Recent comments in /f/history

bedstuybk t1_j45mpu3 wrote

Reply to comment by ProceedOrRun in Discovery of a temple of Poseidon located at the Kleidi site near Samikon in Greece by MeatballDom

Especially with regards to Ancient Rome, what i don’t understand is how it all got so buried in the first place. I mean… the place has been continuously occupied for thousands of years, so it’s not as if the whole city was just windswept and buried in 50 feet of sand like ancient Egyptian ruins. Did the Roman/Italian people just stop sweeping up for a very long time?

I know that’s overly-simplistic, but, still… people have been living there this whole time. How do entire buildings seem to just get swallowed into the earth?

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berent1825 t1_j45gi17 wrote

Reply to What was the State of Arabic Language Literature in the Ottoman Empire? by McGillis_is_a_Char

I think that you can argue that the literature produced by the Ottomans itself is part of Arabic literature, in which case you can argue that the state of Arabic literature wasnt so bad.

Im referring to the great works of literature produced in Istanbul/Constantinople, not the ones produced by Arabians in the Arabia region occupied by the Ottomans. These can be considered as part of Arabic literature because the Ottoman language was very similar to Arabic and Farsi languages and the language used in this literature was particularly closer to Arabic and Farsi since the nobles of Istanbul wanted to separate their literature from that of the common folk by using more and more Arabic and Farsi in their writing.

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GoldenToilet99 t1_j45fa8c wrote

Reply to comment by Johnny_Monkee in A question/debate I don't see answered about German WW2 war economy by KingHunter150

>The German population was not mobilised like the Brits and Russians, for example. Women did not usually go to work in factories

The German population was actually more mobilized than the Brits and Americans in terms of percentage of women working (>50% Germany versus <33% British/American circa 1939). They did not work in the factories as much as the allies because the vast majority of them were working in (relatively inefficient) farms.

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GoldenToilet99 t1_j45e76i wrote

Reply to A question/debate I don't see answered about German WW2 war economy by KingHunter150

Yeah, you are correct to notice those contradictions. The answer is simple: the narrative that "Germany didnt mobilize until it was too late" is arguably largely false. I recommend you read Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. It gives a good overview of Germany's economy during the war, and it was quite a bombshell when it first came out because he debunks many repeated myths. He basically argues that Germany even at the beginning of the war was pretty close to being "maxed out" - there wasn't much more they could've done.

Its been years since I read the book, but as I recall, during the prewar years, Germany was mobilizing basically as quickly as it reasonably could. Even in these prewar years, Germany was already running into resource and infrastructure limitations - like the trains were getting bogged down and such.

For example, there is the often repeated claim that Germany refused to mobilize its women fully to get them working in factories. Problem: the workforce participation rate of German women is over 50% in 1939, which is higher than the equivalent figure for British and American women at full mobilization in 1945! (well, technically, America never actually mange to reached its full mobilization potential before war ended). I believe the figure for Britain circa 1939 was less than 33%. In terms of women, the Western allies were arguably less mobilized than Germany throughout the entirety of the war. The reason for this is, most of those German women worked in the farms (whereas the allies were able to put their women in factories - so yes, the allies technically had more women in the factories, but that isnt the full picture). Pull those women out of farms to put them into factories, and the British blockade will starve Germany like it did in WW1. Britain got a large chunk of their food overseas and America had the most efficient agriculture sector in the world, so they didnt have this limitation.

As for the oft repeated claim of Speer pulling a miracle, kinda. He did organize things more efficiently, but many of the "miracles" that are commonly credited to him were years in the making. Getting armament production setup and going is a long term process, and it just so happens that that stuff finally came online at around the same time Speer took charge, so it makes his efforts seem more impressive than it already is.

Could German industry have done things better? Yes, with hindsight, there were a ton of things that could've been improved, you could point to this thing or that thing. But you could also say the exact same things about the allies. Tooze basically argues that in the big picture, in the macroeconomic level, and considering that this is the largest industrial war in human history, Germany did their best right from the beginning, and there wasn't a whole of "slack" left that the Germans could've tapped into.

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oftenplayingdead t1_j45b4j8 wrote

Reply to comment by R120Tunisia in What was the State of Arabic Language Literature in the Ottoman Empire? by McGillis_is_a_Char

At least in Ottoman Egypt during the eighteenth century, manuscript culture and production were at their height. Many of the ulama or Muslim scholars didn’t just write texts on religious subjects, but language and literature manuscripts as well. Many of these were critical commentaries on 10-12th century Islamic Golden Age texts. See writing by Khaled Elrouahyeb, Jane Holt Murphy, and Jane Hathaway.

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Jediuzzaman t1_j4568uy wrote

Reply to What was the State of Arabic Language Literature in the Ottoman Empire? by McGillis_is_a_Char

It was not the Ottomans who brought misery to Arab people by conquering their lands and burying their culture deep below. It was Arabs' incompetence that led Ottomans to seize their lands in the first place. Especially, after the scholar Imam gazzali's teachings, Arabic culture and science fell into some kind of stagnation. Mongol conquests took what is left behind and striped middle eastern countries naked. Then Ottomans came and find nothing but the sand...

Such western based mind's old-fashion "nationalistic" views are nothing but the nonsense. There were nothing left when the Ottomans came. All forms of art eas long forbidden and forgotten...

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