The History Thread!

ALSO apropos of nothing I just realised a bunch of parallels between the rise and fall of Rome and the Caliphate:

• Both were rooted in a small, militarised city-state that withstood a long period of pressure from its neighbouring tribes before annexing them one by one, whether by military conquest or cultural assimilation. (Rome vs Yathrib/Medina)
• Both had a pagan community leader who persecuted the followers of a new Abrahamic faith before converting themselves, and later helped spread the faith to the pagan society and shield the followers from persecution while making major contributions to the codification of its holy text. (Paul the Apostle vs 'Umar ibn al-Khattab)
• The strains of their conquests caused powerful warlords to rise up and claim succession, until a strongman figure shut down the warring parties and established a powerful but kinda short-lived dynasty. (Augustus and the Julio-Claudian dynasty vs Mu'awiyah and the Umayyah).
• Both empires were increasingly infiltrated by the culture of an older civilisation they'd conquered. (Greek vs Persian)
• The historical homeland of said culture ended up being the empire's political and economical centre of gravity during a later, more centralised regime. (The Dominate in Constantinople vs the Abbasiyyah in Baghdad)
• They both had a renowned leader initially seated in the "old" part of the empire who successfully recaptured lost lands, fought several wars of conquest and established a standardised mint for their respective empires. (Constantine vs Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan)
• Their reliance on converted "barbarian" auxiliaries for their later conquests ended up giving said auxiliaries a prime spot to start carving out their own nation-states when their central rule was buckling under internal conflict. (Goths/Vandals vs Berbers/Turks)

Intriguing. :)

At first I thought you were going to mention the Mamluks in your last point.

Eagle: Humans definitely seem to like to share certain habits and patterns.

More from the Book. This is the "high plains" tribes section.

Ok the Plains, dominated by large relatively flat open territory for the majority of the region. Over a million square miles of space. This area was sparsely populated especially compared to the coastal regions.

They reached up into Alberta and Saskatchewan into the sub-arctic forests, to the rocky mountains to the west, the western edge of the tall grass prairies was the eastern border and the Rio Grande was mostly the southern limit. Their big source of resources for food was the bison herds. The locals started out on foot as most of the tribes in the Northern Americas and got horses from Europeans. The source cited is Spanish horses both lost to happenstance and from local rebellions that set them loose to hobble the Spanish colonies or taken in raids. The dominant tribe was the group of peoples called the Black Feet which largely comprised of at least three general sub-tribal groups. These particular tribal groups had been in the region for a very long time. Long enough that mammoth kills have been linked to groups in the region and hunting of an extinct species of Bison.

Some of their hunting techniques involved fire to box in and then kill the bison, large hunting parties driving game, chasing them into box canyons, assorted impounding traps and running them into foundering sand dunes and even off of cliffs.

The tribes pre-horse mobility was largely facilitated by dogs dragging various sleds, dredges, and carrying packs and panniers. The introduction of horses would drastically alter their mobility but also drastically alter how they fought and their equipment.

The changes are divided into three categories. Pre-Horse and Pre-Gun, Post Horse and Pre-Gun, and finally Post Horse and Post Gun. Each broad category representing a general shift in both arms, how they fought, and equipment.

The most preferred weapons even after the introduction of guns for a time was the bow. The next most favored weapon appears to have been a variant of war club with a short handle the head or heads with pointed or near pointed ends. Thrown spears were also favored as skirmisher weapons. The club was one of the early items to change because protective leather helmets came into play when horseback melee combat became common. Before the horse large leather shields were common and the preferred form of protection outside of armor. The handle was lengthened and wielded with a wheeling motion similar to how you see European cavalry wheeling sabers both to build up momentum for a more powerful swing.

Once the horse was widely adopted lances became popular both long and short variety. The long variety was likely preferred for thrusting over or underhand while the short ones could both be thrust as well as thrown. Various forms of knives were common. Thrown stones and even fire weapons were common enough to be notable and even a few accounts of tossing wasps nests into holdout locations. The general practice of war that was most commonly used was a barrage of ranged attacks followed up by melee combat while the enemy was disrupted and out of position.

They quickly adopted iron and steel weapons and tools as soon as they were available. Guns were likewise rapidly adopted. They favored a large double-edged knife sometimes called the “Beaver Tail Knife”.

From what information could be found before horses the tribal groups used formation style fighting typically arranged in fighting lines and were generally organized affairs. Not formal but organized.

Post horse pre-gun saw armor and shields become lighter and smaller. Also, bows got smaller to easier to use. Some weapons like the warclub got a bit bigger to accommodate the reach needed for striking from horseback. Their cavalry was largely based on what they gleaned from their encounters from the Spanish. Likewise, they eventually adopted the gun into cavalry and armor almost completely disappeared as it offered little or no protection against the weapons.

Fortifications were used but typically only for war. The favored structure was camouflaged war lodge. A teepee-like structure that was hidden relatively close to enemy territory and most commonly used by the Blackfeet.

