sophie
Break My Heart
What about Peter I of Russia?
History questions not worth their own thread IV
- Thread starter Plotinus
- Start date
- Status
What about Peter I of Russia?
Yeah, I wanted to hear your own opinion, wikipedia I can read on my own.
But since this is the questions thread, and this Tamar excerpt reminded me of the question: was it generally seen more as a honorific or a refusal to recognize their gender to assign male titles to female rulers? I think I remember that Maria Theresia was crowned King of Bohemia mainly because Bohemian law didn't allow for a ruling queen. Is there a trend among female rulers?
Most of the ones I'm familiar with don't use the male title except in very specific circumstances like the Maria Theresia one. For the situation with which I am most familiar, Eirene is often claimed to have used the title basileus instead of basilissa, but this relies solely on a single coin minted in Sicily that actually contains other errors, and contradicts legal documents from the period that we know she was titled basilissa on.
General Pilates
Warlord
Tamar was good for Georgia, sure, but The naming conventions behind 'The Great' are stupid as hell anyways and Georgian nationalists absolutely love exaggerating her greatness, especially on Wikipedia.
Tamar had a male title because Georgians had not a queen for hundreds of years if not more and didn't have any title for it. The Georgian title for her was neutral anyways IIRC.
What happened to the areas east of Lithuania in the 13th century that might have created a power vacuum? Answer that, and you'll have about 90% of the answer. Gaining a powerful ally in Poland to the south is about 9% of the remainder.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Poland became Lithuania's ally not before the 14th century.
In 13th century both countries were rather in a state of constant war.
Just to mention that Lithuanians raided Poland 35 times between 1210 and 1300 and further 7 times between 1301 and 1325.
In 1325 marriage of Polish prince Casimir with Lithuanian princess Aldona put an end to wars for a few dozen years.
Alongside the wedding procession of Aldona marched 25,000 previously enslaved, now released Polish peasants.
============================================
I took info about the number of Lithuanian raids against Poland from:
http://viduramziu.istorija.net/socium/zygiai-en.htm
And aditionally from the book "History of wars and military affairs in Poland" by Tadeusz Korzon, volume I.
=============================================
As I wrote the marriage of 1325 put an end to wars for a few dozen years.
But Poland once again temporarily fought against Lithuania during wars for control over Halych-Volhynia which started in mid-14th century.
The Union of Krewo signed in 1385 once again put an end to Polish-Lithuanian conflicts.
You may check "The Northern Crusades" by Eric Christiansen, chapter 6 - "The Lithuanian Crusade (1283 - 1410)".
Mindaugas started the unification of Lithuanian tribes in 1219 and he finished his job around year 1235. At that time Teutonic knights and crusaders who supported them, were still busy with Prussians (and when he started in 1219, Teutonic knights were not even there yet - they were invited to Prussia by Polish duke of Mazovia - Konrad Mazowiecki - in 1226). The Prussian Crusade ended in 1283 and only then the Teutonic Order could start a full scale war against Lithuania. The Livonian Order was also busy with other tribes - the Livonian Crusade ended not before 1290, with the conquest of Curonians and Semigalians.
Of course some encounters and battles between the European crusaders (as well as forces of both Orders - Teutonic and Livonian) and Lithuanians took place already before 1283 (the first skirmish between Livonian Order and Lithuanians was in 1203 - according to Eric Christiansen). But enemy pressure against Lithuania was still relatively light in this period (first half of 13th century) compared to much stronger attacks launched against other Baltic tribes.
That's why Lithuanians were able to unite and consolidate, while other Baltic tribes were all conquered by crusaders.
============================================
And why Lithuanians so quickly expanded into Russian territories? This was already explained by Lord Baal above. The Mongol invasion of Rus created a power vacuum, devastating most of Southern Rus, destroying Kiev, etc. And the strongest of southern Russian states which still remained strong after the Mongol invasion - Halych-Volhynia - had rather friendly relations with Lithuania in the first half of 13th century, when Mindaugas ruled in Lithuania.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
During the imperial period, Rome was still in theory a republic, do I have that right? Was that also the case throughout the Byzantine period, or did the emperors at some point establish themselves as a formal monarchy?
