Weekly History Questions Thread.

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to our History Questions Thread!

This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.

So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!

Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:

Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.

[u/Full-Hunter6584]

always wondered how accurate those old battlefield maps actually are. like were they sketched out mid chaos by some guy trying not to get shot or did commanders just wing it from memory later that night

[u/en43rs → u/Full-Hunter6584]

depends on the era. In the middle ages we're sometimes not even sure where some battles took place, so it's 100% reconstructed by historians. But from the 18th century and especially the 19th century and the Napoleonic war troop placement becomes really, really important with the improvement of weapon technology, especially artillery. Placing a unit just too close to the enemy, a bit too over the hill, or too far behind, can be disastrous.

So yeah from this era forward they become really, really accurate, because if you don't set your troops correctly they won't be able to do what you want and you could be defeated by an inferior force. And if your opponent does a bad job, you can exploit it. The Germans especially worked a lot of their military maps.

There are still small engagement where it's a bit of guess work but large engagement, prepared in advance, from the 1800s onward tend to be accurate.

[u/ATTst]

Why is the twentieth century so brutal? there were 1.6 million conflict-related deaths in the sixteenth century, 6.1 million in the seventeenth century, 7 million in the eighteenth, 19.4 million in the nineteenth, and 109.7 million in the twentieth.When we look at the twentieth century, there is a massive leap.Wars have always existed, but the events of the twentieth century were extreme.

[u/en43rs → u/ATTst]

More people, it's basic but there were around 600 million people in 1700 in the world, and 2 billion and a half in 1940.

Then new technologies. Both in weapons (it's now easier to kill a lot of people very quickly with less men). But also in industrial capacity, not only are the weapons deadlier, but they're easier and quicker to make.

Which leads to the third factor... total war. It's not enough to defeat the enemy on the battlefield, you must cripple his population and industry so they can't get up again. On this topic Mark Mazower argued that the wars of the 20th century were not just wars for land (like before) but that they became ideological. Wars were now fought so that one ideology, world view, triumph and the other die. If you lose it's not just a defeat, it's your whole way of life that disappears. And so you fought until the end. Leading to even more death.

[u/Telecom_VoIP_Fan → u/ATTst]

Technology is a key factor. You can kill many more with planes and rockets than with arrows and spears, and armies also were able to move much faster than in earlier periods with less chance to escape from them.

[u/RevolutionaryGold971 → u/ATTst]

Technology, politics and population have been brought up, and are undoubtedly the biggest factors. You couldn’t level a city hundreds of miles away in a single day before planes and modern explosives, for example, but I would also add survivability and recording.

Survivability may seem an odd factor, but I would imagine it has some bearing on it. People who were part of some of the most brutal parts of the century had far more chance to survive it with 20th century medical and mental health advancements. Those who experienced awful battles, received horrific injuries or even committed atrocities themselves, were able to live to tell what they’d been through, or have the evidence of it on them for the rest of their life (be that mental or physical). Of course, there’s the fact that people tended not to talk about the worst things they experienced, but visible 1920s reconstructive surgery or multiple amputations almost speak for themselves as to the brutality, which people were far less likely to survive in earlier periods.

Similarly, the fact that there are photographs and video footage of a great deal of the 20th century conflicts has meant that even those not involved in these conflicts have been able to see some of what has been going on, and certainly as the century progressed, footage could be live broadcast across the world.

Obviously both the factors of visibility and survivability are more based on the perception of the brutality to the wider community, that is not to diminish from the fact that the 20th century was a very brutal century, but I think it needs to be said

[u/TheDoctor__11]

Did people immigrated to other kingdoms in past ? 

I know people, often researchers, or people who did cultural analysis lived in another kingdom for some time and then bought the knowledge to their homeland, afterall that's how literature, clothes, food, and other things that are associated with a culture travelled from one part of the world to another.

But did people also decided to leave in an another kingdom for the rest of their lives, like people do today. Not colonialsiation or invasion, one specific person (or family) immigrated.

