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Weka posted:Does anybody know the origin of the phrase "night of the long knives"? I can't find it in Nennius or Geoffrey of Monmouth but I'm just using lovely versions from the internet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives It refers to when Hitler, after he took power, executed a lot of the brownshirts that got him there.
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Jan 12, 2021 12:28
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Mr. Nice! posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives Its a lot older than that! (I'll admit that's what I first thought of too...)
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Jan 12, 2021 12:34
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Night of the short swords just didn’t have the same ring.
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Jan 12, 2021 12:36
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Mr. Nice! posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives Yeah it's this The Nazi one did not literally involve long knives, they had perfectly good guns by then.
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Jan 12, 2021 12:37
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Yeah as I recall most of the victims were shot. One was hacked to death with axes in a swamp.
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Jan 12, 2021 12:42
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feedmegin posted:Yeah it's this I was wondering if perhaps a long knife was a specific weapon cos I feel you'd want a short knife if you're hiding it in a shoe, but Wikipedia flicked me to the page for Messer (which is sli-i-ightly longer than a knife). Now I'm picturing a bunch of 5th century dudes trying to act nonchalant while clanking around with swords in their shoes.
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Jan 12, 2021 13:00
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I don't think it is a specific weapon or a very specific literary reference, but just a literary construct. A skilled thief has long fingers, the long arm of the law catches up with him eventually, long knives kill a lot of people.
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Jan 12, 2021 13:56
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LingcodKilla posted:Night of the short swords just didn’t have the same ring. I guess it could be a reference to a seax? IIRC the term pretty much just translates to "knife", and they are mostly used as such. But there were also longer versions more specifically intended for use as a weapon. So in that case, "long knife" could've been a way to refer to seaxes made for killing, rather than your average utility knife that most people would be carrying. Perestroika fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 14:33
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Ola posted:I don't think it is a specific weapon or a very specific literary reference, but just a literary construct. A skilled thief has long fingers, the long arm of the law catches up with him eventually, long knives kill a lot of people. This. A "langes Messer" can reach someone's heart. It's not easy stabbing somebody with a short knife. A "Nacht der Messer" invokes less the image of indescriminate massacre and more the image of lots of people buttering a slice of bread.
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Jan 12, 2021 14:35
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Libluini posted:"Nacht der Messer" Thank you, but I do not wish to see your CutCo demonstration.
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Jan 12, 2021 15:06
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Elissimpark posted:I was wondering if perhaps a long knife was a specific weapon cos I feel you'd want a short knife if you're hiding it in a shoe, but Wikipedia flicked me to the page for Messer (which is sli-i-ightly longer than a knife).  "Fighting with a Messer and a "Hungarian shield" (Gladiatoria Fechtbuch fol. 55r, mid 15th century)" How big are your shoes?
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Jan 12, 2021 15:18
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Don’t discriminate against clowns
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Jan 12, 2021 15:57
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Mister Olympus posted:Don’t discriminate against clowns Especially when they carry pointy things.
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Jan 12, 2021 18:33
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Kassad posted:
Looks like a bowie knife
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Jan 12, 2021 21:00
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The trick with Messers is that they were invented to allow commoners, the ones who were rich enough to afford a sword at least, to carry a sword for protection without breaking laws that restricted sword ownership to nobility because the way they're constructed (the hilt is put together like on a knife and not like a sword) means they're technically just really long knives and not swords.
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Jan 12, 2021 21:37
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FreudianSlippers posted:The trick with Messers is that they were invented to allow commoners, the ones who were rich enough to afford a sword at least, to carry a sword for protection without breaking laws that restricted sword ownership to nobility because the way they're constructed (the hilt is put together like on a knife and not like a sword) means they're technically just really long knives and not swords. And specifically for battle there’s the bigger Lang messers do if that’s too puny there’s the two two handed kreigs messer
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Jan 12, 2021 22:10
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FreudianSlippers posted:The trick with Messers is that they were invented to allow commoners, the ones who were rich enough to afford a sword at least, to carry a sword for protection without breaking laws that restricted sword ownership to nobility because the way they're constructed (the hilt is put together like on a knife and not like a sword) means they're technically just really long knives and not swords. I've heard this before and have always wondered if this caused the rule-making nobility to shake their fists and curse in impotent rage, or roll their eyes and say "Whatever buddy, my dad still makes more money than yours".
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Jan 12, 2021 22:15
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Nennius, in Historia Brittonum, afaik the first extant written record of the alleged event, used "saxas", so seax. I'm specifically wondering about the origin of the phrase "night of the long knives" though, which I can't find in it, nor in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. What would the Latin be, 'noct? saxas'? As to the messer, I don't think it's right to suggest they were created entirely because of sumptuary laws as continental Germans used seaxes aswell during the migration period through to iirc the middle medieval. The longest seax extant iirc was around 4'.
