1/2 Recently, after writing an answer to one question about medieval Lithuania, I searched for unanswered questions on the same subject, and started to work on one that evening. I then left it alone for a couple of weeks, and when I went back to it a couple of days ago, the question post had been archived. It is mostly block-quotes, but as it is done, thought I may as well post it here. Pinging u/Khundes who asked the question, and u/Madaboe who made a short reply.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth inception - Was there a movement opposing a Jagiellon ruler from Lithuania to get on the throne?
In EU4, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth begins as a personal union between Poland and Lithuania created by an event really early in the game (so right after the crusade of Varna). The game offers the Polish player the option to have the Lithuanian monarch rule over Poland as well (and for it to become his primary title), but the player can also reject this and opt for a local noble to ascend on the Polish throne instead. Was there any such historical movement that opposed the Lithuanian monarch to rule in Poland, and if so what where they suggesting instead?

Answer

The area was not actually designated the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth until the Union of Lublin in 1569, but your question appears to be all about the personal union of 1385-86.
(NB: Not all historians I'm quoting prefer the same spellings of various names, but it should still be obvious who's being referred to.)

The union, and the tensions preceding it, have their roots in the reign of Louis I, an Angevin, King of Hungary 1342-82 and Poland 1370-82. Louis himself had not been the final preferred successor of the previous Polish king, his uncle Kazimierz III – but he had claims via an earlier treaty with Kazimierz, and via the preference of the Polish nobility. Louis was a largely absentee king, ruling through a series of regents; the nobility was factionalised and these regents were not popular with everyone. He effectively bought off the nobility by extending a series of privileges and requiring fewer responsibilities of them (Davies, pp.89-90). This increased the power of an already powerful nobility and was significant in the later system of elected rulers.

Louis died suddenly in 1382, leaving as his only children two pre-teen daughters. He had designated the elder, Maria, 11, who was betrothed to Sigismund of Luxembourg, 14, as the heir to both Hungary and Poland. Elizabeth of Bosnia, Louis’ widow and the girls’ mother, soon had Maria crowned as King of Hungary. However, Poland would not be so straightforward. Norman Davies (pp.90-91) provides a succinct summary of a complicated series of events:

In 1374, at Kosice [Louis] had obtained an assurance from the Polish barons that one of his daughters would succeed him in Poland; but in 1382, his unilateral nomination of Maria as regent seemed to pre-empt the issue in no unsubtle manner. It dismayed the majority of Polish lords as much as it angered the Magyars. Even before the King's unexpected death brought the conflict into the open, civil war was brewing. In Wielkopolska, one party urged Maria's husband, the Luxemburger, to take the throne without further ado. A second party, at a gathering of nobles at Sieradz, elected the Piast, Ziemowit of Mazovia. A third party, connected with the barons of Malopolska, sought compromise. After much wrangling, they settled on Maria's younger sister, Hedwig, who was betrothed to Wilhelm von Habsburg, Prince of Austria. At a second gathering at Sieradz at the end of 1383,the spokesman of compromise, Jasko of Teczyn, Castellan of Wojnik, persuaded his opponents to relent. Hedwig was to be elected Queen of Poland on condition that the Union with Hungary was abandoned. The pact was sealed; the invitation was sent and accepted. Throughout 1384, the disappointed candidates battled each other's candidacy into oblivion. After much slaughter, the junior Angevin princess, aged 10 years and 7 months, was crowned in Cracow as Queen Jadwiga, on 15 October.

You asked about the possible succession of a local noble.

The aforementioned Duke Ziemowit IV’s father, Ziemowit III, had been a contender to succeed Kaziemierz back in 1370:

Hence the two immediate candidates for the succession were Louis of Hungary, Casimir's nephew, and Kazko of Slupsk, his grandson. From the technical point of view, their claims in the female succession were inferior to those either of Wladyslaw Bialy of Gniewkow, who was a monk in Dijon in Burgundy, or of Ziemowit III, Prince of Mazovia. (Davies, p.83).

