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Obdicut posted:I'd be really interested in any text with a good analysis of this. For example, it would seem Viking traders travelled pretty long distances, especially in linking Northern Europe down to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and Northern Europe with North Africa. However, did the Viking traders just trade along the way--like, a short hop from Norway over to York over to Dublin down to Cadiz--or did they travel the whole long route, putting in for supplies but trading at a real long-distance? You seem to be asserting the former, but is there analysis of this out there? For most traders it was a matter of having, say, a boat or a bunch of camels/horses whatever and of course whatever contacts/networking along the way. It might make sense for a guy with a boat to go sail from Sweden to where ever along the rivers (quite a long way) but it makes much less sense for them to then, like, rent that boat out or put it on mothballs or whatever while they buy a bunch of horses or what ever for the overland leg of a trip. Like, yeah, they get to charge the middleman's price at the end and save on said middleman's price picking up their return cargo, but they're wasting the value represented by the boat and picking up the cost associated with the next leg. It's not so much about the distance or the difficulty as the infrastructure/capital for one leg isn't going to help for the next leg, so you let someone else do that while you put your poo poo to work where it does work. Personal, individual travel is of course possible, but tourism isn't really a thing and a lot of places kinda looked down on vagabonds and travellers because, well, how are you supposed to be supporting yourself again? Some groups made it work (Roma, e.g.) and they did get around a lot by just making themselves very mobile. But it's not like they got to a shore, chopped down a bunch of trees and built a boat to go to India or something.
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May 16, 2015 18:44
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Bum the Sad posted:No one really did use it much though. I'm under the impression that by the time proper full plate armor was really developed firearms started arriving in force. Firearms didn't end plate though.
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May 21, 2015 19:02
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China also has a pretty interesting and well documented tax system. Most famously the transition from paymen in kind (produce from the men, woven silk from the women) to payment in silver had drastic effects on the world economy. Land surveys were a big deal so that taxes could be assessed well. There's some tablets also that the transition from paymen in kind to payment in coins in the Persian empire, as well as describing how that cash got spent.
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May 25, 2015 20:38
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Speaking of weird Japanese police gear, the last time I went to Japan I was poking around a museum and saw these lovelies.  You can tell they're police equipment. Those diddly little spikes aren't going to do much against armor and in a real fight you'd want an actual spear (or, you know, a gun) but those spikes do pretty clearly say 'gently caress you.' I think they also had firefighting applications and the barbs were useful for that too. But mostly that's a 'technically I need you alive, but I'm going to lodge as many inch long spikes in your muscle tissue as it takes to make you stop moving' sort of deal.
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Jun 1, 2015 04:04
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LimburgLimbo posted:It's more to catch on clothing than hurt people. Yes, but those are big loving spikes. That's going to rip right through your clothes if you even think about thrashing about.
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Jun 1, 2015 15:09
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LimburgLimbo posted:Nah, they are explicitly for grabbing clothes. There was a set of three things called the Mitsu-dōgu (lit. "three tools"). These were the 突棒 (tsuku-bō; lit. stabbing stick), the 袖搦 (sode-garami; lit. sleeve grabber/entagler), and the 刺股 (sasu-mata; lit. thigh-grabber). Yeah, I read the wiki article too. They also put spikes all over the rest of them for a reason. Reason being, 'gently caress you stop resisting.' It could have just been a big blunt metal clad T at the end of a stick meant to be swung at your shins, but then they went and covered it in spikes to really get the point across. Likewise the sleeve-catcher. The photo might not show it well but there is a twiddly bit at the end for poking into loose cloth and twisting. The rest of the spikes along the remaining two feet are there because 'gently caress you, you made me run over here with this heavy rear end stick and now I'm immobilizing your hands from ten feet away because you probably have a knife so gently caress you.' I too have seen the more modern forks, they're pretty cool. They, however, lack the 'gently caress you' spikes and are therefore inferior law keeping tools. E: Yeah, they're handy in a pinch for firefighting too.
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Jun 1, 2015 16:07
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Of course this was a problem European monarchs had as well. Strip out the slave part (and, lets be honest, when parents are desperately trying to have their children taken,* the slaves are armed, and hereditary slavery is a right to be demanded, we've moved past a lot of the modern American connotations of the term) and you've got the same conflict with the Varagians and the late Romans, or the household/personal/state troops vs. Aristocrat troops provided. Why DoD early modern x hire foreig nerd to do y? Because nationalism wasn't a thing yet and the polity needed poo poo done. State payroll/supported/whatever offers a very direct (if expensive and yes, dangerous in its own way) method. Oh, also China and ye olde cycle of outsourcing military needs to steppe tribes. *it happened occasionally when the Jannisaries were doing very well and the population they were drawn from were not. In these cases enslavement was a big move up the social/economic ladder, and regardless shifted the burden of feeding off to the state.
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Sep 20, 2015 21:25
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Bendigeidfran posted:This has probably been asked before, but are there any detailed cases of soldiers in mail armor fighting opponents in full plate harness? If there were, how did they overcome the difference in protection? I get the impression that mail is more maneuverable than plate, but historical examples would be nice. Real life is rarely built around rock paper scissors, and the limiting factor on ring/scale/plate etc. is usually economic or technological, not a matter of choice. Well made plate is, apparently, pretty mobile and maneuverable (if heavy), and in some cases less restrictive than other types. Overall, it'd be 'overcome' in the same way a man in plate would overcome a man in plate: attacking the joints in the armor or the visor. As for historical examples, the relatively lightly armored English longbowmen rushed the heavily armored French men-at-arms at Agincourt. Obviously it's an exceptional case, with a lot of factors (men-at-arms bogged in mud, had just been run over by their own cavalry, possible crowd crush problems, mass psychology, etc. etc.)
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Nov 12, 2015 20:39
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Subyng posted:Is it true that battles between armies were mostly posturing/maneuvering and were often decided very quickly with relatively few casualties, since your average soldier really didn't want to die? Depends on the battle. And the time period. And the weapons. Generally, yes, routs or just people saying 'gently caress that' happened a lot sooner than most films/media show, and so casualties are a lot lower than you'd think, and what casualties do crop up tend to include more wounded and more killed in the rout than most depictions. ~generally~
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Jan 8, 2016 00:56
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I'm just going to sit here and contemplate the phrase "when all his teeth erupted at once" for a little while.
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Jan 26, 2016 09:14
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