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Ghost Leviathan posted:
To a large extent it's because the Early Qing emperors allowed the state to wither away whereas the Tokugawa built up one of the most centralized and efficient states on earth during the 1700-1800s. When the clash with colonialism came: the Japanese state was simply able to respond much more effectively than the Chinese state. Neither of those were inevitability. Fly Molo posted:An alt-history where the Taiping rebellion wins, and they spend the next century exporting Christo-socialist revolution abroad. This exists btw: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/all-about-my-brother-a-taiping-rebellion-timeline.146230/ Typo fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 16:24
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Don Gato posted:Also to really oversimplify, Japan's real ideological struggle at the top wasn't whether or not to modernize, but who should be in charge and how hard they were going to imitate the west. The Shogun's faction is traditionally thought of as being the backwards looking traditionalists but they spent vast efforts and money reforming and modernizing the state, and they were opposed by the Imperial factions who... Had spent vast resources and efforts to modernizing. There were large groups of Shishi that were 100% trying to get Japan back to the supposed golden age of NO FOREIGNERS EVER but the most extreme traditionalists had a way of dying in hare-brained schemes to kick out the foreigners by killing a few and assuming the rest would leave, or at the very least would kill them back in a suitably glorious way. Plus, Japan had Western studies as a field of study for centuries at this point so there was already a cadre of educated professionals who understood on a theoretical level things like steam engines, and the Shogun had a general idea of what the political situation in Europe was, albeit filtered through the Dutch who liked to play up how important they were*. Just to add to this, this one gets badly mangled by the "last samurai". Which portrays Saigo's rebellion was "traditional vs modern" militaries. In reality Saigo's rebellion was fought with rifles/artillery and western military advisers on both sides. And the struggle was less over technology and more over what amounted to the Meiji government cutting welfare payments to unemployed samurais.
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Sep 9, 2020 18:36
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Cetea posted:The Chinese forced millions to labour away at the Great Wall and other grand projects quote:and took hundreds if not thousands of young girls by force to serve in the Imperial Harems every year Typo fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 14:53
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Cetea posted:especially since in traditional Chinese society, the merchant class was considered the lowest of the low. This is wrong, stop repeating pop history
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Sep 10, 2020 14:57
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Cetea posted:That is how it is stated by Confucius In China merchants wasn't even a distinct class, for instance some of the merchant class bought or earned Jinshi (highest civil service)degrees which made them part of the bureaucratic class as well. There are also cases where degree holders -became- merchants as well. Elite Families frequently sent one son to the civil service exams, but another to do business. In practice much like modern day America the social status of merchants just depended on how much money you had. The rich ones got to consort and play on equal footings with their government official counterparts, on the other end the street vendor ofc, are the lowest part of society. But this isn't different from modern day America: hot dog sellers do not have high social status either. Typo fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 15:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:Individual sources, be they confucious or tacitus, are not authoritative statements on how things were. Aristotle condemned merchants in this writings as corrupt parasites who didn't produce anything. Cetea is doing the equivalent of assuming the west must be very anti-merchant after reading about Aristotle.
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Sep 10, 2020 15:14
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quote:The Qin section of the Great Wall was mostly built through forced labour by prisoners, slaves and soldiers (in an era where owning a sharp blade that was a bit too long would get you arrested, it was pretty easy to be a criminal); supposedly 400,000 workers died building that section, and was buried underneath it, but that number is probably made up for emphasis.  It was forced labor in the sense that it was a form of tax. It was mostly just a labor tax levied on peasant households. Not slavery.
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Sep 10, 2020 15:24
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Koramei posted:This might have been the case sometimes, but it was definitely not universally true. Thousands of women were taken as part of Goryeo's tribute to serve in the Yuan harems, and this was against very vehement protestations from both Goryeo and the women's families (and presumably the women too, not that anyone wrote their opinions down). Early Ming and Qing did the same in a slightly less extreme degree, and every time it went down in the histories as one of Korea's biggest grievances against their hegemon. Yeah I should have mentioned -mostly-, it certainly wasn't universally true
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Sep 10, 2020 15:28
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Koramei posted:They weren't "the lowest of the low" like Cetea claimed (that was the absolute scum of the earth, like butchers and tanners, naturally), but the merchants are lower on the Confucian pecking order, for how they "profit off the labors of others without contributing anything on their own." Sure, and Christianity theoretically condemned usury, that didn't stop the Medici from becoming one the most politically powerful families in Italy. Ideological rules often does not coincide with reality, not only that but neat labels and division of classes often does not apply (What is a Jinshi degree holder who chose to go into business?).