Frost (p.16) provides further detail on why Ziemowit IV was not adopted to succeed Louis in the 1380s:

At Sieradz, legalism and Realpolitik triumphed over sentiment. Siemowit would have brought little benefit to the realm. While his accession would have reunited his lands to the Polish crown, he did not even rule over the whole of Mazovia, which he shared with his elder brother Janusz I. He had few resources to offer, and could not have challenged the Luxembourgs, who, if Sigismund were to secure the Hungarian throne, would rule Hungary, Brandenburg, and Bohemia; with the dynasty’s close links to the Order, Poland would be all but surrounded. Under Siemowit, the tender young Polish monarchy was likely to wither in their shadow.

There was then the controversy over who was to be Jadwiga’s husband.

William, born in 1370, was young and inexperienced; he was from a junior branch of the Habsburgs; and he would bring little with him to the throne. If the Polish crown was to stand firm alongside the Luxembourg realms of Bohemia and Hungary, it would need a different kind of monarch.
By October 1384, there was an alternative. It is unclear just when Jogaila became a serious candidate. He was not an obvious choice. Poland’s relations with Lithuania had recently been tense on account of the struggle over Halych-Volhynia. The fourteenth century had seen a decline in the frequency of Lithuanian raids, but Jogaila himself participated in a devastating attack on Sandomierz in 1376 that resulted allegedly—if implausibly—in the capture of 23,000 prisoners. Yet circumstances were changing, and there was much to recommend a rapprochement with Lithuania and its pagan grand duke (p.17)…

It is not known who instigated the negotiations for marriage between Jogaila and Jadwiga, and the limited source material has been subject to various interpretations.

In January 1385 a Lithuanian delegation led by Skirgaila arrived in Cracow with a formal request for Jadwiga’s hand. There were many obstacles to the marriage, not least the attitude of Elizabeth of Bosnia, who in July 1385 expressed her readiness to fulfil the obligations entered into with Leopold von Habsburg for Jadwiga’s marriage to his son William. Given that Jadwiga was soon to reach the canonical age for marriage, that William set out for Cracow to claim his bride, and that Jadwiga was nervous at the prospect of marrying a man three times her age rather than her childhood companion, supporters of the Lithuanian marriage had to move quickly: the Krewo Act was signed within a month of Elizabeth’s declaration (Frost, p.34).

The Krewo Act (14 August 1385) has long been controversial. There were not many conditions. In return for Jadwiga’s hand, Jogaila agreed to pay 200,000 florins to William von Habsburg as compensation for the breach of his betrothal agreement, and to accept Catholic baptism for himself, unbaptized members of his family, and his pagan subjects.1 He agreed to release noble Polish prisoners captured in raids and to recover lands lost by Lithuania and Poland at his own expense. Finally, he promised that he would unite in perpetuity his Lithuanian and Ruthenian lands to the Polish crown: ‘demum eciam Jagalo dux sepe dictus promittit Terras suas Litvanie et Rusie Corone Regni Polonie perpetuo aplicare (see Fig. 4). That little word, '’applicare" has exercised generations of historians (p.47)…

Krewo was not an act of union, but a prenuptial agreement in which Jogaila and his closest male pagan relations gave undertakings as to what would happen should Jogaila’s marriage to Jadwiga take place; it was reciprocated in the obligations confirmed at Vaukavysk in January 1386 by representatives of the Polish community of the realm, who formally offered Jadwiga’s hand and accepted Jogaila as their lord in what was a pre-election, subject to confirmation at a wider assembly of the community of the realm at Lublin, and conditional upon Jogaila’s marrying Jadwiga (p.49)…

the involvement of the Polish community of the realm in deciding who was to rule over it distinguishes it from most personal unions. Most began as the Anglo-Scottish union began in 1603, when the failure to produce heirs, accidents of mortality, or, in the case of England, Elizabeth I’s refusal to marry, disrupted the normal course of the hereditary succession that was usual in western Europe (p.51)...

