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Apologies for lovely photos, will take them again with a real camera when I have it back. Just did a quick look through: Bow 2337:    Bow 2304:   Bow 2300:  Companion Piece:  There were two others on display that were less ornate but I'll need to go with a real camera to get shots of them.
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Jun 11, 2015 15:18
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Disinterested posted:Bow 2304:
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Jun 11, 2015 16:22
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tonberrytoby posted:In which direction does that thing shoot? It looks strange either way. The direction the ends are pointing now. When it's strung it looks kinda like this: Þ. The middle gets bent a lot and the ends stay kind of straight.
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Jun 11, 2015 16:45
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tonberrytoby posted:In which direction does that thing shoot? It looks strange either way. Mostly forwards
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Jun 11, 2015 16:48
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xthetenth posted:The direction the ends are pointing now. When it's strung it looks kinda like this: Þ. The middle gets bent a lot and the ends stay kind of straight.
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Jun 11, 2015 17:20
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Does the museum list where those bows were
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Jun 11, 2015 18:01
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Klaus88 posted:Does the museum list where those bows were Well, if you read the catalogue entries, a lot of them list Lucknow. The collection of armours and arms from India is vast, but it's largely swords and armour from the Punjab. They have, for example, the swords of Tipu Sultan and Ranjit Singh.   African pieces had a very  plaque:
Disinterested fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 18:08
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Imperialism for charity. Oh those whacky Victorians.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:26
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Disinterested posted:Apologies for lovely photos, will take them again with a real camera when I have it back. Just did a quick look through: Fine. The item description is complete bogus. Parthian shape. Whalebone. My rear end. It's like they display a longsword and label it "Gladius shape" 2304 is a weird persian design of doubtful performance, it's strung in the opposite direction ofc. The steel bows were kept strung so long that they kept the braced shape. The decoration on these is usually very well made. The Companion Piece probably hints the shape that braced crab bows had. We have no paintings that show how they looked when fully drawn.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:31
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JaucheCharly posted:Fine. The item description is complete bogus. Parthian shape. Whalebone. My rear end. It's like they display a longsword and label it "Gladius shape" The catalogues for these items are very old, it should be said, and unlike the popular European pieces (the armours) they don't have newer item descriptions in the cases.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:35
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Naturally. The metalworking is exceedingly good though. Everything is totally over the top, way beyond usefulness. Perfect example for costly signaling theory.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:49
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JaucheCharly posted:Naturally. You should see how ornate some of the crossbows, muskets and powder horns are in the collection Ridiculous
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Jun 11, 2015 18:51
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Oh btw, thumbrings would also be on display. Take pics of them.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:54
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HEY GAL posted:"Geluesten lassen," so kind of? "Covet," "want to," "let themselves want to." I'm actually working right now on a chapter about how mercenaries think about their emotions, and I think it's exactly as you say: having what these people regard as normal human impulses is like walking around with a firearm on a hair-trigger, and you need to "pay attention to yourself" (they say this a lot) in order not to do something unfortunate. This "attention" isn't like "self-control," it's way more...reactive. Ideally, you notice a feeling and react to it, rather than controlling yourself so you don't have those feelings. It reminds me of the way early modern justice works--they can't prevent crime, or even catch most of it, but the people they do catch are made an example of with flamboyantly terrible punishments. I imagine the constant state of inebriation plays a big part in this state of mind.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:56
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Disinterested posted:You should see how ornate some of the crossbows, muskets and powder horns are in the collection It's the Early Modern equivalent of those ridiculously tacky golden AKs with saints on them the police always roll out after a drug bust.
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Jun 11, 2015 19:04
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ArchangeI posted:It's the Early Modern equivalent of those ridiculously tacky golden AKs with saints on them the police always roll out after a drug bust. Of course, from our modern perspective we treat them as works of exquisite art deserving of being put in a museum. I imagine that in 400-500 years, the Lord of War gold-plated AK will be behind glass with a plaque detailing its origin.
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Jun 11, 2015 19:10
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ArchangeI posted:It's the Early Modern equivalent of those ridiculously tacky golden AKs with saints on them the police always roll out after a drug bust. As you can see for Hegel's era, the guns can be as ridiculous as the outfits: http://wallacelive.wallacecollectio...sp=F&sp=T&sp=46 http://wallacelive.wallacecollectio...sp=F&sp=T&sp=47
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Jun 11, 2015 19:16
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Disinterested posted:As you can see for Hegel's era, the guns can be as ridiculous as the outfits: Your links are dead, bro. Disinterested posted:You should see how ornate some of the crossbows, muskets and powder horns are in the collection Well?  (These own! Thank you!)
