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I'd like to think the experience of war would dissuade people from starting new ones, but looking back at WWII it doesn't seem like that's the case. Mussolini, Hitler, both lived through some of the worst WWI had to offer, and instead of rejecting war they became obsessed with it. The Russian Civil War didn't make Stalin miserly with human life, and many of the Generals and Admirals dragging Japan into ever widening conflicts for narrow self serving interests were the same ones who would soon throw their lives away in hopeless and futile actions. Mankind just seems impervious to learning lessons from the past,
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Nov 26, 2016 01:08
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Deteriorata posted:Reuniting the peninsula through military conquest was not a precedent the UN was willing to tolerate. It still isn't, which is why Russia's invasion of Crimea is illegitimate. Uh... yeah this is really not an issue the UN has been particularily consistent about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India#Condemnation
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Nov 27, 2016 03:58
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Deteriorata posted:I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. The Soviet Union supported India's invasion and vetoed a resolution calling on India to withdraw and resolve the issue diplomatically. You claimed that the UN sought to avoid creating a precedent of the use of military force to annex territory. However in many subsequent and even prior cases the UN has proved itself indifferent to the use of military force to annex territory or dissect existing states. See: Cyprus 1974, Goa 1961, Israel-Palestine 1948, Bangladesh 1971, etc. We therefore see clearly that the UN has adopted no consistent policy with regards to circumstances as existed in Korea in 1950, and given the ambiguous legitimacy and authority of governments on either side of the parallel, the great powers had plenty of diplomatic wiggle room to justify whatever action they deemed necessary.
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Nov 27, 2016 08:02
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Plan Z posted:That and he gets blamed for Japanese prudishness and censored porn by Weebs, when the laws that affected that kind of stuff go back to something like 1906. In fact the American occupation under MacArthur led to an early Japanese sexual revolution, with most of the earlier restrictions you referenced on pornographic material lifted or simply ignored. Sexual material was only censored if it involved Westerners, and it wasn't until I think 1948 that censorship of sexual material started to be re-implemented. The massive proliferation of prostitution at this time in Japan is another aspect of the sexual politics of the period, which you can see reflected in western media like the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice. That is a rather sad chapter of the occupation though, especially in how in anticipation of the occupation the Japanese government pretty much reproduced the system of comfort women for the benefit of American troops.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:06
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Remulak posted:Prostitution was huge business in Meiji Restoration Japan. Poor girls were shipped all over the world and were an important source of foreign currency. Certainly you can't blame the US government for the Japanese state sponsored brothels, in fact the army ultimately ordered the system shut down (it was embarrassed Allied servicemen were being photographed queued up out the door). I do find the whole situation vaguely disturbing though, particularly because despite all the moral problems raised by the official system, eliminating it may have caused much more harm. It didn't stop prostitution, just put it out onto the street beyond the eye of the state and healthcare workers which had previously supplied prophylactics and other services to improve safety and security.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:I've only heard of them as a result of them taking Constantinople and why America was discovered in class; reading this random soft cover history book did I learn they almost took Vienna and were like, the hordes of Mordor as far as Europe was concerned. The Ottomans were actually Portugal's most dangerous rival for control of trade in the Indian Ocean for parts of this period, and even went as far as importing Venetians to attack their Indian holdings. Even when they weren't fighting directly, the Ottomans funded and armed a lot of the indigenous opponents of Western colonial powers in places like Malaysia and Indonesia
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Dec 30, 2016 21:57
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Hogge Wild posted:that sounds really interesting, could you post more about it There was already a long history of trade across the Indian ocean in the 15th century, and as part of their general expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries the Ottomans muscled in on the routes previously controlled by Arabs and Persians. When the Portuguese appear they threatened what had been the virtual monopoly the Ottomans held on the spice trade to Europe, and also the Venetians role as an intermediary in the trade. The result was a major trade war with each side fighting over access to Indian port cities with lots of intrigue between the two and local princely states. Many of the coastal forts built by the Portuguese in this period were primarily there to defend against Ottoman attacks, like the one in Goa and Muscat Oman. These were not small skirmishes either, naval battles could involve hundreds of ships and thousands of men, and could occur anywhere from Somalia to Singapore. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Diu The Ottomans were always hampered by conflicting priorities, often invasion fleets would be diverted to stamp out fires in other parts of the empire. They never seemed able to match the quality of western European navies, a lot of the battles involved Ottoman galleys getting wrecked by Portuguese carracks. As they were gradually muscled out by European traders they turned sought to work more closely with local maritime powers like the Acehnese also threatened by the arrival of European powers. The Ottoman Sultan's position as Caliph and premier Muslim power served as an additional bridge between these states, and the relationship proved enduring and profitable, lasting right up to the 19th century.