The betrothal [of Jadwiga and William] was a potentially serious obstacle but, although the Habsburgs asserted in a case they pursued in the papal curia that William had consummated his marriage with Jadwiga in Cracow, the young Queen was under the control of the Cracow lords who had committed themselves to the Lithuanian marriage; it is inconceivable that they would have allowed the youngsters to share a bed… William slunk back to Austria, muttering about the ‘Lithuanian Saracen’. He always considered himself Jadwiga’s rightful husband, refused the 200,000 florins compensation negotiated by Elizabeth of Bosnia at Kreva, and did not marry until after Jadwiga’s death (p.34).

#Did the first European explorers understand that the Southern Hemisphere experienced reversed seasons and why? What did they think about the so called Torrid zone?

##Introduction

Here on AskHistorians there appears from time to time a question of when and how the first explorers realized that Southern Hemisphere had inverted seasons. Few amazing answers had already been provided, like by /u/qed1, who shows that the ancient and medieval science already supposed this was the case, and by /u/drylaw, who shows the work of mid-sixteenth century writer-scientist observing and explaining the phenomena.

These answers tackle the question from periods before and after the actual discoveries; one showing the hypothetical, theoretical and maybe even philosophical framework; and the other is an explanation of, by that time, well established and observed matter.

I myself wanted to approach it from as close as possible moment in time and from the angle of people connected to the discoveries -basically the 15th century. To be perfectly honest, the inverted seasons question was almost a side ‘quest’ for me, next to my initial inquiry in what did the explorers think of the so called "Torrid zone". I’ll also deal with an additional related to seasons peculiarity which I found in the texts, and which I’ll introduce later.

Basically, this post will be about evolving opinions to discovery of seasons and climates different from what what was known or expected. Now, unfortunately, I can’t say I succeeded as much as I hoped. We lack information from what would be crucial moments and expeditions, and the ones we have often don’t even mention anything remotely related. But I think I managed to pile enough together for an interesting read. I apologize in advance, this post will be quote heavy as I think the best way to convey what were people thinking is to post their actual words. The texts I am taking them from are primary sources, translated in English for which I hope the translations are sufficiently close to the original material.

##Entering the Torrid zone / Crossing Tropic of Cancer

As you could see from the answer by /u/qed1 the Torrid zone was a concept used by ancient authors, applying to the area between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, sometimes the whole area, sometimes just a part. Due to the closeness to the Sun, it was supposed to be unbearably hot, uninhabitable and also unpassable. Now, even some ancient Greeks and Romans realized that there were actually evidence of people living in the Torrid zone. Arab world had a pretty clear picture of this in the Indian ocean, and for Europeans if I am not mistaken Marco Polo’s account mentions going near equator and analyzing mind would notice that it is quite inhabited. But late medieval european scholars often still quoted the greeks and the uninhabitable zones despite these counter examples.

Similar case was with the Portuguese who in the beginning of 15th century started to systematically go south down the coast of Africa. Ships sent by prince Anrique or Henrique, famous today under name of Henry the Navigator, passed Cape Bojador in 1434, then tropic of Cancer (but haven’t really made notice of it) by 1436, reached Senegal and Gambia region in 1440s and Sierra Leone in late 1450s, 1460.

Main sources for this period are official Portuguese chronicler called Zurara (or Azurara) and his Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea; and Venetian merchant Cadamosto (or Ca Da Mosto) who personally sailed to Senegambia region and which he described in his Voyages. Both are writing in the period of late 1450s, early 1460s. As we see from a position of knowledge of the fact that the Torrid zone is in fact home to many peoples, so this realization might have altered their writing. I wonder what would they have written e.g. in 1420, but let’s content ourselves with they have actually written.

Zurara’s official narration of the events somewhat surprisingly does not really give almost any direct references to the previous knowledge of the uninhabitable Torrid zone. He does use the phrase torrid zone in the introduction, using it as an explanation of the skin color of Africans:

I see those Garamantes,those Ethiopians, who live under the shadow of Mount Caucasus, black in colour, because of living just opposite to the full height of the sun's rays—for he, being in the head of Capricorn, shineth on them with wondrous heat, as is shown by his movements from the centre of his eccentric, or, in another way, by the nearness of these people to the torrid zone,

But this isn’t really addressing the supposed uninhabitability and impassibility of the Zone.

