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my dad posted:Chattel slavery: Turns out that, yes, it's really bad. There's a saying in American history programs at the college level: If you know nothing about the American Civil War, you think it was about slavery. If you know a little about the American Civil War, you think it was a complex issue involving the rights of states relative to the federal government, social upheaval caused by industrialization, and a strain on the political system caused by rapid westward expansion. If you know a lot about the American Civil War, you know it was about slavery.
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Mar 8, 2017 20:12
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duh, there already was an African Hitler Speaking of facial hair, I never have understood Robert Mugabe's upper lip soul batch.
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Mar 8, 2017 20:33
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I suppose the French government was totally unaware of the whole optimal suffering/profit ratio, which was why they ended up passing laws to prohibit mistreatment of the slaves that the landowners got so angry at, they rose up in revolt, which ironically led to a slave uprising in favor of the monarchy. There were so many twists and turns in that season of the Revolutions podcast. It all ended with every white french human in Haiti getting executed and the island's economy in ruins because nobody was going to go through those brutal conditions farming sugarcane if they had literally any other option. Probably the worst way an abolition story could go while still being successful in ending slavery.
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Mar 8, 2017 21:36
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My copy of Peter Wilson's Thirty Years War arrived today. I look forward to the annual SMH conference so I can pester him to sign it.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:19
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fun fact you can probably also kill someone with the hardback
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Mar 9, 2017 00:20
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HEY GAIL posted:fun fact you can probably also kill someone with the hardback It's indeed quite massive, but I own bigger and heavier books. I think Tyerman's God's War is thicker and Tooze's two books are about the same size.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:25
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feedmegin posted:You are, ah, downplaying this a hell of a lot. No Battle of the Chesapeake (won entirely by the French, no yanks involved), no surrender of Cornwallis. No surrender of any British army ever that is anywhere near the coast. Commerce raiding is a thing but in and of itself it doesn't win wars; this is not 1940, Britain is not dependent on Atlantic commerce to survive, and merchants always bitch about wars with, generally speaking, little effect (see also New England and 1812, as previously mentioned). America did not have first rate ships of the line and France did. The difference matters. The Battle of the Chesapeake was essentially breaking the British blockade and replacing it with a French blockade to pin down Cornwallis's army. The defeat at Yorktown was not militarily critical, as the British still occupied most of the major colonial cities and outnumbered the French and American armies by three to one in-theater. Washington was convinced that, unless the French fleet coordinated with him to press the temporary advantage, the rebellion was all but doomed. The military situation at sea wasn't too bad for the British either - Rodney was able to smash the French in the West Indies, the Home Fleet was sufficient to keep the overly-timid Franco-Spanish fleet at bay and prevent invasion, and the troubling situation in India would have readily been solved by Rodney's squadrons. The war could have been won - except for the minor fact that the war had bankrupted the government - largely due to commerce raiding. The notion of commerce raiding as an "interesting secondary theater of war, useful but incapable of changing the outcome" is nothing but Mahanian bunk.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:49
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Death to those who disrespect Mahan.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:51
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Death to those who disrespect Mahan. Lots of death ensued for those who respected Mahan too much. See: Imperial Japan.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:57
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It's indeed quite massive, but I own bigger and heavier books. I think Tyerman's God's War is thicker and Tooze's two books are about the same size. large book, small cat
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Mar 9, 2017 01:07
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HEY GAIL posted:fun fact you can probably also kill someone with the hardback Is there a German translation and if so how many men are needed to carry it?
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Mar 9, 2017 01:34
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:My copy of Peter Wilson's Thirty Years War arrived today. I look forward to the annual SMH conference so I can pester him to sign it. I've got a Barnes and Noble gift card waiting to be used. Is this a good use for it?