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
I don't think that you get this right. Appearances of the Republic were only maintained during the Principate. But those were only appearances - in fact Octavian August guaranteed himself almost unlimited power. And later during the Dominate Rome was both in fact and in theory / officially a monarchy.
During the Byzantine period a formal monarchy was even more apparent.
The pretense of not being a republic was not gotten rid of at one blow. At least in theory, the Senate in Constantinople retained significant amounts of power, and famously played a role in the Byzantine succession during the Herakleian era (first a faction of senators formally threw their support to Herakleios and aided his forces against Phokas, then after Herakleios' death the Senate attempted to become the arbiter of the succession). Officially, the Emperors were always chosen by the Senate, although unofficially it never worked this way except for these two times, and probably also during the era of the Seven Revolutions a century later (not "real" revolutions, but palace coups and military revolts). The Senate did not act as a political protagonist during the long Makedonian dynasty, but regained some of its old prominence after the death of Basileios II, when succession was more or less wide open.
Alexios I was the one to finally abolish the consulate as part of his "yay appanages, family control, and quasi-feudalism" kick, although of course by that point it had been an appointive, not elective, office for a millennium. The Senate continued to exist in some fashion up to about the Fourth Crusade (it was one of the various factions involved in the unholy complicated and sordid political maneuvering between the Byzantines and the Crusaders). We're not totally sure when that Senate ceased to exist, but it seems likely that it was not reconstituted in Nikaia by the Laskares and therefore did not survive into the Palaiologan period.
I thought it was just rigid royalism in support of a Bourbon restoration with a dash of papism and Basque regionalism/separatism.
Wasn't it also grounded in opposition to a female monarch?
Yes, sorta. Spain adopted Salic Law after the Spanish War of Succession. The Pragmatic Sanction (1830) simply restored the right of women to inherit, as had been the case in the past. This blocked the ascension of Infante Carlos, the brother of Ferdinand VII, to the throne. With different actors the results might have been different. But Carlos was an intransigent conservative and Maria Christina and later Isabella II were of liberal sympathies. As liberalism in Spain tended to entail centralism and conservatism the opposite, some groups like the Basques which benefited from decentralization fought alongside Carlos. The Catholic Church was also hostile to liberalism and provided significant institutional/organization muscle to Carlos.
kiwitt
Road to War Modder
I am currently playing Scandinavia in an IOT, and I am going to try to stay neutral for as long as possible. I am going to try to play it as historically as possible from about 1815 onwards.
I have been reading the histories of Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland (on Wikipedia), but nothing stands out in those histories as to how they were able to stay neutral for so long or how they achieved this diplomatically. Also, how did the populace feel about this neutral stance and non-alignment. All it seemed to say is they remained non-aligned, and hoped that they would be considered Neutral in times of war.
So any information you can provide on the diplomatic methods used would be quite helpful to my own role-play.
I have been reading the histories of Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland (on Wikipedia), but nothing stands out in those histories as to how they were able to stay neutral for so long or how they achieved this diplomatically. Also, how did the populace feel about this neutral stance and non-alignment. All it seemed to say is they remained non-aligned, and hoped that they would be considered Neutral in times of war.
So any information you can provide on the diplomatic methods used would be quite helpful to my own role-play.
The Carlists were part of Franco's conservative bloc, along with more traditional monarchists - the divide between Carlists and those in favour of a restoration of the senior Bourbon lines having essentially evolved from its previous liberal-vs-conservative basis into a simple disagreement over who the restored Bourbon should be - the Falange, the majority of the Catholic Church in Spain, etc.. They were pretty marginal, but Franco needed them for their bases in the Basque territories, so he humoured them until he didn't need them any more. By the time Franco named Juan Carlos as his successor, the Carlists had been effectively marginalised. The modern-day Carlist Party has about as much to do with the original Carlist philosophy as the Australian Labor Party has to do with Fabian Socialism, or the Liberal Party with laissez faire economics and social justice.