Not done with this more to come.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Sep 23rd 2018 at 10:59:21 AM

Ah, but the Mamluks would come in much later, overthrowing a caliphate that had little to do with the original line of succession. I guess that you could draw a very loose parallel with the Latin Christians turning on the Eastern Roman Empire in the Fourth Crusade and sacking Constantinople, buuut I really don't think that the parallels go that far.

Both stories ended up involving the Mongols, funnily enough. The Mamluks under Baibars famously beat back a Golden Horde army in 1260 (as the Mongol Empire was collapsing upon itself) and the Byzantines ended up allying with the Golden Horde later in the century in a bid to retake Anatolia from the Turks.

EDIT:

Hmm, interesting to hear about how the Plains Nations interacted with bisons, pre-horsies. I'd heard about the use of fire in bison herding and land management - IIRC the Comanche and co. were originally semi-nomadic agriculturalists centred around the river valleys, and the horse allowed them to pack up and lead a nomadic lifestyle centred around intensive bison exploitation. The problem, of course, was that the horse and the bison competed for the same food source, which limited exploitation and ended up severely limiting their movement when later American settlers began farming the plains. Another IIRC point was that they got their carbohydrates by trading with/raiding other native tribes and European settlers who were farming the lands they'd once occupied themselves. The ecological shift in North America post-Columbus is a pretty huge subject on its own.

Most of the tactical and equipment stuff is pretty new to me. Did they regard knives as effective horseback weapons? Sounds terribly difficult to poke anything with a short blade while riding a horse at full gallop. I'd like to see a sample of the leather armour and helmet as well - found a real interesting website on Native American artefacts earlier this month and am still slowly browsing through it in my spare time.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 21st 2018 at 9:29:32 AM

I am thinking the knives were largely used as secondary or back up weapons or if they had to go on foot and needed a compact hand weapon. They sound like they are a large dagger sized knife with more of a chopping/slicing edge. From the sounds of it, the clubs and lances were the most preferred melee weapons from horse followed by the bow and short lance as the most common projectile weapons. The knife sounds like a dismount weapon or one you use if you break or lose your primary much in a similar role to many medieval daggers and modern combat knives.

From what I can remember even the agriculture groups did a fair bit of pre-horse roaming. They planted garden patches and would travel seasonally. By the time they got to the place, the next round of crops were ready. There were some accounts of settlers stumbling onto their gardens and marveling at the seemingly random bounty at an out of season campsite.

Ok finished the "High Plains" horse people chapter.

The war lodge was the most common fortification for the plains tribes. It was built similar to teepees. Namely, trees, brush, and other woody debris were placed around a shallow circular dug out depression. Often a low breastwork of logs and/or stone up to 3 feet in height was erected. Bark, brush, and limbs were used to create the roofing with some smaller logs to form the structure and loosely laid on. At a distance or on casual inspection it appeared to be a pile of deadfall. The most common use was as a point to launch raids into enemy territory a sort of preparatory camp. The war lodges were not permanent settlements but small war camps placed along war trails usually within a day or two of the enemy.

They were also a refuge if the raiding parties were pursued or harried by retaliating enemy bands and even European settlers armed with guns were reluctant to attack a war lodge head on. They had a single entrance which was well protected, the breastworks resisted gun and arrow fire fairly decently, and it was almost impossible to see into but those inside could see out and fire on the enemy. They were apparently difficult to set on fire because they were never created out of seasoned wood.

Some of the war lodges got to be fairly large with examples up to 50 feet in diameter but with a low 5-6 foot roof. The Black Foot also apparently sometimes built them in a similar style but a rectangular shape.

The war lodges while not permanent were apparently sometimes maintained as well as they could be. That is despite the fact they could be thrown up in a day or less by most raiding parties as needed. I am assuming maintenance was done as long as the site was useful and unknown to the enemy. If they had to seek refuge in it I would assume they would abandon it so they couldn’t be ambushed at the site later and build a new lodge somewhere else.

The plains tribes especially the Sioux from the accounts also practised hasty entrenchments much like the fighting holes used by the modern military. They would dig two to three-foot holes and bolster it with stone or mounds of soil and force the enemy to come to get them. This apparently worked well as it is more difficult to get at an enemy partly protected in such a manner. Even better the technique was known to be effective against even firearms and light artillery something the Europeans were familiar with by the time they made it the Americas. The Sioux also would sometimes dig out the floors of their teepees and heap the earth around the bases and create firing loops creating a prone position type of concealment and cover allowing them to hastily fortify their villages if needed and fight from the shelter.

The hasty entrenchment, hasty breastworks, and fighting holes were apparently known to pretty much all the native groups of North America. Which is not surprising. It is one of the easiest ways to fortify a position on short notice and to build upon with more time later.

Shields were common among the plains tribes and typically constructed of multiple layers of heavy hide such as bison hide. Which according to the tribes were very resistant to arrow fire even from iron-tipped arrows. The nature of the shields description is more like a type of pavise or tower shield. They would set them in line formation and exchange ranged attacks and make attacks from there where they thought the enemy line was weakest.

