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Yeah, that's definitely a thing. Revolutions are always harder to pull off than coups, palace coups or military ones, since like you said, you just cut the head off the snake and take it's place, but the general life of most of the people in the area aren't affected at all. It gets really funny in places like Tsarist Russia or China where they'd be leading rebellions against the advisors of the emperor (or Tsar), but not the emperor himself. They'd basically try to convince everyone that it was only a couple people to get rid of and then everything would get better. China is particularly funny because of the mandate of heaven, which said that anything that happens is because of the emperor, so if there was a bunch of famines and rebellions, then maybe it's time to get a new emperor. As opposed to the marxist view, which is that those conditions alone result in increasing combativeness and eventual change.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:49
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zoux posted:Ottomen, surely.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:51
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https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HITLER%2C%20ADOLF_0003.pdf The CIA seems to have declassified this, and newspapers in South America and Spain loving exploded. I only found out about this because a friend of mine messaged me a couple of hours ago saying "See, told you Hitler didn't commit suicide".
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Oct 31, 2017 16:57
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feedmegin posted:Pretty much - and if they'd decided to attack somewhere else, presumably the Russians would have spotted that too and built up there instead. I guess the best viable alternative would have been for the Germans to go on the defensive, but that rather requires Hitler to not be Hitler. The Germans had other opportunities for attack elsewhere along the salient, but none of these would have resulted in an enormous pocket that took out a huge portion of the Soviet army. It was taking the option of the powerful-yet-obvious haymaker over the more sensible jab.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:58
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Tevery Best posted:I'd say at least a hundred years. The Romans were absolutely notorious for how much they disdained everything that was new, so unless you could somehow claim gunpowder was invented by Archimedes or someone equally ancient, they'd just scoff and tut-tut for about a century. this is pretty much the opposite of what the Romans are known for (when it comes to the military, at least)
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Oct 31, 2017 16:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:Eh, I think it's simpler than that and you don't really need to invoke anything unique about Chinese culture that tamps down on innovation (which just has a very orientalist ring to it). There are more specific, unique to China discussions about why everything went to poo poo in the 19th century. But those arguments make far fewer claims about aspects being intrinsic to Chinese culture, and much more about the specific shortcomings of the Qing system and the people running it at the time. WoodrowSkillson posted:Guys, muskets are infinitely superior to nearly any other type of distance weapon. There is a reason drat near everyone abandoned whatever else they were using in favor of them as soon as they could, outside of rare instances like horse archers or whatever that prevented it. if you give the Romans matchlocks, they will have pike and shot in about 5 years since pikes are literally all over the place and they just need to figure out how to keep the musketeers safe from cavalry. On a pedantic note, I'm not sure the Romans would have developed pike specifically, mostly because there's a reason they didn't use it or an equivalent in actual history. At least, not until well into the Imperial era. There just weren't a lot of effective cavalry forces they had to contend with, and the scutum and gladius worked better against the kinds of forces they did fight. They'd probably keep those for their heavy infantry. I agree that the bigger question is who they'd give muskets to. Pre-Marian reforms, they'd be an obvious way to improve the effectiveness of the velites, especially since the way the velites were used is pretty close to early gunpowder tactics anyways. Post-Marian, it's hard to see them handing them out to auxiliaries, so I'd guess they'd effectively reconstitute the velites from regular legionnaires. HEY GUNS posted:because from cannon ----> musket there are a lot of intermediate steps and you can't use any of them on a horse (although you can use the final step on a horse)
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Oct 31, 2017 17:04
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Nebakenezzer posted:So am I crazy or do I remember various dynasties being overthrown by outside invaders, who set themselves up as the new jack emperors According to the "official" dynasty count, China has been ruled by foreigners twice, the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in the 13th century and the Manchu Qing dynasty from the mid-17th century to the early 20th century. There might be more powerful foreigners that had a lot of power but they aren't considered to be real dynasties by the arbitrary measurement that is used to determine what is and isn't a dynasty.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:04