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Mar 9, 2017 05:58
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VanSandman posted:I've got a Barnes and Noble gift card waiting to be used. Is this a good use for it? It is a very thick book with many pages and sources. e: I should clarify, I have not read it yet, it is sitting on a bookcase while I plow through this 14,000+ page fantasy series. ET looks like a solid read though. Corsair Pool Boy fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 06:19
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the price/pound ratio is p good
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Mar 9, 2017 06:23
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Koramei posted:jesus christ Part of the calculation was that yellow fever was endemic in Haiti and it killed a massive proportion of people who were infected. Like, when Napoleon sent an army to reclaim Haiti 31,000 went in and two years later 8,000 came out, with the overwhelming majority of fatalities due to the fever. But that was under military conditions during a famine triggered by the war, so I don't think it's entirely representative of the real odds of death. But living in the tropics was commonly regarded by Europeans as akin to a death sentence, which gives you some idea of how high the potential profits must have been for white people to go there at all. Now, if you survive yellow fever you acquire permanent immunity, and it was also endemic to some parts of Africa. So if you are importing adult African slaves from those parts, they have a decent chance they survived YF in childhood and will arrive with immunity. But that's a crapshoot, immunity was not well understood, and there are plenty of other tropical diseases that can kill them just as dead, especially given the local conditions and diet. The idea was to bring people over and work them as hard as possible before their first mosquito season, and if they survived, to carry on working them just as hard until they died.
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Mar 9, 2017 06:32
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Schenck v. U.S. posted:There was an important element of continuous innovation that is often obscured in discussion of slavery. Historians coming from the old-school Whig perspective of continuous human progress liked to think of New World slavery as some kind of historical throwback or aberration. And apologists for slavery also justified themselves by drawing the distinction that they were benevolent aristocrats rather than ruthless capitalists. More recently there has been some great work on slavery as a capitalist enterprise--e.g. efficiency moves like mid-19th-century Southern US cotton planters adopting cultivars that were taller, making the movements required to pick the boll faster and easier to boost production. Have you read or encountered "This Vast Southern Empire"? I picked it up the other week and a lot of its argument centers around how slavery was seen by its supporters as the future of the US economy, in a kind of triumphalist narrative. The paternalism was there as well of course but it was also viewed in extremely cold-blooded geopolitical terms. For example, the southerners heavily criticized Brazilian and Caribbean slavery for its high mortality, more because they feared it would provoke Great Britain's abolitionist streak into an aggressive foreign policy than any concern for slaves' wellbeing.
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Mar 9, 2017 10:47
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When did English counts and dukes stop making war against each other?Is it illegal?
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Mar 9, 2017 11:03
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Baron Porkface posted:When did English counts and dukes stop making war against each other?Is it illegal? 'English counts' aren't actually a thing. Dukes, well, I guess the Wars of the Roses? Or the English Civil War? I mean, it might technically be 'illegal' but if you're in the middle of a war already that kind of goes by the wayside.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:43
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Gnoman posted:The Battle of the Chesapeake was essentially breaking the British blockade and replacing it with a French blockade to pin down Cornwallis's army. The defeat at Yorktown was not militarily critical, as the British still occupied most of the major colonial cities Politically critical, though, obviously; and it happened, as you just pointed out, because the French were able to blockade Cornwallis's army. No French Navy, no Yorktown. quote:The notion of commerce raiding as an "interesting secondary theater of war, useful but incapable of changing the outcome" is nothing but Mahanian bunk. The only government that went bankrupt from the War of Independence was France (it was one of the major causes of the French Revolution) and for that matter America came pretty close - take a look at the rate of inflation in the dollar during/after the war. If you're asserting Britain mainly ended the war because of commerce raiding, you're going to have to provide some actual evidence to back that up, I think.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:52