The change to horse culture on the plains led them to adopt a lot of Spanish styles military horse culture including the smaller 2-3 foot shields again of layered hides.

Some of the shields typically those favoured by the Blackfeet were amazingly sturdy. They favoured hardening the leather and shaping into a curved shape with hand grip. They would boil and/or fire harden the leather and at a range, they could potentially deflect a musket ball or absorb some of the force at the right angle. There are multiple accounts of the layered shields of hardened hide achieving this unless struck dead on centre mass. Given untreated buffalo hide is pretty tough material, layered hardened hide could believably be that tough especially if aided by the rounded shape making deflection more likely. The shields were typically made of horse or buffalo hide. However, it appears the shields were also status symbols as much as tools of war as those too poor in the tribe to have the horse or preferred part of the Bison hides used Buffalo robes wrapped around the arm the robes would still have thick hair on it to offer some sort of protection.

The Blackfeet also largely rejected the European metal shields despite attempts to introduce them for profit via trade. Part of the reason was a religious one. A combination of the warrior’s belief in the “medicine”(the term is a bit innocuous and not easily defined hence the quotes.) put on the shield but also the control the Shaman’s exerted via that belief system and only permitting the use of the hide shields which they had hand in making. This was apparently one of the ways they made their bread and butter.

The Comanche made similar shields but they did something different. They used the shoulder hide of a male bison and created the layers only they sewed the layers together and packed with some sort of padding to aid in its ability to absorb blows.

Armour for the tribes of this region was somewhat similar to other groups namely hide. The Black Feet, however, favoured layered, quilted (a type of padded armour) that would sometimes hang down to their knees. Shorter looser quilted jackets were also favoured. Moose and Buckskin hides were the favoured materials apparently moose above all else.

Various forms of padded helmets or head coverings became common after the introduction of horses to protect against cavalry attacks.

The tribes also quickly latched onto armouring their horses with hide apparently shortly after becoming a horse culture. Some of the descriptions of the tribes make them into a form of heavy cavalry seen in earlier days of Europe. The riders wore thick hardened leather armour, armoured their horses in layers or disks of leather like scale mail, and used long lances eventually tipped with sword parts of steel or iron points.

The plains tribes also sometimes used the rod style armours typically made of bone pipe and became popular in the late 1800’s.

Like all the other tribal groups in the North America Region, the armour or lack thereof was also symbolic in the warrior societies and like the other plains region, they had Death Seeking Warrior Societies who often eschewed armour and made pledges to die fighting and never retreat.

So, in summary, the majority of the plains tribes went from reasonably skilled and organized foot infantry to amazingly rapid adoption of the horse and becoming highly skilled cavalry adopting the full range of cavalry styles and tactics that had been found earlier in Europe including varieties of heavy cavalry among some groups. Had these groups had the time to advance their technology they would have been much like the Mongols or Eastern European horse peoples known as skilled fighters and riders.

By all accounts form this book and other sources the “high plains” tribes are often regarded as among the best of the North American Tribal warrior peoples considered highly skilled in war and highly adaptable to changing technology and situations and were set to become the rulers of the plains had things turned out differently in history.

The next one is looking at the N/E Culture area around the great lakes, the Atlantic Seaboard, and down to parts of Virginia. This one has me really interested as the chapter is titled "The Castle Builders". I am already familiar with what direction this is heading as I have some experience with the topic already. There were known presences of often elaborate fortifications built in the Eastern US along with small towns and even a few small cities. Seeing new details should be interesting.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Sep 23rd 2018 at 11:05:33 AM

Seeing some of the displays towards the end of the House on the Rock made me remember something. A lot of people like to use the Middle Ages and the times of the samurai as examples of War Is Glorious.

Didn't know about the proto-FOBs, but they sound like an interesting take on a very old concept. The Plains Nations took great advantage of the post-epidemic bison population boom and the adoption of the horse, and I think Hämäläinen's book mentions that part of their success came from their ability to pit the Americans, Spanish and other native tribes against each other as well.

One thing that I realised while reading about the Mongol successor states is that nomadic peoples could mobilise a much greater percentage of their population for war than sedentary peoples. Without a standing army, most agrarian states could only keep troops in the field for a limited time before they had to peace out to help with farm work back home, lest everybody dies from starvation. Nomadic pastoralists didn't depend on the seasons as much, and the women and children were totally adequate to watch over the livestock. I believe that the balance didn't change until the Industrial Revolution.

Northeast includes the Iroquois and the likes, right? I'm pretty unfamiliar with them, but I've heard about them transitioning from pre-gunpowder formation tactics to loose skirmishing after getting their hands on muskets, and using the river systems to raid European fur trading settlements. I think I also read about the Algonquins manipulating French settlers to attack their Mohawk rivals on their behalf.

