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Squalid posted:Interesting, have you seen this youtube channel, which has a series on processing nettles? It's very good, she puts a lot of effort into researching how to do accurate recreations I haven't seen that so that's interesting, thanks. She just goes ahead and removes the fibres without retting first, that's surprising to me. I guess it works fine if you're making cord or something.
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Sep 5, 2020 04:57
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Koramei posted:I wouldn't be surprised if it was different in Japan (sexual norms were pretty different there), but it definitely way preceded Christianity as a bad thing in most of East Asia. In Joseon Korea, lesbians were punished with up to (iirc) 80 strikes with a cudgel, which is like the third most severe punishment given out. Meanwhile lesbianism was technically completely legal in Victorian Britain. Most people didn't even realise it was a thing.
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Sep 5, 2020 13:21
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Squalid posted:i actually read not that long ago that weaving was one of the most economically valuable trades in China, and this made women very valuable too. So I wouldn't be surprised if lower ranking imperial concubines ended up spending a lot of time on that. Makes sense, wasn't silk like stupid-valuable to the point where some Basileus sent monks east to steal the worms or some poo poo?
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Sep 5, 2020 13:22
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feedmegin posted:Meanwhile lesbianism was technically completely legal in Victorian Britain. Most people didn't even realise it was a thing.
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Sep 5, 2020 13:29
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Grevling posted:I haven't seen that so that's interesting, thanks. She just goes ahead and removes the fibres without retting first, that's surprising to me. I guess it works fine if you're making cord or something. I forget if she explains this somewhere, but for this project she does not rett the fibers for very specific reasons. That is she is trying to recreate specific pre-historical textiles based on archaeological finds. And apparently the earliest material evidence suggests even for textiles fibres were not retted. In some of the videos she talks a bit about the research and she will provide sources, although she never goes much in-depth outside of the specific process she is demonstrating
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Sep 5, 2020 13:36
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Schadenboner posted:Makes sense, wasn't silk like stupid-valuable to the point where some Basileus sent monks east to steal the worms or some poo poo? Yes, as I recall, it was Justinian who sent two monks with hollow canes (you screwed the two parts together I assume) over to China, where they were able to smuggle silk worm eggs back to Constantinople. The worms themselves could not be smuggled, because they would die in transit. The end result was that the ERE had a silk monopoly on the rest of Europe for the next few centuries, allowing them to use the massive trade profits to preserve the empire when everyone was attacking on all sides. They would fund things like Islamic pretenders to the various thrones, minority religious groups (usually branches of Islam) and etc to distract the Caliphates and keep their attention away from attacking the Empire (you could say modern Russian style hybrid warfare was invented by the ERE). They would always try to bribe away a foreign army that was raiding their lands before actually engaging them in battle (which was a last resort, as battle was more expensive than bribery, plus losing a single soldier in battle was a huge deal, as each man took three years of training to become a capable combatant; they had a very strong "no man left behind" policy due to this high cost per soldier as well). Money was basically not a problem (aside from currency devaluation, which was usually fixed via issuing a new type of currency) for the ERE until 1204, when they lost control of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade. Cetea fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Sep 5, 2020 |
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Sep 5, 2020 13:49
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Cetea posted:ERE *ducks*
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Sep 5, 2020 13:52
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On a side note, it'll be interesting to see how the public will see the term Byzantium in the near future as well, as in academic circles they mostly refer to it as the Eastern Roman Empire these days (and there's usually a 50 year delay or something between academic acceptance and popular culture in general). Byzantium was a pretty distinct early (pre Roman) Greek colony located in (or rather under) modern Istanbul, so using that term to refer to the ERE just doesn't make too much sense, especially as they never used it themselves in medieval times.
