The History Thread!

It is a healthy reminder that the US wouldn't yet be the global power-player it is for several more decades, so the European monarchs had the luxury to look more casually at things.

Yeah, with the Crimean war in fresh memory and "The Great Game" going on in Afghanistan for nearly forty more years.

Alexander II is considered to be one of the most well-intentioned Russian monarchs, because he seems to have had a long-term plan to make his country more parliamentarian and democratic. During his reign the Grand Duchy of Finland was one of the most stable parts of the Empire, with no revolutionary activity that he would have considered a threat. In fact, during the Polish revolts his advisers suggested a curtailing of freedoms and some sabre rattling to intimidate the Finns into submission, as a preventive measure. But the czar refused and admonished the advisers because his Finnish subjects were so loyal.

Compared to his predecessor, Nikolai I, Alexander had given the country back plenty of pre-Russian privileges and lessened state-run censorship, which made him a very beloved emperor here. Supposedly Alexander was using the stable little country as a testing ground, to see how well a society could function with added freedom and privileges across social classes. Within reason, of course. The long-term plan was supposedly to test out things in the Grand Duchy and then introduce reforms to the Russian parliament, to start modernizing Russia proper and to continue on after getting rid of serfdom, among other good things.

Unfortunately, anarchists were at the time in habit of murdering heads of state, even the ones that were very sympathetic to commoners and willing to make societal changes. Alexander was killed after an explosion on his way to Parliament, but survived just long enough to thoroughly traumatize his successor Alexander III, as well as his young grandson, Nikolai. This event was the death-blow to any attempts at making Russia a more democratic and egalitarian place to live in, as Alexander III and Nikolai II did whatever they could to not make it happen, which led to even more discontent and eventually the birth of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union.

I remembered one of my favorite jokes from Frasier. In that one episode, Niles and Daphne were discussing about which is the more fascinating civil war to learn about: the English or the American. When they asked Frasier for his opinion, he said the Spanish one.

Those anarchists really had a bad habit of targeting the wrong people, like Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary or Emperor Wilhelm I.

I recently read the Bismarck biography of Jonathan Steinberg (an American historian) who claimed that part of the reason why London refused to intervene in the Second Slesvig War was because it was still distracted with the Civil War in America.

Edit: All three civil wars make for a fascinating read, but I'd actually agree with Frasier on this one since the Spanish Civil War was a) arguably more closely fought than the other twos and b) the outcome was so tragic for the country.

Edited by Zarastro on Dec 14th 2020 at 7:44:41 PM

The American Civil War also caused a major disruption to the global cotton market, which helped motivate the Russians to invade present-day Uzbekistan with the intent of seizing the existing cotton industry there.

Random Prohibition era question.

During that eras, were there any criminals that used ships to secretly distill moonshine inside? I see a lot of Google results of moonshine smuggling ships, but not moonshine making ships.

Were those just too easy for the Coast Guard to spot and never worth the risk compared to the Appalachian spots?

One reason could be inherent risks in doing a potentially volatile chemical process while out at sea. It might be that many thought it a more acceptable risk to work a still on land and get caught, while still being able to run away from a fire and an explosion. That said, sailors have still made moonshine on their ships for centuries, even when the ships were mostly made of wood.

Those Appalachian spots are just too good of a hiding spot for the boats to ever compare, there was no way in hell you were finding them without some one who knows where they are.

The rural parts of America are... I think I remember you not being American? If thats the case there just incomprehensibly empty compared to other nations.... save Austalia and Russia.... a good descriptor of the Appalachians is 100 square kilometers, population 1....

...

And that would not be an exaggeration for most of it, if any thing its a high end guess of the population.... there so empty that I would legitimately guess that the ocean has a higher population density due to boat traffic...

Add this in to all the trees and you just have a perfect place to hide something that is never going to be found.

Edited by Imca on Dec 20th 2020 at 5:44:11 AM

Fair points, both of you.

Now that I reexamine the idea, I dont don't even know why I thought that was a good idea.

I could imagine one situation where it could be worth the risks, which would be to flood a country with large quantities of cheap alcohol with the intent to sow chaos. So as a money-making scheme it would seem like too much trouble to have maritime distilleries, because boats and gear will cost money. But if it is a sovereign nation that wants to weaken another country and cause enough civil unrest to make a possible later invasion easier, then that could make all the dangers worthwhile.

Edited by Mara999 on Dec 20th 2020 at 8:12:15 PM

Speaking of rum boats, I bet there were plenty of piracy during the Prohibition Era as well, with the prime targets being the liquor.

Something that is fascinating to research is how certain materials change in value repeatedly, going from expensive fancy stuff to something for the lower classes and back to being posh. These processes can go back-and-forth over a long time, whenever new cheap materials replace another, rendering the previous cheap-o stuff a more valuable commodity, simply because it demands more work and resources to refine.

We talked earlier about the role of cotton in the American Civil War. Cotton is quite a poor cloth, compared to linen and wool, but it is dirt-cheap and farmed by people who get paid either literally nothing at all, or just embarrassingly little. So it makes sense that cotton becomes very valuable for the entire clothing industry, along with everybody else who needs easily made rags for maintenance and such. Linen was long fancy stuff for rich people, at least whenever rich people couldn't get silk and other exotic cloths from far away. Whenever fancy foreign material was available, linen was relegated to poor-people cloth along with wool. And these days it has become something special again, because someone's workload costs now more than the material used.