-screams in Korean-

Funny thing is that when the samurai (then simply called bushi, or "warrior") first appeared as a mercenary class in the 8th-9th century, they really weren't seen that way. Most of our sources from the time period were part of the (notoriously useless) imperial aristocracy (kuge) at Kyoto, who consistently portrayed them as uncouth provincial thugs. As the Heian court began issuing provincial nobles large untaxed estates (shōen) in a hilariously misguided attempt at trickle-down economics, the bushi who served them grew in power as well, becoming a landowning class and eventually establishing powerful martial clans.

The late 12th century saw three of the most powerful noble clans, the Fujiwara, the Taira and the Minamoto slugging it out in battlefields and court intrigues until the Minamoto samurai finally came out on top, with the clan leader, Minamoto no Yoritomo, becoming the first shōgun. The shogunate distributed land and power to vassal samurai clans around Japan, with the wealthiest^note Samurai wealth was measured by the annual koku produced by their land, roughly meaning the amount of rice needed to feed a tenant for a year. becoming military governors of the provinces (shugo), while lesser samurai became their retainers (gokenin).

The samurai of this time were specialist horse archers, wielding a longbow (yumi) for ranged combat and a glaive (naginata) or occasionally a longsword (tachi) in melee. They wore the bulky ō-yoroi armour, which was made from interlaced iron scales and designed to protect from arrows. Japanese horses were tiny, wearing simple hay patches in place of iron horse shoes and often had to pull non-combat duties. As a result, the mounted samurai were incapable of the kind of shock charges practiced by mainland Eurasian heavy cavalry. They would've mainly used their bows to skirmish or duel. Occasionally they would've trotted forward alongside naginata-wielding men-at-arms in a mixed formation, using their horses to boost their reach and mobility over enemy infantry. Massed combat was a rarity, however.

When the Mongol Yuan dynasty invaded Kyushu^note Specifically at the Hakata Bay near Fukuoka. I have relatives living nearby but haven't been to the site itself. in 1274, they overwhelmed the small garrisons on the outlying islands of Iki and Tsushima, but were locked in a bloody stalemate with the samurai defenders at the beach. Opposed naval landings were rare in pre-modern times, but like Allied planners would discover in 1945, the Mongols and their green Korean-built navy found out that there were only so many beaches in Japan suitable for massed landing operations. Over the night, the Japanese sailed out on small boats and launched boarding attacks on the moored Mongol fleet, where the armoured samurai decimated their Mongol counterparts in close combat. Afterwards, the Mongols and their Chinese/Korean subordinates decided to cut their losses and sail home.

Kublai Khan launched another invasion in 1281, but this one fared even worse: the Japanese had built a sea wall around Hakata Bay that prevented the Yuan troops from landing altogether. Tsushima and Iki were also much better-defended this time. The main fleet stayed moored for fifty days, suffering attrition from the lack of supply and Japanese harassment in the meantime. Finally, a second fleet carrying Chinese troops from Fujian was set to land south of the fortifications - but unfortunately for them, it was typhoon season. The samurai were comfortably sheltered inland, with reinforcements from Honshu on the way. But the storm (later called "divine wind" or kamikaze) thoroughly wrecked the Mongol fleet and killed thousands of soldiers. Based on Conlan's translation of primary sources, it sounds like the Japanese comfortably held the upper hand even before the storm. Nonetheless, religious-minded secondary sources (such as the 16th-century prayer book Hachiman Gudokun) tend to play up the samurai's helplessness in the face of the invaders, and emphasise the role of divine intervention in their eventual victory.

Things really blew up with the Onin War in the 15th century, when a shogunate succession crisis turned into an all-out civil war and sent the country headlong into the Sengoku Jidai. This was when the pop culture image of the samurai (popularised by Akira Kurosawa) appeared: the sleeker tosei gusoku armour, the curved katana and the prevalence of wandering Rōnin looking for a purpose. Powerful regional warlords (now called daimyō) realised that the shogunate in Kyoto had little power left, and began focusing on carving out the countryside for themselves.

This was an age of massed warfare. The samurai lords levied their peasants into a warrior class called the ashigaru to bolster their armies. These were "organised" into a retinue system similar to Western feudal armies, with little in the way of standard tactics and equipment. Eventually the surviving clans began to standardise their armies, transforming the ashigaru into a professional warrior class similar to Western men-at-arms. Both the samurai and the ashigaru ditched the antiquated naginata for the long spear (yari), which suited formation tactics and favoured aggressive thrusting attacks. Trade with the Portuguese (centred in Nagasaki) brought Christianity and firearms into the country. The Japanese saw the potential of the matchlock arquebus (teppō) and began organising their armies into something not too different from European pike-and-shot formations, which outmatched traditional bows in power and ease of training.

Long story short, Oda Nobunaga conquered most of Honshu, Toyotomi Hideyoshi became the imperial advisor and brought a brief period of peace before engaging in two ill-advised invasions of Korea and then dying, and then Tokugawa Ieyasu led the clans of eastern Japan to victory against the western Toyotomi loyalists at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which was pretty much the proto-Waterloo in that it was one of those decisive battles where nobody had any idea what they're doing.