In a different instance, Zurara relates us legends of the supposedly impassable Cape Bojador, which at around 26°N is slightly north of tropic of Cancer at 23°30’. Zurara says in Vol I, Chapter VIII the Cape was in popular mariner imagination an unbearable danger:

For, said the mariners, this much is clear, that beyond this Cape there is no race of men nor place of inhabitants: nor is the land less sandy than the deserts of Libya, where there is no water, no tree, no green herb—and the sea so shallow that a whole league from land it is only a fathom deep, while the currents are so terrible that no ship having once passed the Cape, will ever be able to return.

Now, this resembles closely with the view of the ancients, but(!) Zurara doesn’t quote the ancient authors, he says that this is what the mariners said. While we could connect the two and say that mariners thoughts were much likely shaped by ancient authors work being passed on, we should be careful as there is no such directly stated link. The closeness of the Cape Bojador with the tropic of Cancer isn’t acknowledged by anyone in the books. The same goes for crossing the tropic or going further south: no special attention is given, except this Cape Bojador superstition.

And this apparent superstition was very strong, as, according to Zurara, for 12 years mariners sent to pass it were refusing to do so, before finally in 1434 Gil Eannes went past it, and found that the sea was quite the same and navigable.
Looking back to the whole thing, after Portuguese already reached Sierra Leone Zurara in Vol II Chapter LXXVI says that one can see with his own eyes that the area is in fact quite navigable and not shallow nor unsuited for habitation:

while as to the inhabitants, you have clearly seen the contrary to be the fact, since you witness the dwellers in those parts each day before your eyes, although their inhabited places are chiefly villages and very few towns.

Our next good source, account of Venetian Alvise Cadamosto, is not really much informative about the issue of the Torrid zone. Still, his account is very sober and insightful. He doesn’t really quote ancient works, and simply records what he sees. He traveled as late as 1456, by which time the Portuguese were frequently going deep into the “Torrid zone” (but not yet crossing the Equator), but he does not seem to be aware this might be controversial to some.

Cadamosto gave a detailed account and among other things he gives us descriptions of the different weather between here and his homeland:

This country is extremely hot, the month of January being not so cold as it is with us in Italy in the month of April; and the farther we went to the south, the weather became so much the hotter.

And in another place gives more details and explains how it affects the agriculture:

The climate is always hot, and I was told, that even the rain in the inland parts falls warm, in consequence of the great heat of the air. It is true, that there is some difference of the heat at different seasons, and when the heat is a little diminished, the natives call it winter. The rains begin in July, and continue till the end of October, and fall every day about noon; at which time certain clouds arise in the N.E. by E. or E.N.E. which are accompanied by prodigious thunder and lightning, and vast torrents of rain. In this season, which is in the beginning of July, the Negroes sow their grain, in the same manner with the people in Senegal.

I have particularly singled out this last instance because here Cadamosto directly uses the term “winter” despite acknowledging himself it is always hot. It remains is slightly vague what exactly does he mean with it. Is he referencing the rainy season of July-October which he proceeds to describe? Or did he have some other period when it is colder in mind? Really it isn’t important, what is important is the fact we have seen that different climates and seasons hadn’t gone unnoticed. I’ll finally add some quotes on how Cadamosto connected different climates and differences in flora and fauna as I found them interesting:

On account of the great heats in the kingdom of Senegal, and all the other countries of the Negroes on the coast, no wheat, rye, barley, or spelt, can grow, neither are vines cultivated, as we knew experimentally from a trial made with seeds from our ship: For wheat, and these other articles of culture, require a temperate climate and frequent showers, both of which are wanting here, where they have no rains during nine months of the year, from October to June both included.

And:

Nature, however, has provided mankind with necessaries fitted for their various occasions; having furnished the Europeans with wool, as they have need of warm clothing, while the Negroes, who live in such intense heat, have been supplied with cotton by the Almighty. Owing to the heat, in my opinion, the cattle of this country are much smaller than those of Italy.

