History questions not worth their own thread III

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Who was that Iberian philosopher who made a "wheel of fortune" kind of device with which to produce statements? I think Swift parodied him in Gulliver's travels, if that's any help.
 
Were there any Iberian philosophers of note? I don't think Spinoza really counts, as he was born and raised in The Netherlands.

If we're counting anybody who ever talked about philosophy, quite a bit. If we're talking about people who were actually good at their field, then Maimonides, Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria and Luis de Molina are good names, plus a few others less known. Basically the entire School of Salamanca was centered in Spain.
 
How is the Treaty of Tilsit between Napoleonic France and Russia perceived in Western historiography? Russian textbooks usually present it as a moderate defeat for Russia.
Highly variable. There are plenty of people who will say it was Napoleon getting his way over Aleksandr; there are a few, more intelligent, people who understand that Aleksandr had agency and actually wanted to sign a treaty, that he actually wanted to strike at the British and felt that they presented a great threat.
But in the HRE by this point, you had a few largish states (e.g. Austria, Bavaria, Brandenburg), so how is adding the large and unified state so undesirable? Would this give a nation such as Naples too much authority within the HRE? Or would Naples have no interest in being included and run away the first chance it had?
Eh? Those largish states would be precisely the ones who wouldn't want somebody else in there with them, trying to dictate policy and so on. Nobody cares if a smaller state gets in; whoop-de-doo, another voice in the endless chorus of Imperial Knights, Free Towns, and Secular Rulers With Extremely Small Amounts of Land About Whom Nobody Gives a Crap. Naples would have completely different policy objectives and would be utterly uninterested in resolving most of the 'German' problems that afflicted the majority of the Empire. If the Neapolitan ruler did not become an Elector - and, barring some cataclysmic event like the Thirty Years War, I can't see why they'd manage to get such a thing over on anybody - the Neapolitan rulers themselves would feel unfairly marginalized by the Imperial governing community.

You can't look at this as "the Emperor gets another country to aid him in war and provide monies to his coffers" because in the time period you're thinking about, that didn't happen. Sure, the Imperial community certainly did fight with the Emperor (sometimes), although it was rare except when there was a perceivedly-existential threat around (e.g. the Ottoman Turks) or if a large but vulnerable ruler had been placed under the Imperial ban (e.g. Friedrich II in 1757). And sure, in times of crisis he could usually get the Reichstag to vote him some cash, although again, this was usually when there was an Enemy at the Gates who was Quite Formidable in Nature (like, say, France), and even then, the turnout probably wouldn't be that spectacular.

So what would adding, say, Naples into the Empire do? It would just create another interest group. The benefits would redound in vaguer ways, sure; a larger Empire indirectly endows the Emperor with more prestige, although as it was the office of Emperor was still the most prestigious post in Europe. And if the Empire were ever turned into a unitary state (or a state that made a decent pretense of being unitary, like France), larger would probably be better for "let's fight and beat the crap out of our enemies" reasons.
madviking said:
Understandable. But what about Denmark? Are the reasons much the same as Naples? (a large fringe nation?)
More or less.
 
Methinks you like TVTropes a little too much.:crazyeye:
 
I didn't make any tvtropes references in that post. :confused:
 
I think he's talking about the way you capitalize certain things, like "Quite Formidable in Nature."
 
I think he's talking about the way you capitalize certain things, like "Quite Formidable in Nature."
Oh. But that's entirely independent of tvtropes. Capitalization for emphasis has been around for a long time.
 
Understandable. But what about Denmark? Are the reasons much the same as Naples? (a large fringe nation?)

Actually the danish rulers were at times part of the Holy Roman Empire. Since besides being kings of Denmark-Norway they were also counts of Schleswig-Holstein. Which were part of the empire.
 
Actually the danish rulers were at times part of the Holy Roman Empire. Since besides being kings of Denmark-Norway they were also counts of Schleswig-Holstein. Which were part of the empire.
Personal union didn't constitute an extension of imperial dominion. After all, the Kings of Great Britain were Electors of Hanover for the best part of a century, and nobody's ever thought of claiming that it was part of the Empire.
 
No ofcoarse not, I was trying(very shortly) to show how the empire was a bit of a mess and how technically the danish king was a member of the empire, while Denmark was not. I suppose the same could be said about the English rulers.
 
Secular Rulers With Extremely Small Amounts of Land About Whom Nobody Gives a Crap.
I want this to become an established textbook term :lol:
 
There was nothing remotely English about the Hanoverians. They were Germans, descended from a Scot, who ruled the Kingdom of Great Britain and Electorate of Hanover. :)
 
Why did the British Hannoverian line rule from London and not Hannover?
Because Britain was a major economic and military power, and Hanover was a middling German principality?

Although Hanover was still effectively governed as an independent country, just one in very close alliance with Great Britain, like Scotland or Ireland prior to the Acts of Union. It wasn't just a colony.
 
