History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

Dachs · May 19, 2016

Lohrenswald said:
Yea I know. I thought I had heard somewhere that the Russian empire's expansion into central Asia made muslims a majority.

Although maybe it was like 1/3 instead.

Though I was also wondering about Ivan 4th's conquests.

But I won't dispute the answer "no".

In the 1897 census, within a few decades of the conquest of Central Asia, Orthodox peoples were ~65% of the Russian population, and Muslims were ~11%. Central Asia was at that time much more sparsely populated than European Russia.

There are few/no reliable population figures on the populations of the Khanates of Sibir, Astrakhan, and Kazan, but serious estimates would place the khanates at somewhat lower populations than Muscovy.

Agent327 · May 19, 2016

Dachs said:
Your rebrand didn't change anything, did it?

Sometimes it helps to understand something better by simply using a slightly different, yet very similar word. I'm sure you know what such words are called.

I take it you agree with the analysis, since you have brought up no objections.

Lohrenswald · May 20, 2016

Dachs said:
In the 1897 census, within a few decades of the conquest of Central Asia, Orthodox peoples were ~65% of the Russian population, and Muslims were ~11%. Central Asia was at that time much more sparsely populated than European Russia.

What about the 24 % remainding? Poles?

Flying Pig · May 20, 2016

Buddhists too, I imagine. Most people in Mongolia are Buddhist.

Lohrenswald · May 20, 2016

All the buddhist areas were pretty sparsely populated too

It's actually kinda bad of me to just not look it up

so a bit more orthodox share than Dachs said (was reported), and then it's sort of "diverse outer region peoples"

EDIT:

So more reasonably less than 69 % orthodox (65 % might be closer to the truth, I don't know), and actually more catholics than reported

Phrossack · May 20, 2016

Flying Pig said:
Buddhists too, I imagine. Most people in Mongolia are Buddhist.

Well, Mongolia was never part of Russia or the USSR, but there are Kalmyks (basically Western Mongols who migrated there) in SW Russia. They're mostly Buddhist.

Tee Kay · May 20, 2016

Phrossack said:
Well, Mongolia was never part of Russia or the USSR, but there are Kalmyks (basically Western Mongols who migrated there) in SW Russia. They're mostly Buddhist.

Also Buryats and others on the border of Mongolia Mongolia.

Krajzen · May 27, 2016

How mere Britain was able to conquer and control the entire Indian subcontinent for so long?

JohannaK · May 27, 2016

Divide and conquer. And use the local elites and power structures where convenient. I don't really know a lot about this, but I think that's the gist.

jackelgull · May 27, 2016

JohannaK said:
Divide and conquer. And use the local elites and power structures where convenient. I don't really know a lot about this, but I think that's the gist.

Basically this. The British almost ended up keeping the Mughal code of law word by word, but it was written in Arabic which the British couldn't decode so they sent for imams to interpret the laws for them and each imam came up with a different interpretation, it nearly drove the British mad. But yeah, the British kept power structures laws and elites intact where it was convenient. They only directly intervened in serious cases like abolishing the suttee (the custom that widows had to set themselves on fire after their husbands died).

Tee Kay · May 28, 2016

The conquest also took about a century, from the Battle of Plassey to the establishment of the Raj. It wasn't a case of the British simply marching in, maxim-gunning the Indian army, and kicking back on the verandah with gin and tonic. First the maxim gun wasn't a thing yet; the British has a slight technological advantage on land but not an overwhelming one. Second there was no such thing as an Indian army, actually no such thing as an Indian consciousness at all. The British weren't facing the entire subcontinent united as one, they were facing petty states which in turn were internally fragmented.

The resources and manpower required to keep India captive to the British Empire was basically provided by India itself. The armies of the EIC and later the Indian Empire consisted overwhelmingly of Indian troops commanded by European officers, financed by revenue from British Indian territories, until the rise of Indian nationalism made the situation untenable.

Flying Pig · May 28, 2016

Krajzen said:
How mere Britain was able to conquer and control the entire Indian subcontinent for so long?

Tee Kay said:
The conquest also took about a century, from the Battle of Plassey to the establishment of the Raj. It wasn't a case of the British simply marching in, maxim-gunning the Indian army, and kicking back on the verandah with gin and tonic. First the maxim gun wasn't a thing yet; the British has a slight technological advantage on land but not an overwhelming one. Second there was no such thing as an Indian army, actually no such thing as an Indian consciousness at all. The British weren't facing the entire subcontinent united as one, they were facing petty states which in turn were internally fragmented.

The resources and manpower required to keep India captive to the British Empire was basically provided by India itself. The armies of the EIC and later the Indian Empire consisted overwhelmingly of Indian troops commanded by European officers, financed by revenue from British Indian territories, until the rise of Indian nationalism made the situation untenable.

A related point is that our idea of 'the entire Indian subcontinent' is largely based on what Britain ended up controlling. I mean, before independence we took 'India' all the way up to the border of Afghanistan. Countries and communities are flexible, and 'India' as we understand it was built after, not before, the British conquest.

