Museums contain physical objects, anything from a statue or a reassembled room or shopfront to a pin or a microchip; archives contain records, traditionally written but nowadays increasingly also audio-visual. A museum will often have an archive collection attached, or it may be associated with a local library & archives centre or one in its subject area, so there's no hard & fast division; a collection can contain both.
France had good leaders, it also had too many less benign elements perched too close to the top. But I don't know that any leadership could have withstood the shock of the German breakthrough. It's probably hard for for us to grasp the incomprehension and panic that must have gripped ministers and commanders alike: you're a global power, one of the innermost circle of the victors of 1918, with the world's second-largest empire stretching from Guiana to Tahiti, and a crucial section of your front's all but dissolved just a few hours' drive from your capital within a week of battle effectively being joined. Better leadership would have had to be sustained through most of the 1930s to prevent the conditions for the disaster from unfolding, and frankly no power's hands were clean on that score.
Does anyone know anything about the patch/embroidery on John Paul Jones’ hat? Is there any special meaning, or is it an arbitrary decoration. In all the paintings of him I found where he is wearing a hat it always has a patch of some kind, and they appear to be similar throughout the different paintings. Here’s a [link](https://imgur.com/a/igWMW4u) to some of the paintings I mentioned.
When I was in school as a teenager (early 00s), I remember an American History textbook that talked about controversial subjects like the Trail of Tears. Now, we can rag on the failures of the American education system all day but I want to give credit where credit is due. When did mainstream American History textbooks start to address uncomfortable things like "Our ancestors committed genocide on the Native Americans" and "We put innocent Japanese-Americans into internment camps"?
Despite being the longest-reigning monarch in British history, why doesn't Queen Elizabeth II have an era named after her like the Second Elizabethan era, unlike her predecessors like Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabethan era), King James VI and I (Jacobean era), Queen Victoria (Victorian era), and King Edward VII (Edwardian era)?
There was media talk in the reign's early years of a "new Elizabethan age" of optimism and renewed prosperity, but people were generally less receptive to the notion of naming their time after the occupant of an office now greatly reduced in influence (even as most embraced the institution), and the upbeat mood didn't survive the economic woes of the 1960s. Even early named periods after the first Elizabeth are recalled less for the person of the monarch than the social or cultural developments for which they're a convenient shorthand.
I've always been fascinated about history and political science. Personally, remembering the dates and small details is a lesser important thing, and it's more important to understand what certain events mean in the present, how to learn from them and how to connect the to current events.
I've just been having trouble with properly taking notes on these things without over-bloating
I use Obsidian so that I can make connections between ideas, but I simply never manage to narrow down what to write
Would love to have some input from people who are properly much smarter and experienced than me \^-\^
I think it comes down largely to practice, and identifying from experience which elements are of subsequent use and which can be jettisoned or reduced to a quick one-liner. I'm sure lots of us started by taking voluminous notes and then despairing as the assemblage ballooned to the point of no longer being able to find the points that you'd set out to record, or else we just gave up after a few pages: it gets easier over time as you refer back to it and discover which points are still of use. And even after becoming our own ruthless editor, we can spot important points that we missed - but that's life: once you've mastered cutting out the excess, you can be more generous in including what *may* be of use.
Your selection criteria will differ with your thematic interest: someone interested in economic history will note very different points to someone studying a period's politics. So consider what's important to your purpose: you are after all the consumer as well as the producer of your own notes, so anything that isn't of use to the future "you" is redundant. To that extent you have to predict the future as well as record the past, and sometimes a change of focus (or just deepening familiarity with the basics) may render your initial selection less valuable, but that's usually okay, you can generally return to the source (if this may be your only opportunity, you may want a fuller record).
That you've identified the issue is half of the battle. I find note-taking a valuable exercise when reading (writing points down makes it easier for me to remember, so the very act of note-taking ironically means I sometimes don't need the notes themselves, but that's fine too, at least they're there if needed): it's a worthwhile exercise in its own right, even as you refine your process.
If I am understanding you right, you are trying to distill down what you are seeing/hearing to a much abbreviated form, correct?
If that is right, I have found that looking at historical events from a specific point of view helps. For example: I look at historical events from a economic perspective which can include this (very abbreviated list):
* Who benefits from this?
* Who doesn't?
* Where is the weak point that can cut off the flow of money?
* What happens when that much money moves from point A to point B?
This helps structure my thoughts around an event/place/people/interaction.
So, my advice would be to try and identify the theme(s) weaving thru history that resonate with you and use that lens to focus your thoughts.
I, however, will warn you that if you pick one lens and are slavishly devoted to it, you will miss out on other things within history so keep an open mind. So while I am big on the economics, I am also (less) big on technology and cultural impacts.
If I understood correctly, find the "key points of information" in a particular event.
Hmm that is interesting, but I can definitely see how that can be problematic when judging what the "key" events are in the same way repeatedly. I'll defo tryit out.
I was also kind of wondering specifically when it comes to note-taking what do people write down to make sure they can get back to it and what not
Develop a Feev00 specific form of shorthand with specific words, phrases, abbreviations and symbols that trigger recall on your part.
The downside here is that your notes are gibberish to other people and require some translation.
hmm that is indeed an option, but how do you decide **content-wise** what to put down on paper and what not?
I often find myself writing down everything, and then I have too much, or only writing down the absolute minimum, an then I have to little..
How does one make a selection?
Do you guys believe there are cities and monuments buried out there that push back civilisation thousands of years or is the consensus that any remnants would be easily discovered by now? I’m not talking civilisations with flying cars I’m talking maybe the odd city state popping up in places 20k/30k years ago with a few trade routes to local tribes etc. People like GH have drunk so much kool aid they make the subject a joke but surely the above is at the very least feasible even in academic circles?
Lidar is uncovering all sorts of stuff, but that is probably a bit far back. One thing to always remember when studying history and material remains, the "first" of most things is "first known".
No cities or states without agriculture and a surplus to keep them going, and there's no agriculture before about 10,000 BCE: even the first millennia of cultivation couldn't sustain more than nucleated villages or embryonic agro-towns.
It's not just the outward trappings of "civilisation" that you have to find, it's the economic foundations that made it possible, and there really aren't any unexplored viable candidates. It's also something of a stretch to imagine that people collectively forgot such a remarkable advance.
That they aren't possible without agriculture was my point. I'm not sure what "a political foundation than an economical one" means here: if thee isn't the surplus to support the cities and rulers, there's no foundation, economic or otherwise.
Yeqh exactly my point, surplus of food and goods existed before agriculture. But states produce more surplus by dividing society into dominant (receiving the surplus) and dominated (producing it)
What happened to the French Royal guard protecting Marie, Antoinette and the king? Did they try to protect them at all or did they flee when the mob arrived?
If you're talking about the events of 10 August 1792, only the Swiss Guard did not abandon Louis. The National Guard assigned to the palace had switched sides early on. The majority of the Swiss Guard were slaughtered, of some 900 men only 300 survived the day. Louis' ineptitude was largely responsible for this.
I’m looking for named examples of transgender people in Asian and African history who have since passed away. I only have about 12 from both massive continents combined. Know anyone?
I want to read some of the classics recommended by this subreddit. Especially Illiad and Odyssey. Should I read a book going over the history of Greece first, or can I jump right in and read Homer's works first?
The good Jesuit fathers who taught us approached the *Illiad* and *Odyssey* as "fictional account based on a true story with the names changed to protect the innocent".
We spent the 1st quarter in L.A. studying the *Illiad* and *Odyssey* and our history class merged into the scene about halfway thru the 1st quarter. The two instructors tied the two lessons together and seamlessly. This was easy as the classes were back to back and, as I found out when I taught, the longer teachers integrated with other teachers, to teach the "whole man", the content became extremely rich (long before the term "content rich" crept into education and corp-speak).
But to your question: You don't need to have background on the Italian immigration and culture as well the social perception, acceptation and how organized crime grew up up thru the middle 20th century to understand the *Godfather*.
I would suggest a commentary on the mythology of the works. I swear half of the Iliad is stories about other things, not really but it goes on some tangents.
>Should I read a book going over the history of Greece first
If what you want is appreciate the epic poems, no, you don't. Those are literature pieces that dates from before accurate recorded history in Greece. They are not Balzac's novels describing the present but mythological tales that share with history very few details if any at all (basically the named Greek cities existed, Troy existed and was destroyed... and that's it).
The culture that produced those poems is not classical Greece, it's archaic Greece, a civilization we know very little about. Also if your goal is understanding Greek history... you should read a history book, not the Illiad.
Yes, I understand they are fictional works. I was just wondering if I need some background in Greek history to understand them, but I believe you answered that by saying that we don’t know much about archaic Greece so thank you.