The Ideals of Chivalry vs. the Violence of the Hundred Years War

In the prologue of The History, the Greek historian Herodotus says that he writes "so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory". Drawing on a tradition that dates back to the beginning of written history, Jean Froissart similarly begins his Chronicles writing that "In order that the honourable enterprises, noble adventures and deeds of arms which took place during the wars waged by France and England should be fittingly related and preserved for posterity, so that brave men should be inspired thereby to follow such examples, I wish to place on record these matters of great renown." For Froissart, his Chronicles are an account of the great deeds of the brave men of his era, those who are worthy of mention as models of the values of chivalry.

A few treatises on chivalric culture and practices that were popular during the late middle ages provide an insight on the chivalric values - prowess, loyalty, generosity, courtesy and franchise - and the behavior expected of a knight. In the anonymous poem L'Ordène de chevalerie, written around 1250, a knight describes the ritual of knighting, and the religious and secular values associated with each of its elements. The double-edged blade of the knight's sword signifies the need to protect the poor from the oppressors:

Which is to say it seemeth me,
To guard the poor folk of the land
Against the rich man's heavy hand,
And feeble people to uphold
'Gainst shaming of the strong and bold;
This then is Mercy's work to win.

Protecting the poor against the abuse by the rich, the feeble from the strong, is a defining element of chivalric knighthood in L'Ordène de chevalerie. Ramon Lull, in the chivalric treatise Libre del ordre de cavayleria, written between 1274 and 1276, describes this same requirement as part of a symbiotic relationship between the knight and the people:

And it behoves the people to plough, dig and pull up the weeds so that the land yields fruits on which the knight and his beast shall live, and it behoves the knight to be mounted on horseback and to govern and derive prosperity from those things for which his men endure hardships and privations.

It is the office of the knight to support widows, orphans and the helpless, for just as it is customary and right that the mighty help to defend the weak, and the weak take refuge with the mighty.

In the ideal chivalric society of the L'Ordène de chevalerie and the Libre del ordre de cavayleria, people are expected to provide the means needed for the training, arming, and service of the knight, in exchange for the protection against abuse from the rich and powerful. Does this ideal of chivalry, with bellatores protecting the laboratores, match the world of the war narrated in Froissart's Chronicles?

A more common occurrence than the great and famous battles of the Hundred years were the chevauchée campaigns. Through the use of a relatively small force, smaller than what would have been necessary to fight and win in a pitched battle, the leaders of the war used raiding, looting and destruction to devastate large areas of enemy territory. Edward, the Black Prince, led two campaigns in 1355-56 through the South and the West of France. John of Gaunt led a campaign in 1373 through the north of France. It is hard for the modern reader of Froissart to see the focus of the leaders of the war on the destruction and violence towards the rural population in the chevauchée campaigns, when the poor and the weak were subject to the violence of the strong chivalric knights, as anything but a repudiation of the chivalric ethos, of the ideal of the knight protecting the weak. Froissart considers this killing, pillaging and raping "a deplorable thing", and yet the leaders of those campaigns, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt among them, are some of the great men that he identifies as examples of chivalry.

The sack of Limoges in 1370 was another instance of the unchecked violence against the population. If the account of the events in Froissart's Chronicles is to be believed, three thousand persons were killed by the troops of the Black Prince at the end of the siege, which came after the leaders of the city switched their allegiance from the English to the French. When they broke through the walls of the city, the English

burst into the city, followed by pillagers on foot, all in a mood to wreak havoc and do murder, killing indiscriminately, for those were their orders. [...] Neither man nor woman was heeded, but all who could be found were put to the sword, including many who were in no way to blame. I do not understand how they could have tailed [sic] to take pity on people who were too unimportant to have committed treason. Yet they paid for it, and paid more dearly than the leaders who had committed it.