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Jun 11, 2015 19:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:Gerald Bull was a Canadian artillery expert that worked on Project HARP, which stood for High Altitude Research Project. The aim of the project was to explore the possibility of using very large guns to shoot objects into space. The project ran from 1961 to 1966. The Project HARP gun was a 16-inch (410 mm) US Navy gun that was modified to a barrel length of 40m. At the time the theory was that Saddam wanted to be able to shell Europe or the US (possible with WMDs!) as a deterrent, rather than put stuff into space. Kind of like North Korea didn't get regime changed in the last decade or two because they have nukes.
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Jun 11, 2015 21:15
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feedmegin posted:Kind of like North Korea didn't get regime changed in the last decade or two because they have nukes.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:17
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Murgos posted:Its more likely that there is nothing there worth aggregating China over. North Korea exists because it's such a quagmire of human misery that nobody wants to wade in and claim it.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:25
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Murgos posted:Its more likely that there is nothing there worth aggregating China over. Its not totally that or they wouldnt have been part of the 'axis of evil' in the first place. Their nukes have definitely gotten them special treatment.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:30
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HEY GAL posted:"Geluesten lassen," so kind of? "Covet," "want to," "let themselves want to." I'm actually working right now on a chapter about how mercenaries think about their emotions, and I think it's exactly as you say: having what these people regard as normal human impulses is like walking around with a firearm on a hair-trigger, and you need to "pay attention to yourself" (they say this a lot) in order not to do something unfortunate. This "attention" isn't like "self-control," it's way more...reactive. Ideally, you notice a feeling and react to it, rather than controlling yourself so you don't have those feelings. It reminds me of the way early modern justice works--they can't prevent crime, or even catch most of it, but the people they do catch are made an example of with flamboyantly terrible punishments. Does it make me a bad person if I think that sounds a lot more relatable than the idea that you're never supposed to think bad thoughts? I mean, sure, your subjects seem like they're pretty bad at impulse control, but at least they acknowledge that the impulse exists.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:05
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tonberrytoby posted:In which direction does that thing shoot? It looks strange either way. Front towards enemy?
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Jun 12, 2015 00:53
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verybad posted:Does it make me a bad person if I think that sounds a lot more relatable than the idea that you're never supposed to think bad thoughts? I mean, sure, your subjects seem like they're pretty bad at impulse control, but at least they acknowledge that the impulse exists.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:59
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Can't believe I missed the Taiping Tianguo effortposts until just now. These are awesome P-Mack! I know a decent amount about the Rebellion but not really from a military history perspective, more the religious side and their interactions with British and American missionaries which isn't really the focus of this thread. I think you touched on this but contemporary Western coverage of the Taiping is really interesting because of the conflicting motives of missionaries and state powers. There's an editorial from an English newspaper in Shanghai after the war which espouses the British position that "despite the persistent claims of certain naive agitators (read: missionaries), the rebellion was clearly not religious (read: Christian) in character after all, and so the British military was justified in allying with the Qing to stamp them out even though lots of people asked us to side with the rebels". Lots of missionaries went to visit Nanjing thinking they could convert the rebels to their brand of Protestantism and kick off a Christian China, but they were inevitably turned off by how big the theological differences actually were. IMO the attitude of missionaries presages the American relationship with the Republic of China during the civil war and WW2 in some ways, especially the public enchantment with Chiang Kai-Shek's wife Soong May-Ling as a charming and thoroughly westernized Christian woman and the future of China. I'm looking forward to the Marxist historiography post, especially from Chinese sources because for a long time (maybe still today?) the official academic position on the rebellion depended on the current political push by the state in contemporary politics, where the Taiping were kind of a cipher for discussing the Communist revolution in general. It's also funny because of how insistently it denies the religious character of a movement whose leader's legitimacy derived from being the literal son of God, because historical materialism means no one would actually care about that  Have you ever read God's Chinese Son P-Mack? That's the source I know best, I haven't read the more recent book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom yet but it's apparently a really solid book that looks more at how the Rebellion related to Western powers. Frostwerks posted:It's 3 kingdoms era but do any of you chinese enthusiasts know anything about the stone sentinel maze? I know that it was and is a very popular literary symbol of Zhuge Liang's genius and Taoist sorcery in classical Chinese culture. There is an actual rock formation you can visit today that some people think is the ruins of the historical maze. Most accounts of the story emphasize magical elements, the idea being that Zhuge Liang placed the boulders of the maze in a powerful occult formation so that it would cause a storm when the enemy army entered. The incident is not mentioned in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, a relatively trustworthy (but also quite bland) source on the period, so make of that what you will.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:56
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100 Years Ago It's a bad day to be a civilian, but a good day to be a coffee grinder. Civilians in Galicia are catching it hard as the Russians thoroughly panic in the face of the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, the Jews unsurprisingly copping it worst of all. And it's being paired today with some stories from the Armenian genocide. Kenneth Best does his bit to lighten the mood by describing a macabre variation on the trench shooting competition, and a Royal Engineers major is the latest BEF man to go into Ypres to confiscate vital war materiel (cooking-stoves, coffee-grinders, etc) before it can be destroyed or captured by the enemy. Oh, and someone appears to have put Herbert Asquith's holiday snaps into a highly amusing place in the newspaper.