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Dec 30, 2016 23:09
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PittTheElder posted:Were ships during the age of sail even all that safe? I know disease would kill crews like crazy, but was it common for the ships to just wreck/sink/vanish? Seems like they probably would be, but I guess comparing the safety record against Mediterranean shipping would be tough owing to a lack of records. Average mortality on transatlantic voyages in the late 18th century were about 3.8%, or 1.5% per month of travel time, and it drops through the 19th century. Not the kind of odds I'd like to stake my life on but I can see how people could come to accept it. I bet there are decent records out there for the Mediterranean, merchants are always good bookkeepers. On galleys they seem to have been perfectly capable of traversing the Indian ocean without much more difficulty than larger ships, although maybe they were more limited by the yearly monsoon.
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Jan 5, 2017 00:24
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There's still at least one princely state! Bhutan  I watched this documentary about the partition of Punjab recently, its pretty good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZS40U5yFpc It gives a basic introduction to the politics of independence and partition and then quickly segues into interviews with various eye witnesses to the violence. It paints a picture of violence driven by grassroots action and enabled by the chaotic transition away from British rule. It's odd to imagine the kind of massive conflict it describes, a war with no generals, armies, or front lines, just one village against the next with whatever swords and muzzle loaders they can scrap together. It makes me want to read something with a little more detail about the conflict and sectarian tension in India.
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Jan 7, 2017 21:28
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my dad posted:Ugh, the barbarians have opinions Isn't he doing exactly what you requested by not treating you as "one of the good ones?" Really we should all take everything we read online with a grain of salt. Admittedly he said it in a kinda dickish way (addressing the crowd rather than you directly) but eh. I personally really like the metaphor of a Lovecraftian monster for intercommunal violence. Not in that it defies comprehension, but because it seems to exist as some kind of lurking primordial menace hidden within our very blood, waiting for some foolish human to call it forth to destroy mankind in a feverish orgy of unthinking violence. In Salmon Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children mass violence is a looming threat oppressing the protagonist throughout much of the narrative, and the by the end he literally comes to believe his own body is being pulled apart by the same forces dividing the Indian subcontinent.
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Jan 9, 2017 00:07
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To those who a identified fighting corruption in South Vietnam as one way to increase the odds American victory, how exactly do you do that? You know it's something that seems obvious, but judging by Americas 21st century military adventures I don't think it's a problem anyone has solved. It's a general rule of developmental aid that the more assistance you give, the larger the proportion that gets lost to corruption. The reasons are complex and varied but basically governments face less pressure to use money productively when it comes from outside sources, and direct assistance takes pressure off the government to provide services. It's often, and futilely, recommended that aid be strictly tied to anticorruption measures, however in practice this is almost never enforced as it threatens the perception of local sovereignty and short term objectives. Today no one knows how to make Afghanistan stop being a corrupt mess, in South Vietnam was probably worse!
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Jan 24, 2017 00:28
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Polyakov posted:Can do. It's a good post! I look forward to the rest of the series, however I feel compelled to point out that the story of "plastic 'keys to heaven'" has never been verified and is almost certainly the result of a translation error regarding a prayer book entitled Mafatih al-Janan or Keys to Paradise, which was actually given to new Iranian recruits. The tension and animosity between Western nations and the the governments in this conflict mean we must be careful not to take too credulous a tack towards any material that isn't clear about its sources. This thread has at times broken down how common narratives of Chinese human wave attacks during the Korean War misrepresent what were actually relatively sophisticated and well thought out tactics, and I worry much of what's written about Iran in this war suffers from the same problems.
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Feb 3, 2017 23:10
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Maybe, maybe not... though I don't believe they've ever been confirmed to be a widespread thing, they're definitely mentioned in the memoir/graphic novel Persepolis: Material like this is why I felt the need to say the story is "unverified" rather than false, although I myself do not believe it. Conservative Muslims usually disapprove of men wearing gold jewelry, even gold plated or painted, which makes me suspicious when Mullah's are supposedly handing out such charms. It is such a tempting tale, and very visual. Persepolis is a great novel and one I'd recommend to everyone, especially those interested in Iranian history and culture. However I think this quote is a good example of the sort of historical reference you need to handle carefully. Note that in this passage Satrapi doesn't claim to have seen the keys distributed herself, nor is she even talking to someone who has. This isn't a first hand account, it is third hand, and it was recorded in comic form many years after the events occurred. Maybe this happened exactly as she wrote, but maybe her friend just recounted the story of keys being distributed to children and an actual key was inserted because it made for a better panel. There was a great contemporary interview I read last summer with a member of the Pasadran captured in Iraq (I can't find it again unfortunately) whose story was rather different from the conventional narrative. He enlisted illegally while underage, much to the chagrin of his parents. When asked why he didn't say anything about religion, his Mullah and teachers had encouraged him to participate but were pointed about only doing it when of legal age. Instead he attributed his decision to much more familiar notions of patriotism and self defense and his own impatience for adventure/glory. He recalled being sent home from the recruiting office the first time he tried and when he tried again the office was filled with a mob of other young boy-men so eager to join they were practically ready to lynch the officer if they were prevented.