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Schenck v. U.S. posted:Part of the calculation was that yellow fever was endemic in Haiti and it killed a massive proportion of people who were infected. Like, when Napoleon sent an army to reclaim Haiti 31,000 went in and two years later 8,000 came out, with the overwhelming majority of fatalities due to the fever. But that was under military conditions during a famine triggered by the war, so I don't think it's entirely representative of the real odds of death. But living in the tropics was commonly regarded by Europeans as akin to a death sentence, which gives you some idea of how high the potential profits must have been for white people to go there at all. Imagine if people understood insectbourne diseases at that time and used mosquito nets, you could have had the deaths of a whole bunch of slaves prevented by their owners providing these nePFFFFFFFFFhhahahahahahahahahahaha, sorry man, couldn't keep a straight face there.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:25
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feedmegin posted:and for that matter America came pretty close - take a look at the rate of inflation in the dollar during/after the war This has more to do with a chaotic DIY Bronze Age financial system than actual spending.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:33
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MikeCrotch posted:Imagine if people understood insectbourne diseases at that time and used mosquito nets, you could have had the deaths of a whole bunch of slaves prevented by their owners providing these nePFFFFFFFFFhhahahahahahahahahahaha, sorry man, couldn't keep a straight face there. Don't know about you but I like to keep my valuable property living.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:39
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Yeah there's a really crucial point here about how you read history: people in the past had less access to knowledge than we did, and they grew up with very different cultural norms shaping their morality, but they absolutely weren't stupid. Plantation owners would absolutely have paid for mosquito nets if you demonstrated that the extra value of labour you got out of your slave was worth more than the (reusable!) net.
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Mar 9, 2017 14:23
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As a counterpoint, which is sort of important, I feel. The Nazis refused to feed their slave laborers decently even when people pointed out that it would have made sense to do so.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:09
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HEY GAIL posted:fun fact you can probably also kill someone with the hardback I keep reading this as hardtack. feedmegin posted:'English counts' aren't actually a thing. Dukes, well, I guess the Wars of the Roses? Or the English Civil War? I mean, it might technically be 'illegal' but if you're in the middle of a war already that kind of goes by the wayside. It stopped after the Civil War era yeah for well obvious reasons, also for small scale thing like duels too mid 19th century when Prince Albert pressed Wellington to make being anywhere near a duel a army career killing move after getting fed up reading about scandals over them.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:15
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Have you read or encountered "This Vast Southern Empire"? I picked it up the other week and a lot of its argument centers around how slavery was seen by its supporters as the future of the US economy, in a kind of triumphalist narrative. The paternalism was there as well of course but it was also viewed in extremely cold-blooded geopolitical terms. For example, the southerners heavily criticized Brazilian and Caribbean slavery for its high mortality, more because they feared it would provoke Great Britain's abolitionist streak into an aggressive foreign policy than any concern for slaves' wellbeing. I've read this as well. It's very good, if anyone is on the fence.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:18
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Kemper Boyd posted:As a counterpoint, which is sort of important, I feel. Yeah, but the point there was to kill the people, extracting labor was actually just a cherry on top
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Mar 9, 2017 15:19
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I feel at the very least theres going to be some number crunching on cost of nets vs amount of extra labour gained, and that considering slaves didn't have a great life expectancy anyway, for a bunch of owners they would have made the decision that nets weren't worth it.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:30
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One thing that stuck out in Trin's excellent ongoing WW1 wargame, is how absolutely huge a pain in the rear end it is to maneuver within cities. This had me thinking: Was there much urban fighting in WW1? Considering how brutal the initial maneuvers were, one supposes city fighting would suck just as much as it did in WW2 and since.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:33
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Baron Porkface posted:When did English counts and dukes stop making war against each other?Is it illegal? There was a big crackdown on private armies during the reign of Richard II (1377-1400). This was pushed by the house of commons, and the King, and opposed by high aristocrats, as you might expect. The Battle of Nibley Green in 1470 is usually said be the last time two private armies fought, for no other reason than the economic interests of their lords. But honestly, you can dig up cases of land and inheritance disputes being settled by group violence up until the present day, so I don't really know how the definition is agreed on. If a rebellious aristocrat raises a force, and it fights a pitched battle against a group of loyalists, raised and commanded by another local landlord, is that a fight between two feudal armies, or between rebels and a local militia? Because that's a scenario that played out well into the 18th c in England.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:38