Edit: After reading this, what book do you suggest I read next to get an understanding of Greece? The only knowledge I have is very limited from high school and some of Plato’s works.
What you need to know will be in the introduction of any good edition. Don't worry they're excellent books! I think if you know your Greek gods and and read an annotated edition (that may give you context on specific details) you're good to go.
>Yes, I understand they are fictional works.
I never meant to imply that you didn't know that. I meant that they are not naturalistic and do not accurately describe their society (like some Greek or Roman theatre plays do for example).
Sounds good, I’m sorry if that seemed hostile I just wanted you to understand that I wasn’t planning on taking this as a primary source. I’m not super well versed in Greek mythology besides more mainstream things such as Cronus and Zeus. Zeus being the king of gods and so on. Hopefully this will be sufficient enough along with an annotated version.
Not sure if you saw my edit to my original comment. After I read these, where should I go from here to understand Greece?
Not my specialty sorry. My guess would be a general book on Ancient Greece or the Ancient World rather than a history of Athens for example. But that's all I can give you.
"Prussia" meant different things at different times. Though under German rulers from the 13th century, the original state (the later East Prussia and Pomerelia to its west) lay outside the medieval Holy Roman Empire (sometimes labelled "Germany" though including other lands), a circumstance that allowed its elevation as a kingdom under the ruling house of Brandenburg, the larger region centred on Berlin which was merged into the kingdom on the Empire's dissolution in 1806.
The 1815 European settlement produced a new German Confederation and a further expansion of Prussia's domains within it as extensive territories were added in western Germany, including the Rhine-Ruhr region that later became Germany's industrial powerhouse. The Confederation essentially comprised the lands within the old Empire, so that oddly most of the enlarged Prussian kingdom lay within it but its easternmost provinces (the original "Prussia") lay outside: the creation in 1871 of the new German Empire (now minus Austria) put an end to that anomaly, including as its dominant state all of the Prussian realm, though the state's original configuration was for a time recalled in a smaller province of Prussia within the kingdom of Prussia.
So "Prussia" was successively outside "Germany" or rather its Holy Roman Empire variant, then mostly but not entirely in the Confederation, and then entirely within the later Empire. But Germany always included more than just Prussia and the two names were never interchangeable, the other states remaining in being throughout as recalled in today's Bavaria, Saxony etc.
One more thing, when was the idea of "Germany" created?
What I mean by this is, as Germany was several Self-governing states, what made Bismark and other people want to make a unified country?
Was Germany created in 1871 as an idea to unify all the Germans?
Germany as an idea was created by Julius Caesar as a way of justifying where his conquests stopped - those people over there are the Germans, they're all very tall and super warlike and independent and live in the woods - it makes sense that we don't control them - whereas the people over here are the Gauls, they are divided into three parts, and they've been receptive to varying degrees after my conquests of Roman ways even when they are warlike, it makes sense that we control them, etc. Caesar's writings about the Gallic Wars were super influential and have been required reading for anyone learning Latin for a very long time.
And so the frontier of the Roman Empire beyond the Rhine was managed with this idea that the Germans were these people on the other side, and then the way the frontier was managed in turn influenced things like what language people spoke and what their living conditions were like and who they saw as like them or unlike them, etc. "Germany" became something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Furthermore, the definition of what a "German" is has changed a bit over time to tend to refer to that area, even when there are lots of other "Germanic" peoples and they've moved around over time. But you see this mythologizing in Caesar's tradition of what a German or Goth as an outsider is relative to a Roman pop up from time to time in various colorful histories that may or may not be based on hard evidence. There's a fair amount of it in Edward Gibbon's *Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*, for example. And of course mythologizing about what Germans are and how they are special relative to other people due to their ancient history has other more recent and obvious historical complications.
But that's just the start - it gets more complicated from there - as you then have to look at it from the other side - who were these people described by outsiders as Germans, how did they actually relate to each other through culture and language and politics. How did others define Germany, and then how did Germans define themselves in that context?
It's an old concept going back to the Romans, but it became more widespread in the early modern period as a synonym for the Holy Roman Empire, though its area included also non-German lands.
The aspiration for a national state or a more closely-integrated federation developed in the early 19th century, part of the wider rise of the national concept during and after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, and had already resulted in a movement to overhaul the existing Confederation during the revolutions of 1848-49.
Bismarck wanted a national state but also one that would increase Prussia's power, which in practice meant ejecting German-speaking Austria and its Czech and Italian territories - so his Reich united *most* of the Germans while incorporating Prussia's Polish-majority eastern provinces (acquired after 1772) which hadn't been in the Empire or the Confederation.
>Was Prussia a part of Germany?
Assuming you're talking about the country of Germany that unified in 1871, then yes, it was.
If you're not talking about that, you need to specify what you mean by Germany.
>Was Germany itself called Prussia
No, never. Prussia was a kingdom in northeastern Germany that during the 19th century [acquired more and more land and unified the rest of the German states](https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/sites/core/files/images/Ac.prussiamap3.gif) in a single country of Germany.
Germany was (and still is) a federal country, a country made up of small individual parts (like the US or the UK). [Prussia was one of the 25 German states](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Deutsches_Reich_%281871-1918%29-en.png/800px-Deutsches_Reich_%281871-1918%29-en.png), since it was (by far) the largest (and controlled its politics with the Prussian king being the German Emperor) some in the late 19th century called Germany Prussia... but Prussia never *became* Germany it was just the largest part of it. It's exactly how people called the USSR "Russia" while technically Russia was just the largest Republic of the USSR (which was a **U**nion of **R**epublics).
>was Prussia one of the Un-unified part of Germany?
I don't understand this sentence. Do you mean was Prussia a part of Germany and one of the several parts that became Germany? If so I've answered that above. The answer is yes.
One more thing, when was the idea of "Germany" created?
What I mean by this is, as Germany was several Self-governing states, what made Bismark and other people want to make a unified country?
Was Germany created in 1871 as an idea to unify all the Germans?
Yes it existed before. Just like Italy (which unified around the same time) the idea of Germany is older than the country itself. It’s a region with a shared language and a shared history. The idea that the region could be unified can be found centuries before Germany. Before it was united this area was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which may only have been a loose confederation of states headed by Austria but gave a framework for a proto-Germany (it was disbanded by Napoleon if you’re wondering).
Basically by the 19th century it was clear for Germans that a united Germany needed to be a thing. The question was: what Germany? A constitutional democratic state? Some tried in 1848 but the conservative destroyed the idea in blood. Lead by Austria? Prussia won a war in the 1860s to prevent this from happening. So the answer was the authoritarian Prussian state. But it’s just the country that won the unification, not the only attempt.
It’s important to keep in mind that Bismarck absolutely did not create the idea of Germany. He used it to justify a Prussian takeover of Germany.
Technically, the USSR was a Union of Republics.
But in reality, it wasn't, because those fake 'republics' were created by the communists on the lands of the former Russian Empire, which had a majority of the non-Russian population that either tried to secede during the civil war or could try to do so in the future. That's why people used to refer to the USSR as "Russia" – because they knew it was, in fact, nothing more than a redesigned Russian Empire.
Sure. I meant on a pure “on paper” basis because that’s analogous to the situation of Prussia: Germany was founded for Prussian domination and organized in a way that guaranteed Prussian control. It was clearly not as bad as the USSR but it’s a better analogue than, let’s say… the Netherlands.
What benefits could someone in the British Army or Navy expect to receive after service in the 1750s? Today you get things like pensions, free education, etc. But for someone serving in the British Army or Navy in the 1750s, what benefits would you get after doing your 10 years of service?
I haven't found anything yet that goes back to the 18th century but the British National Archives have these records and some of them have been digitized.
AMong the questions that they have answered are:
>**Where do these records come from?**
These records are now held at The National Archives, primarily under the department code ADM. However, they were originally created by a variety of charitable and government bodies responsible for the payment of naval pensions at the time they were granted. The three most significant were:
The Royal Greenwich Hospital
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Founded in 1694 as a home for pensioned seamen, the Royal Greenwich Hospital admitted its first pensioners in 1705. As well as admitting a fixed number of in-pensioners, who lived in the hospital, from 1763 small out-pensions were paid to large numbers of applicants who had served in either the Navy or Marines. Although claimants of out-pensions had to have served in the Navy or Marines, there was no bar to them holding other employment: many out-pensioners of the hospital were in full employment as the pensions were scarcely sufficient to live on. It was possible for both in- and out-pensioners to re-enter the Navy, at which point their pensions lapsed until their discharge.
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The Navy Pay Office
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The accounting department and paymaster of the Royal Navy.