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Sep 5, 2020 13:58
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I just don't understand why the EREs flex about being the longest continuation of the Roman Empire when they fell in  E: Empirechat always reminds me of this piece from the (awesome and meta-canonical, gently caress you Brian) Dune Encyclopedia:  Schadenboner fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Sep 5, 2020 |
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Sep 5, 2020 14:04
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There's no flexing involved, people are just looking at historical facts (plus the ERE as a Great Power ended in 1204, and continued to exist as a rump state till 1453 or 1461 if you consider the Komnenian Empire of Trebizond to be a legitimate continuation). The Holy Roman Empire is an interesting state because of the man behind its rise, Charlemagne knew he has no legitimacy as a claimant to the WRE (which had been dead for centuries by his time, as the division of the Empire had been abolished), but at the time in Europe, you couldn't possibly be legitimate unless you were a Roman Emperor of some kind, else everyone would just see you as yet another barbarian king, which obviously he did not want. He came up with the union of Church and State as we understand it in medieval terms, when he had the Bishop of Rome crown him Emperor of the Romans on the 25th of December, 800 (this is also the reason we have Christmas on that specific date, previously there was no set standard, it was just around the Winter Solstice). The legal reason he used for doing this was that as the ERE's Emperor at the time was a woman, this could not possibly be right, as women could not rule (this was the accepted in the West by people of Germanic culture, but not so by the ERE, who were already used to women being co-Emperors by this time, so there was little barrier left for a woman to be sole Emperor), so he could take the throne which was 'empty' in his eyes. Obviously the ERE did not agree with this, but at the time they didn't have the resources to really do anything about it. The Emperor at the time, Irene, tried to marry Charlemagne in order to resolve the political division, but I do not remember the reason why that fell through; I'd have to do some research to find that out. In turn, Charlemagne used his power as Emperor to elevate the Bishop of Rome to the position of Pope, and the first among the Pentarchy (at least in the eyes of the West). The terminology was important, as he did not declare himself Roman Emperor; he acknowledged that he was a man, with the authority of an Emperor, who ruled over people who did still consider themselves Roman at that time, but was not a Roman himself. This was a pretty clever diplomatic move as it retained open diplomatic relationships with the Eastern Roman Empire (still acknowledged by all at the time to be the legal Roman Empire), while establishing his authority over the West. So by this extension, while the HRE's neighbours acknowledged it as an Empire, only the Pope really saw them as the Western Roman Empire, everyone else like the Kingdom of West Francia and etc just treated it as a Germanic Empire diplomatically. So if you were to go by a scoring system, with the old Classical Roman Empire as a 10/10 Roman Empire, IMO the ERE would be 9.5/10, the Holy Roman Empire would be a 5/10 (as even their title for their Emperor does not say that he is a Roman Emperor, though they do get some points for using most of the Roman legal code), while the Ottoman Empire would score pretty high at around 6/10 (Qayser-i Rûm, or Caesar of Rome, was one of Mehmed's primary titles, and he himself is a direct descendant of Alexios Komnenos, who was one of the best of the Eastern Roman Emperors, plus preserved most of the laws and etc.) The Russian Empire would get a pretty decent 4/10 as well given that they did take in the religion of Rome, plus married into the last Imperial family and got the claim that way. Hell, you could even score the modern USA at a 3/10 given all the nods they give to Rome, with the Senate, Capitol, building D.C on seven hills, and a ton of other homages. Bottom line is though, of all of the above, only the ERE was seen as a legal continuation of the Roman Empire by the world at large; the Ottomans, HRE, Russian Empire and etc could never get the world to really take their claims seriously. Cetea fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Sep 5, 2020 |
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Sep 5, 2020 14:25
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feedmegin posted:Meanwhile lesbianism was technically completely legal in Victorian Britain. Most people didn't even realise it was a thing. Don't use -ism, it's not a beleif or a political stance. It's really dehumanising
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Sep 5, 2020 16:32
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Cetea posted:There's no flexing involved, people are just looking at historical facts (plus the ERE as a Great Power ended in 1204, and continued to exist as a rump state till 1453 or 1461 if you consider the Komnenian Empire of Trebizond to be a legitimate continuation). The Holy Roman Empire is an interesting state because of the man behind its rise, Charlemagne knew he has no legitimacy as a claimant to the WRE (which had been dead for centuries by his time, as the division of the Empire had been abolished), but at the time in Europe, you couldn't possibly be legitimate unless you were a Roman Emperor of some kind, else everyone would just see you as yet another barbarian king, which obviously he did not want. He came up with the union of Church and State as we understand it in medieval terms, when he had the Bishop of Rome crown him Emperor of the Romans on the 25th of December, 800 (this is also the reason we have Christmas on that specific date, previously there was no set standard, it was just around the Winter Solstice). The legal reason he used for doing this was that as the ERE's Emperor at the time was a woman, this could not possibly be right, as women could not rule (this was the accepted in the West by people of Germanic culture, but not so by the ERE, who were already used to women being co-Emperors by this time, so there was little barrier left for a woman to be sole Emperor), so he could take the throne which was 'empty' in his eyes. Obviously the ERE did not agree with this, but at the time they didn't have the resources to really do anything about it. The Emperor at the time, Irene, tried to marry Charlemagne in order to resolve the political division, but I do not remember the reason why that fell through; I'd have to do some research to find that out. I really do appreciate that my low-skill shitposting results in well written, interesting, and v.informative replies like this. 
