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.
I have had the immense honour and pleasure to meet a very kind elderly fellow at work. As a child, he had the misfortune of being stationed with his family in china during the war. He and his family were captured by the Japanese; they were British and his father worked for the British government. I have read his brief account on his time at the Yuen long road and Yangtzepoo camps, which he graciously gave me.
The contents of this period of his life seem both grim and sensitive. With his permission, I’ll ask him any respectful questions you may have for him.
A huge thank you to u/DanKensington, for helping me find the appropriate place to post this.
Just finished reading “Before Church and State” by Andrew Willard Jones. In it he dismantled a reading of medieval history that saw feudal society being a tension between Church and secular authorities consolidating power and rather proving how feudal society did not compartmentalize “church” and “state.”
Rather than feudal society being like a modern state where power and violence is monopolized, the feudal society was an interpersonal network of Christians (in the church, nobility, or commonfolk) holding ancient “rights” upheld because society sought to maintain a “Peace” where violence and conflict were aberrations (rather than a modern state where only the monopolization of power and violence keeps society from turning violent). Laws could not be universally issued as maintaining Peace depended on deferring to local custom and quasi-precedent over who had authority or liberty to do what.
The book helps prove and illustrate the medieval mindset of how feudal Christian kingdoms saw themselves and operated. It’s a work that takes its historical subjects seriously unlike some other common histories that project onto their subjects ideas they did not hold or otherwise treat them as foolish, unserious people.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, May 07 - Thursday, May 13
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 5,487 | 119 comments | Is there a reason why no Pope ever chose the names "Luke" or "Matthew"? |
| 5,472 | 61 comments | Today, when I go out for dinner, I can choose to visit an Italian, Indian, or Chinese restaurant. How old is the idea of “ethnic” restaurants that specialize in the food of a particular foreign culture? Could a hungry Roman go out for some Persian takeout? |
| 3,852 | 73 comments | Why is Turkey so opposed to accepting that the Armenian Genocide happened? |
| 3,518 | 47 comments | Only about 40% of Mexico's population spoke Spanish in 1820. Today, that number is about 94%. Was a policy of thorough linguistic Hispanicization of the country already planned at the time of independence? |
| 3,463 | 132 comments | In 1961, Goa, a colony of Portugal at the time was attacked by India, Portugal was a member of NATO when this happened, yet the USA and NATO didn't help Portugal or invade India, why is this and what was the global reaction to this? |
| 3,315 | 90 comments | In 2010 series 'Spartacus', in a scene where Spartacus fights as a gladiator while the crowd is dancing and acclaiming him, some women are shown topless. Was it common for women in Ancient Rome to be publicly topless? Otherwise, when and why was Ancient Rome so erotized in the social imaginary? |
| 2,900 | 35 comments | When I look at maps of Napoleon’s conquests, it seems he mostly set up a system of puppet states to run Europe for him..... except for modern day Croatia, which he ran directly. Why? |
| 2,759 | 48 comments | The plague of frogs from the book of Exodus sounds pretty harmless compared to the other plagues (boils, fire, hail, etc). Is there some reason why Egyptians or Israelites would have been particularly afraid of frogs? |
| 2,695 | 13 comments | Mesoamerica was accepting of "Xochihuas", men who identified as women and even served as concubines to kings and were "children" of multiple gay gods, but the Tlatoani of Texcoco banned sodomy and homosexuality. Why is this? |
| 1,985 | 59 comments | After the fall of the Habsburg Empire, the Czechs and Slovaks were amalgamated into a single state, Czechoslovakia, rather than immediately forming individual nation-states. Why? What was the historical context behind the formation of Czechoslovakia? |
###Top 10 Comments
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Last week I watched this collection of coverage of the Skylab re-entry from the perspective of Australian media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoVXuKQ__0s
It was a fascinating little time capsule with a lot of little un-anticipated details, space history enthusiasts might find it interesting.
Do we have records of pre-modern Muslims in SE Asia making the hajj? Islam was already as far as The Philippines before it was The Philippines (before any Christians got there). Did Muslims that far east still make the pilgrimmage to Mecca?
Sort of a meta question I guess but has something changed with the comment box? I can't copy and paste text in here anymore...on Firefox it just won't work at all for some reason, and on Chrome the formatting gets messed up. Anyone else having the same problem?
I assume it would be the same for me all over reddit, but I don't typically copy and paste huge chunks of text on any other subs...
In 1649 Oliver Cromwell began sending Irish criminals and “undesirables” to the American colonies. I know some were sent as criminal punishment and some willing traded service for transport to the colonies. Did the British log the names, dates, and offenses (if applicable) of these Irish people?
This was such a small question that I didn’t want to make a whole post for it.
Apologies to a few of you who might have gotten multiple copies of the newsletter... not sure what that bug was!!
...also sorry for those who didn't get it. We had to stop if half-way through due to the bug. Should be back to normal next week, but you can find the draft copy here!
Someone posted a question about whether James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed was a good intro to the history of technology. I said it had been a lot of years since I threw it across the room in disgust. I was able to answer the question. But it had been a while, so I checked out a copy from the library and read it again this week to see if I had missed something.... Well, I could stand to read some of it. The sweeping, shallow , simple conclusions filled with errors, delivered in smug, know-it-all prose, the immense self-congratulation...it has not improved with time.
What did knights of the Templars and Hospitalliers do during more peaceful periods? I have a mental image of monastic governance of their holdings but I was wondering how accurate/inaccurate this is.
The character Keyser Soze from Usual Suspects allegedly kills his own family to make a point against a rival gang who was threatening him. Are there any real stories of insane sacrifice from history along these lines?