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Jan 12, 2021 22:20
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Weka posted:Nennius, in Historia Brittonum, afaik the first extant written record of the alleged event, used "saxas", so seax. I'm specifically wondering about the origin of the phrase "night of the long knives" though, which I can't find in it, nor in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. What would the Latin be, 'noct? saxas'? I found one statement suggesting it was coined in the 15th or 16th century, but it didn't give the source.
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Jan 12, 2021 23:18
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Sneaking this one in here because you'll still ocasionally see Qing Dynasty stuff labeled "ancient Chinese"
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Jan 13, 2021 02:46
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Epicurius posted:I found one statement suggesting it was coined in the 15th or 16th century, but it didn't give the source. Thanks for looking.
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Jan 13, 2021 04:08
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Perestroika posted:I guess it could be a reference to a seax? IIRC the term pretty much just translates to "knife", and they are mostly used as such. But there were also longer versions more specifically intended for use as a weapon. So in that case, "long knife" could've been a way to refer to seaxes made for killing, rather than your average utility knife that most people would be carrying. Killing someone with a short knife is very annoying and takes a long time. You can do it if that's what you happen to have on you, but if you're pulling off a premeditated massacre then you're going to make sure to fetch your murdering knife beforehand.
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Jan 13, 2021 07:20
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Does anyone have good book recs about the gauls in english or french?
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Jan 13, 2021 07:51
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Does anyone have good book recs about the gauls in english or french? 
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Jan 13, 2021 09:08
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Jan 13, 2021 14:44
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Poldarn posted:I've heard this before and have always wondered if this caused the rule-making nobility to shake their fists and curse in impotent rage, or roll their eyes and say "Whatever buddy, my dad still makes more money than yours". In practice, laws like that were really hard to enforce, because before the modern era, laws in general were hard to enforce. Ericsson mentions in his short work about violence in Stockholm that "yeah dudes seriously, do not carry swords because it is illegal" is an act passed by the Stockholm city council for something like 40+ times over the years, and it can be assumed it had little to no effect, since the population at large saw no big deal in carrying swords or breaking sumptuary laws and no one had invented the Sword Police.
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Jan 13, 2021 17:26
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Shoulda talked to Japan, they got pretty good at the whole sword hunt game.
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Jan 13, 2021 17:34
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Kemper Boyd posted:In practice, laws like that were really hard to enforce, because before the modern era, laws in general were hard to enforce. Ericsson mentions in his short work about violence in Stockholm that "yeah dudes seriously, do not carry swords because it is illegal" is an act passed by the Stockholm city council for something like 40+ times over the years, and it can be assumed it had little to no effect, since the population at large saw no big deal in carrying swords or breaking sumptuary laws and no one had invented the Sword Police. Yeah, whenever you see any law like that passed in the middle ages/early modern and it happens over and over, it doesn't mean they're super enforcing whatever it is, it means noone gives a poo poo about it. If the State is serious about enforcing it and is capable of doing so it tends to be one and done.
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Jan 13, 2021 17:38
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I don't think Time Team has just three days at all...
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Jan 15, 2021 00:41
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtmOdxEVytA
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Jan 15, 2021 01:25
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Kemper Boyd posted:In practice, laws like that were really hard to enforce, because before the modern era, laws in general were hard to enforce. Ericsson mentions in his short work about violence in Stockholm that "yeah dudes seriously, do not carry swords because it is illegal" is an act passed by the Stockholm city council for something like 40+ times over the years, and it can be assumed it had little to no effect, since the population at large saw no big deal in carrying swords or breaking sumptuary laws and no one had invented the Sword Police. "Don't quote laws at men who carry swords" is my favourite quote from Roman history. (Pompey, after recapturing the city of Messina, meeting with their city council)
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Jan 15, 2021 12:14
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Weka posted:You've just got all this money, why not go on holiday? And while you're on your backpacking trip, breeze through customs (queues for Japanese passport, international, REVENGE) and impress all the bars with tales of your REVENGE QUEST
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Jan 16, 2021 10:10
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The best revenge is having a nice vacation.