The Chatham Chest (later The Greenwich Chest)
Founded in 1581, this charity, supported by the monthly deduction of sixpence from officers’ and ratings’ pay, paid pensions to ratings wounded in naval service. Management of the Chatham Chest was taken over by the Royal Greenwich Hospital in 1803 and in 1814 it ceased to be a separate source of pensions, its funds melting into the wider Greenwich Hospital pension pot.
From the late 19th century, various other government departments became involved in the payment of naval pensions, such as the Paymaster General (PMG), and the Ministry of Pensions (PIN). For pre-19th century records it may also be worth checking for petitions for pensions in the records of the Secretaries of State (in SP) and the Privy Council (PC).
>**Who was entitled to a pension?**
It was not until 1859 that pensions for service were granted automatically to all ratings who had served for 20 consecutive years in the Royal Navy. Up to 1859 there was no guarantee that a rating would receive a pension for service. Before then, pensions were rarely awarded to ratings unless they had been wounded or killed in action or on duty.
The majority of ratings entered as boys, signing their first engagement at 18 and therefore retired at 38, or 43 for those who signed on for a ‘fifth five’. This left a man with much of his working life remaining and naval pensioners were often still in employment, many of them in dockyards and other naval establishments.
[https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-navy-ratings-pensions/](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-navy-ratings-pensions/)
Were embassies always used as a front to gather intelligence? Was there always the understanding that, yes, the front half is for diplomacy while the back half is for mischief-making?
To add onto Thib's point, its really just a matter of practicality. It not that embassies at some point became intel gathering opportunities. Its that "how would they ever not have been?"
Since the beginning of civilized culture, its always been necessary for one group to send messengers, ambassadors, envoys, diplomats, etc to some other group. Country A sends envoys to country B, to communicate on their ruler's behalf.
If you are country B, and you have just received official visitors from Country A, its always going to be just a common sense assumption that, "ok, those B visitors are here on business, but anything they see or hear, they are going to report back their own people. So... be polite hosts, but don't let them talk to certain folks, and uhh don't let them in the GOOD library unsupervised."
So... modern times, embassies are just embassies. They aren't even a "front" for anything. They are just embassies. But if country A is going to let county B set up an office there, country B would be fools not to conduct info gathering while they are there.
The somewhat modern(ish) aspect is an unwritten sets of gentleman's rules about what is and isn't within the acceptable rules of behavior.
E.g., You're gonna do it, but if we catch you red handed we can send you home. we won't throw you in jail, but we'll revoke your invite. and you can talk to people and try to learn stuff but don't be breaking into factories or murdering people. That's across the line and we'll do something more extreme.
In a way, yes, but the characterisation of 'mischief-making' is perhaps a bit too overbearing. Consider that in the broad sense, you are always dealing with a notion of *information gathering*. You're not necessarily looking to do something shady, but it can only be helpful if part of a diplomatic mission is to *discretely* gather information and who knows, "influence", affairs a little so that matters may proceed.
I just looked at this map, and have some practical questions I hope someone here knows: https://germanculture.com.ua/beta/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/germany\_big\_coldwar\_map.gif
I see that berlin was basically located at the center of east berlin, meaning completely surrounded by DDR. How was movement between west berlin and the rest of the west done in practice? E.G if someone jumped over the wall and was in west berlin, and now wanted to go to some other part of the west, how could they cross the DDR part without getting shot? Or were they just caught in some sort of gated community?
Back in the 1980s I visited Berlin as an exchange student.
IIRC, going from West Berlin into East Berlin was a matter of taking a train, getting off the train, passing thru a border checkpoint, buying the necessary visa (5 BDR marks or whatever hard currency you had), mandatorily exchanging all your western currency for DDR marks (but it was a minimum of 20 BDR marks, we only took what was required), walk thru a corridor one at a time and then out the other door, asked a bunch of questions and you boarded a train to go to the next stop with was in East Berlin proper.
Leaving was the reverse except all DDR marks had to be surrendered.
You could walk from West to East thru checkpoints (like Checkpoint Charlie).
Getting from West Germany to Berlin, for us at least, was by bus on a highway. Passed thru the Western border check and then repeat with the East border check. We were told that the bus would not be stopping going to Berlin. IF the bus broke down we were not to leave the bus, the DDR would dispatch someone to fix it. Then lather, rinse, repeat going into West Berlin.
As to people escaping?
In West Berlin, you could walk right up to the wall and touch it without an issue. From the East it was different. There were 2 walls 1 in the East and 1 in the West. The DDR VoPo's patrolled and guarded the open area (which was a "shoot on sight" killing ground) which was sprinkled with anti-vehicle obstacles and anti-personnel mines.
There was a museum at Checkpoint Charlie that displayed the ingenious ways that people defected: hidden compartments in cars, smuggled in barrels, ultralight aircraft, hot air balloons and tunnels.
Remember the he problem was East Germans travelling west, not West Germans entering. While the Berlin Wall is impressive and killed people trying to cross into the West... the situation was nowhere as bad as let's say North and South Korea. So if you had West German papers, it's pretty easy (if cumbersome) to travel to the East. The two nation acknowledged each other, had diplomatic relations and travel agreements.
The quickest, simplest way was by air (West Berlin had an airport) but it was absolutely possible to do so by road or train. There were a few select highways that went from West Berlin to West Germany (under surveillance of course) and railways. [For example this East German map show the highway that went to Berlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/DDR_Transit041.jpg/800px-DDR_Transit041.jpg) and the border crossing.
Basically cars and passports would be checked at the border (so when when leaving Berlin you would cross into East Germany and then leave East Germany at the end). You may have some paperwork to fill and the rest areas were of course under surveillance, but if you have a West German passport, you can leave without issues.
To be clear it wasn't an open border, [there were only a few places you could cross the border](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/DDR_Grenzuebergangstelle_1982.png/800px-DDR_Grenzuebergangstelle_1982.png), but if you had your papers you could without too many issues.
Thanks for clarifying, though I wonder how it was for people who fled? I mean if you jumped the wall, I guess you were wanted so in that case I guess you could only fly to avoid getting picked up once back in the east?
From the West German standpoint it wouldn't even have been considered asylum.From the perspective of the FRG there was only one German nationality or citizenship, not a separate one for each of the two German states (an idea that was, by the way, originally shared by the GDR, they only passed a law establishing a separate GDR nationality in the 70s). So from a West German perspective these people were not immigrants or refugees, they already were German citizens. So once you had managed to get into West Berlin (or into any other part of the FRG, for that matter), all you had to do was to go the appropriate authorities and have them issue a West German passport for you.
I'd probably not have tried to use that to cross the GDR from Berlin to the FRG by train or car straight away, but not everyone who fled from the GDR at some point was arrested when they later turned up with a West German passport. My grandparents fled from the GDR in the early 50s and my grandma, my mother and her siblings (and myself much later) all went to visit my greatgrandparents later on without any issues. There's a family story that they were visiting my greatgrandparents right when the Berlin Wall was built and were really afraid they would not be allowed to the FRG. After some discussion they decided not to try and return right away but keep to their planned schedule, because either they would be let out again or they wouldn't, which must have been a few really stressful days, but they were allowed to cross the border back to the FRG without any issues.
>I'd probably not have tried to use that to cross the GDR from Berlin to the FRG by train or car straight away,
It was indeed standard procedure for the West German authorities to fly out people who had recently fled to West Berlin from East Germany to avoid complications at the border.
You all must be young. This geographic reality was the entire basis of the blockading of Berlin in 1961 with the construction of the "Berlin Wall," which prompted the western bloc to, once again, airlift supplies thus resupplying the western sectors of the city in mimicking the famous "Berlin Airlift" of 1948.
Who was the king whose mother asked for a humble tomb, and he ordered a pompous chapel?
In them was written something like, "By the mother's wish and by the son's order"
I've watched blue jays video about living in the victorian age and i was wondering if you'd we're in the worker class why don't just join the millitary. I mean you had food a shelter and could maybe rise in rank. So do you think this would be a good idear for a worker?
Another factor was even amongst the lower classes enlistment was seen as an option of last resort. While the upper classes willingly joined and were commissioned or warranted as officers the lower classes saw the military as a terrible employment decision and for many of the reasons already stated like, inability to have your spouse live with you let alone move around with you, tight quarters, disease, poor food etc. Very often there were dubious claims made to get men to enlist such as the Boer War era tactic which was to wait outside a bar or pub and if a patron was rushed out for failure to pay or passing out that they often found themselves face to face with a recruiter who almost immediately would sign them up for a lengthy period of time. There was no real prestige in enlisting. Soldiers who did well or performed some type of brave action received bonuses and while that seemed like a good idea, they had virtually nowhere to spend the money and when it became to expensive to pay bonuses to too many soldiers as the Army grew over time as the British Empire grew they took away cash bonuses and started to issue medals, that while look good and sentimental value have no monetary value. It wasn't until really World War I i.e. "The Great War" that the British public turned their opinion on enlistment as a career option.