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Azran posted:https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HITLER%2C%20ADOLF_0003.pdf loving lol at anyone taking that seriously. It reads to me like someone telling the CIA a story in order to get in their good graces or become a paid informant or whatever. Nebakenezzer posted:So am I crazy or do I remember various dynasties being overthrown by outside invaders, who set themselves up as the new jack emperors Sure, but this doesn't happen every day. The final time that happened was when Jurchen invaders set up the Qing dynasty in the early 17th century. After that there's really no outside challenges until Europeans gently caress everything up in the 19th. REmember: Europeans went from basically no handheld gunpowder weapons to fielding gunpowder-only armies in the span of about 200 years. These advances were moving quickly in the early modern period, and if you got stable and didn't adopt the latest stuff for a century you could end up pretty hosed.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:05
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It is hard to say what caused China to fall so far behind from its original position. Part of it was that when the Europeans came around they remembered just how much the Chinese looked down on them and so took great delight in doing all they could to poo poo on them. Another factor was that even with change of leadership the relative structure of the world around them remained unchanged as all that happened was that a new set of people were now the elite who were quite happy in keeping the traditional institutions going as long as they were on top. Add to that was the general lack of desperation, as in the European powers were struggling to figure out a way to get stronger and to deal with a lack of resources that China never had to worry about. So when the resource gap started to close it would have still been manageable but then the industrial revolution occurred and the sheer amount of goods that the Western Powers could create overwhelmed anything that the Chinese could field.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:22
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HEY GUNS posted:ottopeople osmanli
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Oct 31, 2017 17:23
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The CIA also reported on Soviet 45-ton Sherman variants, Tiger clones, and IS-9 tanks with 152 mm guns. So, uh, maybe take that report with a grain of salt.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:24
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Comrade Gorbash posted:On a pedantic note, I'm not sure the Romans would have developed pike specifically, mostly because there's a reason they didn't use it or an equivalent in actual history. At least, not until well into the Imperial era. There just weren't a lot of effective cavalry forces they had to contend with, and the scutum and gladius worked better against the kinds of forces they did fight. They'd probably keep those for their heavy infantry. They used Hoplite phalanxes until the end of the 300s BC, and then fought Macedonian successor states for hundreds of years. They never even got rid of the Triarii until the Marian reforms at the end of the 100s BC. They were also allied with states using pikes. The concept of "put the guns behind/between the dudes with long spears, like those ones littering the eastern half of the empire" would not take long to figure out.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:28
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I think the Chinese just got unlucky and the Europeans conversely got lucky. If we're talking about 'stopped innovating' Europeans would also sometimes be stagnant for hundreds of years at a time. EDIT: There might be systematic factors but ultimately it's just a coincidence, and it's a coincidence that we are looking at it from this time period now, as opposed to say, in 100 years time where we might view the whole episode as a blib. "Yes, yes, the Europeans were first to the industrial revolution but inevitably the technology transferred to other nations and the inherent advantages of Asia meant they came back into prominence." Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 17:29
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Fangz posted:I think the Chinese just got unlucky and the Europeans conversely got lucky. If we're talking about 'stopped innovating' Europeans would also sometimes be stagnant for hundreds of years at a time. This. The Industrial Revolution completely revolutionized how much a nation could produce to the point that you either figured out how to do it or you got squashed.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:32
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WoodrowSkillson posted:They used Hoplite phalanxes until the end of the 300s BC, and then fought Macedonian successor states for hundreds of years. They never even got rid of the Triarii until the Marian reforms at the end of the 100s BC. They were also allied with states using pikes. The concept of "put the guns behind/between the dudes with long spears, like those ones littering the eastern half of the empire" would not take long to figure out.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:34
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:osmanli oswomanli?   
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Oct 31, 2017 17:42
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 This is just how it's gonna be from now on huh
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Oct 31, 2017 17:46
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Azran posted:https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HITLER%2C%20ADOLF_0003.pdf I like that even the intro on that is like "lol check this poo poo out"
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Oct 31, 2017 17:48
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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HEY GUNS posted:ottopeople Ottomatons?