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Jan 16, 2021 14:26
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I went down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at Roman and Han iron production figures today, it seems like it’s actually a surprisingly fraught topic. So I was reading about iron in ancient Japan; I think it’s fairly common knowledge that local iron smelting (rather than just reforging imported ingots) didn’t spread to the archipelago until the 500s, but it seems like even after that point it took a long time to get going. A few modern estimates are at 150-300 or so tons/year even into the 9th century, which means that they didn’t have enough iron to supply everyone (William Wayne Farris for instance asserts only like 5-20% of the peasantry actually had iron tools). Looking for a comparison, modern estimates put Tang at something like 20,000 tons/year; with a population like 10x that of Heian Japan, that’s like 100x the iron production per capita, which is a pretty stark difference but kind of makes sense. At the same time though, I stumbled on a figure for 2nd century Rome: 82,500 tons / year. People here talk about Roman industry but that seemed kind of insane. 4x the output of Tang China? Going back to Han, contemporary to Rome, there are estimates of only like 5,000 tons / year; this is in a state that had blast furnaces, which I had been at least led to believe were substantially more productive than the bloomeries Rome was limited to. Looking into the 82,500 figure a bit more, it seems like it is a bit questionable; obviously every single one of these figures is at best a sweeping estimate, but at least are generally useful comparatively; the Roman one though comes from an extrapolation from Roman Britain out to the entire empire, which seems especially shaky. Peeking into an old Wikipedia talk page it looks like this has already been argued to death by a couple of what appears to be Chinese nationalists and counter nationalists, but that was 10 years ago and the figure is still sitting proudly on the Wikipedia page though so I guess it got resolved somehow in its favor. Anyway while I’m still really suspicious of that massive figure for Rome, it still does seem like Rome’s output was substantially higher than Han China’s (Britain’s output, much more reliably estimated, is already like half of Han’s by itself), in which case, what the hell gives? I’m half asking the thread at large, but a couple of things I’ve stumbled on: This old AskHistorians post talks about a few things. Geography makes a lot of sense to me here especially; China would in later centuries be linked by a grandly extensive system of canals, but in Han times this was mostly still in the future, so Rome’s easy access to the Mediterranean is a marked difference. The person in that thread talks about cost differences of 1 to 4.7 to 22.6 for transport via sea, river, and overland respectively; with China still much more overland than Rome, iron being that much more expensive to transport definitely sounds like it would make a difference. There’s also this really interesting journal article about Han ironworking, which seems to put a lot down to the state putting a monopoly on iron and then being extremely inefficient about actually producing it, now it had total control: quote:Archaeology shows that the monopoly ironworks were generally built in urban locations, often only a few hundred metres outside the walls of Han cities. This is a shocking location for a charcoal-fuelled blast furnace, which consumed enormous amounts of fuel in competition with the population of the city and also created a nuisance with fire and smoke and produced large amounts of slag to be disposed of. The ore, too, is likely to have been transported over long distances. The efficient location for such an ironworks is in the mountains, near sources of wood for charcoal and away from population centres I’d basically always imagined everyone everywhere having iron during the Roman Empire, so going deeper into East Asian history I was pretty surprised about how not-universal it seems to have often been in ancient times. I’d assumed this meant that was also the case in Rome; I just hadn’t learned about it in as much detail, but it’s interesting if it turns out Rome really did just have way more iron.
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Jan 17, 2021 01:22
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Can't say much about the specific comparison between Rome and Han, but Britannia was full of iron mines and probably shouldn't be treated as an average province in terms of iron production (I would guess it would be among the most productive, together with Iberia and Noricum).
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Jan 17, 2021 01:48
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skasion posted:Can't say much about the specific comparison between Rome and Han, but Britannia was full of iron mines and probably shouldn't be treated as an average province in terms of iron production (I would guess it would be among the most productive, together with Iberia and Noricum). Was it more abundant in Iron, or was it just cheaper to run a mine there because you're already mining a bunch of Tin for bronze? I don't think of the UK having particularly more mineral wealth than the rest of Europe, but 2000 years is a long time to deplete easily available resources. Also - neat comparison on Roman vs asian metalworking. Given Brittanica was a relatively late addition the Empire, and it was later abandoned, I can't imagine it's outputs were hugely relevant in the roman Strategic production - but also as a frontier province it might have had a greater millitary industry? Would be interesting to try isotope tracing on roman metalwork from around the empire and see if eg - swords in Germania or Britannica were all made locally or not. Nothingtoseehere fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 22:51
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For iron/steel work check out the 6-part series that talks about iron/steel, but does also address some of the differences between the approaches and I think talks a bit about what you're interested in. Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Tbh I think the last one would be most relevant to you as it directly talks about Chinese cast iron making.
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Jan 17, 2021 23:39
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Time Team seemed to constantly be digging up massive, large scale, roman-era iron production sites.
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Jan 18, 2021 01:12
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I found a really neat interactive map of the City of Rome as of 14 AD through one of my classes, I thought people in this thread might appreciate it: https://www.digitalaugustanrome.org/. A fun experiment to try is to think of all the famous Roman monuments in Rome and try to find them on the map, you won't find most of them, since a lot of the best known monuments were built in the later imperial period.
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Jan 18, 2021 10:19
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Koramei posted:
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Jan 20, 2021 16:51
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