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Sep 10, 2020 15:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:
There's a very big gap in quality btwn mike duncan and hardcore history tbf also I'm pretty sure for the WWI he might as well as just read out a loud "guns of august" lol
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Oct 27, 2020 21:50
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galagazombie posted:So what’s the tldr on the changes to the western understanding of midway? I know the general narrative about “Should he have launched torpedo or bomb flights” and such. What’s changed? that the US forces were greatly outnumbered/outmatched and the victory was a miracle against all odds the actual balance of power at Midway was actually fairly even. In the main it was 4 IJN fleet carrier vs 3 USN fleet carriers. The US had a slight numerical advantage in number of planes once you take into account land-based planes on Midway, the Japanese had a big -qualitative- edge in their air groups (both more modern planes and much better crews) and 1 extra fleet carrier. The US no doubt got very lucky during the battle, but it's like if you had to bet on the battle beforehand the odds prob look like 3:2 or something and not 10:1 in favor of the Japanese. Also that the Japanese loss being Nagumo's fault, in reality if you had blame someone it's Yamamoto Typo fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 22:00
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:it turns out that instead of building up forces for a decisive strike with a 3-to-1 advantage you can do perfectly fine just trickling in attackers one at a time, firing off ineffectual volleys, tire the defenders out and burn out their fuel tanks and prevent them from reconfiguring from fleet defense to long-range strike tbf it only worked because the US got extremely lucky Hornet's torpedo squadron -happen- to arrive at the right time to draw Japanese fighters onto the "wrong" quadrant of their fleet The Enterprise dive bomber squadrons -happened- to get lucky when they couldn't find their target and found a Japanese destroyer to follow back to the Kido Butai's carriers the dive bomber airgroups from the enterprise and the Yorktown -happened- to arrive at the same time in 2 different directions to execute a hammer and anvil attack Midway was the -only- carrier battle in 1942 where the US had this type of luck, if you look at other battles what would actually happen is most of the US airgroups would just get lost and unable to find their target and had to return home. It should also be noted even after losing something like 80% of their strength a fairly small number of Japanese bombers (also launched piecemeal) were able to cripple the Yorktown enough that a sub sank it later. If the US got a bit less lucky and 2-3 Japanese carriers survived the morning the US probably would have lost 2/3 of their carriers at least. Typo fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 22:04
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PittTheElder posted:Parshall also makes the point on the regular that while you can talk about Midway as a turning point, it was not in any sense decisive. The US had things really go their way at Midway, but even if it hadn't gone so well for them then, the rage of Pearl Harbour and the industrial might that had already been activated before the war meant that it would have gone that well for them eventually. Shattered Sword also points out the Japanese probably wouldn't even have being able to take the island itself even if they wiped out the US carrier fleets: because the landing forces they sent was completely insufficient and would have being slaughtered storming the island And even -if- they took the island it wouldn't actually do much for the Japanese: they likely wouldn't be able to supply/maintain a large air force on it anyway as per their plan. Eventually they probably had to abandon it anyway. This is why the battle is ultimately Yamamoto's fault: the entire plan was flawed from the get-go. Yamamoto by all accounts was depressed after Pearl Habor because he realized Japan cannot win a war against American industrial might, it just seem like by Midway he became fatalist and his heart wasn't really in it anymore. It feels like he was just going through the motions in a war he knew he was going to lose. Typo fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 16:38
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:If I remember correctly, Yamamoto knew before Pearl Harbor was even planned that Japan could not beat the US but was essentially honor bound to do his best because Japanese leadership felt he was the best man for the job. he was part of the pro-treaty (washington naval treaty) faction of the Japanese military and thought going to war with the US was just dumb kinda ironic at one point in the 1930s he was at serious risk of being assassinated by hawks from within the military for being too dovish
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Mar 9, 2023 17:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:...okay, so the Fourth Crusade was like an Always Sunny episode of Crusader Kings. you know how if 100 ppl RSVP to an event on FB maybe 10 will show up? that was basically the 4th crusade
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Apr 4, 2023 15:49
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Offler posted:The fourth crusade was honestly such a clusterfuck from all sides than no-one escapes blame, the Pope included. Because it was the Pope who had had the idea to ship the entire crusade in one fleet directly to Egypt, so he asked Venice to build a fleet large enough to carry more than 30,000 men and several thousand horses. This estimate was a tad optimistic, and when it was time to sail there were only about 12,000 knights and soldiers ready to depart. This meant that they didn't come close to being able to pay for the entire fleet. And since Venice had dedicated an entire year to building the fleet and training enough sailors to man it, they were not about to just write off 2/3 of the fleet. So they were in no mood to transport anyone to Egypt before they had been paid for the entire fleet. Also the crusading leaders were just straight up lying to their men about their intended destination because nobody wanted to go on crusade to conquer Egypt they wanted to conquer Jerusalem. So the leaders just went "yeah we are totally gonna go to Jerusalem yeah" because attendance in the crusade was so bad they were afraid if they told the truth the whole thing was gonna fall apart completely.