Pillaging was also of great financial benefit for the knights, who were eager to get their share of the spoils of war. This is another example of knightly behaviour in war that is at odds with the tenets of chivalry. Geoffroi de Charny, in his Libre de chevalerie, written around 1350, derides the knights who focus on the financial benefits from ransoms and pillaging to the detriment of their martial activities:

they are more anxious to safeguard their captives and their booty than to help bring the battle to a good conclusion. And it may well be that a battle can be lost in this way. And one ought instead to be wary of the booty which results in the loss of honor, life, and possessions. In this vocation one should therefore set one's heart and mind on winning honor, which endures for ever, rather than on winning profit and booty, which one can lose within a single hour.

When compared with the reality of the destruction in the war - from the chevauchée, to the sieges, to the pillaging, all of them impacting the general population more than the enemy elite - is the chivalric ideal no more than what Huizinga calls a "a cloak for a whole world of violence and self-interest"? How did the knightly class reconcile the chasm between the reality of unchecked violence in war and the lofty principles in the chivalric writings?

The chivalric ethos in the treatises was an image that the chivalric class wanted to project of themselves. It was, in essence, part of a founding myth that linked the late medieval knights to the Arthurian legend and further back to the founding of Rome and to the wars and kings of the Old Testament.

Honoré Bonet in his L'arbre des batailles, written around 1382-87, and Christine de Pizan in her Le Livre des Faits d'armes et de chevalerie, written around 1410, mention Romulus as the first knight and the founder of chivalry, creating a Roman mythical origin for the knightly class. Jacques de Longuyon in his Voeux du Paon, written in 1312, a poem that was very popular at the end of the middle ages, lists The Nine Worthies, men who were the greatest examples of chivalrous activities. Three conquering heroes from the old testament, Joshua, David and Judas, are mentioned as champions of chivalry, in addition to three pagan champions and three Christian champions. Through these myths, the values and rituals of chivalry in the contemporary society gained a connection to an ancient past where chivalry was presumed to exist in its pure form.

The collective nature of war is distant from the individuality of the knight's tournament and of the idealized pursuit of the maiden in the chivalric romances. It is the individual that is honored by Froissart. In his narration of the siege of Calais, Froissart mentions the names of four of the six burghers who volunteer to be hostages in exchange for the safety of the sieged population. They are not knights, not nobles. They are certainly wealthy members of the city, "the most honorable and prominent citizens of Calais". But their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of the people - for being an hostage at the end of a siege would likely lead to their death - makes them individuals who are worthy of mention by name, as they are examples for posterity of chivalric values.

The Nebraska National Guard Museum recently compiled a list of 46 Nebraska soldiers of the 134th Infantry Regiment who fell during the Battle of Saint-Lô, Normandy, France, in July 1944. Perusing the several thousand morning reports I have, I could not account for, or found errors with, the listings of three men;

• Private First Class Howard H. Johnson, 37034511, of Company C (residence Alvo, NE; buried at Alvo Cemetery). Listed as "Promoted to Sgt." on the morning report of 17 July 1944. He is not listed on any other morning reports of any company after that.

• Staff Sergeant Harold A. Meurrens, 20723576, of Company L (residence Omaha, NE; buried at the Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial, France). Listed as "SWA" (seriously wounded in action) on the morning report of 27 July 1944. This was later corrected on the morning report of 24 September 1944 to indicate that Meurrens was only "LWA" (lightly wounded in action), and had been dropped from assignment to the company. There is no indication he ever returned to the company.

• A "James W. Nichols." There is no "James W. Nichols" listed on the morning reports of the 134th Infantry Regiment, but there is a Technical Sergeant "James W. Nicholas," 20723347, listed as killed in action on the morning report of Company K, 134th Infantry Regiment, for 19 July 1944. Nicholas resided in Omaha, NE, and is buried at the Westlawn-Hillcrest Memorial Park.

Week 30

It is fairly reasonable to look at the Great War under the character of exceptionality. As a breach in a pattern of established traditions, morals, rituals and uses of life; a turning point in the evolution of many of those customs – being it a reason for them to end or be transformed. But the War had to fight its way into that system; to carve its place into the ethos and shared world view of the people.