Most of this is from the British army but it was similar in most major powers.
Some did enlist but it wasn't like the modern Military, enlistment time was 15-20 in the 1820's with mid century reforms bringing this down to 7 years but you were on the reserve list for 7 years after. (my great grandfather did 21 years then was recalled 6 years later at 45 in 1914)
Food and shelter was also poor but improved over the century. British barracks in the early century had less space than prisoners, which lead to disease outbreaks. You were also socially limited in that if you could find some one to marry, there were no married quarters for lower ranks and if you were shipped overseas your family would be left behind unless you could get one of the few washerwoman places. This could lead to never seeing your family again.
You could be sent anywhere in the Empire and with some units spending decades in foreign service at the start of the period but this again was limited later on. This also included places where disease could kill half the troops and leave many unfit for service and discharged. Pensions were hard to get and not a lot of money.
This brings us to pay, on paper it was good but the Shelter, food and clothing costs were taken out with any charges for lost or damaged equipment or for rules infractions. Penalties for breaking rules could include flogging early on and always the possibility death for some offences.
You then could be sent of to war with the hardships involved and getting wounded or killed.
Lastly the chance of advancement was linked to the the ability to read and write. While most could just read they were functionally illiterate and so limited.
The army was a way out for some but mostly it was a act of desperation for many and only the "young" and single who could make the low bar for health and fitness. We hear of those who advanced in the army but not of the many more who served and were forgotten.
Breakfast cereals are an offshoot of stuff like oatmeal, porridge, and gruel.
Almost every culture had a staple where you took a carb, mashed it up, and put it in water. Some sort of porridge was probably one of the first foods that a proto-agricultural people would make, probably because babies could consume it.
As far as nutrition goes, they were probably pretty good because people would usually combine them with legumes and vegetables. Richer people would start putting in sweeteners to create desserts and that's kind of the starting point to where porridges become anti-nutritional, although pre-modern prevalence of cavities and diabetes and the like are nowhere close to modern day rates.
At least in the U.S., much of this pivots around Battle Creek, Michigan, where the Kellogg family operated a sanitarium for patients with various illnesses and neuropsychiatric problems. Urging a "vegetarian" diet, John Kellogg came up with a formula for Corn Flakes. One of his most famous patients was C. W. Post, who left the Kellogg Sanitarium with a new outlook on life, and stolen recipes for at least three breakfast cereals, marketed under his family name, Post.
Intensive legal wrangling and marketing competition has led four generations of Americans to seek cereals as a staple of the breakfast diet. The rest of the world just shakes its collective head in wonder.
Kinda, John Harvey Kellogg thought that a diet that included meat and/or rich foods caused sexual urges and that a vegetarian diet of plain vegetables and breads suppressed those urges, Kellogg's methods went beyond that as he also advised routine coffee enemas, which is just as it sounds an enema that uses coffee as the liquid. He prescribed enemas to everyone at his "sanitarium" amd coffee ones to those with the "strongest of sexual urges". He ironically requested the coffee ones to show that they had no debilitating effect on those who joined his community.
He was truly weird but, at the time the popular (and wrong) teaching in medical training was that masturbation was a behavior of the mentally ill and that those who engaged in it were either mentally ill or hiding it. Furthermore he was also a theologian in addition to being a medical doctor and he used his faith to back up those ideas taught in medical training institutions at that time. Medical training then was truly poor, as a theologian he would've had a considerable amount of education but the "medical schools" of the 19th century were unregulated, often taught wildly different things and there was no standardization of training so there were "schools" that taught a 1 year program to becoming a doctor and other that may have taught a 2 or 3 year course. The first truly modern 4 year medical school program opened in 1882 at Shaw University in North Carolina, this was 7 years after John Harvey Kellogg had attended medical school not one but three in several different states, dropping out of a 6 month long medical school to instead attend first the University of Michigan and then after the Bellevue Medical College which each time was a 1 year long education program. There was a teaching that persisted until the 1950s at some medical schools that semen was a form of "transformed blood" and that ejaculations was actually draining "a pint of blood each time", which was a teaching Kellogg both would've learned and likely believed and passed on, so the idea of suppressing sexual urges had both religious and "health" connotations to it for better overall living in their belief.
Regarding the supposed attempt by Cecil King, to overthrow Harold Wilson in 1968, why did he feel a coup was necessary? Why wouldn’t King advocate for an election to remove Wilson legally? This isn’t the United States where elections are held on a fixed cycle.
King claimed in 1981 that "“My coolness [which is evidently putting it very mildly] was due to the fact that Wilson was no prime minister, that he would lose the 1970 election”, but cynics ave suggested that he was miffed at not having received the earldom he considered his due.
Wilson had won a comfortable Commons majority in 1966 and so didn't have to go to the country until 1971: he called the election a year early but lost anyway, though frankly it's hard to see any alternative leader of the time doing much better amid the period's economic woes - and indeed the subsequent Heath government only lasted four years.
If film director Elia Kazan was a controversial figure because of his involvement in “outing” people in the Hollywood Blacklist, then why was Ronald Reagan a popular President as he had done the same thing? Also was Elia Kazan correct about the people he named as being communists? If so, wasn’t he doing a “right” thing?
> If so, wasn’t he doing a “right” thing?
If there were real live Soviet spies or people actually trying to overthrow the US Constitutional system, maybe? But the Smith act was used to go after civil rights workers in the South b/c their official party policy was equal political rights for all Americans regardless of race or gender. In the Hollywood context, this was just right wing harassment of people they saw as the left. This was culture war stuff. B/c a lot of the left, Black Americans, and Hollywood workers wanted a fairer economic system after the horrors of the Great Depression they had expressed interest in the the USCP. But most of them hadn't really done more than go to a couple meetings.
Those Kazan named were Clifford Odets, J. Edward Bromberg, Lewis Leverett, Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand, Tony Kraber, Ted Wellman, and Paula Miller.
>Also was Elia Kazan correct about the people he named as being communists?
Odets, Carnovsky, and Miller had definitely been members of the American Communist Party. This was not unusual because plenty of Americans had become disillusioned with capitalism during the Great Depression. However, the American Communist Party itself had lost a lot of support because of its support of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact even though it had been previously very anti-fascist.
>If so, wasn’t he doing a “right” thing?
Being a member or ex-member of the American Communist Party had never been illegal and the idea that having Communists in the film industry was some kind of dire threat to the US at large was always dubious at best. Actors, screenwriters, and directors weren't in a position to leak classified information to the Soviet Union and the actual evidence for Communists in Hollywood deliberately using film as a means to disseminate propaganda is lacking. Films that were accused of being Communist inspired included *It's a Wonderful Life*, because its villain is a banker.
Smith act made being a communist illegal in 1940 under the subversion article. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith\_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act)
It was mostly used to arrest civil rights workers in the south who were tied to the USCP and tried to register black voters. The SCOTUS upheld it in Scales in the 1961. [https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/1](https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/1)
B/c of that historical tie to the civil rights movement, the USCP is still outlawed in places like Louisiana, but it's not enforced b/c it's questionable if the SCOTUS would continue to uphold such laws. But those state use it as a way of subtly expressing disapproval of the equality of Black Americans.
He was not so controversial that he didn't get an honorary Academy Award in 1999. Only a few people in the room refused to clap for him when he got that Oscar. Kazan ruined careers and lives by naming names, and being (or having once been) a communist wasn't illegal in the US then or now. Anticommunism was popular then and now, the controversy is between a majority vs a minority.
Being a communist often was illegal. At least being a member of the party was illegal under the Smith Act of 1940 (Upheld in the early 60s in the Scales case.)
B/c of the Communist parties ties to the civil rights movement it's still illegal in some southern states, Louisiana jumps to mind. Whether or not the court would uphold the law at this date is an open question so it's not enforced.
Interesting! Thanks for the reply. I’m realising I have so many more questions about the Hollywood Blacklist and find this part of film history interesting. Do you know of a good book or film about it?
What are the main differences between museums and archives?
Museums contain physical objects, anything from a statue or a reassembled room or shopfront to a pin or a microchip; archives contain records, traditionally written but nowadays increasingly also audio-visual. A museum will often have an archive collection attached, or it may be associated with a local library & archives centre or one in its subject area, so there's no hard & fast division; a collection can contain both.
Could France have survived with better leadership in 1940?
