Like even before 1914 America already surpassed britain in terms of gdp and closely catching up to British empire in gdp but Germany was third yet BRITIAN was more anxious of Germany than America navally and industrially etc Why is that?
If so, then, in those contexts, does it even make sense to view so many people being unable to read or write negatively? I mean what's the point of learning to read or write in a context where, for most people, it's not needed or beneficial?
I am developing a historically authentic game set in the American West, and I would like to avoid relying on the usual Hollywood portrayals of the period.
What aspects of everyday life in the American West are commonly misunderstood, oversimplified, or overlooked in popular culture?
I would be particularly interested in details that could help someone understand what life was actually like for ordinary people, including subjects such as:
daily work and domestic life
travel and transportation
communication and the spread of news
life in small towns and settlements
relations between different communities and social groups
clothing, food, entertainment, and recreation
law enforcement and local government
the effects of the Gold Rush and westward expansion
lesser-known historical events or practices that are often absent from popular depictions
I am especially interested in details that might seem surprising to a modern audience, provided they are supported by historical evidence rather than being myths or stereotypes.
I would also appreciate recommendations for primary sources, books, or other reliable sources that could help me research the period further.
I realize that the American West covers a large geographic area and a considerable period of time, so answers about particular regions, communities, or decades are very welcome.
Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.
With no modern technology and a much more sparse population to kill, how did Genghis Khan gain a higher death toll than a man who literally industrialized genocide?
Hello everyone.
I was wondering about a story an Historian friend of mine told me once and i couldn't recall the details.
He spoke about an instance during a conflict where 2 sides happen to hold a fortification (i remember a dungeon or tower like fort) relatively close to each other. Supposedly, they started building siege engine and fire at each other from said fortification for a bit, like two tower attacking each other.
It was a will ago so i don't really remember much, and i wanted to know if someone can guide me toward more specific informations...
maybe i misremember it. I hope it was an historical event and not fictional. I wanted to see in more details what it was about, but i found myself unable to remember details, and searching online with vague terms didn't yield any results...
Thanks to you and have a good day.
Living in Dubai, I’ve noticed how tribal identities, family lineages, and sheikhs still play a visible role in parts of Gulf society. At the same time, I watch quite a lot of Ottoman historical series, and they often portray the early Ottomans as emerging from a world of Turkic tribes, tribal beys, and their followers.
It got me thinking about what happened to those tribes over the centuries.
The Ottoman Empire had systems like the timar system, later went through major centralisation and settlement policies, and eventually gave way to the modern Turkish Republic. Today, Turkey is generally organised around citizenship and state institutions rather than publicly recognised tribal leadership in the same way we see in parts of the Gulf.
Obviously, tribal identities haven’t disappeared completely in Turkey. But the contrast is interesting: how did tribal identity become less visible in one society while remaining such a visible part of another?
Just an observation that got me curious about the different ways these societies evolved.
Months ago I read about a general or military man that was Muslim but "harbored a love for the Mother Mary," and I can't recall much else about him. He may have lived during the Reconquista or the Spanish Inquisition, but I'm pretty sure he was mainly in the Iberian peninsula. He may have also converted to Catholicism and changed sides as well?
It was an interesting story (so interesting that I forgot...) and I desperately want to read about it again but I don't know how to go about finding it. If anyone knows his name or can recall more specific details about the story then I would greatly appreciate anything you could tell me!
Most of the evidence I've come across suggests the opposite. Alfred Nzo (appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1994 by the first ANC government) and Winnie Mandela supported it; Oliver Tambo seemed to essentially mumble something about its time having passed when asked about it in the late 1980s. ANC activists invited to US universities defended it.
Is there really any substantial evidence for the idea at all? I accept my bias against the party could be making me cynical, but it seems to me like they did support it - it was perhaps an essential part in actually making the townships ungovernable and overthrowing apartheid by including yes, scaring the daylights out of people through terror; stopping students from taking exams, stopping people from going to work, stopping people from going to white supermarkets even if that meant hardship or even starvation, so that business owners would put pressure on NP leaders to negotiate - and any distancing done before or since 1994 has really been PR work and tactical, rather than heartfelt.
When you read about European imperialism in the Victorian era, you'll hear about European powers agreeing about "zones of influence" in e.g. Iran, with a map showing a Russian zone in the north and a British zone in Balochistan. Similar things for example in China.
But what did those entail in concrete terms? What did the treaty actually say? Could they put troops there, did they have some exclusive rights to invest, or did they just agree on the concept of influence and left it for later to figure out the details?
We know the claim that people of European descent are descended from everyone who lived during the time of Charlemagne and whose descendants have survived to the present day, as explained by the multiplication of ancestors with each generation going back in time and the pedigree collapse.