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Apr 4, 2023 15:55
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the yeti posted:Did any of those guys get stabbed or otherwise in the poo poo for misleading and mishandling so many armed men? No the pope actually excommunicated the crusaders when they sacked Zara, which was a Catholic city under papl protection so you figure something bad was going to happen but what ended up happening was A LOT of mental gymnastics among the crusaders basically "we gotta do this since we need money to REALLY take back the holy lands for god so it's ok"
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Apr 4, 2023 18:51
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ulmont posted:Also the leaders were in debt to the Venetians up to their eyeballs and didn't tell the rank and file exactly what they were doing until it was too late. at one point the leaders literally told the crusaders to just give the leaders their personal belongings so they can be pawned off to pay an installment on the Venetian debt the more you read about it the more the 4th crusade just seem like the crusading equivalent of fyre festival
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Apr 6, 2023 19:23
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Baron Porkface posted:Is Akkad and Assyria Sumerian then? Did they worship the same gods and have a similar cultural and material society to the Sumerians? No, most obvious example is their language. Sumerian is a language isolate and is from a different language family than all the other languages around it, including Akkadian. Akkadian OTOH was similar to -other- non-Sumerian languages in Mesopotamia at the time and eventually became the langa franca of the ancient near east. And this was a major factor in the gradual extinction of Sumerian as a spoken language. If you spoke Akkadian you can use if for trade etc with other peoples living around you, if you spoke Sumerian you couldn't do that. So over time more and more of the population spoke Akkadian just because it was what everyone else was speaking. Typo fucked around with this message at 15:31 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 15:28
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the fact that the Sumerian language is in an entire different family from everyone else in the region does support the theory that they migrated into the region at a different time and from a different place than everyone else Sumerian legend talks a lot about a water god emerging from the sea to teach the people how to build farms or whatever. So maybe the Sumerians originally migrated into Mesopotamia via boats from somewhere, possibly escaping some sort of flooding triggered by the end of the last ice age
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May 8, 2023 15:33
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Mr. Nice! posted:I thought they literally lived in the area that is now the Persian Gulf. The flood myth comes from them literally fleeing an ever encroaching ocean as it filled in following the glacial meltoff. They didn't have to arrive by boat. that seems very likely
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May 8, 2023 15:46
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euphronius posted:Yeah and it’s cool to me at least to try and piece together what was going on there from Sumer. Although I think what we have from archeology in Sumer is still thousands of years after whenever the flood was The Archaeological evidence on Sumer is interesting because we have incredibly detail records on certain aspects of their society while lacking extremely basic knowledge in other areas like for example we do not know who the early Sumer kings are (the Sumerian king list is obviously not reliable as they claim reigns of 1000+ years for some of those kings). However we also have bureaucratic records on agricultural production in the 22nd century BC that allow us to figure out how much wheat vs barley the Sumerians were planting. Like it's as if tomorrow a giant meteor destroyed the US: then 10,000 years later future historians uncover this intact IRS office: so they can figure out what the annual budget of the US federal government was in the year 2023 but can't tell whether George Washington was actually the first president or a made up legendary figure Typo fucked around with this message at 15:58 on May 10, 2023 |
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May 10, 2023 15:56
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FishFood posted:Yeah, maintaining skilled horse archers is basically an undertaking for your entire society. Even when settled peoples adopt them it's usually in limited numbers and it's insanely expensive. The Eastern Romans incorporated horse archers into their armies in late antiquity/the early middle ages, and it's never more than a small part of their forces and their quality is never equal to that of the various steppe peoples they're facing. They're one of the few examples I can think of where they actually trained their own horse archers instead of or in addition to recruiting nomadic or semi-nomadic horse archers; it's usually a lot easier to hire it out rather than set up your own multi-decade training regime. the problem with horse archers is that they need constant training/retraining for soldiers to retain their skill. Much like how pilots have to constantly fly to retain their combat skill. It's particularly bad with horse-archers, like if a soldier fall out of practice for a while they lose almost their entire skillset. which means that if there's ever a budget shortfall or political crisis that causes your horse archer corps to be disbanded (say during peacetime): then it's very very difficult to re-assemble another one. Steppe nomads don't have this problem because that's their way of life, but settled societies will lay off professional soldiers all the time. So it's very hard to consistently field armies of horse archers to counter nomads.
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Jun 7, 2023 17:08
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