Besides cloth, foodstuffs and some plants have been through the same changes back-and-forth. Rye used to be something fancy and exotic in Iron Age Fennoscandia, while barley was the chosen cereal of commoners, until it was possible to grow wheat here and rye became something for the nobles to sneer at. Most plants that in modern times are considered weeds used to be planted on purpose in small gardens near the house, which is why some wild plants are so difficult to get rid of, since people bred them to be hardy for centuries.

I remember reading somewhere that lobsters used to be the dinner of choice for prisoners.

Yup, lobsters were seen as poor-people food for quite a while. Like so many other things in life, marketing ploys changed perceptions enough for people to believe that suddenly it is fancy food for fancy people. Same goes for things like the need to mask body-odour with deodorant, or that pink is feminine while blue is masculine, while it had earlier been the opposite. Things change constantly, withot us even noticing, but commercials are a very quick way to create new trends that people won't question that much.

They said the same thing about oysters thanks to how plentiful they are.

Diamonds are another.

And even engagement rings as a concept are newer then wwii

Speaking of which, is it true or false that the ancient Romans started the tradition of putting wedding rings on the left ring finger?

I don't know how this video popped back into my mind, but it did. ^_^;; It's an interesting "fantasy vs. reality" examination.

Question for a story!

I'm writing a periodic story that chronicles from WWI to WWII.

The main character, an Asian American veteran of WWI, starts a couple of business during the interwar period and one of them is publishing.

One of the publishing company's projects is pulp serialization, featuring a fictional character named "Mr. American," a quasi-superhero that is "a paragon of America's spirit and fights her enemies," targeted towards kids and teenagers, containing several illustrations (think of prototype light novels).

Now, both the story and the in-story pulp fiction is set in the 1920s. What could be considered acceptable "enemies of America" and can make for good villains? Note that the creator is a minority who wants to promote gender and racial equality in his work.

All I can think of so far are communists, fascists, mafias, and KKK. For your reference, the main character and his company^note  which started as a publishing company hiring unemployed WWI vets that somehow developed into a mafia/spy network/private military company through a series of mishaps with mafiashave been tangled with and fought off the latter two so he's not afraid of pissing them off.

Edited by dRoy on Jan 4th 2021 at 4:38:14 AM

Hmmm, that's a tough one. I have no idea how well a creator in that era would be able to promote equality fitting the standards of the day, or to avoid using non-WASP ethnicities as automatic bad guys. In a 1920's context I believe that the mobsters and commies are the ones that would be most often featured as bad guys at the time, as fascists aren't necessarily seen as bad guys until the 1940's, begrudgingly at that. The KKK might be featured as bad guys in a northern market, in a way to show the South as backwards for treating their blacks so barbarously, while also not showing much genuine sympathy for black people.

The Yellow Peril is possibly the most typical example of a bad guy in that era, especially for protagonists adventuring abroad. I think an Asian-American creator would be pressured to hide their own ethnicity, at least until the 60's, as well as probably told to use Chinamen as bad guys because that sells well. If he owned his own publishing firm it might be a bit different, but he'd still be under horrible pressure to compromise his values and to keep his ethnicity hidden even if he's the boss, if he wants to make money in the industry. There might have been exceptions, people that managed to make it fine in the time-period, but non-whites and non-protestants had generally a really bad deal in the US at the time.

Because of all this I'd probably take lots of liberties with the historical accuracy and realism, if any of it gets in the way of the story you want to tell. The story is what matters most of all.

Thanks for the detailed answer.

Hmm...while he is an Asian-American, his family have fled from Manchuria and have much love towards neither China nor Japan, and he can't stand communists.

So maybe he could make the main villain organization a bunch of Asian communists.

A sort of Ayn Rand-ian situation, where he hates the ideology of the people who rule his former home? Then it would make sense for him to feature Yellow Peril dirty commies as villains, especially in the 30's. To him it might be that they represent something he dislikes about his original homeland, while to his average white reader it looks like he's bashing interchangeable Asians in general, which at that time-period is completely acceptable. It could be an excellent source of drama, in that he realizes that his readers don't pick on the subtler points of his message and the realization causes him at least mild discomfort to realize that he can be seen engaging in Uncle Tom Foolery, or even despair on level with Your Approval Fills Me with Shame.

I just remembered a historical thought my oldest sister brought up. How did it come to be that Saturday was named after a Roman god (Saturn), while a good portion of the other days of the week were named after Nordic gods? :S

No idea, but IIRC it happened as part of the cultural exchange between the Roman/Latinate sphere and the Germanic peoples around the 1st-2nd century CE, in the process known as the interpretatio germanica. Part of the deal was the Germanic peoples (including the forerunners of the Saxons who would later colonise England) adopting the Roman seven-day week and substituting the names of Roman deities with their own:

• Sun (Sol): no change
• Moon (Luna): Mani/Meno (the personification of the Moon)
• Mars/Ares: Tiwaz/Tyr (god of war)
• Mercury/Hermes: Wodan/Odin (All-Father)
• Jupiter/Zeus: Thunar/Thor (god of thunder)
• Venus/Aphrodite: Frijjo/Freyja (god of love)

Saturn doesn't seem to have gotten a Germanic replacement, for some reason.

The most famous agricultural deity I can find for Norse Mythology is Gefjun, who is comparatively obscure. Likely because of the Norse culture not being as heavily centered around farming as the Romans due to their cold and maritime climate.

The Germanic cultures in direct contact with the Roman sphere had fairly rich traditions of cereal farming and cattle husbandry. The frontier was marked by the Rhine Valley, which is still a major agricultural region to this day.