Finland was under Russian rule until 1917, then adopted a friendly attitude towards the other Scandinavian states, particularly Sweden - which had ruled Finland until replaced by Russia during the Napoleonic Wars - but were never really neutral. Mind you, their belligerence in WWII wasn't by choice; they were attacked by their powerful neighbour, the USSR, which sought to incorporate Finnish territory into the USSR as it had already done with most other former-Tsarist territory in Eurasia.
Norway was under Swedish rule from 1815 until 1905, and avoided WWI more by geographic positioning and a lack of reason to fight in it than anything else. It was invaded by the Nazis in 1940 due to the importance of its location in securing German shipping lanes and threatening British shipping in the North Sea. Primarily the former, as most of Germany's iron ore, not to mention many other raw materials, came from Sweden, and therefore Germany needed to secure Sweden's western flank from the Western Allies. The UK itself contemplated an invasion of Norway to cut off Swedish supplies to Germany.
Speaking of Sweden, they remained neutral in WWI for the same reason as NOrway - they really had nothing to gain from fighitng, and neither side wanted to antagonise them. Sweden was considerably more powerful than Norway, as well as Denmark, and shared a border with Tsarist Russia until Finland broke away from the latter in 1917. While this would seemingly open it to the same sort of flanking operations employed in Norway in 1940 and in Greece during WWI, Sweden had a practice of armed neutrality, similar to Switzerland; namely, while Sweden wasn't powerful enough to have successfully defended itself from an attack by either side in WWI or WWII, it was powerful enough that all sides wanted to avoid antagonising it out of fear of the problems it could cause them.
In WWII, Sweden also provided iron ore to Nazi Germany, not entirely willingly, and was forced into the German orbit after Norway was seized by Germany and Finland becamen unwilling German ally. The Swedes maintained as much independence as they could under the circumstances - as, it must be said, did the Finns - and eventually became more and more assertive in their dealings with Germany, especially after D-Day put the outcome of the war in Europe beyond doubt. As Sweden had never actually joined the Axis, even as an unwilling co-belligerent like Finland, it was able to avoid being pulled into the Soviet orbit or suffering the post-occupation difficulties of its neighbouts.
Sweden did very nearly join the Second Schleswig War alongside Denmark, but wisely avoided it, despite the wishes of the King.
Denmark was drawn, quite against its wishes, into two wars with the German Confederation over Schleswig-Holstein. Schleswig-Holstein was a unique territory in that it was Ducal territory held in fief from the Danish crown by a junior branch of the Danish royal family, but was also a member state of the German Confederation. Its population was split between Danes and Germans, thus creating a potential ethnic powderkeg. Denmark tried very hard to avoid conflict resulting from the issue, but Danish constitutional issues effecting the duchies eventually flared into open warfare on two separate occasions. The First Schleswig War ended in a Danish victory, but the problem was only set aside for the short term, not solved indefinitely, and it flared up again in the Second Schleswig War, in which the Danes suffered a resounding defeat.
Denmark sat out WWI for similar reasons to the other Scandinavian powers; its geographic location and military might rendered it not worth the hassle to attack by any sides. Unlike Sweden and Norway, however, Denmark did have something to gain by joining the war; if Denmark joined the Allies and the Central Powers lost, it was in a position to regain Schleswig-Holstein. As it was, Denmark's weakness compared to Germany, combined with a simple desire to not get involved, led to it sitting out the war. Hilariously, however, Denmark still ended up being awarded Schleswig-Holstein in the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of WWI, meaning that the Danes got what they wanted without having to fight for it. Denmark attempted to sit out WWII in similar fashion, but was in the same unfortunate situation as Norway, and therefore was occupied by the Nazis.
Since WWII the Scandinavian states have remained as neutral as possible, but this isn't exactly uncommon in global affairs during this period. Sweden in particular had nothing to gain by antagonising either side in the Cold War, and the multipolarisation of the globe since the end of the Cold War means that the Scandinavian sides have no real need to choose sides. They'll likely integrate themselves, slowly, into the EU as time goes by, provided that institution doesn't collapse like a house of cards any time soon.
- Status
Similar threads