Agent327 · May 29, 2016

Actually, the idea of 'British conquest' is a bit flawed to begin with. At independence British India still had several principalities that simply recognized British sovereignty. Diplomacy played an integral part in the acquisition of India by the British. Just as it had in prior attempts to control the entire subcontinent.

Traitorfish · Jun 2, 2016

Tee Kay said:
The conquest also took about a century, from the Battle of Plassey to the establishment of the Raj. It wasn't a case of the British simply marching in, maxim-gunning the Indian army, and kicking back on the verandah with gin and tonic. First the maxim gun wasn't a thing yet; the British has a slight technological advantage on land but not an overwhelming one.

There's an old story that Wellington was so impressed by Indian bowmen that he wanted to raise a regiment of longbowmen to use as a rapid-response unit in the Peninsular War. The scheme only fell through because their simply weren't enough men of military age who could still use a longbow, nor enough craftsmen to supply them. Possibly apocryphal, and certainly cut through with a generous helping of patriotic nostalgia, but popular enough to suggest that there was a genuine awareness that bows were, if not as effective as firearms, then at least a serviceable alternative to them.

Apparently Benjamin Franklin suggested something similar during the Revolutionary War, but he would, wouldn't he?

Agent327 · Jun 3, 2016

Apparently the notion of 'the little corporal' (faulty translation for le petit caporal, which doesn't refer to height at all) also originates with the British. I'm not sure why Wellington, being impressed by exotic Indian bowmen would want a company of British longbowmen in the first place. By the early 1800s bowmen would have been quite exotic in India even. Seems like one of those stories.

Flying Pig · Jun 3, 2016

Traitorfish said:
There's an old story that Wellington was so impressed by Indian bowmen that he wanted to raise a regiment of longbowmen to use as a rapid-response unit in the Peninsular War. The scheme only fell through because their simply weren't enough men of military age who could still use a longbow, nor enough craftsmen to supply them. Possibly apocryphal, and certainly cut through with a generous helping of patriotic nostalgia, but popular enough to suggest that there was a genuine awareness that bows were, if not as effective as firearms, then at least a serviceable alternative to them.

Apparently Benjamin Franklin suggested something similar during the Revolutionary War, but he would, wouldn't he?

Longbows were certainly 'better' than their firearm equivalents for a lot of their history - they could shoot faster, further and more accurately, and hit harder when they landed. The problem was that it took years or decades to train longbowmen to the proper standard - when they raised the Mary Rose, they found the skeletons of the longbowmen, and they had huge, misshapen right arms and shoulders from so much practice pulling the (really quite heavy) bowstrings. That means that you can't assemble a huge army of them, or recover losses quickly once even a relatively small group of them are killed or captured by the enemy, or die of one of the many horrible diseases kicking around a medieval military camp. I'm willing to believe that there wasn't all that much in it even in 1815.

I heard that the 'little corporal' came from a combination of using the wrong measurement and bad company - Napoleon actually was about 5'7'', which was entirely normal for the time, but the French used a longer foot, so his height was reported as 5'3" or something similar. It didn't help that he surrounded himself with the tallest and most imposing guards that he could find.

r16 · Jun 3, 2016

it's always mentioned that the Ottoman loss in 1571 spelled the end of the threat to Christian dominion of the seas , because so many (sea-going) archers were lost .

salty mud · Jun 4, 2016

French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and to a less extent English are all languages derived from Latin. However, why doesn't Greece speak a Latin derived language? Why did they stick with Greek while many other places speak a Latin derived language? Greece was a Roman province longer than Gaul was and of course was the seat of power for the Byzantine Empire for another millennia after the fall of Rome.

I suppose the question could be simplified to why was the Byzantine Empire predominantly Greek? Why didn't Rome export it's language to the Greek lands?

Arakhor · Jun 4, 2016

Romans were lovers of Greek culture, essentially the first Hellenophiles, and Greek was often used where Latin was not. If anything, it was Greece who exported its culture to Rome, rather than the reverse.

Further, English isn't a Romance language at all: it's Germanic. The Normans imported the French language and (later) science/technology is to blame for the large amount of Graeco-Roman roots in the language.

(Warning: probably simplistic answer!)

Flying Pig · Jun 4, 2016

It's probably also worth mentioning that they did, at least at the upper levels of society, spread Latin. Until at least the fifth century AD, educated people across the empire could read both languages, and a lot of public life in the east happened in Latin - in fact, the 'Roman' army in the East continued giving its drill commands in Latin long after the empire in the West had ceased to exist.

History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

Hero of the Soviet Union

Observer

世界的 bottom ranked physicist

Utrinque Paratus

世界的 bottom ranked physicist

Armored Fish and Armored Men

Three days sober

Deity

Heroically Clueless

An aberration of nature

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Utrinque Paratus

Observer

The Tighnahulish Kid

Observer

Utrinque Paratus

not deity

Deity

Dremora Courtier

Utrinque Paratus

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