History questions not worth their own thread V

[Wrymouth3]

That's because they were living in a free society for 1,000 years. In Irish society, the courts and the law were largely libertarian, and operated within a purely stateless manner. This society persisted in this libertarian path for roughly a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century. And, in contrast to many similarly functioning primitive tribes (such as the Ibos in West Africa, and many European tribes), preconquest Ireland was not in any sense a "primitive" society: it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe. A leading authority on ancient Irish law wrote, "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice... There was no trace of State-administered justice."

1. "They certainly had access to both gold and silver from native sources; they traveled abroad and knew the monetary usages of their neighbors; and the metalworkers capable of creating such masterpieces as the Tara brooch or the Ardagh chalice were certainly capable of striking coins...The essentially libertarian nature of Irish society can also be seen in the fact that the native Irish never issued coinage." http://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf

2. "In addition, cities and walled towns were brought to Ireland by invaders; the early Irish people did not have these places of mass congregation that supported cities and marketplaces." http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Acade..._different_12/Papers_12/Irish Law Osborne.htm

3. Property rights in Irish law: http://mises.org/journals/jls/1_2/1_2_1.pdf

4. "While a comprehensive survey of the Irish law of property and property rights cannot yet be written, we can already see that the idea of private ownership permeates those aspects of the law which have been subjected to recent study. The Irish frankly and openly used assessments of property as the criterion for determining a man's social and legal status, the extent of his capacity to act as a surety or compurgator, and to fix the amounts of compensation due him as a victim of crime or any kind of injury..." http://books.google.com/books?id=nf...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false p.14

You sound more convinced about Ireland than Robert Devereux, that can only mean good things. They will write an opera about it!

 

[Traitorfish]

Park is a postgrad student specialising in Irish studies. He probably doesn't need Mouthwash to lecture him on Irish history.


Besides, what he's referring to isn't any fanciful "libertarianism" (which: no), but to the fact that until the early modern period, Irish law identified bards and poets as a distinct legal class, a remnant of their pre-Christian membership of a formal priestly class. It was about the fact that Irish law did not conform to Continental conventions, not that they were particularly concerned for the liberty of religious conviction.

 

[Lord Baal]

But dude, Mouthwash read a book on Ireland once. He totally has knowledge that would blow up the internetz!

Swap out "a book on Ireland" for 'Atlas Shrugged' or 'read an article on the Iraq War, and you have half of all new posters in OT and WH.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Don't forget the Party hack ideologues, Baal. I'm wounded you would forget me so quickly.

Question: re: slavery. As hinted in the Jared Diamond thread, there is a developmental gap in the institution of slavery within the.emergence of capitalism. Marx and Engels called chattel slavery a "peculiar institution" within capitalism. How do historians view chattel slavery versus the early historical slave systems.

e.g., what was Rome?

 

[Mouthwash]

Park is a postgrad student specialising in Irish studies. He probably doesn't need Mouthwash to lecture him on Irish history.

I was baiting him lol. Some ancap made a thread on another site and I was hoping someone here would kick his arse.

Moderator Action: Surprisingly, infracted for trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[sophie]

I was baiting him lol. Some ancap made a thread on another site and I was hoping someone here would kick his arse.

I'm sorry? We don't exist here to provide material on command for you to plagiarize and pass off elsewhere as your own work. If you have a question, ask it, but don't play this stupid childish game.

 

[Plotinus]

I'm sorry? We don't exist here to provide material on command for you to plagiarize and pass off elsewhere as your own work. If you have a question, ask it, but don't play this stupid childish game.

Moderator Action: What he said.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Lord Baal]

Don't forget the Party hack ideologues, Baal. I'm wounded you would forget me so quickly.

I'm sorry, who are you again?

Seriously, party hacks like yourself are actually pretty rare here. Though that might be confirmation bias on my part, seeing as how I would normally stay out of things like the US political threads. The recent shut-down has made me pay closer attention than usual. Maybe the hacks hang out in places I don't.

I don't mean to PDMA, but Plotinus's use of the word "surprisingly" makes me wish CFC had a reputation system, because that had me in hysterics.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

@Baal: I don't blame you for staying out of the US political threads. The US political system makes very little sense even to the insider and can best be described as one party with two wings with "divided areas of self-interest." It may be fun to view as an outside observer, but from the inside it's like marching through the mud of the Rappahannock river banks.

Hence why I choose an alternative.

But does anyone care to answer my question on the historical views of slavery?

 

[Lord Baal]

I don't know much about slavery outside of a few very specific periods, most of which aren't related to each other. I would expect innonomatu to be your best bet, though I haven't seen him around in a little while.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Thanks, Baal. I can always PM him.

 

[Phrossack]

How the hell did the Catalan Company manage to kill practically everyone in its path? They smashed the Turks more than the Romans ever could, then destroyed a few Roman armies and rampaged across Anatolia and Thrace, then annihilated some Franks in Greece, took over Athens, and held it for 77 years, despite being outnumbered most of the time. I don't get it.

 

[r16]

though ı know nothing about the period it might be because of they were complete strangers to the region and totally outnumbered by the Locals . They couldn't last in the long run and they were useful as "mercenaries" as the Locals sought to destroy their opponents by conspiracy . Once the opposition would be cleared , it would have been easy to mobilize the Locals and kick the Catalans out .

 

[Phrossack]

though ı know nothing about the period it might be because of they were complete strangers to the region and totally outnumbered by the Locals . They couldn't last in the long run and they were useful as "mercenaries" as the Locals sought to destroy their opponents by conspiracy . Once the opposition would be cleared , it would have been easy to mobilize the Locals and kick the Catalans out .

