Recent comments in /f/history

mycatchynamegoeshere t1_ja050sa wrote

Not sure if this fits here, but I have always wondered why North America doesn’t seem to have any remaining indigenous groups that live in traditional ways. How is it that other continents do, and some even have completely uncontacted tribes?

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elmonoenano t1_ja03uay wrote

In the US the narrative of colonization for religious reasons gets over played b/c it's a nice story. But what really drives colonies are institutions, usually financial. England was set up to make more money off of colonies b/c it's institutions, like corporations, banks, credit systems, shipping, etc. were set up to exploit those opportunities. The French just weren't at the same scale.

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shantipole t1_j9zzqqx wrote

You don't usually leave people who can recognize you and are highly motivated to do you harm in a position to act on that motivation. Especially if you plan to raid anywhere near here in coming seasons.

Plus, it encourages your next victims not to fight back (by running away as soon as they see you coming, in this case). Brutality now to prevent resistance from others later is a pretty common tactic.

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shantipole t1_j9zyzd6 wrote

First, ask yourself why the old system was the default and when those factors that caused the old system to be the default changed. The old system wouldn't persist across millennia and multiple cultures if it didn't, as a practical matter, work.

Second, I think your recitation of the state of affairs was overly-cynical and so you missed the point. Marrying for love is not the historical norm because romantic love doesn't indicate success in a life that was fairly precarious. Romantic feelings for your partner were certainly a good thing, but marriage was more an extremely involved with each other business partnership. It was thought of in terms of: you were joining your life to this other person, and joining your families (at least to the extent that you might call on them for help but it'd be nice if they could work together e.g. raising a barn for the couple), and probably were subsistence farming together (so you were heavily reliant on each other's abilities in order to not starve), and rearing children together (who would take care of you when you were old). You need to pick someone who will be at least a minimum level of successful in life or you suffer and maybe die. Plus, your pool of potential partners is relatively small...people didn't travel and how many people of marriageable age were within a 1-day walk?

And divorce was very frowned upon in the Christian West. It was a very high-stakes decision that was very difficult to undo. Romantic love was not a factor that would make this a success or not, plus it was common that most couples would grow to love each other at least somewhat over time (Ned and Catelyn Stark in the book of A Game of Thrones is a good example, though obviously fictional and nobility), so romantic love was basically a non-factor.

So, you see older-and-wiser people basically making the decision by arranging marriages because they were making the best decision for those children in light of the likely consequences for making a bad decision. And you see things like older men marrying younger women because the man has proven he's successful enough, removing the risk for her. While she would be young enough that her risks in childbirth were (relatively) low and her energy and ability to care for a large (remember: farming) family were high, removing risk for him. It's not about exploitation but about reducing risk (though, of course, people are terrible and so you do see examples of exploitation).

For romantic love to be a dominant factor, you need to see the consequences of a bad choice of partner somehow be lessened or disappear. Or, put another way, you need to see a system with romantic love making at least as good a choice for.the couple as the old system. When and what those factors exactly were depends on the culture, time period, etc., and are something you can research, but there's a reason it correlates with industrialization.

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elmonoenano t1_j9zy5ip wrote

It depends a lot on what the goods were, where they were going, etc. A lot of voyages were speculative and instead of wages, the crew would get a proportion of the profits from the voyage. How big a share you got was determined by your rank. So, you would sign on to sail to Goa and pick up spices. You'd go down and hopefully not die, then come back, or jump ship if there was a more lucrative looking offer, and sail back. When your cargo of spices are sold, it's accounted for and you're given an allotment commiserate with your rank and whether and for the length you spent on the ship during that voyage.

The other poster mentioned advances. Those became more essential and expected over time. Sailors needed money to support their families while they were gone if they had one. They had to settle debts. Etc.

Also, some things we don't count as wages were considered wages back then. The most important was the food and beer rations. Nicer food/beer was seen as a better wage. They also had the opportunity to pick up some rare goods to take back and sale on their own.

Also, if the vessel had passengers, the crew had opportunities to earn tips to supplement their wages.

There's a scholar named Lewis Fischer who did a lot of work on this topic. He's got a couple books out and if you've got JSTOR you can find papers.

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jezreelite t1_j9ztnxt wrote

The Inn at the Crossroads blog has medieval recipes for Oxtail Soup, Leek Soup, Beef and bacon pie, Pork pie, Fruit tarts, Apple crisps, Hildegard of Bingen's spiced cookies, Spiced plum mousse, Boiled beans, Almond milk, and Mulled Wine, amongst others.

This page on the website of the British Museum also includes recipes to recreate Medieval Creamed fish, Roasted steak, Mushroom pasties, Lamb stew, Haddock in sauce, Cherry pottage, Cream custard tarts, Rose pudding, and Mulled wine.

There are plenty of surviving medieval cookbooks (translations of many of which can be found here), but they're very difficult to use alone. because they tend to be maddeningly vague about measurements. This, for example, is a translation of a 13th century French recipe for pancakes:

>Here is another dish, which is called white pancakes. Take best white flour and egg white and make batter, not too thick, and put in some wine; then take a bowl and make a hole in it; and then take butter, or oil, or grease; then put your four fingers in the batter to stir it; take the batter and put it in the bowl and pour it through the hole into the (hot) grease; make one pancake and then another, putting your finger in the opening of the bowl; then sprinkle the pancakes with sugar, and serve with the "oranges."