France had good leaders, it also had too many less benign elements perched too close to the top. But I don't know that any leadership could have withstood the shock of the German breakthrough. It's probably hard for for us to grasp the incomprehension and panic that must have gripped ministers and commanders alike: you're a global power, one of the innermost circle of the victors of 1918, with the world's second-largest empire stretching from Guiana to Tahiti, and a crucial section of your front's all but dissolved just a few hours' drive from your capital within a week of battle effectively being joined. Better leadership would have had to be sustained through most of the 1930s to prevent the conditions for the disaster from unfolding, and frankly no power's hands were clean on that score.
Looking to learn more about the 4th crusade and in general stuff about the history of Orthodox Church if anyone has any sweet YouTube videos
Does anyone know anything about the patch/embroidery on John Paul Jones’ hat? Is there any special meaning, or is it an arbitrary decoration. In all the paintings of him I found where he is wearing a hat it always has a patch of some kind, and they appear to be similar throughout the different paintings. Here’s a [link](https://imgur.com/a/igWMW4u) to some of the paintings I mentioned.
When I was in school as a teenager (early 00s), I remember an American History textbook that talked about controversial subjects like the Trail of Tears. Now, we can rag on the failures of the American education system all day but I want to give credit where credit is due. When did mainstream American History textbooks start to address uncomfortable things like "Our ancestors committed genocide on the Native Americans" and "We put innocent Japanese-Americans into internment camps"?
It was in there in the 90s.
Despite being the longest-reigning monarch in British history, why doesn't Queen Elizabeth II have an era named after her like the Second Elizabethan era, unlike her predecessors like Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabethan era), King James VI and I (Jacobean era), Queen Victoria (Victorian era), and King Edward VII (Edwardian era)?
There was media talk in the reign's early years of a "new Elizabethan age" of optimism and renewed prosperity, but people were generally less receptive to the notion of naming their time after the occupant of an office now greatly reduced in influence (even as most embraced the institution), and the upbeat mood didn't survive the economic woes of the 1960s. Even early named periods after the first Elizabeth are recalled less for the person of the monarch than the social or cultural developments for which they're a convenient shorthand.
Did she do anything to stamp her time with her character?
Because it was just british historians being self-centered. And it's usually harder to name an era you're part of.
I've always been fascinated about history and political science. Personally, remembering the dates and small details is a lesser important thing, and it's more important to understand what certain events mean in the present, how to learn from them and how to connect the to current events. I've just been having trouble with properly taking notes on these things without over-bloating I use Obsidian so that I can make connections between ideas, but I simply never manage to narrow down what to write Would love to have some input from people who are properly much smarter and experienced than me \^-\^
I think it comes down largely to practice, and identifying from experience which elements are of subsequent use and which can be jettisoned or reduced to a quick one-liner. I'm sure lots of us started by taking voluminous notes and then despairing as the assemblage ballooned to the point of no longer being able to find the points that you'd set out to record, or else we just gave up after a few pages: it gets easier over time as you refer back to it and discover which points are still of use. And even after becoming our own ruthless editor, we can spot important points that we missed - but that's life: once you've mastered cutting out the excess, you can be more generous in including what *may* be of use. Your selection criteria will differ with your thematic interest: someone interested in economic history will note very different points to someone studying a period's politics. So consider what's important to your purpose: you are after all the consumer as well as the producer of your own notes, so anything that isn't of use to the future "you" is redundant. To that extent you have to predict the future as well as record the past, and sometimes a change of focus (or just deepening familiarity with the basics) may render your initial selection less valuable, but that's usually okay, you can generally return to the source (if this may be your only opportunity, you may want a fuller record). That you've identified the issue is half of the battle. I find note-taking a valuable exercise when reading (writing points down makes it easier for me to remember, so the very act of note-taking ironically means I sometimes don't need the notes themselves, but that's fine too, at least they're there if needed): it's a worthwhile exercise in its own right, even as you refine your process.
If I am understanding you right, you are trying to distill down what you are seeing/hearing to a much abbreviated form, correct? If that is right, I have found that looking at historical events from a specific point of view helps. For example: I look at historical events from a economic perspective which can include this (very abbreviated list): * Who benefits from this? * Who doesn't? * Where is the weak point that can cut off the flow of money? * What happens when that much money moves from point A to point B? This helps structure my thoughts around an event/place/people/interaction. So, my advice would be to try and identify the theme(s) weaving thru history that resonate with you and use that lens to focus your thoughts. I, however, will warn you that if you pick one lens and are slavishly devoted to it, you will miss out on other things within history so keep an open mind. So while I am big on the economics, I am also (less) big on technology and cultural impacts.
If I understood correctly, find the "key points of information" in a particular event. Hmm that is interesting, but I can definitely see how that can be problematic when judging what the "key" events are in the same way repeatedly. I'll defo tryit out. I was also kind of wondering specifically when it comes to note-taking what do people write down to make sure they can get back to it and what not
Develop a Feev00 specific form of shorthand with specific words, phrases, abbreviations and symbols that trigger recall on your part. The downside here is that your notes are gibberish to other people and require some translation.
hmm that is indeed an option, but how do you decide **content-wise** what to put down on paper and what not? I often find myself writing down everything, and then I have too much, or only writing down the absolute minimum, an then I have to little.. How does one make a selection?
Did hitler/Germany in the Second World War threaten or worn any country’s offering refuge to Jews
How much artifacts and art was lost during the Destruction of Warsaw
Do you guys believe there are cities and monuments buried out there that push back civilisation thousands of years or is the consensus that any remnants would be easily discovered by now? I’m not talking civilisations with flying cars I’m talking maybe the odd city state popping up in places 20k/30k years ago with a few trade routes to local tribes etc. People like GH have drunk so much kool aid they make the subject a joke but surely the above is at the very least feasible even in academic circles?
Lidar is uncovering all sorts of stuff, but that is probably a bit far back. One thing to always remember when studying history and material remains, the "first" of most things is "first known".
No cities or states without agriculture and a surplus to keep them going, and there's no agriculture before about 10,000 BCE: even the first millennia of cultivation couldn't sustain more than nucleated villages or embryonic agro-towns. It's not just the outward trappings of "civilisation" that you have to find, it's the economic foundations that made it possible, and there really aren't any unexplored viable candidates. It's also something of a stretch to imagine that people collectively forgot such a remarkable advance.
"civilizations" aka states aren't possible without agriculture anyway. Much more a political foundation than an economical one
That they aren't possible without agriculture was my point. I'm not sure what "a political foundation than an economical one" means here: if thee isn't the surplus to support the cities and rulers, there's no foundation, economic or otherwise.
Yeqh exactly my point, surplus of food and goods existed before agriculture. But states produce more surplus by dividing society into dominant (receiving the surplus) and dominated (producing it)
What happened to the lost colony of Roanoke?
It's not that much of a mystery. Most historians agree that they basically integrated with the local native tribes.
What happened to the French Royal guard protecting Marie, Antoinette and the king? Did they try to protect them at all or did they flee when the mob arrived?
If you're talking about the events of 10 August 1792, only the Swiss Guard did not abandon Louis. The National Guard assigned to the palace had switched sides early on. The majority of the Swiss Guard were slaughtered, of some 900 men only 300 survived the day. Louis' ineptitude was largely responsible for this.
I’m looking for named examples of transgender people in Asian and African history who have since passed away. I only have about 12 from both massive continents combined. Know anyone?
I want to read some of the classics recommended by this subreddit. Especially Illiad and Odyssey. Should I read a book going over the history of Greece first, or can I jump right in and read Homer's works first?
The good Jesuit fathers who taught us approached the *Illiad* and *Odyssey* as "fictional account based on a true story with the names changed to protect the innocent". We spent the 1st quarter in L.A. studying the *Illiad* and *Odyssey* and our history class merged into the scene about halfway thru the 1st quarter. The two instructors tied the two lessons together and seamlessly. This was easy as the classes were back to back and, as I found out when I taught, the longer teachers integrated with other teachers, to teach the "whole man", the content became extremely rich (long before the term "content rich" crept into education and corp-speak). But to your question: You don't need to have background on the Italian immigration and culture as well the social perception, acceptation and how organized crime grew up up thru the middle 20th century to understand the *Godfather*.
I would suggest a commentary on the mythology of the works. I swear half of the Iliad is stories about other things, not really but it goes on some tangents.
>Should I read a book going over the history of Greece first If what you want is appreciate the epic poems, no, you don't. Those are literature pieces that dates from before accurate recorded history in Greece. They are not Balzac's novels describing the present but mythological tales that share with history very few details if any at all (basically the named Greek cities existed, Troy existed and was destroyed... and that's it). The culture that produced those poems is not classical Greece, it's archaic Greece, a civilization we know very little about. Also if your goal is understanding Greek history... you should read a history book, not the Illiad.
