The History Thread!

A question for any Marxists or people who pay attention to Marxist thought, is there a general consensus on where the Hebertists of the French Revolution stand? As far as the well-known factions go, there's a lot of overlap with Marxist thought regarding the prominence of the lower class in their demographics, their antireligiosity, their support for drastic action against landowners and people who would fall under the petit bourgeois label, and I've definitely come across Marxist apologetics of the Hebertists in the face of perceived Historical Villain Upgrade. However given they were also debatably responsible for much of the mass paranoia and worst excesses of the Reign of Terror in ways that are highly similar to the purges of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, I have to wonder if the pro-Hebertist Marxists are limited to tankies or if it's much more complicated than that.

Edited by AlleyOop on Nov 22nd 2019 at 7:49:42 AM

Having said so to one of my friends recently, is it true or false that Napoleon was responsible for Germany and Austria becoming separate countries?

Here's a fascinating historical video with some great music to go with it. :)

I'm wondering why some contemporary figures like Cassius Dio and historical works like Augustan History think that Faustina the Younger slept around. Nothing supports it and Marcus Aurelius' personal notes don't have any evidence. He's the last of the five good emperors, so I have to think that this was started to discredit Commodus and figure out why he was nothing like his father. Of course, even if you believe the rumors he'd still be the grandson of penultimate Good Emperor Antoninus Pius.

Does anyone know why Commodus might've been so different personality-wise to his dad?

I think you answered your own question. Making Commodus look bad was probably the only reason.

Random amusing anecdote.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people here (if not most) have seen that image of Roosevelt laughing like hell. But a while ago I didn't know who that actually was. So I had to ask this one American friend for the identification, and this is the question I gave:

"Uh...who's that guy...you know, black and white image, laughing like crazy, wearing glasses and had a mustache, kinda looks like a sea lion?"

He immediately answered Roosevelt, but what I found amusing was that he looked a bit confused, until I mentioned "looks like a sea lion" part.

Quite the screw you to Commodus, but I am wondering just why he was so different to his dad.

Random rambling.

So, the biggest writing project I've been working on for years is an isekai story where a former DEVGRU operator gets transported into a (very low) fantasy land that is ruled by a militaristic and fascist government run by a human-supremacist emperor. Initially, he just wants to go back to America, but after being constantly hunted down and tortured by the empire's military (which also happened to forcibly replace the law enforcement), he had enough and joins in the revolution to revert the empire back to the functional democracy it used to be.

In order to get some references, I searched for countries that have a history of coup d'etats and military dictatorship. In the process, I learned how disturbingly common coup d'etats and coup attempts are. So far, the nations I've picked as models to which my fictional dictator regime are Spain under Rivera and Bulgaria under Tsankov.

Oh, and liberally taking elements from the Nazi Germany, because come on, it's just so easy. Besides, one of the biggest enemies the protagonists have to face are xenophobes and the secret (military) police. I can't resist it.

Half this thread and half the Random Thoughts thread; this idea just occurred to me. Who were the first people to practice reforestation?

My studying of fortresses, sieges, and related material continues. Finished off the two-part Osprey books for Medieval Chinese, Korean, and Japanese siege warfare specifically their weapons. I followed it up with fortifications and trenches of the Western Front WWI. I need to find a meatier tome focussing on sieges. Something akin to the Native American Warfare book I read last year.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Feb 8th 2020 at 8:33:48 AM

Here are some very fascinating history videos. :) I just finished watching all the one about the history of Britain.

A question about the usage of UTC: when it came to applying time zones, how different were time zones pre-1960 under the term "UT (Universal Time)" and now post-1960? To elaborate, was UTC+08:00 called UT+08:00 prior to 1960?

I'm asking because I'm planning on writing a World War II historical fiction story set in the Philippines, which uses UTC+08:00 and I want to indicate a part of the story taking place at a certain place in a certain time like this from Daniel Carney's The Thin White Line, now called The Wild Geese:

However, what I want to do is use the 24-hour clock ("14:00" instead of "2:00 p.m." for example) and indicate the time under "Philippine Standard Time".

The ideal time and location stamp I'd write in the story would be this:

All right, book recommendation question!

What are some good books on US history? Specifically, I want a book that that touches on all the big events and gives the reader a general picture of American history; no need to be too detailed on each event, although I wouldn't complain if it is.

I looked around and People's History by Howard Zinn pops a lot often. Is that a good book to begin with?

As a reference for reading level, I spent 8th grade in America and during that time took US history class. Not that it matters at this point, but I did pretty darn well there.

Best I can say about A People's History is that it's a good introduction into alternative viewpoints on historical events from perspectives that are not always given the respect or context they deserve, and a good challenge to the great man theory of history.

One significant issue with the book is that it doesn't pretend not to be heavily partisan. As in, there's a lot of aggressive values judgments being made in a Black-and-White Morality fashion, often to the point of conspiratorial thinking, and deliberate skewing and under-reporting of facts to the point of whitewashing atrocities that go against the narrative.

So while I think it's worth considering it's an extremely conditional recommendation and it certainly does not fulfill the general broad view of history that you seem to be looking for. And if you do take it up, make sure to take everything it says with a grain of salt and try to find additional sources on things it says, as it rarely lies outright but is very selective in what it chooses to tell you.