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Feb 4, 2017 20:14
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How much power do military leaders really have to shape big strategic decisions anyway? Those seem like the sorts of things civilians usually handle in the US government, although I'm sure they often defer to the generals.
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Feb 14, 2017 23:35
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Very nice. I flew over the Zagreb mountains once, it's seriously forbidding terrain, kinda reminiscent of parts of Colorado or Wyoming, definitely not somewhere I'd want to launch an offensive. And losing 150 tanks to mud in a desert plain is a pretty spectacular gently caress up.
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Feb 17, 2017 23:53
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HEY GAIL posted:trenches from the 30yw were still there hundreds of years later, i've seen 18th century engravings of well-dressed gentlemen staring at 'em. some of them are still there today, like the field fortifications at noerdlingen If you visit more recent mass graves that haven't been dug up and reburied the bodies come up just the same, something to do with fluid dynamics and granular convection. When I visited one of the sites of mass killings in Cambodia there were signs everywhere asking you to please not keep any souvenirs, and around each sign post were little heaps of cloth and bone which respectful visitors had removed from the footpaths.
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Feb 21, 2017 04:04
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My father has an autographed photo of my great-grandfather shaking hands with Chiang Kai-Shek. In the mid 1930s his company was contracted to build arms factories for Chiang's government. He was an interesting man, his company was heavily involved in the international arms trade and was also involved in rearmament in several Central European nations prior to WWII, including I believe Czechoslovakia. He was active all of the world in fact. Ominously, I've found Congressional transcripts showing communication between him and the brutal military government which ruled Peru in the 1930s, although its not clear any contract was ever signed. His specialty was chemical weapons, and his company was involved in the early commercialization of tear gas. He was a scientist and inventor, and in one of his early efforts to create a civilian market for gas weapons he created a pen which concealed a tear gas canister. Unfortunately it never become popular, and in fact one exploded in his hand during a demonstration nearly killing him. The picture of him and Chiang is at my dad's so I can't share it but I do have this jaunty photo of him during WWI, from a US army trade journal in which he describes a gas attack on a US position and talks about some of the munitions involved and other such things, he has at least two full length articles in the issue.  The full length article is here and the journal also has bad vintage 1918 poetry if technical descriptions of shell fuses don't interest you. His gun pen looked like this: 
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Feb 25, 2017 06:37
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Sadly he died when my dad was quite young and my grandmother mostly just complained about his constant smoking. Thinking about him though I started flipping through some of his Congressional testimony and at one point he describes shooting a machine gun in the basement of (the original?) Abercrombie & Fitch in New York, and apparently his business sold a product called "Chlorocold," for "treating colds with chlorine gas" 
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Feb 25, 2017 08:00
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Alchenar posted:On the other hand, the Romans just saw Slavery as being a natural part of a wide spectrum of civil rights that you could (within reason) move up and down and that's just a thing that could happen. The Romans didn't see any inconsistency with a slave having no freedoms with respect to their master, yet wielding immense practical power over others by virtue of being chief clerk to a Consul. I think this is typical of a lot of pre-modern slave systems. For example in old Siam 'slavery' was common, but it can be hard to distinguish slaves from other forms of serfdom. For example Nobles and Princes could buy and sell serfs from one another, and in certain periods would even tattoo their names onto the serfs to prevent them from running away. Serfs under the de jure direct control of the King would not infrequently sell themselves into slavery, in order to escape their obligation of corvee labor. Slaves could take any profession, including soldiery, and possessed many rights and privileges that varied with how they become property. Meanwhile all technically free people were embedded in patron-client system which came with numerous obligations. Living without a patron, perhaps the most free social category, essentially meant living as an outcast or outlaw with no rights or recourse to the legal system.
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Mar 4, 2017 02:17
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I was reading the book King Leopold's Ghost recently and the Belgian colonizers' compulsively Victorian need to use oblique euphemisms for everything is taken to a truely absurd extreme when they have to refer to their slaves:quote:Always, however the slave system was bedecked with euphemisms, used even by officers in the field. "Two boats . . . just arrived with Sergeant Lens and 25 volunteers from Engwettra in chains; two men drowned trying to escape," wrote one officer, Louis Rousseau, in this monthly report for October 1982. Indeed, some three quarters of such "volunteers" died before they could even be delivered to Force Publique posts, a worried senior official wrote the same year. Among the solutions to the problem of this "wastage" he recommended were faster transport and lightweight steel chains instead of heavy iron ones. Documents from this time repeatedly show Congo state officials ordering additional supplies of chain. One officer noted the problem of files of conscripts crossing narrow log bridges over jungle streams: when "liberes [liberated men] chained by the neck cross a bridge, if one falls off, he pulls the whole file off and it disappears."