I'm afraid I don't follow. Some of the locals, the Romans, used the Catalans to defeat the Turks, but for a bunch of reasons the Catalans ended up defeating the Romans, too. And then the Latins. The locals didn't kick out the Catalans because the Catalans almost always won, for some reason.

The following is an utter mess of a question, but maybe some of the experts here can point me in the right direction.

Spoiler :

Why is it that the Turks, unlike almost every other nomadic group of conquerors in history, not only avoided becoming assimilated to their new subjects' culture after settling down, but managed to assimilate them? The Tuoba Wei, at least some of the Khitans, the Jurchens, the Manchus, and others all settled down and became Chinese after conquering China, as did some of the Mongols. I think the Hephthalites and others who conquered India eventually became part of the local cultures. But the Turks managed to settle down without losing their distinct culture, win over or assimilate a lot of Armenians, Romans/Greeks/Rhomaioi/Romioi/whatever the convention of the week is, and others in Anatolia and beyond, and Central Asia went from a largely Iranic to a largely Turkic region in the middle ages, albeit under very different Turkic peoples than those in Anatolia, though the local Turkoman nomads may have had some similarities.

Was it the fact that Islam, which became a major part of Turkish identity, was incompatible with their neighboring Christian cultures, making assimilation more difficult and giving the Turks a more separate identity? Granted, I'm aware that a fair amount of Muslims and Turks did become Romans, but in general Muslims and Turks were more resistant to this trend. Did enough of them manage to settle down in areas vacated by the Romans and others to establish their own distinct identity as a settled people? I mean, I'm aware that they picked up a lot of Persian, Greek, and some Arab influences, but the Turkish language(s) and culture(s) didn't vanish and the Turks didn't become Romans/etc., unlike, say, the Manchus, who conquered China and gradually became Chinese. But then, I'm dimly aware that "Chinese" identity is a rather complicated thing and that it includes some other groups, though I'm fuzzy on the details.

 

[cybrxkhan]

@Phrossack: This doesn't entirely answer your question, but the Turks were heavily Persianized in the Middle East. For instance, up until the rise of the Pahlavis in 1925, Persia was ruled entirely by Turkish dynasties. Certainly, they still tended to intermarry with each other, but the Persianization was extremely heavy. In fact, a number of the first modern Iranian nationalists were actually Turks. There's also the case of India, where the Turks assimilated well enough, I guess (not entirely sure, thouguh). Additionally, if I remember correctly, Persian was the language of administration in the Ottoman court.

This is a completely off-the-top-of-my-head theory, but I suppose one reason why the Turks didn't become fully assimilated in the former ERE was because there were just so many ethnic groups. Maybe not. I dunno. I think the Ottoman Empire was a bit unique in some senses, but I can't really say more. I do feel the Turks were a lot more Byzantinized/Romanized than people give credit to, but that's just a gut feeling.

 

[Dachs]

There are plenty of instances of Turkic groups - or groups that are claimed to be Turkic, with various caveats, etc., etc. - assimilating to various extents, not just in Iran. What do you think happened to the Tiele, or the Khazars, or the various ostensibly Turkic states that popped up in north China in the late antique period and around the turn of the second millennium?

I don't think there's anything particularly special about Turkic-speaking peoples in that regard. One might as well claim that there are special things about Christians that make them more resistant to total religious conversion, as evidenced by the Syrian, Egyptian, and even Indian churches. That's clearly not true, obviously, because there are loads of Christian communities that have pretty much completely disappeared (like the vast majority of the Church of the East, or the old North African communities). It's just an selective data set and a willingness to twist the information that we do have into a system, regardless of whether that system actually fits.

 

[History_Buff]

I don't know much at all about Turkey, but my hunch would be that the Turks in Anatolia did become fairly Romanized, but retained their language and religion. And since they eventually wound up running thing there for quite a long time, both the Turkic newcomers and the existing inhabitants assimilated into that new hybrid.

I know it's a thing I've heard around before, someone want to explain whether I'm completely out to lunch or not?

 

[Lord Baal]

delete

 

[Dachs]

I've never actually been to Turkey, so I dunno why you think it's my "area". :3

I think that we're all going about this cultural stuff in overly systematizing ways that implicitly take a lot of very dubious nationalistic assumptions to be axiomatic.

 

[Phrossack]

There are plenty of instances of Turkic groups - or groups that are claimed to be Turkic, with various caveats, etc., etc. - assimilating to various extents, not just in Iran. What do you think happened to the Tiele, or the Khazars, or the various ostensibly Turkic states that popped up in north China in the late antique period and around the turn of the second millennium?

I don't think there's anything particularly special about Turkic-speaking peoples in that regard. One might as well claim that there are special things about Christians that make them more resistant to total religious conversion, as evidenced by the Syrian, Egyptian, and even Indian churches. That's clearly not true, obviously, because there are loads of Christian communities that have pretty much completely disappeared (like the vast majority of the Church of the East, or the old North African communities). It's just an selective data set and a willingness to twist the information that we do have into a system, regardless of whether that system actually fits.

I didn't mean to suggest that all Turkic peoples are inherently resistant to assimilation. I really just meant to focus on the Rum Turks, the Ottomans, and other Turks in Anatolia. I'm aware that the vast majority of other originally nomadic steppe peoples assimilated (with the possible exception of the Magyars, who still have their language and a distinct culture and have assimilated other groups in the past. Compare with, say, the Cumans, a Turkic people who were totally assimilated). But I'm just curious why the Anatolian Turks of all these peoples successfully transformed into a sedentary group that preserved its language, adapted its culture, and assimilated other groups when the historical trend is for these kinds of nomads to settle down and become the assimilated.

And does anyone know anything about the Catalan Company?