ı don't know the view of Petain presented in this thread is a personal view or a new fangled and gaining-ground-day-by-day history . If the first , of course it is to be respected at least as much as my posts . If the second , the art / science of history is surely getting a bad name again . To understand Petain , one must look at procession of events before the war , how the Western Allies sold Czechoslovakia , how they left Poland alone in the lurch and somehow on blind faith in the r16 view of the past , how they were ready pre-September 1939 to co-operate with Netherlands with administration of its colonies after it was occupied by the Nazi colossus . Which was something sure to be planned for , without telling the Dutch . It was a backbreaking effort to get the German Command to the sicklecut . So Manstein would be quite a Talleyrand as depicted as in this thread . Considering he got this 10 year sentence he is the perfect example to "Makes me wonder how we'd view the Hitlerites if a bunch of them had managed to skip the war-crimes trials and turn out best-selling autobiographies." . Petain had no doubt that the Albion P. was now selling out France .

some silly suggestion to think power structures of countries depend so much on social networking , the celebrated smoke filled darkened rooms . Yet Petain would not be coming out of the countryside as a senile emptyhead ignorant of the undercurrents . He was surely aware that "his mouthpiece" De Gaulle had strong patronage , to get a tank division to take the German feint on the flank . Intelligence business is seeing the bluff , not finding out secrets ; there are no secrets . Never had heard of De Gaulle's last ditch stand until this thread , yet it would have been ridiculous for Petain to contemplate it as anything realistic . Politically supreme though , proving to the masses that the young De Gaulle had fire in the belly , making him most suitable to be sent overseas for any contingency ; ı remember seeing one or two posts in this forum that underlined the French did believe De Gaulle went away as an agent of Petain .

sending him away was of course the perfect thing to do . France after Case Red had no chance of fighting Germans conventionally . Even if a section of the country was to be kept in a bitter fight , the only thing that would have resulted would have been a faster deployment of the 80 cm , which mangled Sivastopol throughly . A fight from Algeria would have turned into one desert war , where the British would have idly watched German reinforced Italian armies tearing into Francophone Africa . Yet a ceasefire , a low profile , the specter of a humbled France would have given Adolf lots of bragging and a sense of glory to betray his new ally and realise the Lebensraum thing . Not that Nazis could have done it , but France needed the time to recover . The fall of France is an accident and it surprised Berlin as much as it did the rest of the world . And Germans were very careful not to restart anything involving the French , equally the resistance was not of the French in this early period , we always hear we can't get any lobbying done in Paris regarding the Armenian genocide thing as Armenians were quite possibly the only guys fighting the Germans until '42 .

you can easily get branded as an apologist by all these stuff , but ı would have doubted Petain was a coward in the world war , neither in the First , nor the Second . History says , quite convincingly , that he was the guy who defeated the Kaisersclach's last effort . And had all the French commanders of the Great War been as much a traitorous coward as Petain , they would have avoided all those Napoleonic bloodbaths and defeated the Germans by 1917 or Spring 18 . If that comes too unpalatable , they surely would have saved enough men hence fighting spirit to refuse betraying the Czechs and the Poles .

the shooting in the Notredame is called the Quesimodo affair , the guy has always been a favourite of some who have been inclined to literature . And it appears to have cooled some hot heads in the French Admin that they were not out of the woods yet . Paris would have been bypassed , it took De Gaulle to talk of the Commies waiting in the wing to take over . Ike didn't particularly help either , the French hate of the Anglosaxons was rekindled by his attempt to evacuate Strassburg during Operation Nordwind , in the face of mere 8 German divisions . Though even that was to topped by the refusal to send in the B-29s to save Dien Bien Phu , as supposedly somebody had promised two brigades of MiG-17s in return . There are Commies , then there are Commies . It didn't stop the French to intentionally shell the victory celebrations in Algeria though .

mumbo-jumbo aside , Petain's honour would have been protected , if necessary by a discussion of where De Gaulle was during Guderian's run to the sea . In case the political brilliance of forgiving the mistakes of a father past his prime was not enough . ı should really dig up that semi-official USAF history article that said the French Airforce was delaying aircraft deliveries up to the German attack in May 1940 . It is a self preservation measure on part of the Yanks , it seems to this nut , considering they had the temerity to send people to count Israeli aircraft out and in back in 1973 when Americans had promised to replace any plane shot down free of charge . Yet especially the first day slaughter had never made sense ; they were suspectin' Tel Aviv was pulling a French on them .
 
Why did the British Hannoverian line rule from London and not Hannover?

Because they wanted to get away from Leibniz, of course.

Saying the Hanoverians weren't English because they were German makes no sense to me. George I and George II were about as English as Beethoven, but from George III onward they were as English as fish and chips, Newcastle Brown, and mistrusting the French. Englishness isn't about where your ancestors came from, it's about where you come from.
 
@r16:
It's sad because you made the effort to write such detailed posts, but I'm struggling to make sense of them.

@Plotinus:
But wasn't George III just as disliked as his predecessors because of his perceived lack of Englishness?
 
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