So... samurai ethics weren't really a thing at this point. But anyway: Ieyasu and his successors reformed the shogunate's power structure in the aftermath. The losers of Sekigahara, called the tozama daimyō, were stripped of most of their lands and power. The two leading clans of the western alliance, the Shimazu^note of the Satsuma province in southern Kyushu, now Kagoshima prefecture and the Mōri^note of the Nagato province in southwestern Honshu, later called Chōshū domain and now Yamaguchi prefecture were hit particularly hard: they lost all their wartime conquests yet had to continue supporting all their retainers on inadequate lands. Many of the lower-ranking samurai in their service ended up dirt poor for the next two centuries and had to work multiple jobs just to survive.

In the meantime, Christianity established a foothold in Japan. The Date clan of Sendai (northeastern Honshu) built Japan's first Western-style galleon, called the Date Maru or the San Juan Bautista, and sent one of their Christian retainers, Hasekura Tsunenaga, on a diplomatic mission to Rome (crossing the Pacific to Mexico, and then taking a Spanish ship to Spain and travelling overland). But the shogunate was increasingly unhappy with the Christians, who were seen as a potential fifth column for European (particularly Portuguese) imperialism and subversion. In 1637, Christian peasants around Nagasaki rose up in the Shimabara Rebellion, which chipped off the last of the shogunate's tolerance. The country was put under maritime prohibition (kaikin), which banned foreign trade and proselytising. The country's remaining Christians were hunted down and tortured until they either recanted or died. The Chinese and the Portuguese's Protestant archnemesis, the Dutch, were allowed some limited trade in Nagasaki, while limited trade with the Koreans and Ainu occurred in Tsushima and Ezo (Hokkaido), respectively. The struggling Satsuma domain also ran its own illegal foreign trading post in the vassal Ryukyu Kingdom, which the shogunate turned a blind eye on. Confronted with this development, the anxious Portuguese ministry in Macau tried to send a mission, which was promptly hacked to bits by shogunate samurai upon landing to make sure that the message gets through.

Basically, for over two centuries, you had a large population of sorta-aristocrats of varying socioeconomic classes living a lifestyle subsidised by the peasantry and anxious to assert their place in society. In the absence of warfare, the samurai took on other roles: cops, civil servants, scholars and artists. Not all of them were neckbeardy badass wannabes, but you could imagine how the legend of their warrior forebears would've appealed to the idle samurai (not to mention the economically anxious jizamurai). Once in a while, a daimyō somewhere would downsize his army, leaving bands of newly laid-off and angry ronin to wander the countryside, getting drunk and starting riots along the way. Taking all that into consideration, it was in the shogunate's interest to commission literature and artworks that romanticised the samurai and fed them the idea of good conduct, honour and duty. At the same time, the shogunate worked to limit the daimyō's powers, including mandated annual trips to the capital at Edo that allowed the shōgun to keep an eye on them _{as well as pre-emptively drain their treasuries lest they use it to fund a rebellion.}

There were still tons of asshole samurai who abused their privileges for kicks, of course. But There Was An Attempt.

As a side note, the romanticisation of the katana really took off in the Edo period. With no wars to fight, battlefield weapons like the long spear and the musket were relegated to old warehouses. The katana became a much more readily-identifiable symbol of the samurai class: it was a handy sidearm, so everyone could see the samurai carrying theirs everywhere, and it was useful for bar fights and sporting events. Most of the really ornate swords you'd see are from this time period, where they were designed as fancy status symbols instead of rugged battlefield weapons.

Things changed around the mid-19th century. Chinese traders in Nagasaki brought horror stories from the Opium Wars, where modern Western armies decimated their Chinese counterparts with superior technology and organisation. Some mid-level samurai lords began to train more translators, order European military manuals from the Dutch and prepare for the worst. In 1853, the Perry Expedition sailed into Edo Bay and demanded that Japan open itself for trade. Faced with modern steam warships, the shogunate knew that there was no going back. European powers strong-armed the shogunate into unequal treaties, which angered the struggling lower-ranking samurai - particularly those from the tozama domains, who had been nursing a centuries-old grudge against the Tokugawa.

Several incidents erupted: in Satsuma domain, angry low-ranking samurai hacked several British merchants to death, while in Chōshū domain, the armed steamers and coastal guns operated by the ruling Mōri clan made a habit of firing at passing foreign ships. Western intervention followed: the Royal Navy bombarded Kagoshima in 1863, and a joint force of British, French and US marines stormed the coastal fortifications at Shimonoseki in 1864. In a strange twist, both incidents actually ended up bringing their respective factions closer into the Western fold. After all, the only hope of survival lied in Western science and firepower. Modern rifles and artillery flooded the country - and with the shogunate being increasingly humiliated by the West, their old foes smelled blood in the water.