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Sep 5, 2020 16:44
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Miss Broccoli posted:Don't use -ism, it's not a beleif or a political stance. It's really dehumanising  Not all words ending in ism refer to beliefs or political stances.
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Sep 5, 2020 16:51
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when you find suffixes problematic it may be time to log off
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Sep 5, 2020 16:53
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On the topic of homosexuality in Victorian England, I remember reading of a fairly famous event of two gay men crossdressing and being arrested and put on trial. Only, they were just caught in women's clothes, not actually engaging in sodomy or whatever, so they were cleared. So I guess even then it wasn't technically illegal to be gay because how do you even enforce that, but gay activity like sex with another man was the prohibited thing. Still obviously horrible but it was an interesting story I randomly came across a year or two ago.
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Sep 5, 2020 17:06
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Cetea posted:Yes, as I recall, it was Justinian who sent two monks with hollow canes (you screwed the two parts together I assume) over to China, where they were able to smuggle silk worm eggs back to Constantinople. The worms themselves could not be smuggled, because they would die in transit. The end result was that the ERE had a silk monopoly on the rest of Europe for the next few centuries, allowing them to use the massive trade profits to preserve the empire when everyone was attacking on all sides. They would fund things like Islamic pretenders to the various thrones, minority religious groups (usually branches of Islam) and etc to distract the Caliphates and keep their attention away from attacking the Empire (you could say modern Russian style hybrid warfare was invented by the ERE). They would always try to bribe away a foreign army that was raiding their lands before actually engaging them in battle (which was a last resort, as battle was more expensive than bribery, plus losing a single soldier in battle was a huge deal, as each man took three years of training to become a capable combatant; they had a very strong "no man left behind" policy due to this high cost per soldier as well). Money was basically not a problem (aside from currency devaluation, which was usually fixed via issuing a new type of currency) for the ERE until 1204, when they lost control of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade. The history of the byzantine empire is basically an advertisement for effective diplomacy.
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Sep 5, 2020 18:03
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Lawman 0 posted:The history of the byzantine empire is basically an advertisement for effective diplomacy. And also for not turning away the guy who tries to sell you a big cannon.
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Sep 5, 2020 18:53
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Alhazred posted:And also for not turning away the guy who tries to sell you a big cannon. I mean let's be real that was about the last on their list of problems at that point. 
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Sep 5, 2020 22:21
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Alhazred posted:And also for not turning away the guy who tries to sell you a big cannon. At the very least just kill the dude
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Sep 5, 2020 23:05
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Cetea posted:They would fund things like Islamic pretenders to the various thrones, minority religious groups (usually branches of Islam) and etc to distract the Caliphates and keep their attention away from attacking the Empire (you could say modern Russian style hybrid warfare was invented by the ERE). nah, bribing enemies enemies was much older than that
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Sep 5, 2020 23:32
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Yeah during the rebellion against the Qin Emperors they would bribe the generals to surrender their army and then massacre the soldiers because they didn't trust them.