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Kemper Boyd posted:The Nazis refused to feed their slave laborers decently even when people pointed out that it would have made sense to do so. MikeCrotch posted:I feel at the very least theres going to be some number crunching on cost of nets vs amount of extra labour gained, and that considering slaves didn't have a great life expectancy anyway, for a bunch of owners they would have made the decision that nets weren't worth it. evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 15:40
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evil_bunnY posted:They weren't motivated by greed. Not all of them were, but greed was a huge factor in a lot of the way the Nazi state played out. There was a FUCKTON of money to be made on making GBS threads on the jews, between slave labor, expropriation of Jewish property, and all the assorted contracts that were involved in the endeavor. For every die hard antisemite there was another guy who didn't particularly care but was along for the ride if it got him rich, doubly so if you talk about the higher levels of politics and society. edit : even more so if you expand out that kind of lovely behavior to not just be about Jews, but about loving up the untermensch for profit in general. A lot of broke-rear end aristocrats looked on annexing the western chunks of Poland as a great chance to re-establish the Junker system. You know von Stauffenberg? The guy who tried to blow up Hitler? Played by Tom Cruise in that movie? Yeah, he wrote a letter back to his brother (cousin? Male family member) in 1939 gushing about how great the land in Poland was, how they could rebuild their family finance, and how the Poles were brutes but with a firm hand could be made into capable serfs. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 15:48
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Mr Enderby posted:There was a big crackdown on private armies during the reign of Richard II (1377-1400). This was pushed by the house of commons, and the King, and opposed by high aristocrats, as you might expect. Would it be illegal for Prince Harry and the Duke of Norfolk to raise armies and hit each other with swords?
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Mar 9, 2017 15:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Not all of them were, but greed was a huge factor in a lot of the way the Nazi state played out. There was a FUCKTON of money to be made on making GBS threads on the jews, between slave labor, expropriation of Jewish property, and all the assorted contracts that were involved in the endeavor. For every die hard antisemite there was another guy who didn't particularly care but was along for the ride if it got him rich, doubly so if you talk about the higher levels of politics and society. Baron Porkface posted:Would it be illegal for Prince Harry and the Duke of Norfolk to raise armies and hit each other with swords?
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Mar 9, 2017 15:58
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evil_bunnY posted:Urgh. I'm pretty sure parliament has monopoly on contracting force, private or not.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:05
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Tias posted:I'm pretty sure parliament has monopoly on contracting force, private or not. Unless the Queen decides she's had enough of this 'parliament' thing, raises her standard and forms a Commission of Array, of course...
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Mar 9, 2017 16:23
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evil_bunnY posted:Urgh. That would make keeping the monarchy around worth it imo
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Mar 9, 2017 16:26
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Tias posted:I'm pretty sure parliament has monopoly on contracting force, private or not. Technically, there is one private army in the UK (& I think in all Europe), owned by the Duke of Atholl. But it's ceremonial and made up of his staff and pals, about 80 people, unlikely to threaten the crown or democracy. The right was granted to the 6th Duke of Atholl by Queen Victoria in the 1840s. It's mostly a touristy thing these days, they are based at Blair Atholl on the road between Inverness & Perth, so a convenient stop if driving north. The Atholl Highlanders did actually perform guard duties further back in its history, including looking after the future Japanese Emperor Hirohito when he came to Scotland in 1921. Not really relevant, but a fun detail.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:39
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Victorian 19th century volunteers and militia are their own crazy thing though.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:44
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Ainsley McTree posted:That would make keeping the monarchy around worth it imo When I want to imagine Canada taking a Brighter turn, I imagine a Queen or King coming to Canada and using her official residence here, because they are pissed off about the state of things And they use all of their powers to sack the existing parliament, reform democracy, and get the civil service on a good footing again (In Canada, all civil servants serve at the whim of the Monarch, so they could just blanket-fire the lot of them)
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Mar 9, 2017 16:57
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