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Mar 4, 2017 05:31
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bewbies posted:There were a lot of free blacks in the south. Granted their situation was somewhat less than sunny, but there were still a lot of them. I think with systems like this you shouldn't necessarily look at it as a rational system that was constructed to accomplish some specific aim, like consolidating power among big planter aristocrats. The southern slave system was created because the early colonies just didn't have enough labor to run their commodity export market, nor could they realistically offer enough wages to keep free laborers from leaving for the frontier. Meanwhile northern farms probably could have used the labor, but without the ability to produce high value commodities like tobacco and rice there were fewer incentives to spend a lot on bonded labor. As you approach the Civil war and populations increase, the efficient or rational way to order society probably changes, but social systems have a great deal of momentum that's not easily overcome.
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Mar 4, 2017 22:28
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This documentary series on some of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia was linked in another thread, and it is really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_PzsfXbyAw It was produced in 1996, so it obviously doesn't cover the Kosovo War but it gives a great window into the earlier events, with lots of interviews with many of the important players before the ICJ could get a hold of them and while the events were still fresh in memory. It touches on a lot of lesser known issues, for example implicating that Croatian President Franjo Tuđman was likely involved in or at least aware of the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks by Croatian forces. There's another follow up documentary I just started watching which covers some later events, including the Kosovo War. It's also good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIouFeIqBlI The Death of Yugoslavia begins with a crisis in Kosovo in which an angry mob of Serbs confronted Milosevic, accusing Albanian residents of trying to drive them out of the region. Milosevic later refers to accusations of the desecration of graves and churches as well as more direct forms of violence. There isn't much more information on the actual conflict here however. The wikipedia page on Serbophobia describes anti-Serb pogroms in Kosovo occurring in the 2000s, however that was after the war and all the attendant bad blood. So I'm just wondering if anyone knows what kind sort of conflict was occurring between Serbs and Albanians during the 1980s that made inter-communal relations just so bad?
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Mar 11, 2017 07:18
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feedmegin posted:Nah, that took a while to shake out, though. Hence carpetbaggers and so on. The South recovered in the way you described, sometimes with pre-war elites in charge, sometimes not, but the debtors wanted the money right now this second in 1865 and that wasn't going to happen. One of my ancestors who owned a plantation in Arkansas was crippled and shortly died in 1865 after being assaulted by a criminal gang trying to extort money out of him, money which the war had made disappear. Family legend is that while they hung him by the neck and were demanding the location where he buried his (nonexistent) money, his newly freed slave came around with a shotgun and chased them off.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:09
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P-Mack posted:Which is why I'm surprised Germany insisted on so much in Brest Litovsk instead of just trying to conclude any peace treaty as quickly as possible. Time was a resource they couldn't really afford to squander. Humans are just really bad at dealing with the sunk-cost fallacy
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Mar 20, 2017 18:03
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 Indian Pangolin scale armor, presented to King George the III 1820 lenoon posted:I've been expanding my reading beyond my usual realms of Britain 1600-1954, and looking at some romans. Does anyone know of any good studies about Roman armour? I've been poking around looking for ballistic gel studies on squamata, plumata and segmentata but am drawing a blank. For my modern oriented mind, segmentata seems like a revolutionary invention, but was it as much of a huge leap in infantry armour as it seems, or was it only marginally better than the other contemporary armours? Not sure if this is your 'thing,' but I found this article on the evolution of Roman helmets to be surprisingly interesting as a lay reader, and it has lots of great illustrations. http://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1986_num_63_1_6923   Evidence From Dura Europos For the Origins of Late Roman Helmets posted:[This helmet] was certainly deposited during the siege which destroyed the city in the mid-third century. Dura, the most important forward base and garrison of the Roman army on this stretch of the Euphrates, was attacked and destroyed by the Persians under Shapur I around AD 255-7. of the wealth of archaeological remains resulting from the siege, the richest in terms of artifacts are those from the operations around tower 19. The countermine was an attempt by the Roman defenders to stop the Persians undermining the foundations of the tower preparatory to an assault. The consequent battle underground resulted in the defenders being worsted. The pile of unrecovered Roman bodies in the countermine, and the subsequent destruction of the tower are eloquent testimony to this.
