Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
For everyone that thinks the whole Nigerian prince email scam is a recent phenomenon, I ran across a reference to the old Spanish prisoner mail scam:
And lastly - did you ever hear of the Spanish prisoner letters? I got one of these too. A missive from, in my case, Mexico. Some enterprising soul who said he was being held a political prisoner but had access to a family fortune if he could only obtain his liberty. A small sum paid to him to help in his political fight would be repaid many times. The postal officials tried everything to halt this hoax.
It's really just an aside, but the more things change...
Well, it's been far too long since I've written something of substance for /r/AskHistorians. In light of that and in a vague attempt to convince myself I actually contribute here, I'm going to share a basic source overview of the English-Language historiography of the Winter War which I've just finished writing in response to a PM request. There's so, so much more I could and should add here, but I'm getting tired and it'd take a weekend to refresh myself on my historiography. So, in all its unpolished glory:
Hi Heim,
I'd be more than happy to help you as I can with sources on the Winter War, with one major caveat - English-language sources on the war are now, almost without exception, problematic. For this reason, I've actually abandoned my flair in 'The Winter War' for some time now, being uncomfortable with calling myself an expert when the sources I rely on (like you, I speak no Finnish or Russian) have become, by and large, badly outdated, or are lacking accuracy.
I've written a few papers on the Winter War in the past, however, so I'm happy to point you towards the sources I've used in the past. I've procrastinated too long on assembling a comprehensive bibliography of these works, so I'll do my best to cover as many bases as possible.
Academic Publications
I'll take the time here to point you towards two works which are key to a comprehensive understanding of the Winter War - two pieces which have aged remarkably well and stand out as the greatest English-language contributions to the scholarly discussion of the war. Both of these pieces are now more than 40 years old, and the passage of time has rendered a number of their arguments and discussions outdated. They are, nonetheless, a must-read.
Chew, Allen F. The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War. Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1971.
Chew's work remains the centre-piece of comprehensive research scholarship on the Winter War. His work was the first, and remains to date, the only time a comprehensive, academic account of the Winter War has been written and published in English - a sad indictment of the state of the scholarly body, given the book is now 45 years old. Chew's work focuses on the strategic side of the conflict, and its excellent use of first-hand accounts and interviews with veterans means it remains relevant and extremely useful today. Nonetheless, it is outdated, with limited access to Russian archives and perspectives of the conflict - a shortcoming shared by almost every English-language work.
Jakobson's account of the diplomacy of the Winter War is to this day the best, most comprehensive discussion of the diplomatic angle of the conflict. Despite being nearly 60 years old, Jakobson's work is vital to understanding the political angle of an intensely political conflict - and crucially, for understanding the conflict's conclusion.
/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov and I tend to quip "Reese is awesome" on a fairly frequent basis, and this piece is exemplary of why. Reese's article focusses solely on the strategic aspect of the Red Army's performance, so it's an extremely niche work, but if that's of use to you, then I couldn't recommend it more highly.
Pop History
Unfortunately, most of the longer, newer works we have on the Winter War in English are what we'd call 'pop' history - they draw extensively on first hand evidence, but they lack the same academic integrity that we might hope for in scholarly pursuits. The pieces I'm going to list here are definitely of value in understanding the conflict, but none should be treated as gospel.
Finland at War is the newest, flashiest and best presented work on the Winter War, having been released just last year. In it, you'll find a well-written and beautifully presented overview of the conflict, complete with charming formatting and lovely pictures. Unfortunately, you won't find academic level analysis or discussion in the book - instead, expect and treat it more as an overview narrative, and not necessarily an entirely reliable one at that. None of the authors holds academic credentials (they are, respectively, a military veteran, a tabletop roleplaying enthusiast and amateur historian, and a veteran-turned-singer-songwriter.) If you are looking for somewhere to start in 2016, it is this book. In my case, I was extremely excited for its publication, and disappointed to find that it added nothing new to the scholarship of the Winter War. It did, however, go a long way towards sprucing up the established narrative and presenting it nicely.
Osprey did us all the enormous disservice of publishing two very similarly named books on the Winter War. If Nenya, Munter and Wirtanen's Winter at War is the flash pop-history account of the war, then Jowett and Snodgrass' Winter at War is the accompanying pocket-book. At just 64 pages, don't expect any scholarship from this piece - you may, however, find it useful as a reference work thanks to its excellent, detailed illustrations of weapons, uniforms and materiel. In short, treat it like a really fancy Wikipedia article.
Until Osprey's 2015 publication, Trotter's work was our most recent comprehensive discussion of the Winter War. Trotter provides a narrative account of the conflict in considerable detail, and his discussions prove useful. Frozen Hell is, unfortunately, undermined by its extremely poor scholarship. Trotter's bibliography is woefully lacking, and I've been left red-faced in the past after citing claims made in his book and later finding those claims to have been erroneous. The strongly pro-Finnish bias of the work further hinders its use as an academic work. I definitely recommend reading it, but would advise using it with caution.
Engle and Panaanen's account of the Winter War is worth reading, but not worth citing except for the purposes of criticism. It has aged extremely poorly, is poorly researched, staggeringly biased and treats hearsay as fact. It is representative of a long trend in the English-language historiography of the Winter War; the trend towards writing pro-Finnish hagiography in contrast with more academic pursuits.