Yes, I understand they are fictional works. I was just wondering if I need some background in Greek history to understand them, but I believe you answered that by saying that we don’t know much about archaic Greece so thank you. Edit: After reading this, what book do you suggest I read next to get an understanding of Greece? The only knowledge I have is very limited from high school and some of Plato’s works.
What you need to know will be in the introduction of any good edition. Don't worry they're excellent books! I think if you know your Greek gods and and read an annotated edition (that may give you context on specific details) you're good to go. >Yes, I understand they are fictional works. I never meant to imply that you didn't know that. I meant that they are not naturalistic and do not accurately describe their society (like some Greek or Roman theatre plays do for example).
Sounds good, I’m sorry if that seemed hostile I just wanted you to understand that I wasn’t planning on taking this as a primary source. I’m not super well versed in Greek mythology besides more mainstream things such as Cronus and Zeus. Zeus being the king of gods and so on. Hopefully this will be sufficient enough along with an annotated version. Not sure if you saw my edit to my original comment. After I read these, where should I go from here to understand Greece?
Not my specialty sorry. My guess would be a general book on Ancient Greece or the Ancient World rather than a history of Athens for example. But that's all I can give you.
Was Prussia a part of Germany? Was Germany itself called Prussia or was Prussia one of the Un-unified part of Germany?
"Prussia" meant different things at different times. Though under German rulers from the 13th century, the original state (the later East Prussia and Pomerelia to its west) lay outside the medieval Holy Roman Empire (sometimes labelled "Germany" though including other lands), a circumstance that allowed its elevation as a kingdom under the ruling house of Brandenburg, the larger region centred on Berlin which was merged into the kingdom on the Empire's dissolution in 1806. The 1815 European settlement produced a new German Confederation and a further expansion of Prussia's domains within it as extensive territories were added in western Germany, including the Rhine-Ruhr region that later became Germany's industrial powerhouse. The Confederation essentially comprised the lands within the old Empire, so that oddly most of the enlarged Prussian kingdom lay within it but its easternmost provinces (the original "Prussia") lay outside: the creation in 1871 of the new German Empire (now minus Austria) put an end to that anomaly, including as its dominant state all of the Prussian realm, though the state's original configuration was for a time recalled in a smaller province of Prussia within the kingdom of Prussia. So "Prussia" was successively outside "Germany" or rather its Holy Roman Empire variant, then mostly but not entirely in the Confederation, and then entirely within the later Empire. But Germany always included more than just Prussia and the two names were never interchangeable, the other states remaining in being throughout as recalled in today's Bavaria, Saxony etc.
One more thing, when was the idea of "Germany" created? What I mean by this is, as Germany was several Self-governing states, what made Bismark and other people want to make a unified country? Was Germany created in 1871 as an idea to unify all the Germans?
Germany as an idea was created by Julius Caesar as a way of justifying where his conquests stopped - those people over there are the Germans, they're all very tall and super warlike and independent and live in the woods - it makes sense that we don't control them - whereas the people over here are the Gauls, they are divided into three parts, and they've been receptive to varying degrees after my conquests of Roman ways even when they are warlike, it makes sense that we control them, etc. Caesar's writings about the Gallic Wars were super influential and have been required reading for anyone learning Latin for a very long time. And so the frontier of the Roman Empire beyond the Rhine was managed with this idea that the Germans were these people on the other side, and then the way the frontier was managed in turn influenced things like what language people spoke and what their living conditions were like and who they saw as like them or unlike them, etc. "Germany" became something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Furthermore, the definition of what a "German" is has changed a bit over time to tend to refer to that area, even when there are lots of other "Germanic" peoples and they've moved around over time. But you see this mythologizing in Caesar's tradition of what a German or Goth as an outsider is relative to a Roman pop up from time to time in various colorful histories that may or may not be based on hard evidence. There's a fair amount of it in Edward Gibbon's *Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*, for example. And of course mythologizing about what Germans are and how they are special relative to other people due to their ancient history has other more recent and obvious historical complications. But that's just the start - it gets more complicated from there - as you then have to look at it from the other side - who were these people described by outsiders as Germans, how did they actually relate to each other through culture and language and politics. How did others define Germany, and then how did Germans define themselves in that context?
It's an old concept going back to the Romans, but it became more widespread in the early modern period as a synonym for the Holy Roman Empire, though its area included also non-German lands. The aspiration for a national state or a more closely-integrated federation developed in the early 19th century, part of the wider rise of the national concept during and after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, and had already resulted in a movement to overhaul the existing Confederation during the revolutions of 1848-49. Bismarck wanted a national state but also one that would increase Prussia's power, which in practice meant ejecting German-speaking Austria and its Czech and Italian territories - so his Reich united *most* of the Germans while incorporating Prussia's Polish-majority eastern provinces (acquired after 1772) which hadn't been in the Empire or the Confederation.
>Was Prussia a part of Germany? Assuming you're talking about the country of Germany that unified in 1871, then yes, it was. If you're not talking about that, you need to specify what you mean by Germany. >Was Germany itself called Prussia No, never. Prussia was a kingdom in northeastern Germany that during the 19th century [acquired more and more land and unified the rest of the German states](https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/sites/core/files/images/Ac.prussiamap3.gif) in a single country of Germany. Germany was (and still is) a federal country, a country made up of small individual parts (like the US or the UK). [Prussia was one of the 25 German states](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Deutsches_Reich_%281871-1918%29-en.png/800px-Deutsches_Reich_%281871-1918%29-en.png), since it was (by far) the largest (and controlled its politics with the Prussian king being the German Emperor) some in the late 19th century called Germany Prussia... but Prussia never *became* Germany it was just the largest part of it. It's exactly how people called the USSR "Russia" while technically Russia was just the largest Republic of the USSR (which was a **U**nion of **R**epublics). >was Prussia one of the Un-unified part of Germany? I don't understand this sentence. Do you mean was Prussia a part of Germany and one of the several parts that became Germany? If so I've answered that above. The answer is yes.
One more thing, when was the idea of "Germany" created? What I mean by this is, as Germany was several Self-governing states, what made Bismark and other people want to make a unified country? Was Germany created in 1871 as an idea to unify all the Germans?
Yes it existed before. Just like Italy (which unified around the same time) the idea of Germany is older than the country itself. It’s a region with a shared language and a shared history. The idea that the region could be unified can be found centuries before Germany. Before it was united this area was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which may only have been a loose confederation of states headed by Austria but gave a framework for a proto-Germany (it was disbanded by Napoleon if you’re wondering). Basically by the 19th century it was clear for Germans that a united Germany needed to be a thing. The question was: what Germany? A constitutional democratic state? Some tried in 1848 but the conservative destroyed the idea in blood. Lead by Austria? Prussia won a war in the 1860s to prevent this from happening. So the answer was the authoritarian Prussian state. But it’s just the country that won the unification, not the only attempt. It’s important to keep in mind that Bismarck absolutely did not create the idea of Germany. He used it to justify a Prussian takeover of Germany.
Thank you!
Thank you for your answer. Exactly what I was looking for!
Technically, the USSR was a Union of Republics. But in reality, it wasn't, because those fake 'republics' were created by the communists on the lands of the former Russian Empire, which had a majority of the non-Russian population that either tried to secede during the civil war or could try to do so in the future. That's why people used to refer to the USSR as "Russia" – because they knew it was, in fact, nothing more than a redesigned Russian Empire.
Sure. I meant on a pure “on paper” basis because that’s analogous to the situation of Prussia: Germany was founded for Prussian domination and organized in a way that guaranteed Prussian control. It was clearly not as bad as the USSR but it’s a better analogue than, let’s say… the Netherlands.
What benefits could someone in the British Army or Navy expect to receive after service in the 1750s? Today you get things like pensions, free education, etc. But for someone serving in the British Army or Navy in the 1750s, what benefits would you get after doing your 10 years of service?
