History questions not worth their own thread II

[LightSpectra]

Isn't the idea of the Hundred Years War as a conflict between nations something of a later invention anyway? I'm given to understand that it's better viewed as a dynastic war within France itself, with one of the claimants happening to hold the English crown, in much the same way that the Hapsburg Emperors happened to hold additional crowns elsewhere in Europe.

That's exactly right, though Henry VI was hounding to collect the entire French crown, and overextended his forces at Orléans.

 

[Traitorfish]

Maybe Hadrian's Wall? I think it was pretty useful for some time.

Only because the Romans managed to bring the British kingdoms of Hen Ogledd into their political orbit. The old image of Romans on one side and wild Picts battering away at the other isn't at all accurate.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Hadrian's Wall worked well at looking impressive and showing Roman might, but Rome couldn't just leave the border at the wall. There were barbarians on the Roman side of the wall and Romans on the barbarian side of the wall afterward.

I'm tempted to say "The Berlin Wall. Leaving aside the politics of it being a bad thing and just talking about wall utility, it still wasn't worth it, but it seems a lot closer. Of course, it was just in a city, not a border between states, so it probably doesn't belong in this discussion.

 

[LightSpectra]

I'm looking for the name of a Turkish-born commander for the Holy Roman Empire (don't know specifically if he attained the rank of Generalfeldmarschall) that converted to Roman Catholicism and then swore his allegiance to the Habsburgs against the Ottoman Empire. I think he was active in the 17th century, but it might've been the 16th or 18th.

No idea about this one? If it helps, I think he may have become a count in Slovenia.

 

[Yeekim]

It is often mentioned that the Chinese Great Wall never served it's original purpose a the empire grew too fast and or it was outdated when it was finished.

None of the multitude of "border walls" the Chinese built from Shi Huangdi till Ming emperors never really served their "purpose" but that was hardly anything to do with them being "outdated".
(Can a thing that has never worked become outdated?)

 

[Tee Kay]

I'm tempted to say "The Berlin Wall. Leaving aside the politics of it being a bad thing and just talking about wall utility, it still wasn't worth it, but it seems a lot closer. Of course, it was just in a city, not a border between states, so it probably doesn't belong in this discussion.

Actually, on one side was the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, and the other side was the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. So, for all practical purporses it was a border between two states.

 

[Masada]

I don't think that the current scholarly consensus is that the Great Wall was designed necessarily to 'keep the barbarians out'.

 

[Tee Kay]

I don't think that the current scholarly consensus is that the Great Wall was designed necessarily to 'keep the barbarians out'.

 

[Renner]

Isn't it generally believed the Great Wall was used to impede the escape of Raiders and such? No idea how effective it ever was at this however.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Actually, on one side was the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, and the other side was the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. So, for all practical purporses it was a border between two states.

Oh, I agree, that's why I thought of it. But it's still not on the same scale as the others.

 

[Tee Kay]

The Hadrian Wall was 117 km long. The Berlin Wall was 140 km long.

 

[say1988]

But you have a relative sense. With 20th century technology, materials, and knowledge 140km in the 1960s and '70s is probably much less than 117km in 128.

 

[Lord Baal]

"Too many barbarians in China."

 

[Yeekim]

I don't think that the current scholarly consensus is that the Great Wall was designed necessarily to 'keep the barbarians out'.

So what was it designed for? The walls could have been doubled as "White Sea Canals", but I wouldn't think that was the primary aim?

 

[ParkCungHee]

No, the new hip theory is they doubled as Anti-Fascist Protection Barriers.

 

[Dachs]

What I don't understand is if the Romans don't have any clear modern descendants, how can every single ancient civilization apart from the Romans apparently have them?

They are mostly inventions of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the age of European nationalism.

 

[Louis XXIV]

The "Roman" population declined dramatically over the years. As more people were made Roman citizens, the term became near meaningless. Other groups still point to themselves as descendants (like Egyptians or Persians), but nobody really knows how closely they're related. But that was more luck that their language was adopted by a large enough homogeneous group that they can point to themselves as related. With Romans, there's enough of a detailed history to show the odds are they aren't. Romans as distinct from the Italian tribes and certainly distinct from everyone who became Roman later was always a very small group and, with the barbarian migrations, certainly aren't the majority in Italy.

 

[Dachs]

Even migrationists say that the barbarian migrations were minuscule compared to the number of people who already lived there.

 

[Karalysia]

If I recall correctly, the Cimbri who walked into North Italy, and Marius fought had something like 800,000 people.

 

[Dachs]

According to Hydatius, the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields against Attila the Hun featured 300,000 casualties. That doesn't make it true; ancient historians colossally inflated the number of troops on a battlefield, from China (see: Goguryeo-Sui Wars) to Alexander the Great's wars to the wars of the Roman Republic and Empire. People haven't been taking those huge numbers seriously since Delbrück, a century ago. A modern migrationist scholar of the Völkerwanderung would shy from saying that any more than two to three hundred thousand people were involved in the migrations in total, compared to a Roman Empire with a population of, at minimum, fifty millions.