A note on Older Works
The historiography of the Winter War, and the context in which the war was fought, have resulted in an enormous, amorphous mess of works written at the time of the conflict. We have many book-length discussions of the conflict published in the UK and US between 1940-1943. While fascinating, these works are uniformly sensationalist, riddled with errors, and closer to pro-Finnish propaganda than to useful accounts of the conflict. There's a longer story here, and they generally make for fascinating reading, but exercise extreme caution in drawing upon contemporary discussions of the Winter War.
This is far from a comprehensive list of Winter War scholarship, but to my knowledge, these are the most important English-language works on the subject. You'll notice there's extremely limited discussion of the Continuation War here - I'm unfortunately not well-read or qualified enough to discuss scholarship there, although I can say that Continuation War scholarship is staggeringly lacking.
Last but not least
I do hope the discussion I've provided helps point you in the right direction. One final archive which may be of use to you is SA-Kuva, the Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive. The Finnish Defence Force maintains a meticulous archive of wartime photography, which has proven both fascinating and extremely useful to me in my studies, and I hope it will serve you as well.
If there's anything else I can do to assist you, or you have any more specific questions or requests, I'll do everything I can to help.
Kind regards,
Elm.
P.S: In addition to my last, you may find this previous discussion on the historiography of the conflict by both myself and /u/Holokyn-Kolokyn to be of interest.
I was asked to contribute a chapter to an edited volume on architectural energetics. So that's cool.
I had a great week after Dr. Robert Alter visited my college to give a presentation on his translation of Genesis. I asked him a question about whether the Hebrew term adonai might have a relationship to the Mediterranean god Adonis, which I suspected, and while he said no, I had several of my professors come up to me after the presentation and say that he was wrong and I was correct. So, that was pretty neat.
What is known about the history of cheese? I assume its invention predates writing. Is cheese mentioned in ancient texts?
I was writing a blog post on a topic I found interesting, coincidentally got asked to write a popular article on the same subject... it will be up next week, but I am very excited already, as it is an interesting story! Watch for it!!
Does someone know why Charles V is Karl in German, Carlos in Spanish, Carlo In Italian and different variations in other languages but for Prince Charles the Germans don't use Karl anymore but Italian and Spanish still use their own version?
I also saw on Wikipedia that the Spanish also translate Prince Williams name but the Italians don't use their own translation anymore.
Does this has to do with how much English has penetrated foreign countries or is there some kind of logic behind why some names are and some names aren't being translated in different languages?
Last week I promised a review of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg this week. I will not be able to do this because instead of an enjoyable read the book has become a slog. I have around 3 hours left on the audiobook and I keep listening in short bursts before switching to something else.
Should be done by next week, if only so I can say 'there, I read it, I'm done'. Doesn't bode well for the book.
Part of the problem stems for the uneven pacing, detail, and structure of the book. I just checked and it seems that Professor Isenberg specializes in the Early Republic and the Antebellum 19th century. This makes the slog of the latter part of the book make a lot more sense.
Ugh, I've been getting steamed all week because I remembered that Victor Davis Hanson exists and is nationally prominent despite having a theory of very little historical merit.
Also witnessed an argument yesterday about whether history should strive for objectivity and truth or be used as socially progressive propaganda (i think you can guess which side I support). Person (social psychologist iirc) had the gall to call people who study history for its own sake hobbyists. I mean, I'm a hobbyist (with professional aspirations), but I think it's quite unfair to dismiss lifelong professional scholars whose work doesn't necessarily impact current social movements 'hobbyists'.
What are some noteworthy historical events or facts that are often overshadowed by other events or other narratives about history of that time or region?
I've been reading a bit about the "Lavender Scare," which was the greatly overshadowed by the Red Scare but was arguably more significant and directly affected more people. I didn't know that LGBT people were targeted during the McCarthy era, let alone the numbers of people that were affected.
I'm sure that, because of the nature of minority/majority politics and balances of power, many of the examples that fit my question are going to be centered around minority groups. Any types of examples are welcome, I just thought this was an interesting phenomenon and would like to find out about some other manifestations of it.
A relative of mine is currently in America and is coming back soon. This is great because it allows me to take advantage by ordering some sweet sweet physical-only books; getting historical books that are not in ebook form is really hard for me, as here in Ecuador I can never find the ones I'm interested in (plus they're insanely expensive).
As I was ordering I thought, damn, this is getting expensive but I justified it by thinking "hey, I'm saving a lot of money buying used (but in good condition)" Plus, with these books I was set. Everything else that I want is on Amazon Kindle so I'm set for life.
Damn.
Only now I realize that I didn't ordered a copy of "The Northern Crusades". The only book I actually wanted.
I was in such a hurry to order because my relative leaves soon (I even took advantage of the one free month of Amazon prime for that two day shipping deal) so it completely escaped my grasp.
Damn... I'm such an idiot.
Guess now I have to find someone online that happens to be traveling to Ecuador. I could ship the book to them, and then they would give it to me once they're here. Books don't pay import taxes in Ecuador so it completely fine. Also, it takes very little space...
Damn.
Edit: some formatting. Also, I made a post in /r/Ecuador. Hopefully someone responds!
If anyone here attends St. Lawrence University, consider coming to the War of 1812 heritage talks tomorrow. Should be interesting!
Sanadamaru didn't show the Battle of Sekigahara. It makes sense because none of the Sanada clan was there.
But they didn't even show the Second Battle of Ueda Castle properly, only showing the preliminary skirmishes. I r disappoint :(