History questions not worth their own thread II

[Dachs]

Historians are perhaps some of the worst futurists. If there's anything you learn about the past, it's that it does not teach you lessons about the modern world. People don't really learn from the past and do "better", because they're confronted with different situations than obtained back in the day. That old Santayana quote is nonsense because if you draw anything more than a superficial understanding of much of anything from history, the "lessons" you might learn are very difficult to apply, and sometimes contradictory in their messages.

When you characterize the "ages" of the past (I'm not entirely sure what your criteria are there, in your particular case), no matter how you do it, your periodization is going to be flawed in some way. No way around it, really, except to alter the periods' definitions so far as to become practically useless. That doesn't make periodization in itself useless; it's a convenient shorthand. It's not something you can then turn around and use to prove some kind of natural progression.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Historians are perhaps some of the worst futurists. If there's anything you learn about the past, it's that it does not teach you lessons about the modern world.

Some would say that makes them the best futurists :3

 

[Lord Baal]

Some would say that makes them the best futurists :3

The best futurists I've ever seen tend to be sci-fi authors, notably Arthur Clarke.

Toffler was a sociologist, from memory. Seems to me that a very good sociologist - there are precious few of them - seem to have the best luck when it comes to non-fictional predictions about the future, but even Toffler, the best I've ever seen, was way the hell off-target. Predictions rely on accounting for all variables, and unfortunately for futurists even one decade of human society provides an infinite number of variables. Even Future Shock focused almost solely on the capitalist West if I recall correctly. I haven't read it in five years, so I might not.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

I'm having some trouble with a history report so maybe you guys can help. I need to identify and talk about the various evangelical sects/movements in 19th century England. I've been told that there were 6-7: Wesleyan Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Pentecostals, the Clapham sect, and Muscular Christians. Is this even correct? Can you give me 4-5 reputable scholarly sources on this? Thanks in advance.

 

[LightSpectra]

Calling any Christian sect "evangelical" (in the sense it is used today) before the 19th century is iffy. Some would say that Low Anglicans are evangelicals.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

All of the sources I'm using right now talk about the "Low Church" as evangelicals. Not much distinction is made between the different sects. This is from Stephen Neill's "Anglicanism" and Julie Melnyk's "Victorian Religion."

 

[madviking]

Was Iceland ever Christianized a la Norway or Sweden?

 

[Lord Baal]

Was Iceland ever Christianized a la Norway or Sweden?

Yes. I remember reading not long ago about missionaries and royal intervention in Iceland, but have no idea where I read it, unfortunately.

 

[Plotinus]

Low Anglicans are evangelicals, at least some of them, but the problem with the term "evangelical" is that it has a very wide range of meanings. It was certainly used in the nineteenth century, but not necessarily in the ways that it is used today; Gladstone called himself an "evangelical" but I doubt he'd fit in at Holy Trinity Brompton. Evangelicalism isn't a matter of "sects" but is a theological and liturgical tendency which is found in pretty much all denominations to some degree - even Catholicism. And finally, I'm not sure that Pentecostalism really counts as evangelicalism; it certainly doesn't apply to nineteenth-century England, as it began in twentieth-century America.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Thanks Plotty. I think the problem was that the assignment was framed for me in the wrong way.

 

[Karalysia]

How affected was the aborignal population of the Amazon by the disease brought by conquistadors and whatnot? I imagine less so than the Aztecs or Inca due to their relative isolation and later contact, and also wouldn't the Amazon have acted in a similar way as Africa in creating immunity among local population to disease?

 

[Tee Kay]

How affected was the aborignal population of the Amazon by the disease brought by conquistadors and whatnot? I imagine less so than the Aztecs or Inca due to their relative isolation and later contact, and also wouldn't the Amazon have acted in a similar way as Africa in creating immunity among local population to disease?

We're not sure how many lived in the region in the first place. I think the death rate would probably be similar to other Indian populations elsewhere in South America.

Relative isolation is no shield against the disease. Smallpox arrived in the Incan Empire ahead of Pizarro's expedition, not during the invasion. It'd only take one or two smallpox (or flu, or measles)-infected European or Indian to introduce the disease to the region - from there, trade networks along the Amazon would spread the disease quickly.

As for the Amazon creating immunity in the population, it's impossible that Amazonian Indians would have much of an immunity to European diseases since after all they were never present there before Europeans arrived. Tropical environments doesn't create immunity; what does is constant exposure to the disease.

 

[say1988]

Yes, many inland and Pacific tribes in Canada were devastated long before they had any contact with Europeans, to the point that some exploreres of teh Pacific coast first encountered deserted villages that had been wiped out. It was passed through native groups.

As for Africans, there was constant contact between Eurasia and Sub-Saharan Africa throughout Africa throughout history (at least indirect contact). It may have been quite minor compared to what would come with European colonialism, but more than enough to transmit diseases and for people to develop basic immunities.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

What sort of houses of worship did Manicheans use and what was their main one (i.e. the one that would be their special wonder in Civ)?

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yes, many inland and Pacific tribes in Canada were devastated long before they had any contact with Europeans, to the point that some exploreres of teh Pacific coast first encountered deserted villages that had been wiped out. It was passed through native groups.

Same is true with Plymouth colony. The first winter, they subsisted off of corn that had grown in abandoned villages.

While isolated tribes would have been less likely to catch small box due to their small numbers and isolation, other old world diseases like Malaria would still have reached them.

 

[vogtmurr]

What sort of houses of worship did Manicheans use and what was their main one (i.e. the one that would be their special wonder in Civ)?

I don't know much about them, but I think their wonder might be a literary work rather than a building; such as the Shabuhragan, written in Mani's time in Persian for his emperor.
There's some pretty weird stuff too, connected to the Book of Enoch

 

[LightSpectra]

In the sense that English is "unified" insofar that anybody that knows standard English can be easily understood in Australia, England and the U.S. just fine -- how "unified" is the Russian language? Would someone born in Moscow have any trouble in communicating in Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok and Murmansk? Was this also true in the early 20th and 19th centuries?

 

[Tee Kay]

I remember reading that someone once said that television did more to unite Italy than Garibaldi ever did, because it introduced a standard form of Italian to every part of the country, enabling people from different regions to communicate with each other more readily.

 

[LightSpectra]

Yes, though I would be surprised if the average guy living in Siberia or further east than that had a television. (I don't really know though, so I fully admit probable ignorance.)

 

[madviking]

In the sense that English is "unified" insofar that anybody that knows standard English can be easily understood in Australia, England and the U.S. just fine -- how "unified" is the Russian language? Would someone born in Moscow have any trouble in communicating in Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok and Murmansk? Was this also true in the early 20th and 19th centuries?

Other than some colloquial phrases and slang, most urban Russians speak the same language. Things get complicated when you get to the borderlands.