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Oct 31, 2017 17:52
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WoodrowSkillson posted:They used Hoplite phalanxes until the end of the 300s BC, and then fought Macedonian successor states for hundreds of years. They never even got rid of the Triarii until the Marian reforms at the end of the 100s BC. They were also allied with states using pikes. The concept of "put the guns behind/between the dudes with long spears, like those ones littering the eastern half of the empire" would not take long to figure out. So unless we're talking about the period when they're effectively using the pike already, I don't see an intrinsic reason the Romans would switch to it rather than just adding muskets to their existing system. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 17:57
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European cavalry of the 1400s or whatever was more advanced than the cavalry that the Romans faced I believe, although I don't feel nearly confident enough in my knowledge to really compare their effectiveness against blocks of muskets.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:04
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zoux posted:
Its...how it has always been. The event in question, for reference. I actually agree that the war was ultimately caused by an inability to compromise (and incompetence on both sides of the issue). He's also right that Americans back then viewed the relationship between states and the federal government very differently than we do now. It is more than a little irritating that he didn't acknowledge that, though both sides were indeed fighting in "good faith", that one side had a clear moral high ground.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:05
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Brute Squad posted:Buddy of mine posted this, figured you might be able to help. My googling has turned up little. Well, if its WW2 its not American, unless its from a some undocumented group.  I can't seem to find anything even closely resembling it.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:06
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I think the gymnastics you need to make to call it "an inability to compromise" would put literally all wars in that category.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:08
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What's funny is the number of things literally called "The 'X' Compromise" relating to causes of the Civil War. Three-fifths, Missouri, 1850 off the top of my head. And yet..
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Oct 31, 2017 18:16
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Fangz posted:I think the gymnastics you need to make to call it "an inability to compromise" would put literally all wars in that category. Well, most wars are exactly that. The ACW was pretty extreme in that regard though - it was wound around the political/cultural/economic differences between regions in a way that isn't usually seen in wars between nation states. It was also kind of unique in that there was a solid century leadup to hostilities where any number of potentially useful compromise measures could've been tried and implemented, but weren't, and the measures that were put into place tended to exacerbate the issues rather than solve them. Note: this is not equivocating between the sides
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Oct 31, 2017 18:18
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zoux posted:What's funny is the number of things literally called "The 'X' Compromise" relating to causes of the Civil War. Three-fifths, Missouri, 1850 off the top of my head. And yet.. With everything surrounding the lead up to the war it is clear that the only compromise that would have stopped the war from starting would have been to enshrine slavery in the constitution and change the 3/5's compromise to something like the 5/3s' compromise so every person in the south, be they slave or freeman was worth 5/3s of a vote compared to anyone up north.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:21
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Azran posted:https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HITLER%2C%20ADOLF_0003.pdf Some SS guy who's first name for some reason is Hitler and surname is Adolf.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:25
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Hunt11 posted:With everything surrounding the lead up to the war it is clear that the only compromise that would have stopped the war from starting would have been to enshrine slavery in the constitution and change the 3/5's compromise to something like the 5/3s' compromise so every person in the south, be they slave or freeman was worth 5/3s of a vote compared to anyone up north. This. The South didn’t secede over any particular action taken by the federal government. They seceded when Lincoln was elected because he could have tried to ban slavery. The only compromise the South would have taken to avoid war was one that permanently ended the slave debate in their favor.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:42
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There's a whole book about the subject of why China seemed to slip and wind up in a disadvantageous situation compared to the Europeans by the time of the Opium War called Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, and it's a pretty good read. It's a topic that inspires a lot of nationalist/regionalist/racist biases, but I think the book does a pretty good job attempting to mitigate them. It establishes a pattern of sometimes when society builds up enough, it collapses and goes into decay, and China was going through a period of decay while at the same time Europe was going through a boom because it was benefiting from the discovery of the Americas (all the scholarly innovation in the world won't invent the potato, or the sheer amount of new resources that became available) and the invention of the steam engine (which I remember having a bit more of a nebulous explanation, I think it summed up to labor being cheaper in China so they didn't go through the initial steps of the steam engine where the principles were used to pump water out of mines).
