History questions not worth their own thread IV

[tokala]

Some other problematic claims include: the complete lack of archaeological evidence for cannibalism, the fact that only a small number of bones show signs of violence and the kicker for me is that the what were thought to be 'spear points' have turned out to have wear patterns consistent with cutting and scraping plant material and close analogues (used for those purposes!) found elsewhere in East Polynesia (e.g. Hawai'i and Taihiti). These points are important because they make some of the more lurid claims look naive and a little bit offensive.

Hunt and Lippo's Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island) "ecocide" is also fantastic. It's behind a paywall though

Actually the article is also available from the University of Hawai'i:
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/22778/vol63n4-601-616.pdf?sequence=1

Lately a lot of articles from paywalled journals are also available directly from the author's university. Google Scholar makes it really easy to dig those free versions up.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yes. It is rather sad, in what it says about man's ability to be trained for servility, that the opposite is not the more common thing.

Perhaps it's a credit to the American character that, during the Vietnam War, it was.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I always wondered if that's actually true, or if previous generations were simply more discreet.

 

[Flying Pig]

Perhaps it's a credit to the American character that, during the Vietnam War, it was.

I always wondered if that's actually true, or if previous generations were simply more discreet.

I have absolutely no doubt that the same went on in other wars of mass conscription and low morale, but with fewer journalists to report on it. I would also say that military leadership can only be described as 'servility' (that is, the dominant leading the unwilling) when it has totally broken down; a military officer or NCO exists more to direct and maintain the will of his men, which is to close with and kill the enemy, or accomplish whatever other mission they might have; their professionalism as soldiers gives them the will to do their jobs well. If people don't want to fight, they're not going to do it very well; conversely, people being dragged onto the battlefield against their will don't generally come away with Victoria Crosses.

 

[Dachs]

Plenty of journalists reported on how abysmal the French military's morale was in 1870-71. Of course, this being the French military, it also had peaks of ridiculously high morale interspersed throughout the whole thing.

I think Vietnam is probably one of the only instances in modern history in which an army that was generally victorious and, by the standards of the time, more or less competent at accomplishing its objective, was riddled with such piss-poor morale. Part of that - maybe all of that - was the difficulty of measuring how good it actually was, and part of that was factors exogenous to the military, and part of it was the problems that military had with related issues...but still.

 

[r16]

ı would say the issue with Vietnam was that it was either a foreign war or some serious dissent at home for Americans and they chose the first . Yet the rift was not settled and opinion leaders -whomever they might be and at various scales- used the fighting in Vietnam to further their points . Those who heard it from home were concious of the notion that it didn't matter one bit that they could be all dead within the week since nobody would have cared . If true , it didn't help that one American division or something kept dead VC in ice to get better kill ratios .

 

[Louis XXIV]

I don't think it's fair to say that Vietnam was designed to prevent dissent at home. If it was, it failed spectacularly. It not only failed to prevent the counterculture, but it exacerbated it.

 

[Plotinus]

On Diamond, I think that his work typifies a lot of popular history/anthropology/etc. in that appears to present radical or non-conventional explanations, but ultimately functions as a defence of, or at least resignation to, the existing social and global order. His environmental determinism appears to be a solid step away from older racial, cultural or economic theories of European hegemony, and so in that sense appears a radical challenge to presumptions of European superiority. But at the same time, his narrative is one of iceberg-like inevitability, that Western Europe was always going to come out on top, that the current world order was always going to look like this, and there's really not much any of us can do about it, so fundamentally it's really quite conservative. Thus Diamond can pose as a convention-bucking maverick even while laying out a March of History as inevitable, if not as enthusiastic, as that of any latter-day Whig.

None of that's a reason for thinking him actually mistaken, though, is it?

Speaking purely as a devil's advocate here, I'd be interested to see an example of a claim by Diamond that's outright, demonstrably or probably wrong given the evidence.

 

[ace99]

The last pope to step aside was Gregory XII in 1415, who did so in order to end the Great Western Schism.

According to the news. Is this true and have there really been no other Popes to resign?

 

[Plotinus]

According to the news. Is this true and have there really been no other Popes to resign?

Technically speaking it is not true. Gregory XII was, technically speaking, an antipope. At this time there were three people all claiming to be Pope; the schism was resolved by persuading two of them to drop the claim, so the last man standing was the "authentic" Pope.