Experts also say that all Europeans today are descended from Europeans who lived 1,000 years ago. This means that figures such as William the Conqueror and Hugh Capet are probably part of all our family trees, even though this cannot be proven for most of us due to a lack of documentary evidence.
This sparked a very specific question in my mind: Who would realistically be the most recent historical figure to appear as a common ancestor in our (sometimes proved, sometimes theorical) family trees, as people of European descent? Would it be someone from the year 1000? From the year 1100? 1200? Which rulers or other famous figures could we name without taking too big a risk?
I’ve recently started wondering if a prototype of a steam-powered tank was ever built. I know the idea sounds far-fetched, but at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if such a propulsion system had been experimented with back when tanks were still in their infancy, or perhaps as a solution to Germany's fuel shortages during WWII. For instance, the Germans designed the Lippisch P.13a aircraft, which featured a coal-fired ramjet engine. That’s what prompted my question.
It can be a conflict that’s now resolved or it could still be ongoing.
It could be individual people or entire nations.
Like there’s the British Empire vs the French Empire, a lot of conflict and grudges.
Basically, my question is about the relation between the size of an empire and how quickly information, people, and resources can travel through it, especially for those that contain disjoint territories separated by oceans.
I'm thinking of the Portuguese or Spanish empire, or the early British, before electronic communications, when a message would take weeks or months to reach the empire's farthest reaches and return. I understand that there were local governors with troops, etc., but in practice, how did it work? How cohesive were the empires? How much leeway did local governors have? Was the enforcement of the Empire based on a practical application of power, symbolism, religion, all of the above?
Happy to learn about other, non-European empires as well.
What were their circumstances during the journey as families who lived for months in the middle of the ocean without any communication?
Were there epidemics that wiped out everyone on the ship, and were there any crimes?
In the afterword to Mao: The Man Who Made China (I.B. Tauris, 2017), Philip Short writes the following about Mao's and Chiang Kai-shek's competing visions for China (pp. 673–674):
>As for the conflicting visions of China’s future pursued by Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, one may legitimately wonder how much difference it would really have made, in the long sweep of history, if Chiang rather than Mao had won in 1949. Rana Mitter, an Oxford don whose thinking is representative of the younger generation of China scholars, has pointed out: ‘Both the nationalists and the communists wanted to establish a politically independent state, with a government that penetrated throughout society, and a population that was stable, healthy and economically productive ... However [neither] was seeking to establish what the West, and particularly the United States, would regard as a democracy: a liberal, multi-party regime with significant civil liberties.’ Indeed both explicitly rejected it. In a passage which remains relevant to American policy today, Bai Chongxi, the Guangxi warlord who in 1934 had allowed the Long Marchers to cross his territory to reach safety in the south-west, and who, ten years later, became one of Chiang’s key commanders, wrote in his memoirs in the late 1970s, long before there was talk of ‘regime change’ and ‘exporting democracy’ in Washington: ‘The big mistake that America often makes is to force their model of democracy on other countries’.
>
>Mao’s victory was viewed at the time as a grave setback for America’s strategic goal of establishing a democratic or at least neutral China on the Soviet Union’s southern border. Yet the ‘loss’ of China to communism did not prevent the United States becoming the world’s dominant power. Nor did US support for Chiang’s rump state in Taiwan make it a democracy: that did not happen until long after the Generalissimo’s death. Had Chiang defeated Mao, would he have been able to unify and develop China as effectively as his communist rival? In Pankaj Mishra’s words: Would China without Mao have found the political basis for its current prosperity? That is open to debate. In any case, the challenge to the West posed by Xi Jinping’s China today is not communist but nationalist. There is no reason to think that a mainland China ruled by Chiang Kai-shek’s successors would wish to act significantly differently from that now ruled by Mao’s heirs.[71]
Note 71 (p. 800):
>Jay Taylor has speculated that, were Chiang alive today, he would see the current Chinese leaders as ‘modern neo-Confucianists’ like himself, with the same goals for China that he would have adopted had he been in a position to do so (The Generalissimo, p. 592). The implication is that Mao’s successors have succeeded in implementing Chiang’s vision where the Generalissimo himself failed. If one accepts Taylor’s premise – which I find debatable – it can be interpreted either way: as showing that Chiang’s ideas have triumphed (‘lost the battle but won the war’); or as vindicating the system Mao founded which has put those ideas into effect (‘game, set and match’).
What do you make of Taylor's idea? If you accept it, does that suggest a triumph for Chiang's vision, a vindication of Mao's system, both, or neither?
From my understanding the verdicts were read out on 10/1/46 and the sentences carried out during the early morning hours on 10/6/46. During that window what happened? Was Herman Goring going crazy and spouting nonsense? What about the other defendants?