History questions not worth their own thread IV

[Flying Pig]

But 'feudalism' implies that there is some unity, while 'the systems that existed in the middle ages' directly tells us that there is none, save that of chronology.

 

[TheLastOne36]

The farthest I ever heard about them sailing was during Hanno II's voyage to Sierra Leone or Nigeria or possibly as far as Cameroon. I remember reading they encountered "a tribe of savages covered in black hair" whom they dubbed "Gorillae" and though it's unknown if what they really encountered were gorillas, it's still where the name of the species comes from. I realize that doesn't answer your question, but I've always just found that an interesting little related story.

That's actually really neat.

 

[Gucumatz]

I feel like asking what if questions:

What if:

What if the US didn't drop nuclear bombs in Japan and the Russian-American invasion of Japan had happened. What would Japan be like now? What would the casualty rate have been?

What if the French media didn't alert the world to the Hoare-Laval Pact? Would the British and French have helped out the Italians in Ethiopia after the Ethiopians gave the Italians a fight? Would Chamberlain have ever been elected Prime Minister without the weight of the scandal over the next years? Would Italy still be Facist today had the British and French not broke the secret treaty?

 

[sydhe]

What do we think of Necho II and a supposed circumnavigation of Africa in Phoenician times? I was reading Carthage Must Be Destroyed, and it was mentioned fairly authoritatively (though in passing) as A Thing That Definitely Happened, with sailors getting at least as far as the Bight of Benin. Which struck me as odd since that was the first I'd ever heard of it, and that sounds like quite the feat.

It's a reasonably well-known story and may be possible even with the ships of the time. If I'm not mistaken, that direction is more favorable than the reverse, and they would have taken several years. The story comes from Herodotus, which makes people justifiably skeptical, but some of the details are right. On the other hand, some later maps have the Indian Ocean landlocked, which indicates the mapmakers rejected the story.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

What about Roman exploration of the North Sea and Atlantic as a whole?

 

[Lord Baal]

I feel like asking what if questions:

What if:

What if the US didn't drop nuclear bombs in Japan and the Russian-American invasion of Japan had happened. What would Japan be like now? What would the casualty rate have been?

No one is exactly sure when Stalin's invasion of Japan was meant to kick off, but it is believed that the Soviets planned to pre-empt their own allies by invading Northern Japan before the US invasion of Japan kicked off in December. While it's doubtful the Soviets could have done that much damage to the Japanese Home Islands - this wasn't Manchuria, and the Soviets didn't have much in the way of landing craft - simply having a foothold on Japanese soil may have given them enough at the negotiating table to swing a joint occupation of Japan, creating a situation similar to that of North and South Korea, or East and West Germany. A divided Tokyo is much less likely than a divided Berlin, however.

The possibility also exists that the Japanese may have simply pushed any Soviet invasion back into the sea. As I said, the Soviets didn't have much in the way of landing craft.

What if the French media didn't alert the world to the Hoare-Laval Pact? Would the British and French have helped out the Italians in Ethiopia after the Ethiopians gave the Italians a fight? Would Chamberlain have ever been elected Prime Minister without the weight of the scandal over the next years? Would Italy still be Facist today had the British and French not broke the secret treaty?

No. The French and British would have, at most, backed Italian claims in a negotiated settlement. It's doubtful they could have afforded to look the other way while Italy conquered Abyssinia without public opinion forcing at least some response, even a half-hearted one.

I don't think this scandal contributed as much to Chamberlain's election as you think. It was the French government who suffered in the public's eyes, not the British.

You really think the Italian Fascist regime would last seventy years based on a slightly different geopolitical reaction in a colonial sideshow, despite the myriad other things going on I,n the world at the time? Really? What-if scenarios hold up over weeks, months, a few years at the most. Not seventy.

What about Roman exploration of the North Sea and Atlantic as a whole?

To my knowledge there wasn't much of it. There were the occasional expeditions, but the Romans didn't really trade or fight in the North Sea, and had no interests in the Atlantic beyond the Canary Islands and Ireland on occasion, so they never much bothered with either.

 

[ace99]

Sugar plantations are possible on the Canary islands right?

 

[Traitorfish]

Yeah, that's pretty much were Atlantic sugar production (including the use of slave labour) got its start. Sugarcane wasn't introduced to North African until around the 8th or 9th century, though, so the Romans wouldn't have had the opportunity to make use of that potential.