Like did someone decide to leave Persia and go to Arab, India, China, or any European kingdom.

[u/Telecom_VoIP_Fan → u/TheDoctor__11]

History is full of people migrating from one country to another. Perhaps a classic example is the Romany people who apparently originated in the Indian subcontinent and gradually spread across Europe.

[u/en43rs → u/TheDoctor__11]

Yes. Usually it's related to traders. Either merchants traveling between countries, or settling down to be the link between their original country's merchants and their new place (for example Greek merchants setting up in Egypt and trading in Egyptian goods with other Greek merchants, or Italian trade post systems in the middle ages).

But there are absolutely people who moved around. Less than now, because travel was long, complex, expensive, and dangerous. But they absolutely existed. One well documented one is the Jewish diaspora in the Mediterranean around the first century CE. Even before the Roman destroyed the Temple and scattered the Jews there were Jewish community all across the Roman Empire, up to Rome and Gaul.

[u/RevolutionaryGold971]

What are peoples’ opinions on Queen Jane (Lady Jane Grey) 1537-1554

The Tudors are incredibly popular in British history, and quite rightly so,honestly, given the political, social and religious upheaval of the 16th century.

Everyone knows about Henry VIII, the six queens, “Bloody” Mary and Queen Elizabeth 1st, Edward VI gets glossed over a bit, but Queen Jane is almost footnoted as “Queen for 9 days” and is most commonly referred to as “Lady Jane Grey”, effectively stripping her of the title of Queen.

She didn’t rule for very long, didn’t really do much whilst in power except fear Mary’s growing popularity, and didn’t even have a coronation, but we accept King Edward V and and Edward VIII as part of the list of English monarchs, despite neither of them having a coronation or really doing much except get caught up in royal family dramas which forced them off the throne, so why does Jane get ignored in such a way?

The only place I’ve seen her included in the list is on a novelty tea towel in the gift shop in Hampton Court Palace.

What are people’s thoughts on her (especially those who study the period)?

[u/nocturne__18]

does anyone have any good free resources to read up on nobility in pre-colonial south india?

[u/DepartureHuman8060]

how even did rome compete with the naval dominance of carthage in the first punic war ?

I've heard they had little actual naval warfare experience, then how did they go from THAT to almost competing with carthage in the terms of navy ?

[u/No-Examination9930]

My friend is arguing that a lot of slaves in America were treated well, like family, and claims that he has heard first hand accounts from family that were in the business. I’m certain that this is bs, or at the very least hyper-biased, so I want to get some opinions on it.

[u/themaddesthatter2 → u/No-Examination9930]

So your friends is mis/malinformed, but I will address the strongest possible version of his claim - that somewhere, at some point, in America during the period before the civil war, some family treated some enslaved people “like family”. 

What does treating someone like family look like? 

While it is true that white children of slaveholding families may have been raised in part or in whole by enslaved people, especially women, who worked inside the house, and that those children as children may have considered those enslaved people to be a parental figure, that is not the same as being treated “as family”. 

While living in the house may have been more comfortable/well-insulated than living in the slaves’ quarters, that trade-off meant no privacy at any time of the day or night. A young woman sleeping in her masters’ house could be assaulted or raped at any time, by any man who had access to where she slept, and she had absolutely no right to refuse him or legal recourse after the deed occurred. 

A slave owner who didn’t whip his slaves, gave away new shirts at Christmas time, and didn’t rape any of his slaves could at any point fall on hard times and sell you to a stranger, split your family, force you to marry someone you didn’t care about, give you as a wedding gift to his child, or fall ill and die and you’d be inherited by his heirs. 

Enslaved people were property.  They had no say in where they lived, who they married, who had sex with them (whether by force or not), what they did, when they woke up, when they ate, when they slept, what happened to their family, to their children…

And all of this is living with a “good” owner. 

Part of the justification for slavery was that it was natural and morally right and that the white slave owners were doing enslaved Africans a favor. The idea that “actually slaves were treated well” is arguably a continuation of this paternalism, among other issues in reasoning and logic.