The History Thread!

& — Being light-skinned or appearing white meant very little back then. When it came to determining Slave vs. Free status in Colonial times, children took on the legal status of the mother, not the father. The "one drop of blood" rule didn't exist until the 19th century, wasn't applied until after Emancipation, and didn't become law (in certain states) until the 20th century.

So, in Jefferson's day, Free father + Slave mother = Slave children, while Slave father + Free mother = Free children. (Make of that what you will.)

It was also common for white people to be bondsmen or indentured servants — essentially slaves, but manumitted once their term of service had expired or someone else bought their contract and released them from it.

edited 24th Nov '16 7:17:30 PM by pwiegle

By the way, Southern and Eastern Europe are closer geographically and culturally to Asians than other Europeans (Western Europe, Northern Europe and Central Europe), right (With a big chunk of Southern Europe being ruled by the Ottoman Empire for a long time and being connected to Western Asia via Turkey and Cyprus, and Eastern Europe being connected to Western, Central and North Asia via Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Russia and ruled by the Soviet Union for a long time)?

No, Eastern Europe is definitely closer to Western Europe in general than Asian culture. Though once you get into places like Armenia it gets a bit fuzzy but only if you count that general area as Asian and not an extension of the middle east.

Also I say it's closer but really one could definitely consider Eastern European to be a sort of cultural area on it's own.

Bring up that point to a Pole or a Czech and see if they agree. The origin of that viewpoint was rather Anglocentric: everything to the east of Austria or Germany was regarded as the faraway East.

Hence why I excluded Central Europe.

Poland was part of Eastern Europe for centuries. It is not anglocentic. This is a history thread and history is about what people at the time thought of concepts instead of what we now think of them. A hundred years ago Germany was not part of Western Europe because the Germans (I am including Austria) did not want to be part of the west. They felt they were doing fine on their own as part of Central Europe or Mitteleuropa. This was when imperialism was still in the vogue. WW 1 did not kill imperialism, WW 2 did because the two anti-imperialist powers were the only ones still standing after it.

Mitteleuropa ceased to exist as a concept after the world wars and Europe got split by the Iron curtain. West of that wall was Western Europe and east of it was communism. After the cold war it became uncool to be associated with the east and history is being retroactively modified to fit modern politics.

Now the Czechs were considered part of central Europe because they had been lumped with the Germans for 1000 years. Poland is more complicated but they would have identified as part of Eastern Europe. Why? Imperialism. The Poles didn't care about being associated with the east so long as they were top dog. There are two concepts of Polish history, Piast Poland and Jagiellonian Poland. Now the Piast Concept had been completely discredited after the loss of Silesia to the Bohemians (Czechs). So all of Polish history after that point is Jagiellonian Poland. The Poles of Commonwealth saw it as their duty to civilize the east. And they did quite well until they ran into the wall that was Russia.

After WW 1 the Polish republic was still Jagiellonian. They were part of Eastern Europe and were the most civilized part of it. They were going to teach to teach Russia and the rest of the Slavs who the best were! Well, WW 2 put an end to that and the Piast Concept, long dead was resurrected. The ancient polish borders were inalienable and the centuries of eastern expansion was just a misunderstanding. Poland was always part of the West, yeah.

edited 25th Nov '16 2:57:16 PM by DocJamore

I thought everybody who browses Civilization Fanatics knew Poland is on Mars.

One part to remember about Armenia and Georgia: Both follow their own forms of Christianity, and while Armenia's is much closer to that of Ethiopia and the Coptic peoples, this is partially why in some ways they identify more with Europe than Asia.

There is though one major exception: The Kurds. That though is because of how long it took both Armenia and the areas we know as Kurdistan to get much recognition as a separate nation, if not nationstate in Kurdistan's case.

^note This is actually why there's units of Armenians fighting in the Syrian Civil War on the Kurdish side, along with in Turkey due what they both have suffered under Turkish states.

When it comes to Georgia though, they have many cultural similarities with places like France: We have evidence of wine having existed for longer than many other nations, they play a sport which shares many similarities with one of their own, homegrown ones and they similarly resisted conversion by the Turks and other groups such as the Mongol hordes.

It wouldn't exactly be too far off to call them European in culture and spirit, if perhaps not in location.

