History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

Louis XXIV said:

Czechoslovakia was different. It had a stable democratic government that didn't have a Communist-allied majority and there was no prospect of forming a permanent ruling coalition of just Communists. Then the Communist party took over in a coup while Soviet troops waited just outside.

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Czechoslovakia was different, but not because it had a stable democratic government. Rather the communists were (initially) actually voted into power with considerable popular support.

It was 1946 and the Communist Party got almost a third of the vote. Gottwald became prime minister with Benes as President. The Czechoslovak communists operated more or less independently of Moscow to the point they entertained joining the Marshall Plan, at which point Stalin presumably went enough is enough, and tightened the reins, hence the "coup", after which point the country followed the standard Eastern Bloc path to Stalinism as you described.

tl;dr a democracy that voted Stalinists into government can't really be considered "stable"

Considering that by 1946, the Soviets waltzed through half of Europe, I don't see it very strange that they voted in the Stalinists.

What would have happened if Ashoka didn't convert to Buddhism?

Theodorick said:

What would have happened if Ashoka didn't convert to Buddhism?

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India would still be Hindu today.

Oh wait.

Can anyone think of anyone who held the rank of both Admiral and General at the same time, or different times in their lives, other than Idi Amin?

Can anybody give me a rundown of English history from about 1000-1500.

Nasty, brutish and about five hundred years long.

Quackers said:

Can anybody give me a rundown of English history from about 1000-1500.

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Uhhh...lol?

Let me try:

Vikings
Frenchies
Civil War
Other Frenchies
Crappy kings
Papal Conflict
Frenchies fighting Frenchies
France won, France hilariously lost, France won, France hilariously lost
More Civil War
Welshies

Owen Glyndwr said:

Uhhh...lol?

Let me try:

Vikings
Frenchies
Civil War
Other Frenchies
Crappy kings
Papal Conflict
Frenchies fighting Frenchies
France won, France hilariously lost, France won, France hilariously lost
More Civil War
Welshies

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Wait, I know about the English civil war but that goes beyond my time frame.
We had a further two?

Quackers said:

Wait, I know about the English civil war but that goes beyond my time frame.
We had a further two?

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Oh, I forgot, throw in like 20 instances of "Power struggle between monarch and nobility"

Also yes and yes and kinda yes

Huh, I really should have remembered the War of the Roses. Actually remember that from Primary School. Even today there is a banterous rivalry between Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen.

What did the Welshies do? And what about the Losing and Winning of France?

That was really more a case of one French dynasty winning and losing France, I think, but I could be wrong.

I'm guessing it is the Normans conquering England and then having to deal with rebellious French constituents and failing.

More the other way around, actually. In theory it was the French king dealing (eventually) successfully with his rebellious English subordinate.

Quackers said:

I'm guessing it is the Normans conquering England and then having to deal with rebellious French constituents and failing.

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It's kind of a tricky one. Like, on paper, it was a contest between two rival claimants to the French crown, one set of whom happened to be Kings of England, so you could see it as a French war with English involvement. But on the other hand, it wasn't like there were two separate English and Plantagenet French states that just happened to be under a personal union, because there wasn't really a clear structural distinction between the Plantagenet's French and English domains in that sense. (Separate legal jurisdictions, but that was also true of parts of England.) So maybe there's one Anglo-French state? But then how do we relate that to national histories; would it imply that a "history of France" should include a section on the winning and losing of England?

Flying Pig said:

More the other way around, actually. In theory it was the French king dealing (eventually) successfully with his rebellious English subordinate.

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That sorta assumes the legitimacy of the Valois claim, which may in the long run be legally accurate, but it doesn't really describe what was happening at the time. We could just as easily characterise the Plantagenets as the French kings, and the Valois as the upstart subordinates. Did Counts of Valois have some more natural claim to the French throne than Dukes of Normandy? As contemporaries saw it, there was one rightful king of France and one vassal making false claim to the crown, they just disagreed about which was which.

I always understood the invasion of England to be the moment at which the Dukes of Normandy demonstrated their de facto independence.

True, but the Dukes or Normandy later inherited the French crown, or at least they claimed they did, so it's between rival claimants to the French throne rather than between a king and a vassal which the 14th and 15th century Plantagenet-Valois wars are fought.

Although, you've got the 13th century Plantagenet-Capetian wars, too, which are more straightforwardly England-Normandy-Aquitaine against the French crown, but that raises the question of how far Aquitaine was really part of the Kingdom of France, so...

Basically, Medieval history resents us trying to fit modern state-identities onto it and will fight like a bugger to complicate things.

And then, because things weren't going to be any less complicated, the Burgundians decided to join in the fun and also mess everything for France, and later on, for themselves.

There's some Bretons in there, too. Two sets of them. And various Germans wading in from time to time. And the Scots. S'a right mess.

Quackers said:

Huh, I really should have remembered the War of the Roses. Actually remember that from Primary School. Even today there is a banterous rivalry between Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen.

What did the Welshies do? And what about the Losing and Winning of France?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_dynasty

France won: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Br%C3%A9tigny

France lost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War_(1369%E2%80%9389)

France won again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Troyes

France lost again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Arras and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castillon and ultimately http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Picquigny