In 1866, the shōgun Tokugawa Iemochi died from beriberi - perhaps a side effect of the Japanese urban population's exclusive consumption of polished white rice. In 1867, the Emperor Kōmei died from smallpox. Their respective successors, Tokugawa Yoshinobu and Emperor Meiji, were both young and untested. Yoshinobu saw a whole country chomping away at his house - and not wanting to suffer the fate of deposed ruler, he resigned his post, choosing to ride on this rollercoaster as a regular noble house. But the imperialist faction, led by the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance, wanted blood. In 1868, the imperialist and shogunate factions met in a series of small but decisive clashes across Japan that we now call the Boshin War. The house of Tokugawa quickly surrendered to the imperialist forces, while its parent house of Matsudaira fought a hard battle in Aizu domain before surrendering. The remnants of the pro-shogunate forces and a handful of rogue French advisers fled to Ezo to establish a short-lived republic, while the ad-hoc coalition of feudal samurai armies started reorganising themselves into the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. In 1869, the Imperial military carried out its first-ever amphibious operation, landing 7,000 troops on the bay of Hakodate and storming the rebel-held star fort of Goryokaku under the guns of the Emperor's shiny new _{ex-Confederate} ironclad, the Kotetsu. The Emperor now ruled all of Japan... at least in theory.

The Meiji government went to work on modernising their country. The army, political system and constitution were remodelled after the German Empire. The navy was rebuilt by the British, while the school system was built on the French model. But most importantly, the politicians and scholars who led Japan's modernisation (many of them samurai themselves) believed that modernising would require getting rid of the archaic caste system, along with its parasitic privileges and baggages. The samurai and kuge were reorganised along a British-style peerage system, with the highest-ranking families becoming recognised Imperial peers (kazoku) and the rest holding a nominal title (shizoku).

Now, this meant gradually doing away with the samurai's class privileges, from rice handouts to the right to strike down rude commoners. Many samurai simply carried on with their new careers as professional soldiers, sailors and civil servants; Satsuma families would dominate the IJA well into the 20th century, while Chōshū families became their IJN counterparts. Some got real lucky and struck gold with massively successful zaibatsu enterprises. But a lot of the struggling lower samurai felt betrayed by the Meiji government, whom they'd supported throughout the conflict. Many disgruntled samurai from all over the country flocked down to Satsuma, where some Boshin War veterans had established a private military academy teaching Traditional Samurai Values™. In 1877, they rebelled against the Imperial government. The Satsuma Rebellion was Japan's first test as a modern country, where itsindustrial economy, railway and conscript army (led by professional samurai veterans) struggled to put down a well-armed opposition. The rebellion was crushed and its leaders committed seppuku, but the Imperial government saw the propaganda potential of the traditional values they espoused. The rebels were posthumously pardoned and rehabilitated, with their samurai ideals appropriated as a shining depiction of sense of duty to one's lord - in this case, the Imperial government. The 1882 Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors famously contained the line:

So the warrior ideals of the samurai were really only built up in the 17th-19th centuries and entered official propaganda in the Meiji era. The final codification of the so-called bushidō really only took place in 1900, when the Japanese economist Inazō Nitobe (at the time residing in Monterey) wrote an English-language book titled Bushido: The Soul of Japan, basically serving as an oversimplified beginner's guide on the history of the samurai class and their supposed ethos. For many Western readers, the book was their first exposure into samurai culture and overall Japanese history, so the anachronistic idea of bushidō tends to colour Western pop culture more than Japan, which still has filmmakers like Kurosawa depicting the samurai era in various moral flavours.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 23rd 2018 at 1:09:07 AM

If you're interested, this interview by historian Karl Friday (and his books) would argue that the view on the Heian court is pretty fallacious and is based on old assumptions. They were perfectly capable of handling the warrior classes through various means right up until the Kamakura period (and partially during it).

He talks about other things as well in it, relating to Japanese warfare and martial arts.

Edited by TerminusEst on Sep 23rd 2018 at 6:25:31 AM

Eagle: I think those tribes will be in the mix. It should be the right general region IIRC. It will be interesting to see who the big regional builders were.

A little off-topic but for a story, I'm writing the backstory of a German noble family that is integral to the plot, with the story proper being 20 Minutes into the Future. Here's what I written so far:

My question is now more on-topic: When do I have the following generations of this noble family have long lifespans past 40?

It really depends. People in pre-modern times didn't age faster than we do now, but they suffered from issues that increased the wear and tear on their bodies, like constant unregulated hard labour, unhygienic lifestyles, malnutrition and exposure to toxic/carcinogenic substances like the smoke from indoor oil lamps. Infants were particularly vulnerable, and you'd see the average of life expectancies of many societies skewed by high rates of infant mortality, whereas individuals who survived infancy would probably go on to live to their 50s-60s. Average life expectancies also would've gone down in times of extreme crisis, like the Thirty Years' War.

