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So what was the deal with John J. McCloy? Was he an Axis sympathizer or something?
Why is Czechia about the only country on the map that Americans call "Czech Republic" and not a more informal name? You almost never hear "French Republic" or even "Republic of China" where it actually matters.
I still refer to it as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Missed the point.Do you still refer to Germany as Trizonia?
Very. But it depends on what you're looking for.How much outdated is Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?
Thanks for the recommendations, but could I ask what are the most glaring examples of his outdatedness?Very. But it depends on what you're looking for.
*snip*
Other than the decidedly one-sided source list? The fact that he didn't have anything about archaeology or epigraphical material means that he pretty much cleanly missed the entire modern understanding of the late Roman economy. (Especially the understanding of its overall improvement in the fourth century; increased diversification and areas under cultivation, as discovered especially under Tchalenko in Syria and under the auspices of various groups in North Africa, would argue strongly against the notion of some sort of long decline that one might potentially get from a - skewed - view of Roman high politics during the same period.) Insofar as he got a picture of it, he viewed things from the perspective solely of high politics and with a decent dosage of cultural/religious information, but he lacked enough context to understand how representative his sources were. (His personal bias also showed through, there.)Thanks for the recommendations, but could I ask what are the most glaring examples of his outdatedness?
Depends. There's still plenty of great stuff going back to the sixties and seventies that still has a great deal of merit. The aforementioned Bury published between 1889 and 1923, and his conclusions still hold up reasonably well. The equivalent of Bury for Byzantine history, Aleksandr Vasiliev, published in the 1920s and the 1930s. (Vasiliev emigrated to the United States and his major works can all be found in English.) It's less about the dates per se and more about the conclusions drawn and the evidence used; Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell, despite being a recent publication by a well-known historian who amply backs up his opinions, is garbage compared to the much older History of the Later Roman Empire.On that last point, what sort of time-frame should you allow yourself when looking for books on a subject? Obviously, fields move at different speeds at different times, and individuals books vary in lifespan, but as a very general guideline? (Obviously, certain books will have usefulness as introductions to certain points of theory or historiography even if they're not exactly up to date; last semester I was assigned Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution and they basically spent two months picking holes in it.)
May be a tough one, but what was the world economy like in A.D.1500? (In terms of leading countries in nominal GDP, GDP per capita, etc.) I don't expect any answers to be accurate, but I would like to know.
Very roughly speaking, the broad regions of Europe, India and China were roughly on par with each other in terms of both economic size and per capita wealth, with Europe slightly ahead in the latter regard.
I got a question myself: how did Chiang Kai-shek ever got to Cairo in 1943, anyway? It sounds like a logistic nightmare of a trip.
Can anyone ever be sure about such things?
According to the late Angus Maddison's estimates - problematic, but widely accepted as the best we have - total Western and Eastern European GDP was lower than those of either China or India in 1500, but was within about twenty percent of either, which certainly qualifies as "about the same", especially when considering that that's probably smaller than the error involved in making such calculations.But where they even close?
I read somewhere that India had the world's largest economy (GDP) from the 1st to 18th centuries.
Very roughly speaking, the broad regions of Europe, India and China were roughly on par with each other in terms of both economic size and per capita wealth, with Europe slightly ahead in the latter regard.
According to the late Angus Maddison's estimates - problematic, but widely accepted as the best we have - total Western and Eastern European GDP was lower than those of either China or India in 1500, but was within about twenty percent of either, which certainly qualifies as "about the same", especially when considering that that's probably smaller than the error involved in making such calculations.
It's virtually impossible to measure the GDP of anywhere before roughly the 19th/20th Century.