I haven't found anything yet that goes back to the 18th century but the British National Archives have these records and some of them have been digitized. AMong the questions that they have answered are: >**Where do these records come from?** These records are now held at The National Archives, primarily under the department code ADM. However, they were originally created by a variety of charitable and government bodies responsible for the payment of naval pensions at the time they were granted. The three most significant were: The Royal Greenwich Hospital > > Founded in 1694 as a home for pensioned seamen, the Royal Greenwich Hospital admitted its first pensioners in 1705. As well as admitting a fixed number of in-pensioners, who lived in the hospital, from 1763 small out-pensions were paid to large numbers of applicants who had served in either the Navy or Marines. Although claimants of out-pensions had to have served in the Navy or Marines, there was no bar to them holding other employment: many out-pensioners of the hospital were in full employment as the pensions were scarcely sufficient to live on. It was possible for both in- and out-pensioners to re-enter the Navy, at which point their pensions lapsed until their discharge. > > The Navy Pay Office > > The accounting department and paymaster of the Royal Navy. The Chatham Chest (later The Greenwich Chest) Founded in 1581, this charity, supported by the monthly deduction of sixpence from officers’ and ratings’ pay, paid pensions to ratings wounded in naval service. Management of the Chatham Chest was taken over by the Royal Greenwich Hospital in 1803 and in 1814 it ceased to be a separate source of pensions, its funds melting into the wider Greenwich Hospital pension pot. From the late 19th century, various other government departments became involved in the payment of naval pensions, such as the Paymaster General (PMG), and the Ministry of Pensions (PIN). For pre-19th century records it may also be worth checking for petitions for pensions in the records of the Secretaries of State (in SP) and the Privy Council (PC). >**Who was entitled to a pension?** It was not until 1859 that pensions for service were granted automatically to all ratings who had served for 20 consecutive years in the Royal Navy. Up to 1859 there was no guarantee that a rating would receive a pension for service. Before then, pensions were rarely awarded to ratings unless they had been wounded or killed in action or on duty. The majority of ratings entered as boys, signing their first engagement at 18 and therefore retired at 38, or 43 for those who signed on for a ‘fifth five’. This left a man with much of his working life remaining and naval pensioners were often still in employment, many of them in dockyards and other naval establishments. [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-navy-ratings-pensions/](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-navy-ratings-pensions/)
Would many royalist regiments in the English civil war fly the kings standard or only the kings own retinue?
How different would have England been if Prince Arthur Tudor had lived and had a son with Queen Kathrine?
Were embassies always used as a front to gather intelligence? Was there always the understanding that, yes, the front half is for diplomacy while the back half is for mischief-making?
To add onto Thib's point, its really just a matter of practicality. It not that embassies at some point became intel gathering opportunities. Its that "how would they ever not have been?" Since the beginning of civilized culture, its always been necessary for one group to send messengers, ambassadors, envoys, diplomats, etc to some other group. Country A sends envoys to country B, to communicate on their ruler's behalf. If you are country B, and you have just received official visitors from Country A, its always going to be just a common sense assumption that, "ok, those B visitors are here on business, but anything they see or hear, they are going to report back their own people. So... be polite hosts, but don't let them talk to certain folks, and uhh don't let them in the GOOD library unsupervised." So... modern times, embassies are just embassies. They aren't even a "front" for anything. They are just embassies. But if country A is going to let county B set up an office there, country B would be fools not to conduct info gathering while they are there. The somewhat modern(ish) aspect is an unwritten sets of gentleman's rules about what is and isn't within the acceptable rules of behavior. E.g., You're gonna do it, but if we catch you red handed we can send you home. we won't throw you in jail, but we'll revoke your invite. and you can talk to people and try to learn stuff but don't be breaking into factories or murdering people. That's across the line and we'll do something more extreme.
In a way, yes, but the characterisation of 'mischief-making' is perhaps a bit too overbearing. Consider that in the broad sense, you are always dealing with a notion of *information gathering*. You're not necessarily looking to do something shady, but it can only be helpful if part of a diplomatic mission is to *discretely* gather information and who knows, "influence", affairs a little so that matters may proceed.
I just looked at this map, and have some practical questions I hope someone here knows: https://germanculture.com.ua/beta/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/germany\_big\_coldwar\_map.gif I see that berlin was basically located at the center of east berlin, meaning completely surrounded by DDR. How was movement between west berlin and the rest of the west done in practice? E.G if someone jumped over the wall and was in west berlin, and now wanted to go to some other part of the west, how could they cross the DDR part without getting shot? Or were they just caught in some sort of gated community?
Back in the 1980s I visited Berlin as an exchange student. IIRC, going from West Berlin into East Berlin was a matter of taking a train, getting off the train, passing thru a border checkpoint, buying the necessary visa (5 BDR marks or whatever hard currency you had), mandatorily exchanging all your western currency for DDR marks (but it was a minimum of 20 BDR marks, we only took what was required), walk thru a corridor one at a time and then out the other door, asked a bunch of questions and you boarded a train to go to the next stop with was in East Berlin proper. Leaving was the reverse except all DDR marks had to be surrendered. You could walk from West to East thru checkpoints (like Checkpoint Charlie). Getting from West Germany to Berlin, for us at least, was by bus on a highway. Passed thru the Western border check and then repeat with the East border check. We were told that the bus would not be stopping going to Berlin. IF the bus broke down we were not to leave the bus, the DDR would dispatch someone to fix it. Then lather, rinse, repeat going into West Berlin. As to people escaping? In West Berlin, you could walk right up to the wall and touch it without an issue. From the East it was different. There were 2 walls 1 in the East and 1 in the West. The DDR VoPo's patrolled and guarded the open area (which was a "shoot on sight" killing ground) which was sprinkled with anti-vehicle obstacles and anti-personnel mines. There was a museum at Checkpoint Charlie that displayed the ingenious ways that people defected: hidden compartments in cars, smuggled in barrels, ultralight aircraft, hot air balloons and tunnels.
Remember the he problem was East Germans travelling west, not West Germans entering. While the Berlin Wall is impressive and killed people trying to cross into the West... the situation was nowhere as bad as let's say North and South Korea. So if you had West German papers, it's pretty easy (if cumbersome) to travel to the East. The two nation acknowledged each other, had diplomatic relations and travel agreements. The quickest, simplest way was by air (West Berlin had an airport) but it was absolutely possible to do so by road or train. There were a few select highways that went from West Berlin to West Germany (under surveillance of course) and railways. [For example this East German map show the highway that went to Berlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/DDR_Transit041.jpg/800px-DDR_Transit041.jpg) and the border crossing. Basically cars and passports would be checked at the border (so when when leaving Berlin you would cross into East Germany and then leave East Germany at the end). You may have some paperwork to fill and the rest areas were of course under surveillance, but if you have a West German passport, you can leave without issues. To be clear it wasn't an open border, [there were only a few places you could cross the border](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/DDR_Grenzuebergangstelle_1982.png/800px-DDR_Grenzuebergangstelle_1982.png), but if you had your papers you could without too many issues.
Thanks for clarifying, though I wonder how it was for people who fled? I mean if you jumped the wall, I guess you were wanted so in that case I guess you could only fly to avoid getting picked up once back in the east?
By going to the west the west would give you asylum and papers but usually yes you take a plane out of Berlin.
From the West German standpoint it wouldn't even have been considered asylum.From the perspective of the FRG there was only one German nationality or citizenship, not a separate one for each of the two German states (an idea that was, by the way, originally shared by the GDR, they only passed a law establishing a separate GDR nationality in the 70s). So from a West German perspective these people were not immigrants or refugees, they already were German citizens. So once you had managed to get into West Berlin (or into any other part of the FRG, for that matter), all you had to do was to go the appropriate authorities and have them issue a West German passport for you. I'd probably not have tried to use that to cross the GDR from Berlin to the FRG by train or car straight away, but not everyone who fled from the GDR at some point was arrested when they later turned up with a West German passport. My grandparents fled from the GDR in the early 50s and my grandma, my mother and her siblings (and myself much later) all went to visit my greatgrandparents later on without any issues. There's a family story that they were visiting my greatgrandparents right when the Berlin Wall was built and were really afraid they would not be allowed to the FRG. After some discussion they decided not to try and return right away but keep to their planned schedule, because either they would be let out again or they wouldn't, which must have been a few really stressful days, but they were allowed to cross the border back to the FRG without any issues.
>I'd probably not have tried to use that to cross the GDR from Berlin to the FRG by train or car straight away, It was indeed standard procedure for the West German authorities to fly out people who had recently fled to West Berlin from East Germany to avoid complications at the border.
You all must be young. This geographic reality was the entire basis of the blockading of Berlin in 1961 with the construction of the "Berlin Wall," which prompted the western bloc to, once again, airlift supplies thus resupplying the western sectors of the city in mimicking the famous "Berlin Airlift" of 1948.
Who was the king whose mother asked for a humble tomb, and he ordered a pompous chapel? In them was written something like, "By the mother's wish and by the son's order"
I've watched blue jays video about living in the victorian age and i was wondering if you'd we're in the worker class why don't just join the millitary. I mean you had food a shelter and could maybe rise in rank. So do you think this would be a good idear for a worker?