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Mar 25, 2017 03:33
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feedmegin posted:Well yes and no, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy,_Army_and_Air_Force_Institutes for example. Japan might be a bit of a special case but field kitchens and mess halls have been around for quite a while in any First World army in any situation where the blokes have settled down for a bit, and stuff like https://reprorations.com/Britain%20WW2/WW2-Britain.htm was a thing, too. Like, I'm not saying America was bad at this, they were good at it, but it's not like all the rest of the world's militaries were banging rocks together and having their grunts stew mammoths in cauldrons they'd hunted themselves with flint spears, you know. I like how as with every subject in WWII, the US military created elaborate films describing the food science and industry behind Americans rations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YueiTnSl_Bo Interestingly the US military-industrial complex is alive and well in American fields of research. The Lunchable, the little kids lunch pack with crackers and cheese or do-it yourself pizzas, is based on the same research and was designed by the same scientists who developed the MRE. Another strange example of how US industry works, with research and development paid for by the military and then freely adopted and commercialized by US industry.
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Mar 25, 2017 22:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:All that development and research that went into the rations didn't stop the people in the army from scavenging what they could though. In addition to "liberating" supplies from the locals, here's an except from my Grandad's memoir: Lol that's a great war story. I was going through my great grandfather's Congressional testimony recently and he and other American industrialists were openly marketing to jumpstart the chemical weapons industry of anybody willing to buy, and then instruct their army in the proper use of chemical weapons. Here's a deal offered to the Colombian government in 1933 quote:Mr. Roberto Escobar, Acting Consul General, At the time of the testimony the deal was still being negotiated and given export of gas warfare technology was tightly restricted in the mid-1930s by the isolationists it was probably never completed. There were also a number of issues raised in Congress about 'commissions' collected by a US navy attache with the Colombian military named Commander Strong, through whom arms deals were arranged. Apparently my great grandfathers competitors were paying extra for preferential treatment.
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Mar 26, 2017 08:02
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Saint Celestine posted:Edit: There haven't been many straight up tank vs tank fights bigger than misc. forces after World war 2. I can think of the Six day war, Yom Kippur, India-Pakistan in 65', Iran-Iraq, and Desert Storm. Im sure random T55s and stuff have been engaging each other for the past 50 years all across Africa. In the Ogaden War Somali deployed over 250 tanks, mostly T55s, in a mechanized offensive across a desert plateau. Ethiopia started with M-41s and M-47s but by the end of the war also had several formations of Cuban T-62s and probably more from the Soviets. Unfortunately I haven't seen any detailed accounts actual engagements so it's hard to tell what sort of ranges were like. I believe the early stages of the war were dominated by Somali armored thrusts against infantry in fortified positions, with Ethiopian F-5s wrecking Somali formations from the air. There must have been several big engagements towards the end when Cuban and Ethiopian forces swept the Somalis back across the border but I haven't read any clear descriptions of what engagements were like, both governments at the time were terribly unreliable in terms of their reports. Edit: out of curiosity I started looking for first hand accounts of combat in the Ogaden War, and while I didn't find any I did find this impressive footage of what looks like armored combat from the Eritrean War of Independence, which I did not expect to look so conventional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGf0gOjh7p0&t=1294s Unfortunately I think it's in Tigrayan, but the images are compelling on their own. I've set the video to start at a point where you can see various armored vehicles firing tracers across the hills, although they don't seem to take return fire so its hard to tell what's happening. There's lots of footage of tanks shooting in other engagements earlier, and shots of tanks blasted apart, although they could be Eritrean vehicles hit by the Ethiopian airforce. There's several shots of them dropping what look like thermobaric bombs I also also found this cool Somali (presumably by a Somali American?) about the Ogaden war. Although it does celebrate war crimes  Based posted:Yo, u hear dat Ogaden war Racks remix? Squalid fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Mar 28, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 04:57
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Plutonis posted:Mao was also probably the best guerilla commander of the century alongside Castro and Luis Carlos Prestes, too bad this didn't translate very well into rulership itself. Hmm.. could expand on what made Luis Carlos Prestes so successful? I can't say I've heard about him before, or even any communist insurgency in Brazil at all.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:06
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This quote mentions one of my favorite documentaries ever, The First World War. I remember one episode in particular, on the Ottoman Empire's entrance to the war. It did a great job of showing me a perspective on the war that before had always seemed very distant and hard to comprehend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p8X5mflZtI I was particular struck by one letter recovered by the Entente from a dead Turkish soldier, there was something about hearing this coming from what was supposed to be an enemy that really hit me at the time and I still sometimes remember. quote:To my highborn royal wife Aisha,
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Mar 31, 2017 06:49
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Man what is it with petty dictators and executing their own generals. Is that something Saddam did more than once in the conflict? I can hardly think of any behavior that would seem worse strategically.
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Apr 5, 2017 17:52
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HEY GAIL posted:along with spain, venice, and genoa they were the early modern Med superpowers, what the hell are you smoking If you can list four comparably strong nations in the same breath can you really call a state a super power? Regardless, during this period the Ottomans also dominated the spice trade into the Persian Gulf and Egypt, which was greater in volume and I think value than the spice trade to Europe. This persisted at least until the rise of Oman as a maritime power in the Indian Ocean.
