Recent comments in /f/history

Bentresh t1_iu9yiob wrote

Reply to What did Egyptians think of other races and their surrounding nations? by 3ayzamout

It's not uncommon to see literary texts from highly urbanized societies like Mesopotamia and Egypt mocking outside groups for their clothing, dietary habits, housing, perceived character traits, etc., but it cannot be emphasized enough that these are ideological statements and do not necessarily reflect how most people in those societies actually felt about outsiders.

We see many negative statements in Egyptian military inscriptions about "wretched Retjenu" (Canaan), for example, and yet kings like Thutmose III married Canaanite women. Similarly, Ramesses II was quite negative and dismissive about the Hittites in his Kadesh inscriptions, referring to the Hittite king as the "Enemy" and the "Fallen One," and yet he had few qualms about establishing a peace treaty with the Hittites, marrying Hittite princesses, exchanging gifts and technical experts with the Hittites, and so on.

The Egyptologist Thomas Schneider has used the terms topos (highly negative depictions of foreigners in ideological statements in monumental/royal inscriptions) and mimesis (more favorable and realistic depictions of foreigners in everyday texts) to differentiate between the contradictory attitudes we see in the Egyptian textual record.

I've written a few posts about this over on r/askhistorians.

Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East by Trevor Bryce and Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East by Amanda Podany are the best introductions to Bronze Age diplomacy. They're a bit more theoretical, but Mario Liverani's International Relations in the Ancient Near East and Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations edited by Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook are very interesting reads as well. The latter includes contributions not only by Egyptologists and ancient Near Eastern historians but also specialists in political science and international relations.

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BlazingDemon69420 t1_iu9vxyr wrote

Reply to Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

why was the Soviet union considered strong?

The Soviets only won against the germans because of the winter and had also lost to the Finnish and japanese previously. So why were they feared so much? Its weird because even during the coalition wars they only won because of the winter. Am I missing something due to which they were feared by Europeans and Americans? They also lost to Germany and Poland in ww1 too.

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Ferengi_Earwax t1_iu9uqpd wrote

Reply to comment by 3ayzamout in What did Egyptians think of other races and their surrounding nations? by 3ayzamout

Mostly is right, but for hundreds of years foreign dynasties ruled as pharaohs too. You have the hyksos (semitic) the kushites, and the Macedonians. As for your post, there are a multitude of inscriptions and documents that call anyone from outside the Nile, barbarians. Pretty much all the great civilizations treated foreigners the same way. As if they were inferior, barbaric, uncivilized and less human.

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jezreelite t1_iu9t5ds wrote

Reply to comment by Nakedsharks in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

  • Carlo III, Duke of Parma — Stabbed to death by two unknown men while taking a walk.
  • Juan Prim, Prime Minister of Spain — Shot by unknown persons while leaving the Cortes.
  • Aleksandr II of Russia — Blown to pieces by a bomb by members of the populist revolutionary group, Narodnaya Volya.
  • Sadi Carnot, President of France — Stabbed to death by an anarchist.
  • Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain — Shot by an anarchist.
  • Umberto I of Italy — Shot by an anarchist.
  • Empress Elisabeth of Austria — Aunt by marriage of the famous Franz Ferdinand; stabbed by an anarchist.
  • Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich of Russia — Blown to pieces by Socialist Revolutionaries.
  • Carlos I of Portugal and Luís Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal — Shot by republicans.
  • Pyotr Stolypin, Prime Minister of Russia — Shot by a socialist revolutionary, though since the assassin was also an informant for the Okhrana, it's possible that there was a conspiracy afoot.
  • Georgios I of Greece — Shot by a man with unclear motivations.
  • Eduardo Dato, Prime Minister of Spain — Shot by Catalan anarchists.
  • Symon Petliura — Shot by a Jewish poet who blamed him for pogroms during the Russian Civil War.
  • Sergei Kirov — Member of the Politburo. Shot by a disgruntled loner with delusions of grandeur, though he was later made to have been acting on the orders of former rivals of Stalin.
  • Reinhard Heydrich — Blown up by the Czechoslovak Resistance.
  • Ion Gheorghe Duca, Prime Minister of Romania — Shot by three members of the Iron Guard for trying to suppress the movement.
  • Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma — Killed by a bomb planted on his fishing boat by members of the IRA.
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