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Sep 6, 2020 02:21
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I mean obviously people fight wars for a lot of reasons but if they're attacking because they want to loot your cities, cutting out the middle man and just paying tribute is a win for both sides
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Sep 6, 2020 02:25
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ChubbyChecker posted:nah, bribing enemies enemies was much older than that That's very true, but this was more of a coordinated attempt by an intelligence community to actively find and fund charismatic individuals in enemy empires, exploit theological/succession based weaknesses and use them to cause internal issues that were not necessarily military in nature to begin with, but consumed the attention and resources of that particular state anyway so that they were too busy to attack. The ERE also made it their business to understand the culture of their various neighbors as much as possible, so as to better ally with them or neutralize them when necessary. When they did have to resort to direct bribery because all the previous prep didn't work, they also gave a really nice way for Caliphs to accept the bribes for not attacking them as well. The template used for invading Muslim forces goes something like "As the Koran says that since the inevitable victory of Islam is assured anyway, you don't have to go through all this effort taking fortresses and fighting our armies in the field. We are willing to offer you gifts of friendship to maintain good relations at this point in time." Alhazred posted:And also for not turning away the guy who tries to sell you a big cannon. That's a pretty common myth for the reason behind the fall of the City in 1453 for some reason. In reality, that particular cannon was so large, it could only fire once a day, and by the time it could fire again, the Engineering Corps inside Constantinople had already repaired all the damage. The real headway the Ottomans made was when they found an unlocked side gate (which was basically the size of a door) and pushed into the city, and a small detachment of Ottoman troops were able to put up the Ottoman Flag onto the Theodosian walls, which really hurt morale. That plus the death of one of the Italian mercenary leaders (I forgot how he died, but I vaguely recall that it might be because he was leading the troops who were trying to plug the gap in the wall created by the unlocked door) who was leading the defenses caused a ton of chaos, and ultimately lead to the fall of the city. There's a bunch of new papers in academic circles that now sees Mehmed's seige as something that was very lucky and far from a sure fire thing (they did not have the naval power to blockade the city, and they had been beaten back multiple times before they found the door with massive casualties and no progress), and how many of Mehmed's advisors actually wanted to retreat from the city, but Mehmed basically all-ined onto winning this siege or losing his throne + head (if he was defeated, it's likely that factions within the Ottoman Empire would have used it as an excuse to usurp him and gain power themselves). Of course, even if the City had been saved, it's unlikely that the Empire would have lasted much longer, unless they could diplomatically convince the Mongols to help them retake parts of Anatolia somehow (the Komnenian Dynasty did have marriage alliances with the Mongols, but that's a far cry from getting them to fight for you). Europe had lost the appetite for Crusades by that point, so that option was pretty much out of the window. P.S The Romans wouldn't have executed the inventor because it would be a terrible violation of diplomatic norms by their standards, plus they probably did plan on being able to attract future inventors if they somehow survived their crisises. The Greek concept of guest rights was viewed as sacrosanct throughout the Empire, and that never really changed at all through its lifespan. Cetea fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 05:30
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Tell that to Archimedes's circles.
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Sep 6, 2020 06:33
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Alhazred posted:And also for not turning away the guy who tries to sell you a big cannon. I thought the ERE did keep him on a salary living in Constantinople for a few months? They were just so impoverished at that point that they couldn't maintain him in the manner to which he was accustomed indefinitely, or provide the materials he would need to make the giant cannons, so he quickly decided to pack up and move on.
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Sep 6, 2020 09:40
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Cetea posted:
I have a feeling that most inventors that took jobs from kings and emperors knew that being executed was an unavoidable risk.
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Sep 6, 2020 11:00
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Fuschia tude posted:I thought the ERE did keep him on a salary living in Constantinople for a few months? They were just so impoverished at that point that they couldn't maintain him in the manner to which he was accustomed indefinitely, or provide the materials he would need to make the giant cannons, so he quickly decided to pack up and move on. What would the ERE have even done with a giant cannon? Blown through its own walls?
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Sep 6, 2020 12:59
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Cut it up and make a throne out of it.
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Sep 6, 2020 13:33
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Load grapeshot 
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Sep 6, 2020 13:46
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Maybe we need a Chinese history thread, because it seems underserved and fascinating. Feeling particularly interested in what the medieval Chinese army looked like, given there seems to be extensive literature on it.
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Sep 6, 2020 14:27
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Lawman 0 posted:The history of the byzantine empire is basically an advertisement for effective diplomacy. I mean, when you no longer have an advantage in technology, nor social development that can mobilize greater numbers of warriors, you may as well rely on your age old institutions that can grant legitimacy to your diplomatic corps.