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Apr 5, 2017 19:26
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HEY GAIL posted:also in in the tuerkische kammer in dresden is the best sword ever made, which is a transylvanian katana. What indication is there that the blade is Thai? It is a little hard to judge the shape from the blurry picture and awkward angle, but it doesn't look much like the Thai blades I'm familiar with. Although a Thai blade with Japanese influence is not exactly outside the realm of possibility. . .  quote:An image representing Yamada Nagamasa's volunteer army. It was rescued by Sakae Miki in 1939. The original was allegedly painted in the 17th century on the walls of Wat Yom, an Ayuttayan temple that was later destroyed. (Samurai of Ayutthaya, Cesare Polenghi). edit: Thailand produced a number of styles of curved sword but they tend to be shorter than katanas and wielded single handed. Squalid fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Apr 8, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 01:18
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A couple quotes from Samurai of Ayutthaya, Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese Warrior and Merchant in Early Seventeenth-Century Siam, Cesare Polenghi.quote:… once the Siamese had witnessed the Portuguese superiority in warfare, in 1516 they promptly signed a treaty with them regarding firearms. This was only five years after the Portuguese had taken Malacca! … in 1534, King Chairacha hired one hundred and twenty Portuguese. After the Portuguese it was the turn of the Japanese, who were in charge of the bodyguards also during Nagamasa’s days in Siam. Over the following decades, foreign body guards were a constant presence in Siam, and they, in return, were followed by Chams and Malays. Besides the bodyguards, the Siamese army featured squadrons of asa, auxiliary troops formed by foreigners residing in Ayutthaya who fought alongside the local military. (The Japanese asa were involved in a great battle in 1593...). Dutch and Portuguese also provided soldiers to Ayutthaya in the seventeenth century, both to protect their business interests there and as mercenaries. quote:In 1662 a French father, Lambert, counted an astonishing number of 1,500 Japanese Christians, a figure essentially confirmed by his colleague, father Deydier, one year later. quote:Regarding more picturesque occupations, there is a source that mentions how a certain Kinoshita Rokuemon managed a small Japanese-style hotel at the mouth of the Menam. Furthermore, among the inhabitants of the Nihonmachi in the early 1630s there was an actor by the name of Hayami Matasaburo, a fact that shows how the Japanese brought over some of their traditions, including popular entertainment. There are no records indicating that the Japanese living in Ayutthaya engaged in agricultural activities. quote:There is one last interesting piece of information regarding the Japanese in Siam before the normalization of relations between Japan and Thailand in 1887… a collection of Thai documents contains a memorandum with the instructions of King Rama III for arranging the audience. This memorandum shows that a special unit of guards called “Japanese auxiliaries” (asa yipun) still existed at the time, consisting of 100 soldiers and two officers. We do not know whether among these guards, there were any of the descendants of Nagamasa and his men. However, it is clear that the tradition or perhaps the ideal, of hiring Japanese auxiliaries in the royal army lived on until at least the mid-nineteenth century. It's entirely possible it was manufactured in South East Asia by or for resident Japanese, and then traded to the Ottoman's via Aceh and from thence was given to their Romanian vassals.
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Apr 8, 2017 01:47
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PittTheElder posted:Semi-related, but I still cannot get over how the Portuguese come sailing into the Indian Ocean in 1498, and then just 15 years later Alfonso de Albuquerque is taking and holding fortresses all over the places, even in the face of determined efforts by the locals to take them back. If anyone happens to be particularly knowledgeable on how that happened, and inclined to effort-post about it, I'd certainly like to read it. I was reading about early Portuguese and Dutch interactions with the Chinese and at least for Macau, they hold it at the pleasure of the Ming. Both nations show up and immediately start making bizarre demands and basically believing themselves to be big important players who have to be taken seriously. Meanwhile the Chinese tell them to  and come back when they're ready to act like responsible merchants instead of piratical slavers.Sholto Percy, Reuben Percy (1826) posted:The king of Portugal, desirous of the trade of China, sent an ambassador and one of his captains to propose a commercial alliance. The ambassador was gladly received, and sent by land to Nankin, and the honourable behaviour of Pedro de Andrade gained the important traffic of the harbour of Canton.On this officer's return to India, Sequeyra the governor sent Simon de Andrade, brother to Pedro, with five ships to China; and whatever were his instructions, the absurdity of his actions was only equalled by his gross insolence. As if he had arrived among beings of an inferior order, he assumed an authority like that which is claimed by man over the brute creation. He seized the island of Tamou, opposite to Canton. Here he erected a fort and a gallows ; and while he plundered the merchants, the wives and daughters of the principal inhabitants were dragged from their friends to his garrison, and the gibbet punished resistance. Nor did he stop even here. The Portuguese in India wanted slaves, and Andrade thought he had found the proper nursery. He published his design to buy the youth of both sexes, and in this inhuman traffic ha was supplied by the most profligate of the natives. These proceedings, however, were soon known to tha emperor of China, and the Portuguese ambassador and his retinue died the death of spies. Andrade was attacked by the Chinese itao, or admiral, and escaped with much loss, by the favour of a tempest, after being forty days harassed by a fleet greatly superior to his own. Next year Alonzo de Melo, ignorant of these transactions, entered the harbour of Canton with four vessels. But his ships were instantly seized, and the crews massacred, as spies and robbers by the enraged Chinese. And though the Portuguese afterwards were permitted to some trade with China, it was upon very restricted and disgraceful conditions1*, conditions which treated them as a nation of pirates, as men who were not to bs trusted unless fettered and watched.