The last undisputed Pope to abdicate was Celestine V in 1294. He never wanted to be Pope, was appointed against his will, and after only a couple of months in the job declared that Popes can abdicate before promptly doing so himself.

There are a couple of examples before Celestine V. Benedict IX actually sold the papacy to his godfather in 1045. The godfather, Gregory VI, was forced to resign a year later on the grounds that you can't buy the papacy. In the meantime Benedict had regretted selling the papacy and installed himself as an antipope; he did eventually become Pope again not once but twice, being the only man ever to be Pope for non-consecutive terms.

This isn't usually considered as really counting as papal abdications, though, because it was all so murky and political. Until now, Celestine V is the only real papal abdication. And there haven't been any of any kind since the fifteenth century.

 

[ace99]

Was Benedict IX the one who had the corpse old Pope dug up and put on trial? And had some dude crouching behind his chair whispering the answers?

 

[Traitorfish]

None of that's a reason for thinking him actually mistaken, though, is it?

Well, that's true. I was commenting more on why he's popular, than on why he's right or wrong. It's kind of a Thing, in this bizarre post-Thatcher world of ours, to present conservative ideas in radical costumes, and Diamond is an example of that, if albeit very far from the worst.

 

[Masada]

Speaking purely as a devil's advocate here, I'd be interested to see an example of a claim by Diamond that's outright, demonstrably or probably wrong given the evidence.

See here and here (thanks tokala) for links to academics who do just that. The tl;dr version is that the archaeological evidence supports almost none of the claims made by Diamond. Cannibalism in the bones we've collected? No evidence. Spear points? Nope, scraping tools with clear analogues in other parts of Polynesia. Large population estimates compared to other Polynesian societies? Extrapolation from a densely populated part of the island. Likely population levels are something like 2000, which fits the archaeological evidence (i.e. as a loose network of farming communities) and makes contextual sense (Rapa Nui is small). These are just a small range of the specific flaws in Diamond's account. I can provide further papers and discussion points if required!

 

[sydhe]

Was Benedict IX the one who had the corpse old Pope dug up and put on trial? And had some dude crouching behind his chair whispering the answers?

That was Stephen VI. Sergius III later re-exhumed poor Formosus's corpse.

 

[r16]

Vietnam ... not only failed to prevent the counterculture, but it exacerbated it.

which ı would concur . ı had some rants on this as heard from people who saw hippies in the flesh but they would still think that Americans could not bring themselves to see some of their more obvious stuff and the patriotism they would like to have kind of exploded in their hands .

 

[Dachs]

guys

guys.

would anybody be up to the task of telling me why the fact that the Democratic-Republican Party was a freaking awful political party with some of the worst policies in American history has apparently slipped the notice of the current crop of Jefferson-worshipping historians (e.g. Gordon Wood)

it's like American historiography is getting almost as bad as Canadian historiography

 

[Phrossack]

guys

guys.

would anybody be up to the task of telling me why the fact that the Democratic-Republican Party was a freaking awful political party with some of the worst policies in American history has apparently slipped the notice of the current crop of Jefferson-worshipping historians (e.g. Gordon Wood)

it's like American historiography is getting almost as bad as Canadian historiography

Well, this'll trigger an interesting rant, but I'll bite: What's wrong with the Democratic-Republicans and Canadian historiography?

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

guys

guys.

would anybody be up to the task of telling me why the fact that the Democratic-Republican Party was a freaking awful political party with some of the worst policies in American history has apparently slipped the notice of the current crop of Jefferson-worshipping historians (e.g. Gordon Wood)

it's like American historiography is getting almost as bad as Canadian historiography

What. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions are da Bob-omb! And on a serious note its not like the Federalist were any better, they practically invented the smear campaign... (in the U.S.)

 

[ace99]

Canadian historiography

There's only so many books you can fill about being America's hat.

 

[Agent327]

guys

guys.

would anybody be up to the task of telling me why the fact that the Democratic-Republican Party was a freaking awful political party with some of the worst policies in American history has apparently slipped the notice of the current crop of Jefferson-worshipping historians (e.g. Gordon Wood)

it's like American historiography is getting almost as bad as Canadian historiography

As post-Eisenhower foreign policy is concerned, you might be correct. But it hasn't slipped the notice of historians, thankfully, so I've no idea where you've gotten that idea.