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Doctor_Impossible_ t1_j9zt8a0 wrote

>What would be the reason for killing those people? Why not just leave them behind?

Raiding was often mutual, and enmities and feuds were well-known. A raid could be opportunistic, or part of a long campaign against an enemy, to frighten their people, to weaken their economy, to gain renown.

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shantipole t1_j9zrthe wrote

From my understanding, if a sailor or officer was violently seasick and didn't get over it after a day or two, that's a liability to the ship and was bad for morale, so it's in everybody's best interest to transfer him to a shore role (which probably limited their chances for promotion and so some refused). There were a ton of Navy jobs that didn't involve being on a ship. Some guys probably lied about how sick they were or just hung on out of sheer stubbornness, and they made it work, but that depended on their NCOs and CO letting things slide.

But, generally you'd want to figure this out before the guy was deployed somewhere where him being half-dead from vomiting the past 10 days straight might or not might matter. So, everyone went on a training cruise during basic training or OCS at least in part to see how they handled being on a ship in deep ocean. Worst case,l scenario, you find out on your first Atlantic crossing or the trip to Pearl Harbor, you suck it up and do your best until you get there, and they reassign you there.

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jezreelite t1_j9zr6pt wrote

The turning point, at least among elites, began in the late 18th century. By the 19th century, the choices of the couple began to count for more and the traditional methods of arranged marriages had began dying out.

For example, Queen Victoria's mother and maternal uncle both wanted her to marry one of their Coburg nephews, but rather than outright arrange the marriage, they just invited Ernest and Albert to visit her often and hoped she would take a shine to one of them (which, as we all know she did). Victoria and Albert then used similar methods to marry off their nine children. Marriages weren't outright arranged as they had been in the 18th century and earlier, but the royal children instead were introduced to other suitable royals in hopes that they would meet someone they liked. This still isn't quite like modern dating and marriage, but it's still not traditional arranged marriage, either.

Among British nobility in the 19th century, there was also a change from more traditional arranged marriages to allowing some degree of choice with the birth of the London social season, which became the time for unmarried children of nobles and gentry to find matches. While they are fiction, Sense and Sensibility and Bridgerton both depict the London season.

It's more difficult to gauge changes among common people, but it is known that the Industrial Revolution is one main catalyst in the changing of marriage and courtship. One problem is that records of peasant marriages in the medieval and Early Modern Period are sparse, so comparing and contrasting is not as easy as it for royalty and nobility.

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ImEdInside t1_j9zqhlm wrote

I’m trying to remember this leader (I think he was Greek) that played a huge role in his society and nearly perfected it. He decided that in order to preserve things as they were and so nobody alters the work he had done he said no decisions would be made until his return. His people (but except for one person he told) didn’t know he was leaving to never come back and he might have completed a suicide attempt in a boat that was sailing…

This is all hazy i remember reading about it as a teen.

Tl:Dr a leader attempting to preserve his societal structure and prevent changes tells people he is leaving and will discuss things when he returns. He never intended to return and hoped that his society ran the way it did indefinitely.

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Vo_Mimbre t1_j9zd2rg wrote

This is a really conplex question that’s super well documented down a thousand rabbitholes. But I’ll attempt to summarizes. Some of this may be insulting to some or surprising to others, but it’s important to think of all this through the context of the cultures of the day.

In very broad terms, we were involved in WW2 long before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. That became the flashpoint that allowed the politicians to openly propose entering the war to a public that was now super angry. But we were already supporting in a few key ways (arms, lend-lease, etc).

America always has pockets of people who openly support any belief. There were fairly large (by the era) Nazi gatherings and a long history of open racism and anti-culture bias against whoever came to an area after whoever were already there. All of these also had many (and usually larger) counter protests. Again, all in super broad strokes.

But the largest general sentiments were to either stay out of it because it wasn’t-our-problem isolationism and it being “all the way over there” (we were very late to WW1 even), or support for Britain and France out of kindred spirit camaraderie and “why can’t they just leave we’ll enough alone). Plus of course the folks behind the scenes securing and shipping the arms that knew the truth:

The technical progression just from the beginning of WW1 to the end was enough that the same progression from WW2 beginning to end was going to lead to ICBMs or at least long enough ranged missiles, and likely with nukes, the war was going to hit North America. The Axis knew this too (Zimmerman note, sub attacks). And what America had which Japan and Germany didn’t was basically infinite natural resources. So if they could keep us from entering the war, all the best. And we knew if the Axis did win, they’d get those resources from the conquered territories.

The reasons for the Axis to even start the war are as complex and as deep as the particular question you have. But I hope the above helps.

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plaidtattoos t1_j9zcg7q wrote

I feel like I heard/ read once that there was a time when people didn’t name their child until the child was eight days old, due to death being quite common for newborns. Or is the eight days thing just when they were baptized? Anyone know about this?

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