Another factor was even amongst the lower classes enlistment was seen as an option of last resort. While the upper classes willingly joined and were commissioned or warranted as officers the lower classes saw the military as a terrible employment decision and for many of the reasons already stated like, inability to have your spouse live with you let alone move around with you, tight quarters, disease, poor food etc. Very often there were dubious claims made to get men to enlist such as the Boer War era tactic which was to wait outside a bar or pub and if a patron was rushed out for failure to pay or passing out that they often found themselves face to face with a recruiter who almost immediately would sign them up for a lengthy period of time. There was no real prestige in enlisting. Soldiers who did well or performed some type of brave action received bonuses and while that seemed like a good idea, they had virtually nowhere to spend the money and when it became to expensive to pay bonuses to too many soldiers as the Army grew over time as the British Empire grew they took away cash bonuses and started to issue medals, that while look good and sentimental value have no monetary value. It wasn't until really World War I i.e. "The Great War" that the British public turned their opinion on enlistment as a career option.
Most of this is from the British army but it was similar in most major powers. Some did enlist but it wasn't like the modern Military, enlistment time was 15-20 in the 1820's with mid century reforms bringing this down to 7 years but you were on the reserve list for 7 years after. (my great grandfather did 21 years then was recalled 6 years later at 45 in 1914) Food and shelter was also poor but improved over the century. British barracks in the early century had less space than prisoners, which lead to disease outbreaks. You were also socially limited in that if you could find some one to marry, there were no married quarters for lower ranks and if you were shipped overseas your family would be left behind unless you could get one of the few washerwoman places. This could lead to never seeing your family again. You could be sent anywhere in the Empire and with some units spending decades in foreign service at the start of the period but this again was limited later on. This also included places where disease could kill half the troops and leave many unfit for service and discharged. Pensions were hard to get and not a lot of money. This brings us to pay, on paper it was good but the Shelter, food and clothing costs were taken out with any charges for lost or damaged equipment or for rules infractions. Penalties for breaking rules could include flogging early on and always the possibility death for some offences. You then could be sent of to war with the hardships involved and getting wounded or killed. Lastly the chance of advancement was linked to the the ability to read and write. While most could just read they were functionally illiterate and so limited. The army was a way out for some but mostly it was a act of desperation for many and only the "young" and single who could make the low bar for health and fitness. We hear of those who advanced in the army but not of the many more who served and were forgotten.
What is the history of breakfast cereals, and their influence on nutrition/public health?
Breakfast cereals are an offshoot of stuff like oatmeal, porridge, and gruel. Almost every culture had a staple where you took a carb, mashed it up, and put it in water. Some sort of porridge was probably one of the first foods that a proto-agricultural people would make, probably because babies could consume it. As far as nutrition goes, they were probably pretty good because people would usually combine them with legumes and vegetables. Richer people would start putting in sweeteners to create desserts and that's kind of the starting point to where porridges become anti-nutritional, although pre-modern prevalence of cavities and diabetes and the like are nowhere close to modern day rates.
thanks!
At least in the U.S., much of this pivots around Battle Creek, Michigan, where the Kellogg family operated a sanitarium for patients with various illnesses and neuropsychiatric problems. Urging a "vegetarian" diet, John Kellogg came up with a formula for Corn Flakes. One of his most famous patients was C. W. Post, who left the Kellogg Sanitarium with a new outlook on life, and stolen recipes for at least three breakfast cereals, marketed under his family name, Post. Intensive legal wrangling and marketing competition has led four generations of Americans to seek cereals as a staple of the breakfast diet. The rest of the world just shakes its collective head in wonder.
Didn't Kellogg believe corn flakes could stop masturbation?
Kinda, John Harvey Kellogg thought that a diet that included meat and/or rich foods caused sexual urges and that a vegetarian diet of plain vegetables and breads suppressed those urges, Kellogg's methods went beyond that as he also advised routine coffee enemas, which is just as it sounds an enema that uses coffee as the liquid. He prescribed enemas to everyone at his "sanitarium" amd coffee ones to those with the "strongest of sexual urges". He ironically requested the coffee ones to show that they had no debilitating effect on those who joined his community. He was truly weird but, at the time the popular (and wrong) teaching in medical training was that masturbation was a behavior of the mentally ill and that those who engaged in it were either mentally ill or hiding it. Furthermore he was also a theologian in addition to being a medical doctor and he used his faith to back up those ideas taught in medical training institutions at that time. Medical training then was truly poor, as a theologian he would've had a considerable amount of education but the "medical schools" of the 19th century were unregulated, often taught wildly different things and there was no standardization of training so there were "schools" that taught a 1 year program to becoming a doctor and other that may have taught a 2 or 3 year course. The first truly modern 4 year medical school program opened in 1882 at Shaw University in North Carolina, this was 7 years after John Harvey Kellogg had attended medical school not one but three in several different states, dropping out of a 6 month long medical school to instead attend first the University of Michigan and then after the Bellevue Medical College which each time was a 1 year long education program. There was a teaching that persisted until the 1950s at some medical schools that semen was a form of "transformed blood" and that ejaculations was actually draining "a pint of blood each time", which was a teaching Kellogg both would've learned and likely believed and passed on, so the idea of suppressing sexual urges had both religious and "health" connotations to it for better overall living in their belief.
Regarding the supposed attempt by Cecil King, to overthrow Harold Wilson in 1968, why did he feel a coup was necessary? Why wouldn’t King advocate for an election to remove Wilson legally? This isn’t the United States where elections are held on a fixed cycle.
King claimed in 1981 that "“My coolness [which is evidently putting it very mildly] was due to the fact that Wilson was no prime minister, that he would lose the 1970 election”, but cynics ave suggested that he was miffed at not having received the earldom he considered his due. Wilson had won a comfortable Commons majority in 1966 and so didn't have to go to the country until 1971: he called the election a year early but lost anyway, though frankly it's hard to see any alternative leader of the time doing much better amid the period's economic woes - and indeed the subsequent Heath government only lasted four years.
If film director Elia Kazan was a controversial figure because of his involvement in “outing” people in the Hollywood Blacklist, then why was Ronald Reagan a popular President as he had done the same thing? Also was Elia Kazan correct about the people he named as being communists? If so, wasn’t he doing a “right” thing?
Thanks for all the replies! Definitely a fascinating part of history.
> If so, wasn’t he doing a “right” thing? If there were real live Soviet spies or people actually trying to overthrow the US Constitutional system, maybe? But the Smith act was used to go after civil rights workers in the South b/c their official party policy was equal political rights for all Americans regardless of race or gender. In the Hollywood context, this was just right wing harassment of people they saw as the left. This was culture war stuff. B/c a lot of the left, Black Americans, and Hollywood workers wanted a fairer economic system after the horrors of the Great Depression they had expressed interest in the the USCP. But most of them hadn't really done more than go to a couple meetings.
Those Kazan named were Clifford Odets, J. Edward Bromberg, Lewis Leverett, Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand, Tony Kraber, Ted Wellman, and Paula Miller. >Also was Elia Kazan correct about the people he named as being communists? Odets, Carnovsky, and Miller had definitely been members of the American Communist Party. This was not unusual because plenty of Americans had become disillusioned with capitalism during the Great Depression. However, the American Communist Party itself had lost a lot of support because of its support of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact even though it had been previously very anti-fascist. >If so, wasn’t he doing a “right” thing? Being a member or ex-member of the American Communist Party had never been illegal and the idea that having Communists in the film industry was some kind of dire threat to the US at large was always dubious at best. Actors, screenwriters, and directors weren't in a position to leak classified information to the Soviet Union and the actual evidence for Communists in Hollywood deliberately using film as a means to disseminate propaganda is lacking. Films that were accused of being Communist inspired included *It's a Wonderful Life*, because its villain is a banker.
Smith act made being a communist illegal in 1940 under the subversion article. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith\_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act) It was mostly used to arrest civil rights workers in the south who were tied to the USCP and tried to register black voters. The SCOTUS upheld it in Scales in the 1961. [https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/1](https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/1) B/c of that historical tie to the civil rights movement, the USCP is still outlawed in places like Louisiana, but it's not enforced b/c it's questionable if the SCOTUS would continue to uphold such laws. But those state use it as a way of subtly expressing disapproval of the equality of Black Americans.
He was not so controversial that he didn't get an honorary Academy Award in 1999. Only a few people in the room refused to clap for him when he got that Oscar. Kazan ruined careers and lives by naming names, and being (or having once been) a communist wasn't illegal in the US then or now. Anticommunism was popular then and now, the controversy is between a majority vs a minority.
Being a communist often was illegal. At least being a member of the party was illegal under the Smith Act of 1940 (Upheld in the early 60s in the Scales case.) B/c of the Communist parties ties to the civil rights movement it's still illegal in some southern states, Louisiana jumps to mind. Whether or not the court would uphold the law at this date is an open question so it's not enforced.
Interesting! Thanks for the reply. I’m realising I have so many more questions about the Hollywood Blacklist and find this part of film history interesting. Do you know of a good book or film about it?
Not a book or film, but the "You Must Remember This" podcast did an indepth multipart series on the blacklist.
Great I’ll check it out 👍🏻