[14][15] The early Dutch efforts to control trade with China ended no better. quote:the Dutch seized Penghu (the Pescadores Islands), built a fort there, and continued to demand that China open up ports in Fujian to Dutch trade. China refused, with the Chinese Governor of Fujian (Fukien) Shang Zhouzuo (Shang Chou-tso) demanding that the Dutch withdraw from the Pescadores to Formosa (Taiwan), where the Chinese would permit them to engage in trade. This led to a war between the Dutch and China between 1622-1624 which ended with the Chinese being successful in making the Dutch withdraw to Taiwan and abandoning the Pescadores.[4][5] The Dutch threatened that China would face Dutch raids on Chinese ports and shipping unless the Chinese allowed trading on Penghu and that China not trade with Manila but only with the Dutch in Batavia and Siam and Cambodia. However, the Dutch found out that unlike smaller Southeast Asian Kingdoms, China could not be bullied or intimidated by them. After Shang ordered them to withdraw to Taiwan on September 19 of 1622, the Dutch raided Amoy on October and November.[6] The Dutch intended to "induce the Chinese to trade by force or from fear" by raiding Fujian and Chinese shipping from the Pescadores.[7] Long artillery batteries were erected at Amoy in March 1622 by Colonel Li Kung-hwa as a defence against the Dutch.[8] The defeat of the Dutch on Taiwan was a strange incident too. See Zheng Chenggong didn't actually care at all about the Dutch presence on the island, however the island represented a secure base from which he could continue resisting the ascendant Qing empire, and the Dutch were just unlucky to be in his way. In this period the Chinese, Japanese and Thai states all seemed to follow fairly similar strategies in their relations with Europeans. Wanted to trade and were fine giving westerners a presence in their territory, but wanted to control the terms of commerce and sought to physically regulate and limit where they could call to port.
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Apr 10, 2017 01:36
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One of the earliest European accounts of the Ming dynasty comes from a Portuegues sailor named Galeote Pereira who was imprisoned as smuggler and exiled to interior China. quote:Pereira and other Portuguese mercenaries helped defend the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom against the invading army of King Tabinshwehti of Pegu in the Burmese–Siamese War (1548–49), introducing Early Modern warfare to the region.
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Apr 10, 2017 02:18
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feedmegin posted:He tried that with The Passion , too. Then promptly hosed it up by having everyone speak Latin instead of koine Greek. With Church pronunciation even! Wouldn't they have been speaking Aramaic? Or at least the common people, the Roman administration would have likely used koine
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Apr 13, 2017 22:24
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Rob Roy is famous for its swordfights because they go on forever, which people mistake for goodness. A historically accurate swordfight is basically impossible to find in a movie because it is not dramatic. Arn the Knight Templar has a duel that strikes a good balance between realism and accuracy imo. The movie duel I thought was most similar to those descriptions in that funny webpage with the description of old dueling injuries was actually in The Revenant, with the final fight between Tom Hardy and DeCaprio reminding me a lot of those absurd cases. Of course those probably weren't typical duels, but it was still a nice change of pace from guys falling dead instantly. fake edit: Oh I found the webpage, I think it was originally shared in the medieval LARP thread? "The Dubious Quick Kill posted:Two duelists, identified only as "His Grace, the Duke of B " and "Lord B ", after an exchange of exceptionally cordial letters of challenge met in the early morning to conduct their affair with pistols and swords. The combat began with a pistol ball inflicting a slight wound to the Duke's thumb. A second firing was exchanged in which Lord B was then wounded slightly. Each then immediately drew his sword and rushed upon the other with reckless ferocity. After an exchange of only one or two thrusts, the two became locked corps a corps. Struggling to free themselves by "repeated wrenches," they finally separated enough to allow the Duke to deliver a thrust which entered the inside of Lord B 's sword arm and exited the outside of the arm at the elbow. Incredible as it may seem, his Lordship was still able to manage his sword and eventually drove home a thrust just above Duke B 's right nipple. Transfixed on his Lordship's blade, the Duke nevertheless continued, attempting repeatedly to direct a thrust at his Lordship's throat. With his weapon fixed in His Grace's chest, Lord B now had no means of defense other than his free arm and hand. Attempting to grasp the hostile blade, he lost two fingers and mutilated the remainder. Finally, the mortally wounded Duke penetrated the bloody parries of Lord B's hand with a thrust just below Lord B 's heart.