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Sep 6, 2020 14:44
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Phobophilia posted:I mean, when you no longer have an advantage in technology, nor social development that can mobilize greater numbers of warriors, you may as well rely on your age old institutions that can grant legitimacy to your diplomatic corps. Nah, gently caress it, let's just get all the career diplomats to resign in disgust and go touch the Saudi King's magic orb! Wait, poo poo, are we still doing ERE?
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Sep 6, 2020 15:02
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Phobophilia posted:I mean, when you no longer have an advantage in technology, nor social development that can mobilize greater numbers of warriors, you may as well rely on your age old institutions that can grant legitimacy to your diplomatic corps. Technically they still had a massive advantage in technology (Greek Fire being a naval superiority weapon up to about the 1150s; Anna Komnene described it in use at 1099; but the secret was somehow lost by 1203) and having a well trained army that could double as engineers on the fly allowed the ERE to do some things that other armies just couldn't at the time (such as move ships from a sea to an inland lake, build seige equipment like the counterweight trebuchet on the fly, and etc). The thing is that war was just too expensive manpower and time wise (money was not the limit to the military might of the ERE, but their manpower base wasn't great following the loss of Egypt), and the time it took to train a single soldier to standard is three years, so if you just fought every single enemy that you ever encountered (and there were a lot of them because Constantinople was the richest city in the entire world for most of the medieval period), you'd quickly run out of men and be completely screwed. The original Roman Empire just had a massive advantage in logistics, being first able to field men who were poor but well trained (which other classical states simply did not do). Later on, they had the entire economy of Europe + North Africa + Anatolia + bits of the Middle East to draw on meant that they could just slowly grind down any enemy, given enough time. However, the little ice age coinciding with the Crisis of the Third Century just did a huge number on the Empire, then it got hit with the Plague during Justinian's reign where basically 33% of the entire population just died in the span of a few short years, and that plus Justinian spending most of the Empire's manpower and resources reclaiming Italy and bits of North Africa just left it really vulnerable to the Sassanian Empire. They even beat the Persians despite all their losses. but the precursors to the founder of Islam, the mercenaries out of Arabia, knew that both sides were super weak following the last Roman-Sassanian war, and they were employed by both sides, so they knew the tactics and terrain of both. The fact that the Romans held onto anything at all was pretty much a testament to their technological advantage (the Arabs had no true navy originally, and by the time they did, and any navy they built was eventually just defeated by ships equipped with Greek Fire flamethrowers) and the ability to do a complete restructuring of the entire empire on the fly (after losing Egypt, which was their agricultural heartland).
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Sep 6, 2020 15:16
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Communist Walrus posted:What would the ERE have even done with a giant cannon? Blown through its own walls? I mean maybe not a GIANT cannon but counterbattery fire was a thing.
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Sep 6, 2020 16:16
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I think I asked this exact question in the Europa Universalis 4 thread sometime before march and time becoming a meaningless illusion, but could the Bosporus be controlled with artillery only by 1453?
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Sep 6, 2020 16:37
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Silver2195 posted:
It's dehumanising to refer to sexual orientations or genders as an ism. I'm not debating you, I'm informing you. Arglebargle III posted:when you find suffixes problematic it may be time to log off Perhaps consider listening to the queer people on issues queer people face. It's dehumanising. It's used to other us. Google transgenderism and look at the quality of discourse from people who use that word. It's problematic because how it is used. If you haven't had the misfortune of experiencing that then you are fortunate and the correct move is to accept that yes, language is important. Mocking something because you lack understanding is a bitch move, as they say. Miss Broccoli fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 16:55
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Gendered insults? Impressive.
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Sep 6, 2020 20:28
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To be fair, if someone called me a member of maleism, I too would think I'm not talking to a human being, so it definitely can be dehumanizing.LingcodKilla posted:Gendered insults? Impressive. Yeah, that's kind of shooting yourself in the foot with a bazooka when talking about sex and gender Anyway, I'm not sure, but isn't this thread about ancient history? I'm definitely sure there are tons of other threads where you can have discussions about this stuff.
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Sep 6, 2020 20:54
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Libluini posted:Anyway, I'm not sure, but isn't this thread about ancient history? I'm definitely sure there are tons of other threads where you can have discussions about this stuff. Yes please, take to the forums for slapfighting about this.
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Sep 6, 2020 21:41
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So what was the most innovative/well run hellenistic state?
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Sep 7, 2020 00:08
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