The original prompt was that Eastern European countries were closer to "Asia" (kind-of defined as the Ottomans and further east) than to Western Europe, which I didn't think was correct. It's true that the somewhat-vague Mitteleuropa tilted east and west throughout history, but unless you define "Asia" as Russia, the argument is still rather suspect. South of Mitteleuropa, I'm still pretty hesitant to agree; I'd say more that the former Orthodox states in the south of Europe—including the ones that fell under Ottoman control—are more their own thing than Ottoman Turkey.

re: free father + slave mother = slave children...

Legally speaking, even to this day, you are always the same race as your mother. At least, that's how they list it on your birth certificate (both Halle Berry and Barack Obama's birth certificates list them as being white). The reason for this, one supposes, is that for a very long time a child's mother was the only parent to whom it could not be doubted they were related ("No man can truly know who his father is" and all...).

edited 25th Nov '16 10:14:25 PM by Robbery

I found this intriguing article.

For those who haven't heard the news yet Fidel Castro died yesterday.

edited 26th Nov '16 1:34:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Yup, the man who proclaimed "Socialism or death!" ten years or so after the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Black Friday — the biggest day of unbridled capitalism in the western hemisphere. Taste the irony...

How and when did Queen Victoria get her (unofficial) Catchphrase of "We are not amused"?

History is written by the losers, from the brilliant Thucydides Roundtable—an ongoing discussion of the History of the Pelopennesian War. T. Greer, also known as the Scholar's Stage, offers some insight on the fact that some of the most memorable histories—the ones that have survived the ages—are written by the losers.

And, from a comment (unlike most comment threads, the ones here are worth reading):

edited 30th Nov '16 2:18:38 PM by SabresEdge

The inventor of the Big Mac died on Monday. Farewell mate, I think I may actually have bought one on Monday...

Also, you may be dealing with too many Internet Nazis if you can figure out what's wrong with the set pricing here◊.^{For those who aren't} 14 and 88 are common references to a white supremacist slogan

Happy Pearl Harbor day, from a historical standpoint.

edited 7th Dec '16 3:40:51 PM by RandomWriter413

I noticed that compared to WWII, Modern and Futuristic era games, there is a surprising lack of Cold War era games, and especially ones set in the major conflicts of the Cold War (Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War). You have Metal Gear Solid 3, Portable Ops, Peace Walker and V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 1, No One Lives Forever and that is about it.

edited 12th Dec '16 2:12:08 PM by Bat178

Lack of pop-culture awareness for Korea, I'd guess. As for Vietnam, that might be timing: there was a massive tide of Vietnam-related pop culture that was ebbing by the time video games made their way onto the market. Also, the relative lack of moral clarity might scare developers away. It's kind of interesting that the games that use that setting are ones that just use it as a backdrop for conspiracies and the like to happen in. (CODBLOPS, looking at you.)

Desert Storm comes down to, I think, the lack of infantry combat for FPSes. If you look at the flight sim niche, it comes up a ton.

Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain actually visits the exact same 1980's conflicts (Afghanistan, Angola, and Latin America) that Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 does and in even greater detail - the latter is a fast-paced FPS whereas the former is third-person and open world.

Like Sabre mentioned, Cold War settings are generally always used to further a conspiracy-laden plot rather than a fully historical precedent. Probably because having a shadowy N.G.O. Superpower like Cordis Die or the Patriots suits the black and white morality of video games better than the moral grayness of international politics.

Second Sight is another, and is notable in that both the Americans (With the exception of your squad) and Russians are the bad guys in it and you fight both throughout the game.

edited 12th Dec '16 3:48:03 PM by Bat178

So my mom was watching a series about the life of Queen Elizabeth II, and I had a massive Oh, Crap! moment when I saw they were visiting Kenya in the early 1950s...

The other day I visited the Real Armeria in Madrid. While I was ogling at the pretty armors I thought, did Chalets v ever use any of this armors in jousting? Or for that matter, did other kings actually participate in the jousts or they were mere spectators?

I can think of at least one King who participated in jousts, King John of Bohemia (who'd later go blind and die in a blaze of glory at the Battle Of Crécy). It doesn't seem like it was a common thing as far as I'm aware, though.

Henry II of France died of jousting wounds when a lance went through his visor; there is also speculation that Henry VIII of England (yes, that Henry VIII) suffered from brain damage after a jousting accident in 1536.

I guess the moral of the story is "don't joust if you're named Henry".