History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[Absolution]

Why not call it the Yellow River? This is a convenient English name.
I don't see the point of being accurate, because either way, when talking to a Chinese person, one of you will have to know the other's language.

Why do you say Egypt and not Mysre or something like that? Why Tigris river and not Dicle? Because you speak English, it has a different vocabulary and those words are part of it.

If you don't have an different name, then even just a heavier Romanisation can be better, just like Euphrates instead of Perat and Xerxes instead of Hashiaresh.
I don't even know how to read Huanghe. How do you expect it to catch against the simple Yellow River? It should at least be Romanised as something like Aunger river (actually sounds too Germanic ), or Changie, or whatever experts can come up with.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's not the English name that confuses me, so much as the contrast with the Yangtze. We're apparently comfortable attempting a Chinese name for one of the regions great rivers, however badly we messed it up in practice, but for the other, we don't even bother. I expect Cutlass is right, there's no real reason for it, at some point it just became the standard, and it's too late too change.

(And I would tend to read "Huanghe" as "hwang-hee". That's incorrect, of course, but nobody expects us white devils to get it right.)

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

I always thought that part of the problem was that much of the Anglophone speaking world has been sticking with Wade-Giles system of Chinese transliterations where as the Chinese themselves have moved to Pinyin. Just look at how confusing writing Chiang Kai-shek's name has become in Western histories compared to the East.

 

[Traitorfish]

I take the Dynasty Warriors comprise, and read Pinyin as if it was Wade-Giles.

 

[JohannaK]

Jiang Jieshi, not Chiang Kai-Shek. Mandarin over Cantonese!

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

When I was TA-ing for a Chinese history class, one of the most constant struggles was convincing students that Chiang Kai-Shek = Jiang Jieshi and that Kuomintang = Guomindang because the textbook used pinyin but all the assigned articles used Wade-Giles.

 

[JohannaK]

Yeah, it's such a pain. When I wanted to research a bit on my own and grabbed a Cambridge History of China everything was Wade-Giles, but grabbing more modern and specialised books were on Pinyin. I do think Chiang is sometines an exception just because he's about the best known Chinese name.

 

[Absolution]

Why did West and Middle Francia evolve into Latinised societies, while East Francia retained the German culture?

 

[sophie]

What do you mean by Latinized society, and what do you mean by German culture?

If you mean linguistically, it has to do with the fact that a Frankish (Western Germanic family) noble society was introduced to Gaul as a superstrate to an already-existent Vulgar Latin/PRom.-speaking substrate. The rest of what today constitutes Modern Germany and Austria existed then as assorted substrata of Germanic languages and dialects.

Generally language doesn't shift unless there is a specific reason for that shift to occur, usually owing to some kind of prestige or social advantage.

If you're talking legally, that's a more complex question which would require quite a bit more time to answer.

If you're talking in strict cultural terms, I'm not so convinced the distinction exists as clearly as you seem to think it does. Certainly not if you're talking broadly over a Medieval period stretching from ~500 CE to, say, 1500 CE.

 

[Hrothbern]

Why did West and Middle Francia evolve into Latinised societies, while East Francia retained the German culture?

The current cultural border is more or less still the old border of the Roman Empire.
More or less
For example the southern part of Germany, currently the state Baden-Wuertemberg, was in the Roman sphere, but got enough Germanised afterwards.
Also the Netherlands north of the river Rhine, the Roman border, kept their Germanic culture and "germanised the southern part of the current Netherlands to a high degree, but the cultural difference between north and south of the Rhine is still significant.

 

[Absolution]

What do you mean by Latinized society, and what do you mean by German culture?

If you mean linguistically, it has to do with the fact that a Frankish (Western Germanic family) noble society was introduced as a superstrate to an already-existent Vulgar Latin/PRom.-speaking substrate. In the rest of Modern Germany existed then as assorted substrata of Germanic languages and dialects.

Generally language doesn't shift unless there is a specific reason for that shift to occur, usually owing to some kind of prestige or social advantage.

