History questions not worth their own thread II
- Thread starter Plotinus
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The Bolsheviks tried something like this during the Russian Civil War. That's where these hats come from:
Spoiler :
They were meant to suggest a Mongoloid look.
Do you know what the whole uniforms looked like? What period of the Civil War was this from?
Cynovolans
Not in my dimension.
Well we are talking about raising animals to eat them later, so giving them grass isn't going to make them as fat and juicy, and the big difference between cows and pigs is cows can live off grass, cuz they have special cells for turning grass into everything needed for them to survive.
Got a problem with the other source?
All of the Arabian Peninsula and Israel then.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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That foreign olive oil prohibition is interesting. If there is a rational explanation we'd expect it to be economic, but we may well be missing important elements. Did the ban apply to eating or to other uses? Illumination may have been an economically more important use.
And we shouldn't assume "national interests" here - rather, political interests, private interests. Someone who happened to control oil production in the area could also control the priests who mattered?
Really? I know that in the southern european/Mediterranean scrub-lands wild pigs get along quite well on fruits from cork oaks and other trees adopted to these climates. These are certainly not deserts, but nor is much of the inhabited Middle East. No one here is proposing to grow pigs on the desert. But even that wouldn't be absurd: wild boars are documented in ancient Egypt!
Cynovolans
Not in my dimension.
Forgot fruits and shoots, and egypt has a freaking amount of grains in it and a river.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
They were popular throughout the Civil War and the 1920s. Those ubiquitous ushankas didn't pop up until the Second World War.
Here is a man wearing a budyonovka in uniform.
The ban applied to using the olive oil for anything. Oddly enough, there was no ban on olives; just the oil. Ever since I heard of this earlier this year I've looked into it; I've found absolutely nothing to explain it, yet plenty of evidence of the ban.
Seems unlikely, since the ban also extended to Jews in Parthia, who were surely outside of Roman influence.
Jolly Rogerer
Prince
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Space 1899: Can aliens fight without European Officers?
A hilarious RPG whose subtitle hints at the reason. Native troops were used early and often around the world during the colonial era, and proved themselves effective when placed into European style armies led by European officers. Having your officers look the part of what were assumed to be effective officers gave people more confidence in the capabilities of your army, regardless of their true capabilities (or the truth in the assumption that European officers were indeed automatically effective). As the purpose of most armies is to retain political control of their own lands it can be better to be assumed to be capable (and thus not have to fight a civil war) than to actually be effective fighters and have to prove that at great cost. Uniforms are cheap.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Did the European Great Powers have any plans to partition China, supposing the old order had been maintained past 1914, or was it free-game to expand as they pleased there?
The only official agreement vis-a-vis Chinese partition that I know of was a Russo-Japanese agreement formalized in 1910. The earlier mentions of Chinese territorial integrity that both states had maintained in their discourse since the Treaty of Portsmouth were explicitly dropped, as was any mention of the Open Door (which both Russia and Japan had agreed to in principle in a convention of July 1907). Instead, both states provided for "common action to safeguard and defend their respective spheres of influence". In Japan's case, this meant Korea; in Russia's, it meant Outer Mongolia. The Japanese annexed Korea a month and a half after this treaty was signed (the connection ought to be obvious), while Russia established a de facto protectorate in Outer Mongolia in November 1912.
That's all I can get from Rich, Great Power Diplomacy 1814-1914, at any rate.
I don't think there were any general European agreements, but if there were to be any, I imagine that they would entail formal annexation of some of the spheres of influence; Germany to gain the remainder of Shandong, Japan to get Fujian (and possibly Liaodong), the French to get Yunnan and Guangxi, the British to gain Guangdong (and possibly Tibet), and the Russians to gain the Mongolias and Xinjiang.
That's all I can get from Rich, Great Power Diplomacy 1814-1914, at any rate.
I don't think there were any general European agreements, but if there were to be any, I imagine that they would entail formal annexation of some of the spheres of influence; Germany to gain the remainder of Shandong, Japan to get Fujian (and possibly Liaodong), the French to get Yunnan and Guangxi, the British to gain Guangdong (and possibly Tibet), and the Russians to gain the Mongolias and Xinjiang.
I realize this is sort of a difficult question to answer, as there really is not an exact answer and it is also unlikely that there will be a consensus, but what American President had the least amount of a foreign policy (not including Garfield and W.H. Harrison)?
Was there anyone with really no interaction with other countries besides the basic stuff? If there was a President like this, did they do it for isolationist reasons or was there really just nothing worth getting involved in? Who was the USA's most genuinely isolationist President?
Was there anyone with really no interaction with other countries besides the basic stuff? If there was a President like this, did they do it for isolationist reasons or was there really just nothing worth getting involved in? Who was the USA's most genuinely isolationist President?
LightSpectra
me autem minui
I'd venture to say Martin Van Buren.
You appear to be right. I can't manage to find a single interaction between his administration and a foreign power besides the incident with that Spanish ship commandeered by Africans who landed in New York.
John Quincy Adams and William Howard Taft seems to be pretty isolationist as Presidents though. I can't think of much that took place during their terms.
Not necessarily isolationist in belief, just he seems to have not been involved in foreign affairs as a President, if by choice or not.
It is kind of funny that I can't think of much in the way of foreign affairs during his office when in addition to being Secretary of State he also served as Ambassador to about a half a dozen countries at one time or another. Am I forgetting any major treaties or international confrontations?
LightSpectra
me autem minui
John Quincy Adams opened trade treaties with every country in central Europe; hence why I consider him one of the best presidents.
Though didn't he actually do most of this while Secretary of State and an Ambassador?
Omega124
Challenging Fate
What launguage did Lief Ericson speak? I need to know so I can properly enjoy Lief Ericosn Day by speaking some phrases in Danish or Norwegian, but I don't know which one. Thanks in advance.
sydhe
King of Kongs
Some dialect of Old Norse. His father came from the west coast of Norway and I'd guess most of his settlers did too.
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