Aside from that, I don't know what else I can suggest to you, but I've read AP US History study guides that do a decent summation of the major events.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 5th 2020 at 8:37:15 AM

Not sure on good US history books as my preferred study target tends to aim a bit more broadly than that.

Speaking of which I have been doing a reading on the early cannon in both Asia and Europe. In the historical time scale, the introduction of cannons to Europe was a surprisingly fast estimate of technological transmission. It is believed one of the key aspects of this, is the ongoing fighting between European and Islamic nations of the era.

A common theme among the earliest black powder cannon was the launching of arrows and stone shot. The arrow shots were frighteningly effective against all but stone.

The bronze cannons were quite capable and well-made examples could fire an iron shot. The wrought iron cannons seem flimsy at first but have a fairly decent track record if not as effective as their bronze made cousins.

The effective range of various cannons was surprising up to 3km's for what we would call field guns.

Contrary to some popular belief the bombard artillery pieces fired both solid and grapeshot. However, they had to be well made and accidents were quite spectacular. They were cumbersome to load and some had special loading requirements including using clay to hold components in place during loading and tamping. There was some European transmission of artillery that made it to the Islamic nations and was mingled with the existing tech there usually via rogue or mercenary gun makers.

The Koreans used the arrow or dart-like projectiles fired from cannons the longest and seemed to get the most of them eventually using all iron built examples.

@Alley Oop - Interesting. I will keep that in mind.

@Teufel - Man, that's some really specific study into a historical field.

dRoy: I have been doing a lot of reading on sieges and siege weapons recently. Including North American Tribal warfare and fortifications.

I did reading on the old Celt fortifications, Sieges and basic fortification designs in Asia, mostly China and Korea with some inclusions of the Japanese methods, Trenches and fortifications of WWI, and a few other scattered references.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Mar 7th 2020 at 10:18:39 AM

Deleted content in this post due to errors I made when I composed it. I apologize for that.

Edited by HallowHawk on Mar 16th 2020 at 5:16:24 PM

Random historical movie idea: a film about the Ottoman court intrigue of the 17th century, but given The Death of Stalin treatment. So instead of a luxurious Game of Thrones-like Orientalist costume drama, the whole thing plays out like an office comedy on bathsalts.

I recently read about the Battle of Vittorio Veneto of World War One. Quite fascinating how it led to the collapse of the entire Hapsburg Empire after they broke their back (again) and ability to fight after the failed Piave Offensive. They really didn't have anything left to fend off the Italian attack and to paraphrase Ludendorff they dragged Germany down into the Armistice. Such great consequences and it wasn't even the "main theater" of war that is popularly perceived.

Probably rates up there with Amiens and the Breakthrough at Megiddo as one of the top three events that finally brought World War One to a close.

Random thing I didn't know before:

The Hundred Years War and the Byzantine Empire both ended in the same year. That's kinda cool.

Also, Holy Roman Empire fell at 1806. That's...a lot more recent than I knew.

Edited by dRoy on Mar 21st 2020 at 2:15:48 AM

Admittedly, I only minored in anthropology, and we only mentioned him briefly in one course I took, but I find it rather perplexing how Frazier and the Golden Bough became so influential in esoteric movements. He was an anthropologist trying to describe common trends in world religions who hypothesised about their origins, not a prophet.

So I have done some more reading on artillery specifically Super Guns.

Various concepts are older than we think. Like Multi-chambered gun pieces such as the V-3. The first person to propose such a design was a Frenchman but it was an American who actually built a testbed concept that didn't quite work out.

Some of the earliest ideas for concepts of modern sabot ammo firing long rod projectiles dates back to WWI with the creation of the Paris Guns.

Those guns were unique as they used a larger barrel with a barrel insert to make the caliber smaller but with a larger chamber and the end piece of the gun was smoothbore. The firing of the guns eroded the barrels severely and the large barrels were maybe good in terms of accuracy for about 10-15 shots before accuracy notably degraded. Each shell and powder charge was unique and built to fit into the eroded barrels but it never quite worked. Of all the guns built all but one survived to the end of the war where they were destroyed and their documentation was hidden or destroyed. One gun suffered an in barrel detonation effectively destroying it.

The German's original V-3 weapon was on the verge of achieving the required muzzle velocity to shell London but the allies had begun targeting the emplacement sites with Operation Crossbow. Initially, the site was too well fortified and the bombings only slowed the construction but that changed with the introduction of the Tallboy bombs. Several multi-hundred craft air raids had failed to destroy the project but one single Tallboy raid ended it when a hit destroyed one of the shafts being dug for the guns.

The project didn't end there as smaller more easily created versions were created by the SS after they took over various superweapons programs. The guns were used to fire on allied positions in Burgundy. While they inflicted civilian deaths the only real military casualties was the destruction of several US army laundry service vehicles which injured the crews of said vehicles.

Gerald Bull basically put together the big solution for a lot of the problems that plagued super guns by creating a propellant chain that went off in a sequence rather than burning all the propellant at once. It achieved a greater velocity with a smooth pressure build-up without the severe impacts of barrel erosion because of the better-controlled pressure gradients in the barrels.

It's worth mentioning that the concept of a super cannon existed as early as Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and the French silent film A Trip to the Moon, which envisioned that giant artillery pieces would be used to shoot out spacecraft.

Was the Oregon Trail part of Manifest Destiny or its own thing?