I found this useful study on the quality of life in Württemberg during Germany's industrialisation. Life expectancy at birth seemed to only surpass 40 at the turn of the 20th century... but if you'd survived to your thirties before, your life expectancy would've shot up to the 60s-70s. It doesn't really distinguish cleanly between social classes, but it does note that the biggest killer during industrialisation seemed to have been respiratory diseases, which nobles and white-collar workers would've been spared the worst of. The mid-19th century was also a time of improving health care and nutrition, which would've improved life expectancy across the whole population. I went on Wikipedia to do a cursory check of aristocratic life expectancies in the 18th century - and while there were people in Germany who lived to extreme old ages, they seemed to match the number of those who died in their forties. So I'd say that the mid-19th century was probably the point where you could start expecting the nobility to reliably live long, healthy lives.

Other than that, what about that example of Standard Hero Reward (peasant inheriting everything from a nobleman who couldn't have a son after the peasant saved him and his family).

Hey wait a minute, why is the quotation "The more laws, the less justice" considered a German proverb when it was actually Cicero who said it? :S

A look at the somewhat unusual relationship between society and gambling in Finland:

Gambling in Finland: From vice to national virtue

To make it clear, gambling problems generally plague the more lower income areas, and there's a huge tension between revenue increase and harm reduction policies.

Edited by TerminusEst on Sep 27th 2018 at 5:03:26 AM

Ok, so partly into the new chapter. The dominant group is the Five Nations^note  Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca. otherwise known as the Iroquois. Their area of influence nearly encompasses the majority of the cultural region. Said region is the Great lakes and sub-arctic Canadian forests, to Virginia, to the start of the lower plains, to the Atlantic seaboard, and included parts of Canada. The tribes in this region are another group that has been there likely since the first human migrations to the region with a broad estimate of 16,000 to 19,000 years ago.

The region is heavily forested, had ready access to many types of arable land, gathering options were a massive boon with a substantial amount of wild food available. There were also ample supplies of water and other assorted resources including abundant native copper. This is the region most associated with arguably the earliest known examples of human metal working. They used copper in both tools and weapons as well as decoration, trade goods, and of course making of holy items and other cultural goods.

Their culture was interesting in that they had traditional divisions of labour the women largely in charge of farming and domestic duties the men hard labour, hunting, growing of some tobacco, and war. However they were matrilineal, which is lineage, whose clan you were in, whose name you took, and property rights were decided from the woman's side. They were also matrilocal meaning it was customary for the men to move to the land our house of their wives families and clan rather than the other way around. Men gained prestige mostly as part of the various warrior groups.

The initial assessments of their bows are something akin to Welsh longbow made of seasoned hardwood and the arrows tipped with copper were described as able to pierce through a deer side to side. They had lances for thrusting and spears as well but the preferred melee weapon was a two to three food long war club instead of wooden swords or stone axes. They preferred rounded club heads. They used regular arrows, poisoned arrows, and fire arrows commonly.

Initially, reading suggests fortifications similar to those of the eastern low plains area that is large palisaded towns and forts sometimes with elaborate and/or extended defenses and bastions.

More to come later.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Oct 8th 2018 at 1:43:55 PM

The election of 1828 was so nasty that if Andrew Jackson lost, I wouldn't be surprised if he instead of Booth becomes the first to assassinate the president

On another note, do you think Henry VIII's inability to consummate his marriage to Anne of Cleves wasn't because he thought she was a Gonk, but because he was dealing with impotence? His health had been declining ever since the jousting accident in 1536, and was approaching 50 on top of that. If he was having trouble rising to the occasion it would absolutely be in character for him to blame it on his wife being unattractive

Edited by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93 on Sep 30th 2018 at 6:48:54 AM

It was some time in the early 1600s. Date Masamune, the lord of Sendai domain, woke up from a night of heavy drinking to find a note from one of his retainers, Tadano Sakujūrō. Enclosed was a love letter from him, sealed with the man's blood as a sign of devotion. At a loss on how to respond, the famed samurai eventually followed up with the greatest, most awkweird act of friendzoning in history:

Just over a month from now, it will be the centennial of the end of World War I. Do any of you have stories of family members who fought in it?

My story would be my great-grandfather and namesake, who dug tunnels under the Germans in order to get them. His brother was a casualty of the war, killed in France

Hmm, don't think I do. Do you know which campaigns they served in? I recall that ANZAC diggers tunnellers saw action in Messines/3rd Ypres (including the infamous operation to delete Hill 60 from all topographic maps) and Arras.

Also, a little quiz: Can You Save the Roman Republic? Mike Duncan's The History of Rome is a really good resource and a must for everyone who's interested in the time period.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Oct 9th 2018 at 6:56:05 AM

A relative with the AEF was saved by their steel cigarette case when it absorbed a German rifle bullet. We have both their medals and the case still.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:04:16 AM

Great-grandpa was an Army doctor in WWI. I have his service medals.

And just found a confirmed record of an ancestor dating back to the Revolutionary War. His name was Abraham and he was serving in Connecticut.