The most prominent is the Romance language issue, and I got some impression that the socio-political structure of High Middle Age "Germany" was a bit different than what was going on in the French (or Capetian Frankish) realm, as well as in Burgundy.
I may be wrong, but I am quite convinced that there are some differences, even if I may not be able to put my fingers on them precisely, right?

*Didn't notice your edit while quoting, now what would you think about the non-linguistic part?

 

[Mouthwash]

I've heard it claimed several times that the Crusades were actually an attempt to remove a violent class of warriors from Europe by giving something to do besides war with each other (it was originally Steven Runciman's idea?). How is that claim regarded these days?

 

[Traitorfish]

The current cultural border is more or less still the old border of the Roman Empire.
More or less
For example the southern part of Germany, currently the state Baden-Wuertemberg, was in the Roman sphere, but got enough Germanised afterwards.
Also the Netherlands north of the river Rhine, the Roman border, kept their Germanic culture and "germanised the southern part of the current Netherlands to a high degree, but the cultural difference between north and south of the Rhine is still significant.

"The border is the same, if you ignore the bits where it isn't"?

 

[Hrothbern]

"The border is the same, if you ignore the bits where it isn't"?

You tackle me on my bad wording.

If we take the old Roman border, some adjusts are needed, like South of the Rhine Netherlands and North of the Alps Germany,
which can be plausibly explaned because those areas were in post Roman time under control of the Dutch earls/Republic/constitutional Monarchy and the HRE, stamping their culture on those areas.

 

[Traitorfish]

You tackle me on my bad wording.

If we take the old Roman border, some adjusts are needed, like South of the Rhine Netherlands and North of the Alps Germany,
which can be plausibly explaned because those areas were in post Roman time under control of the Dutch earls/Republic/constitutional Monarchy and the HRE, stamping their culture on those areas.

That's what I'm saying: if you have to make numerous "adjustments" to the Roman border to make this continuity work, then it doesn't work. The idea that the Franco-German border dates back to Caesar comes from nineteenth century nationalism, it's superficially appealing but doesn't have any really solid foundation.

 

[r16]

...the Crusades were actually an attempt to remove a violent class of warriors from Europe ... How is that claim regarded these days?

aren't those the 2nd sons , set to inherit nothing ? Was very "available" a few years back here in Turkey as the country was becoming New Turkey and everything of Western origins to become suspect .

 

[Dachs]

I've heard it claimed several times that the Crusades were actually an attempt to remove a violent class of warriors from Europe by giving something to do besides war with each other (it was originally Steven Runciman's idea?). How is that claim regarded these days?

aren't those the 2nd sons , set to inherit nothing ? Was very "available" a few years back here in Turkey as the country was becoming New Turkey and everything of Western origins to become suspect .

It's associated with the "second sons" idea, yes. They're not exactly the same thing, but they're related.

The second sons claim is that, due to the nature of primogeniture, all but the first son of a family would be set to inherit either nothing or very little. Therefore, those second sons would have to find some other way to make their fame and fortune other than inheritance, and they found it in military adventurism, adventurism that was supposedly, in the Crusading era, redirected overseas in the general direction of non-Catholics. The claim was not Runciman's - it's about a hundred years older - and is clearly not borne out by the evidence. Going on Crusade was often a family affair, and when single sons did it they were usually first sons rather than second sons. A cursory survey of the leaders of the First Crusade - mostly powerful landed nobles in their own right - shows this fairly clearly, but thorough analysis of the individuals known to have gone on Crusade through various other forms of data bears it out. There are other aspects to arguing against the thesis. For example, crusading was generally very expensive, not a matter for poor freebooters and adventurers. The second sons claim is, therefore, not held in much repute nowadays.

Runciman's history is slightly different (and it would be deeply unfair to try to summarize it here, but I will try). He was a master of the literary sources, and generally sympathetic to the non-Catholic participants in the wars. He viewed Christianity as fundamentally a religion of peace that was horribly perverted by the call to holy war. His strongest complaint was against the Fourth Crusade, which pitted Catholic Crusaders against Orthodox Greeks and as such, he believed, was the worst kind of crime. (His argument in part was based on the premise that attacking the Byzantine Empire destroyed the West's bastion against Islam and, in particular, "the Turk".) For Runciman, one of the motive factors for holy war was a desire to get rid of that violent class of warriors, yes, and I believe he explicitly connected that desire to the so-called "peace of God" movement in medieval Europe. The "peace of God" was an attempt to delegitimize violence toward fellow countrymen and Christians; in Runciman's view, it was impossible to eradicate this violence, so Catholic leaders cynically redirected it overseas.

