History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII
- Thread starter Plotinus
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sydhe
King of Kongs
Pyrrhus won a couple of battles against the Romans. And if Wikipedia is correct, the Romans had elephants at Cynoscephalae and Philip V didn't.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
During the battle of the Trebia Hannibal still had some elephants (according to wiki he had 37 of them there).
I think a good approach to this research would be listing all known major battles in which war elephants participated.
Once we have a list of battles with war elephants, we can compare the results and also check in which battles only the victorious army had them.
I think a good approach to this research would be listing all known major battles in which war elephants participated.
Once we have a list of battles with war elephants, we can compare the results and also check in which battles only the victorious army had them.
Ankara 1402, Timur using war elephants against the Ottomans.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Huh, I'd read a good deal about Ankara but didn't recall the elephants. I knew he got a lot from the conquest of the Sultanate of Delhi.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Around when did the Galatian Celts disappear as a distinct group? My vague uneducated guess would be sometime in late antiquity, but I want to know if there is something more exact out there.
Hard to tell; the language survived until the 5th century AD, but their Gallic ancestors at that time would probably not have seen very much 'Celtic' about them.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Yeah, that's true. I suppose by late antiquity they had already been assimilated into the local Anatolian populations.
'Assimilated' is a difficult word, I think. It's unlikely that if they consciously kept their language they saw themselves as one and the same with their other neighbours, but they probably felt more in common with them than with 'real' barbarians or even the Gauls of the western empire.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Last Celtic-speakers in Gaul itself also existed until about the 5th century AD:
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
How did Yugoslavia secede from the Eastern Bloc without triggering a reaction similar to the ones in Poland/Hungary/Czechia?
Yugoslavia wasn't part of the Warsaw Pact: no Russian troops were in the country. It wasn't even a member of Comecon. So, while Yugoslavia ideologically was part of 'the Eastern bloc', as you say, the USSR really did not have a say in matters Yugoslavian.
Albania was also part of neither organization. Lastly, neither country was a member of Cominform, the ideological component of Soviet inspired Communism.
Albania was also part of neither organization. Lastly, neither country was a member of Cominform, the ideological component of Soviet inspired Communism.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
In that case, how did Yugoslavia avoid the fate of being invaded by Russians?
Too much of a hassle, I presume.
The other communist states remained loyal and Tito was pretty well isolated; there was no immediate threat to Soviet hegemony in the region.
Military intervention against their own satellites wasn't taken lightly by the Soviets. The better question would be why did Hungary and Czechoslovakia got invaded. Both were situations which could very well have resolved without invasion.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
To teach them a lesson that you just don't say "hey how about we are a bit more democratic, y'know?" in the middle of the Cold War?
The aftermath of WWII saw the Soviet Red Army already occupying Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. But not Yugoslavia. Then following the war, Yugoslavia had a government in Tito who was nominally friendly, but refused to let the Soviets in. And it wasn't worth it to the Soviets to force the issue, so long as Tito remained communist.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Didn't Stalin expel Tito from Cominform?
I think distance was a big factor. I don't think it's a coincidence that both Yugoslavia and Albania weren't under the Warsaw Pact and it was the farthest western expansion of Communist rule (excluding Latin America). However, the fact that Yugoslavia was free from the apparatuses that justified Soviet invasion certainly helped. Finally, the Communist party wasn't installed by the Soviet Union, it arose relatively independently. Obviously, the USSR supported the Partisan movement, the Soviet advance against Germany helped Partisans take back the country, etc. In addition, even countries that the Soviets "installed" a government often formed plurality or majority coalitions to initially take control and only then expelled non-Communist parties (Czechoslovakia more or less is an exception to this rule). But the Red Army never occupied Yugoslavia, which helped it maintain independent control and I don't think the Soviets ever were in a position to invade it.
Also, when looking at the quelling of the Prague Spring, the Brezhnev Doctrine was arguably only about maintaining control, not expanding it. So Yugoslavia wouldn't fit in at all there.
I think distance was a big factor. I don't think it's a coincidence that both Yugoslavia and Albania weren't under the Warsaw Pact and it was the farthest western expansion of Communist rule (excluding Latin America). However, the fact that Yugoslavia was free from the apparatuses that justified Soviet invasion certainly helped. Finally, the Communist party wasn't installed by the Soviet Union, it arose relatively independently. Obviously, the USSR supported the Partisan movement, the Soviet advance against Germany helped Partisans take back the country, etc. In addition, even countries that the Soviets "installed" a government often formed plurality or majority coalitions to initially take control and only then expelled non-Communist parties (Czechoslovakia more or less is an exception to this rule). But the Red Army never occupied Yugoslavia, which helped it maintain independent control and I don't think the Soviets ever were in a position to invade it.
Also, when looking at the quelling of the Prague Spring, the Brezhnev Doctrine was arguably only about maintaining control, not expanding it. So Yugoslavia wouldn't fit in at all there.
Yugoslavia has been a Cominform observer since 1964, but I do seem to remember Stalin's only response was to Kick Tito out of Cominform, yes. And the Brezhnev doctrine obviously postdates the Tito-Stalin quarrel.
Well, they didn't manage much of that at the end of WW II. But why would the Warsaw Pact invade Yugoslavia in the first place?
Well, they didn't manage much of that at the end of WW II. But why would the Warsaw Pact invade Yugoslavia in the first place?
Russia's historic interest in Yugoslavia was to gain a foothold on the Mediterranean; this had been a major theme in international politics between about 1850 and 1918. Russian attempts to annex territory in what is now Greece led to forceful responses from all of the other Great Powers; it's not out of the question that an intervention in Yugoslavia would have been met with force that was not forthcoming in the cases of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
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