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Jun 12, 2015 11:34
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Kellsterik posted:Can't believe I missed the Taiping Tianguo effortposts until just now. These are awesome P-Mack! I know a decent amount about the Rebellion but not really from a military history perspective, more the religious side and their interactions with British and American missionaries which isn't really the focus of this thread. I think you touched on this but contemporary Western coverage of the Taiping is really interesting because of the conflicting motives of missionaries and state powers. There's an editorial from an English newspaper in Shanghai after the war which espouses the British position that "despite the persistent claims of certain naive agitators (read: missionaries), the rebellion was clearly not religious (read: Christian) in character after all, and so the British military was justified in allying with the Qing to stamp them out even though lots of people asked us to side with the rebels". Lots of missionaries went to visit Nanjing thinking they could convert the rebels to their brand of Protestantism and kick off a Christian China, but they were inevitably turned off by how big the theological differences actually were. IMO the attitude of missionaries presages the American relationship with the Republic of China during the civil war and WW2 in some ways, especially the public enchantment with Chiang Kai-Shek's wife Soong May-Ling as a charming and thoroughly westernized Christian woman and the future of China. Kellsterik posted:I'm looking forward to the Marxist historiography post, especially from Chinese sources because for a long time (maybe still today?) the official academic position on the rebellion depended on the current political push by the state in contemporary politics, where the Taiping were kind of a cipher for discussing the Communist revolution in general. It's also funny because of how insistently it denies the religious character of a movement whose leader's legitimacy derived from being the literal son of God, because historical materialism means no one would actually care about that Kellsterik posted:
Yeah, Spence is probably the first book I'd recommend, since the other general surveys in English, while excellent, are 40 years old and chock full of Wade-Giles. Platt is good too, since his limited scope of the second half of the war allows for a lot more detail.
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Jun 12, 2015 21:37
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I was just idly wondering how segregation in the US Army used to work, as you do, so of course I went to Wikipedia and found one of the best things I've found on there in a long, long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_segregation_in_the_United_States_Armed_Forces The whole page is a masterpiece of half-arsing the half of an arse that was there already, but the clear highlight of the thing:   I could spend weeks being sarcastic about that.
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jun 13, 2015 |
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Jun 12, 2015 23:50
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Ah yes, those European American Union officers.
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Jun 12, 2015 23:52
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Needs more citations.
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Jun 12, 2015 23:59
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Wikipedia is where knowledge goes to die.
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Jun 13, 2015 00:20
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SeanBeansShako posted:Ah yes, those European American Union officers.  Pea Ridge never5get 
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Jun 13, 2015 00:25
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 At least the lazy bastards could have written "The United States Navy is a navy" to be consistent.
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Jun 13, 2015 13:50
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Mildly irritated that for once I had this all ready to go on Saturday at 10am, and then the dratted forums fell over until after I had to go out  100 Years Ago Today we're paying short visits to Second Artois and the BEF's latest wizzo idea (it's actually not that bad, something does need to be done). However, the meat of today is with Louis Barthas, as we get to see that much as he likes to complain about everything, as a corporal he does have a very strong sense of duty and responsibility to the men of his squad. He may hate officers and their stupid orders, but he'll continue to soldier, protect his men, and get them through the madness as best he can. Unfortunately, today his best may not be good enough...
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Jun 13, 2015 21:25
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Perestroika posted:Presumably you wouldn't be shooting straight up, but rather at a sideways angle that would give it enough horizontal velocity to achieve most of a proper orbit. Put some stubby wings on it and it'd be basically an unpowered spaceplane. Presumably your maximum muzzle velocity is limited to the propagation speed of the propellant. Is this high enough to achieve orbit?
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Jun 14, 2015 00:32
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I imagine being one of the very few officers Barthas' liked and reading his memoirs would be a really  moment
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Jun 14, 2015 00:52
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V. Illych L. posted:I imagine being one of the very few officers Barthas' liked and reading his memoirs would be a really Unfortunately, they weren't published until fairly recently.
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Jun 14, 2015 01:02
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French publication was in 1978, so it's unlikely but not impossible. (He and the good Captain Hudelle knew each other through both being gigantic raving socialists in Peyriac.)
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Jun 14, 2015 01:11
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what are some good examples of weapons or general events in military history that were really ahead of their time?
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Jun 14, 2015 02:10
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