It also, combined with the insignificance of location at sea, shows the orientation of the Arab World towards the East and South (see e.g. Pryor, 1988, p.137 and the geographic scope of Arab travelers [more on this below]). Mediterranean trade was of marginal importance compared to the Muslim trade across the Sahara and in the Indian Ocean.
(...)
The radical change in the dominant transport mode following the Arab Conquests is clearly evident from Table 4: in contrast to cities linked via the infrastructure predating the Arab conquest (roman roads), cities outside this network, and linked via caravan routes instead, are larger than the other cities, pointing to a clear discontinuity in the urban system following the Arab conquest: camels have taken over the role of horse-drawn carts
The footnote for the last paragraph above even states that one of its sources claims that wheeled transport disappeared (I guess that must be a huge overstatement) and also attempts to give an explanation for this change:
Hourani 2002: 44: ‘In the greater part of the Near East wheeled transport disappeared after the rise of the Muslim Empire, not to come back until the nineteenth century, and various reasons have been suggested for this: Roman roads decayed, the new Arab ruling groups had an interest in the rearing of camels, and transport on camel-back was more economical than by cart’; according to Glick 1979: 24 the disappearance of wheeled transport antedated the Arabic expansion by several centuries, but he also stresses the link with the military use of the camel.
In its concluding remarks, the paper says that although the Muslim world was quite innovative in adopting the caravan routes as the preferred method of transport for trade, it ended up limiting the later and larger gains made by improved maritime technologies:
Another factor that we argue has played a substantial role was the importance of different in modes of transport. In a way, the Arab world was more innovative in that it replaced the system of Roman roads by caravan routes, and the cart drawn by oxen or horses by the camel packed with goods (a rational move as camel transport was a more efficient means of transportation – there was no need for road maintenance and the camel outperforms the horse when it comes to stamina in desert type conditions). By focusing on caravan routes, Muslim cities to some extent turned their back to the seas, which initially may have been related to the fact that during the Arab Conquests of the Middle East and North Africa, Christian powers – in particular Byzantium – still dominated the Mediterranean, which made sea transport more risky than overland trade. This choice for camels and caravans as the key mode of transport had long-term consequences. Given its technology, prospects for productivity growth were meager; in fact, the productivity of camel transport may not have changed at all during the ten centuries under study (see Austen 1990).
This comment from another thread also states:
Instead, camel caravans made increasing sense, as the Islamic states that succeeded the Roman Empire streamlined government, abandoning road repair but also taxing trade less and intervening less directly into the affairs of urban families. From a broad perspective, the transition from Roman boats and wagons to Arab camel caravans on the 'inland sea' of the deserts demanded the careful maintenance of bridges and the construction of caravanserais (inns built around courtyards at watering holes across the desert).
So, how much of this is accurate?
And if it is, why did the Muslim world largely relinquish the old Roman systems of transport to second place?
Was it a conscious decision or the conclusion of a trend that had already been going on for some time (e.g. socioeconomic benefits or environmental conditions such as desertification)?
Finally, what was the state of all these transport methods during the Ottoman Empire, after it had conquered the whole Eastern Mediterranean? I know that they maintained a strong naval hegemony at least until the Battle of Lepanto, but what about trade?
EDIT: also posted on r/history
1 Answers 2021-03-30
Did they compete?
Importantly, is Zoroastrianism a missionary religion, or an ethnic religion? Does Zoroastrianism have the same concept of "universalism" ("everyone has to become Zoroastrian") that Christianity and Islam have?
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In images like this recent post to /r/oldschoolcool , https://i.redd.it/bqtsz17i97q61.jpg several of the buildings have a parapet wall on the front instead of letting the pitched roof show. One might assume this was for advertising, but they're often blank like in the photo example.
Was there a reason for this, or was it only so we could later make movies with bad guys hiding and shooting from behind them?
1 Answers 2021-03-30