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Apr 15, 2017 06:40
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Arquinsiel posted:That article actually totally ignores Omagh, which is what actually made the Good Friday Agreement stick. Other than that, he's right. "Nerf war" won, and the Omagh bombing, while debatably intended to be a nerf bomb, resulted in both sides seeing what would happen if the gloves came off. He's also massively over-charitable to the IRA, who did regularly engage in reprisal killings. Mostly targeted at military personnel, but still... they killed people. Lots of people. War Nerd is always a bit sloppy on specifics. Still I think it does a good job of making the point that an insurgency isn't really purely or even primarily a military action, they are political movements with political goals, and force or violence is just one means to that end. EggsAisle posted:Are there cases where it has worked? This has me really curious now. It's difficult to think of cases like this because the fact that a consequential insurgency has occurred means the hearts and minds of the subject people have already been lost by a government. However its not just the government that has to win hearts and minds, rather they and the insurgents are competing for the support and backing of the people. The far-left terrorist groups of Western Europe which mobilized in the seventies, like the Red Army Faction in West Germany or the Red Brigades of Italy, never really developed a popular base of support. Without a broad base of support these organizations could never truly threaten the state and as dedicated cadres died or were imprisoned they were rarely replaced and the groups withered. In Peru the revolutionary Maoist organization the Shining Path became popular among Indians, who had long resented and been neglected by the Federal government. In the 1980s and 1990s they expanded across much of rural Peru, controlling territory and threatening the government. However The Shining Path soon turned towards brutal and unpopular methods, indiscriminately slaughtering the inhabitants of villages known for collaboration and barring farmers from taking goods to market in a misguided effort to besiege Lima and strangle the capitalist system. While peasants still mistrusted the government, many also began to fear the Shining Path, and the state took advantage by organizing local self-defense militias that kept the Shining Path out. Losing popular support and facing a more competent military campaign, the Shining Path have been declining in strength since the 1990s.
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Apr 16, 2017 20:29
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spectralent posted:I'm kind of curious, now. Are things like Vietnam and the Chinese Civil War (1940s edition) and the fighting against Al Qaeda or the IRA the same kind of thing, when people talk about "guerilla war"? In my head, guerilla wars were still ultimately "military campaigns", they were just ones where one side was aware they had a big disadvantage and were fighting accordingly with a large element of subterfuge and espionage about things. Comparatively, AQ and the IRA seem to be something different because there's no military objectives, except for the fact that all military objectives ultimately serve some political end. Presumably vietcong are fighting (in addition to fighting for the unification of Vietnam) to destroy a given element of the enemy army, or deny them ground or deplete materiel, or something similar, whereas AQ didn't destroy the twin towers for any kind of objective, except for what's ultimately for publicity. I mean I use the term broadly because all these conflicts occur across a wide range of circumstances with many wildly varying features and often involve relatively conventional phases. I'm fascinated by revolutions and asymmetrical conflicts because they can illustrate the processes and mechanism of power and social organization much more clearly than conventional conflicts, which are comparatively crude. Guerrilla war is just a tactic that can be used even by regular forces, for example Freddie Spencer Chapman efforts against the Japanese in Malaysia. On the other hand, the Zapatistas in Mexico today remain in what they have declared a "war" with the Mexican government, but haven't actually fought a military campaign since the mid-1990s, instead focusing on organizing its shadow government in relative peace. In the Rhodesian Bush War the ZANLA never really defeated the white government, they just made the situation difficult enough it had to seek a compromise, culminating in the Lancaster House Agreement and popular elections. Mugabe initially though he was getting screwed and neither side expected the smashing victory of his ZANU-PF in the elections of 1980, finally ending the conflict. HEY GAIL posted:war nerd is poo poo and bullshit in every area where i know enough to criticize him, so i imagine in the other areas too I mean its definitely juvenile but it still remains a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, if only because I feel its really as much or more about political and popular narratives than trying to objectively describe some historical event. It certainly appealed to my adolescent edgelord history nerd self, who of course thought he could see through all the bullshit the government feeds to the drat sheep. I think there's still value in just explicitly saying there's more than one way to look at something, especially when say, the US government describes disastrous military defeats like this:  Translation: Afghan forces fled a region the coalition has tried to control for over a decade in the middle of the night abandoning their equipment, and we had to destroy the village in order to save it.
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Apr 17, 2017 02:09
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