 

[Cutlass]

highly unlikely, to say the least. The Carthaginians had far more resources and interest to explore the Atlantic, and the furthest any of them got was Hanno the Navigator in the 4th century B.C., who got to about modern-day Nigeria. You have to wait for the caravel before getting to the other side of Africa from the Mediterranean is plausible.

I was reading in the book "Atlantic" that the problem is that you cannot sail south very far on the African Atlantic coast under wind power because of the prevailing winds and currents. Because of that, in order to go south you have to go pretty far west into the open ocean first. So any ship type or seafaring people who were not comfortable with extended times in the open ocean didn't really have the ability to go to the south of Africa.

I have a question. In modern history (let's say starting in the 1600s), what are some examples of major armies that have surrendered or been annihilated due to being cut off of supplies?

Cornwallis at Yorktown? Is that in line with what you were thinking?

 

[ParkCungHee]

No. The French and British would have, at most, backed Italian claims in a negotiated settlement. It's doubtful they could have afforded to look the other way while Italy conquered Abyssinia without public opinion forcing at least some response, even a half-hearted one.

Eh. I can very easily see the British and French backing Italy in a negotiated settlement, and then supporting an Italian invasion to quash Ethiopian "belligerency," so long as the whole plan hadn't been made public.

Britain in particular had fairly legitimate grievances against Ethiopia already that it tolerated mainly because they couldn't be arsed to deal with Ethiopia.

 

[LightSpectra]

Cornwallis at Yorktown? Is that in line with what you were thinking?

Yeah, that's a good example.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Vicksburg, I believe, fits the bill also.

 

[Cutlass]

The Japanese at Guadalcanal were cut off from supplies, but the majority of the force there was evacuated before the US Army reinforcements destroyed or captured the remainder. There were various German army units that were forced to surrender in WWII as well. Pretty much all of the Japanese units on islands taken by American forces were cut off first. As were the American forces in the Philippines in 1941-2.

 

[Dachs]

To my knowledge there wasn't much of it. There were the occasional expeditions, but the Romans didn't really trade or fight in the North Sea, and had no interests in the Atlantic beyond the Canary Islands and Ireland on occasion, so they never much bothered with either.

The North Sea economic-cultural zone does have something of an overlap with the later Roman Empire in the West. It started to become relevant in the fourth century, judging from the sort of things that start popping up in Scandinavia about that time (combined with textual references to piracy and whatnot). Interestingly, Roman iconography and motifs become much, much less prevalent in Scandinavian finds around the 470s, which has led some scholars to argue that it was only then that the symbolic importance and relevance of the western Roman state receded, and also that the 476 changeover to Odovacar's government meant more, in terms of abstract Roman-ness, than a simple continuitist narrative would lead one to believe.

 

[kiwitt]

Would it be reasonable from a civ-modding perspective to call use Hinduism as a base religion, where other more simple religions are in place, e.g. Voodoo, Shamanism and even Shintoism, given its similarity in the multi-god side of things.

I am creating a modern-day scenario and I do not want to add more religions to the base number.

 

[Tee Kay]

No it would not be reasonable.

Shintoism can be subsumed under the "Buddhist" category.
Most shamanist and voodoo-practicing areas are under Christian influence, so put them as "Christian"

 

[LightSpectra]

Most shamanist and voodoo-practicing areas are under Christian influence, so put them as "Christian"

preposterous. Substituting aboriginal terms with established Christian names isn't substantially changing their practices to being Christian. It would be like calling Islam "Arabic Judaism".

Not a scholarly expert on Buddhism, but I'm also pretty sure most informed Buddhists would vigorously object to classifying Shintoism as being a subset of their own confession.

 

[kiwitt]

For Example, My idea is to place a Hindu religion in the city, but also Christian, but also include more Christian buildings to reflect the actual religion proportions. e.g. 50% Christian may get a church, 75% may also get a monastery, and 99+% maybe even a Cathedral. But no Hindu buildings are added, if the proportions are less than say 25%.

 

[LightSpectra]

Using "Hinduism" to generally mean polytheism is what Civ4 does. Depends on if you're more, equal, or less worried as the Civ developers to potentially offend people with oversimplifications.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Using "Hinduism" to generally mean polytheism is what Civ4 does. Depends on if you're more, equal, or less worried as the Civ developers to potentially offend people with oversimplifications.

This is not true of CIV at all. Hinduism was hinduisim, not some nebulous 'polytheism'. You could argue that neither hinduism nor any other religion in CIV did a good job of portraying the tennants of their actual religions. But they definately didn't make Hinduism a stand in for all polytheistic religions.