As a result of the War men were forced out of their households; those who came back often were injured or disabled, physically and mentally infirm. Meanwhile their families had to fill in for their absence, both in material and psychological terms, and to rely on their own means for survival. They had to face the public and private limitations of war time, the rationing, the rising prices, the uncertain work hours, the envy towards those who had escaped service, the need to make do or even to take advantage of some remote possibility of fortune and speculation in the unbalanced economy of war.

There is in the contemporary retelling of the War a common trope: that the “men” went to the war with the same degree of acceptance and passive resignation that inspired their going through the various adversities of life; that war was an inescapable evil, like a famine or an ailment of the body or the mind, or a death in one's family. And while the trope may be less accurate than what the contemporary observers of Italian society believed, it is still worth looking into what those misfortunes of life were and how they shaped the world those “men” experienced and inhabited.

In this frame, even the purpose of the statistician – like that of the countless walking shadows of history – is to reconcile the exceptional with the ordinary. To fit the extraordinary misery of war in between the ordinary misfortunes of life.

Wrote statistician G. Mortara that “the war, devourer of lives, has throughout history brought about [...] modifications in the demographic balance of the peoples fallen under its grisly apparatus. Massacres of combatants, epidemics among the armies and from those spreading to the civilian populations, famines and hunger, devastation of large territories, oppression or flight of their inhabitants, fragmentation of familiar cores, obstacle to new marriages.”

The Great War could not be discussed independently from those manifold changes. It was a social phenomenon and the idea, that comes immediately to the mind is to attempt to discuss it as one – one specific kind of social phenomenon, that spreads through one nation with its percentage of afflicted, dead and permanently disabled. To discuss war as an epidemic – or as G. Cosmacini observed, the last “social epidemic”: the “plague of the XX Century was war”.

The idea of looking at the war through the lenses of epidemiology is not a novelty. War, as a disease, clearly affects on portion of the population more than others. It's gender based, targeting able bodied male over the usual most exposed, children and elderly.

Around 5.2 million men aged 18-45 were called to arms during the conflict. 14% of the overall population of 36.4 millions. The general evolution of population can be traced as follows.

a – Those in parenthesis are deaths due to the war as estimated by the Military as of 1923. the compilation of data worked by combining civilian and military records, so no systematic overlapping should exist between deaths of military men that took place in civil hospitals, etc. and those accounted by the military. Those data do not appear to include those who died in captivity.

b – Estimates for the end of each year, based on the data for births and deaths and immigration fluxes. Census was taken in 1911 and again in 1921. The clear reduction of emigration is caused first by limited mobility through European and international borders – either by deliberate actions of the governments or as a consequence of the uncertain situation of sea transports. In 1914 167,481 Italians had chosen to emigrate to the United States (dropping to 11,459 in 1917 and 2,793 in 1918) but 55,159 had gone to Germany and 32,161 to Austria-Hungary (which obviously dropped to zero after the war declaration). Emigration to Argentina also fell from 34,822 in 1914 to 762 in 1917. The immigration flux followed from the expulsions of foreigners from other nations, as well as the (modest) number of Italians who choose to answer the call to arms (as we saw in previous weeks, the financial treatment especially resulted in Italians overseas often favoring joining the US Army over the Italian one). There is a (very!) major discrepancy between data of emigration based on passport releases and transport analysis (that give for example 614,611 emigrants in 1920) and those based on cancellation from lists of city records used in the above table. The overall tendency is the same.

c – As you can see the direct impact of casualties of war is noticeable – only the reversing of the emigration flux during the war compensated in part the increased number of deaths through 1915-18. There was also a clear diminution of childbirths that appeared roughly one year after the call to arms for the first classes – those were all men of appropriate age to marry and father children; but marriage, especially in the country, presupposed the ability to support one's family through work: an assumption obviously not warranted in times of war.

d – But the largest dent in the Italian population was caused by the flu epidemics of 1918 with a number of deaths almost twice that of pre war levels. I plan to discuss the “Spanish” flu in further detail somewhere in the future. Therefore I won't go into much more detail here and focus on other afflictions.

There's 'The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World' by Michael Rostovtzeff. What are greek opinions on that?

I'm wondering if you guys have opinions on 'Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West' by Guy Halsall?