I would say that many modern scholars would downplay that explanation. The "peace of God" was important for the history of the Crusades, but mostly in terms of demonstrating a relatively new and surprising willingness on the part of secular military leaders to listen to the Church at all. There are serious questions about how widespread the peace actually was, and how long it lasted, and whether it had an identifiable ideological connection to the reformist papacy that formulated a theory of just war from the 1060s onward.

Runciman believed that a theory of just war was fundamentally incompatible with the Christian religion (and that, therefore, any declarations to the contrary must have been motivated by other factors), but the medieval papacy appears to have disagreed. Whether these medieval Catholics were right or wrong doesn't really matter next to the fact that they believed they were right. They weren't just spouting propaganda. I would say that, while it's certainly possible to identify other individual motives (venality, violence, and hatred cannot be fully separated from any war), by and large Christians went on Crusade because they really believed that by doing so they were being better Christians.

 

[Hrothbern]

That's what I'm saying: if you have to make numerous "adjustments" to the Roman border to make this continuity work, then it doesn't work. The idea that the Franco-German border dates back to Caesar comes from nineteenth century nationalism, it's superficially appealing but doesn't have any really solid foundation.

My general considerations for these kinds of cultural opinions are predominantly based on all time periods and in this case much more the medieval/Hanseatic period than this nationalistic and ideological aftermatch of the 19th century.
Most of our cultural traditions are not rooted in recent times.
And BTW
I did not make numerous adjustments, just two
Whereby I dare say that the couple of hundreds of years Roman time are easily outweighted by the more than thousand years of Dutch and HRE culture.

 

[Mouthwash]

That's what I'm saying: if you have to make numerous "adjustments" to the Roman border to make this continuity work, then it doesn't work. The idea that the Franco-German border dates back to Caesar comes from nineteenth century nationalism, it's superficially appealing but doesn't have any really solid foundation.

But the area governed by Rome still is roughly conterminous with France and Belgium. The nationalist* could argue that this created a cultural distinction that lasted into the present day.

*i.e. not me.

 

[Traitorfish]

But the area governed by Rome still is roughly conterminous with France and Belgium. The nationalist* could argue that this created a cultural distinction that lasted into the present day.

*i.e. not me.

It's not, though, is the thing?

The effective boundary of Roman rule in the region was the Rhine. Most of the Rhine runs through Germans and the Netherlands; it forms the German border only along the French regions of Alsace and Moselle, which are historically German-speaking. Flanders, Luxemburg and German-Switzerland also sit on the "Roman" side of the Rhine, and Austria, while on the far-side of the Rhine, was largely within the Empire. "Roughly", at this point, involves ignoring hundreds of thousands of square miles, millions of people, indeed, ignoring entire countries- quite an ask, for the dubiously worthwhile purpose of purging an imagined Roman Empire of the Germanic languages.

This whole idea of the Rhine as some great civilisational boundary is something that comes pretty entirely out of French revanchism. The Germans have traditionally regarded the Rhine not as a boundary but a conduit, one of the great arteries of German cultural and economic life; a wholly German Rhine was one of the central ambitions of German nationalism since day one. The Rhine-as-boundary emerges out of French nationalism in the nineteenth, a pseudo-historical rationalisation of French territorial ambitions, briefly realised under their own eagle-touting empire. (The Dutch and Swiss, naturally, have their own complicated feelings about both sides.) It has credibility in the English-speaking world only because the last time the idea had much political relevence, both the British Empire and the United States happened to be aligned with France and against Germany.

There's nothing self-evident about it, and there was nothing self-evident about it for the better part of fifteen hundred years, until a bunch of bitter old Bonepartists decided that it was self-evident, and the English-speaking world happened to find it convenient to humour them.