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Oct 31, 2017 18:48
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It was t even a fear that Lincoln would end slavery. The republicans were against spreading slavery. The fear was that if western states were admitted as free they would be outnumbered in the senate and eventually, decades down the road, slavery would be legislated away. It wasn't a fear of Lincoln ending things, it was a fear of congress doing it decades down the road. gently caress Lincoln only came around to emancipation as a way to try and strong arm the south back in. That's the real irony of all this. For the south the war was 100% about slavery but for the north it was way more about preserving the union with emancipation tacked on as a pressure to peacefully end the rebellion and the 14 th amendment a reaction to the reality that emerged as the union army released the vast majority of Americas slaves.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:49
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When Sumner was being beaten almost to death on the floor of Congress, he should have said "wait, I'll meet you halfway"
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Oct 31, 2017 18:49
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chitoryu12 posted:This. This really isn't true until very late in the timeline of American slavery, maybe the mid-1840s or so. This unsurprisingly coincides with the explosion in the value and quantity of the cash crops most slaves were used to cultivate. Looking at the way the slavery argument changes during this period is really fascinating. Prior to the mid 19th century even slaveowners (eg, our hypocritical founding fathers) considered slaves to be more of an irritant than critical to their way of life...they were still valuable, and useful, but weren't the license-to-print-money that they'd become a half century on. Once the money really started flowing, the southern position on slaves changed incredibly quickly: now, slavery was an important and honorable institution, critical to their way of life and culture, the best way to take care of the blacks, and so on. Point being, it was only at that point that something like compensated abolition became totally unviable. Had they aggressively addressed the slavery issue 50 years earlier, it wouldn't have been cost-prohibitive, nor would it have been so hotly contested by the planter class.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:00
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Well, if its WW2 its not American, unless its from a some undocumented group. Yeah, I just went through over 2000 insignias and none of them were a match. Either its an undocumented unit or a custom patch.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:01
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SlothfulCobra posted:There's a whole book about the subject of why China seemed to slip and wind up in a disadvantageous situation compared to the Europeans by the time of the Opium War called Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, and it's a pretty good read. China wasn't isolated from the Columbian exchange at all, they grew plenty of potatos and it helped increase settlement in backwater mountainous regions.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:07
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Aside from slavery, the south seceded for a series of complex reasons and differences, that if you examine independently, were all because of slavery. I think the biggest incident that highlights just how different the north and south had become culturally was the caning of senator Charles Sumner, where a southerner brutally beat a northerner for a perceived slight on his kin. Up in the north, they were horrified, but down in the south, it was seen as all good and honorable, all part of the absurd way that southern honor had developed, which I think slavery played a big part of. And then the slight that Sumner made against the southerner's kin was in a speech against admitting Kansas as a slave state, so it all comes full circle.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:That's the real irony of all this. For the south the war was 100% about slavery but for the north it was way more about preserving the union with emancipation tacked on as a pressure to peacefully end the rebellion and the 14 th amendment a reaction to the reality that emerged as the union army released the vast majority of Americas slaves. And that was something palpable to liberal thinking people elsewhere in the world at the time. All the Gladstonian liberals in the British cabinet were all split about the issue politically 'well yes slavery is very bad but self-determination is also good...' until the proclamation, and then everyone is unanimously pro-Union rather than fence sitting. In fact, before the proclamation, various anti-slavery campaigners in the UK are in communication with Union officials like Lincoln and Sumner saying 'can you please make this explicitly about anti-slavery on your end so we can mobilise British support for the Union and so you can stop whining about the British state's neutrality'.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:08
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SeanBeansShako posted:Some SS guy who's first name for some reason is Hitler and surname is Adolf. 
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Oct 31, 2017 19:13
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bewbies posted:(eg, our hypocritical founding fathers) https://twitter.com/BrianSchoeneman/status/925385972296159232 Hamilton being one of the few FFs you can't say this about, but he's hot right now so gotta make sure you invoke him. But yeah you can say similar things about many of the other founders which should be a hmmmm moment not a double-down moment.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:21
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The problem with a lot of the "what was the war about" argument is that it presupposes that it can only be about whatever white people thought it was about, marginalizing the role of black Americans to whom it was very much about slavery practically from day one.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:24
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