So now the Lt. Dan joke is truly complete. My family has served in almost every US conflict dating back to the Revolutionary War. We have missed some of the more continental conflicts like the Indian Wars and the Spanish American War. The vast majority survived and appear to served mostly as infantry until roughly 1800's when more of the family started becoming officers.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:41:22 AM

Also, speaking of anniversaries! Today marks the 107th year since the beginning of the Xinhai Revolution, where revolutionaries across China overthrew 2,000 years of imperial rule^note Not counting the Three Kingdoms, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Red Turban rebellion... y'know, all those times where China got fractured without a sitting Emperor ruling over the land. Even the "proper" dynasties mostly overthrew the previous one by force and established essentially a new state on its remnants. and laid the foundation for the Republic of China.

Revolutionary movements had been brewing in China for at least a couple of decades, following a century full of environmental disasters, rebellions, foreign incursions, and sundry other humiliations for the ruling Qing dynasty. One of them was the Tongmenghui, a coalition of secret societies founded on the "Three Principles of the People": nationalism, democracy and welfare.. Having launched a failed uprising in Guangzhou, and then another in Huizhou, its leader Sun Yat-sen fled China to establish a worldwide network of pro-republican Chinese immigrants, hoping to draw on their expertise and financial assistance to kickstart the revolution. Sun and his colleagues built alliances with the Philippine nationalist movement and Japan's infamous Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon Society). He also went to the British colony of Singapore to establish the Nanyang^note "South Seas", meaning Southeast Asia. branch of the Tongmenghui, which soon attracted the region's vast diaspora Chinese business network. The group also established "reading clubs" among the global Chinese diaspora, which aimed to spread revolutionary ideals - including to the less-literate lower classes, through cartoons and discussions.

9th of October, 1911. A bomb went off in the Russian concession in Hankou. The locals found several injured victims and quickly rushed them to the hospital, where they were soon found out as local revolutionaries allied to the Tongmenghui - the very people who were assembling the bomb when it went off by accident. Several revolutionary cells in the area were soon tracked down and surrounded by the Qing police. But there was one cell that they hadn't found out: several hundred soldiers in the nearby Wuchang garrison. And knowing the end is nigh, they sprang into action. On the evening of the 10th, the revolutionary soldiers launched a mutiny and declared a military government over the Hubei province. The Tongmenghui overseas leadership was caught by surprise: Sun himself was raising funds in Denver at the time and missed a telegram, only finding out about the Wuchang Uprising on the next day's papers.

Nonetheless, Tongmenghui cells across the country rapidly linked up with revolutionary elements within their local army garrisons, launching one uprising after another and causing Qing control over the country to disintegrate within the month. A provisional republican government was established in Nanjing, and Sun Yat-sen was elected president with 94% of the vote.

Yet the republicans still had a rocky road ahead of them. The revolution was a patchwork affair: the people holding the sticks were ranking officers of the Qing military, and a fair number of them weren't particularly interested in the Three Principles, opting to carve out their own feudal fiefdoms and rule as warlords. The dominions of Mongolia and Tibet had seceded, reaffirming their centuries-old alliance in the process. And in the north, the Qing court sheltered itself in Beijing, protected by Yuan Shikai's powerful Beiyang Army. So the Republic approached Yuan in a deal: in exchange for the Emperor's abdication, Yuan would become its President. The child Emperor Puyi and his court were soon whisked away to the Summer Palace, and Yuan was sworn in as President.

But Yuan was many things, and a true believer was not one of them. He was the Republic, and he wanted to lead an Empire. Yuan launched an assassination campaign against popular leaders from Sun's Kuomintang party, breaking the power of the National Assembly and stopping the formation of the cabinet dead on its tracks. Sun once again had to flee to Japan, and a "Second Revolution" by the KMT was quickly crushed by the Beiyang Army. Yuan, who had led the Qing Army's modernisation in the previous decades, now handed it piecemeal to his governors, not unlike the feudal lords of centuries past. This, of course, led to more chaos and warlordism. The Beiyang regime faced popular opposition across the country, which was made worse when the Empire of Japan, having just seized the German concessions in Shandong, sent its oppressive Twenty-One Demands. Yuan declared himself Emperor in a last-ditch attempt to regain legitimacy, but it didn't take. He died from uremia in 1916, as the southern provinces rose up in allegiance to the KMT.

The Republican dream was not dead, but it had been broken. It now had to fight a long campaign to reclaim the country from the warlord fiefs that Yuan had left behind, whether by diplomacy or by force. The northern frontier would only be reunited under Chiang Kai-shek's leadership in 1928. Sun himself would not live to see his country reunited: he died from liver cancer in 1925, and was interred in a mausoleum in Nanjing.

I actually got to visit the Tongmenghui's Nanyang HQ◊ earlier this year! It became a communication centre for the Kempeitai during WWII^note Their actual HQ was the YMCA building downtown, oddly enough and now serves as a museum.

Half this thread and half the "Things you didn't know until very recently..." thread. The Soviet Union and nuclear power were a bad combination. x_x