History questions not worth their own thread

[say1988]

That was getting late in the period of muskets (especially the Anglo-Afghan Wars), and guerrilla tactics can do damage, but a decisive defeat usually requires a field battle (where the Americans used linear tactics like the British).
Skirmishers had roles in European Armies (both musket and later rifle armed).
For the British in Afghanistan most of the battles were clear British victories. The only major Afghan victory was the massacre of the British army that thought it was in a safe withdrawal. Primarily through ambushes and continuous harassment. The Afghans had every advantage in the books.
The only other significant Afghan victory I can think of, they had a numerical advantage of 10:1 and suffered far heavier casualties.

There were disadvantages to linear tactics, but overall the advantages far outweighed them. Even with the adoption of the Minie rifle, linear tactics still had large benefits, in particular to stop charges and defense against infantry.

 

[Dachs]

That was also because the people involved were using rifles and, in the case of the Afghans, the famous jezails. These are significantly more accurate than smoothbore weapons, just damned hard to make until you get better ways of machining the barrel.

 

[privatehudson]

Its funny, because wherever musket-users picked specific targets (United States, Afghanistan), they were incredibly more effective than their mass-firing adversaries (British!!!) who picked no targets. A musket's range is practically doubled if you fire it at a specific target rather than "in the direction of" one.

As has been pointed out such a tactic works quite well when you ambush or skirmish with an opposing force (especially combined with favourable terrain), but wouldn't work for your whole force if you have to engage the enemy in a pitched battle, especially if you lacked say a conveniently frozen canal and heavy earthworks...

 

[Tabster]

When were seconds and minutes invented?

An astronomer called Walther is sometimes given the credit for first using the minute, but he calculated it directly from the movement of the cogs in his clock, rather than having a minute hand on the clock face. This was mid 15th century

I would hazard a guess that the first clock with a second hand could not be earlier than pendulum/anchor escapement clocks of about 1670

You can also measure small periods of time by counting the swings of a pendulum, Galileo did this.

 

[Cynovolans]

Did Constans II actually have plans to move the capitol of Eastern Rome from Constantinople to Syracuse? I doubt he would do that as Byzantine Italy was in bad shape, and he wasn't popular with the Italians.

 

[Dachs]

Difficult to say because he un(?)fortunately got killed; I lean towards "no".

 

[Cynovolans]

Is OrthodoWiki reliable?(I have a good bet on "no") It says he was and a bunch of other stuff about Monothelitism, and stripping the Pope of power. I'm really leaning towards normal wikipedia, which says it was just rumors of the capitol move.

 

[Dachs]

It's as reliable as any other wiki is. (By the way, the Pope thing doesn't make much sense - I have it that he "cordially" met with Pope Vitalian on his arrival in Rome. He, of course, then raided the city for whatever specie he could find. The only power he stripped of Vitalian was that of de facto self-management.) That said, here are several facts that militate against him doing a full-on capital move:

• He left his family behind in Constantinople.
• He did not bring many bureaucrats (well, insofar as the Empire still had bureaucrats left) with him to the West.
• His son Konstantinos IV, who as noted was still in Constantinople, apparently had "control of the government" in his mid to late teens - that is, while his father was still alive, and in Sicily.
• It would have kinda messed up the whole administrative structure that he had just set up to deal with the themata.

 

[ParkCungHee]

The only major Afghan victory was the massacre of the British army that thought it was in a safe withdrawal.

...Through a mountain pass, in the dark, in a snowstorm.

 

[say1988]

That was also because the people involved were using rifles and, in the case of the Afghans, the famous jezails. These are significantly more accurate than smoothbore weapons, just damned hard to make until you get better ways of machining the barrel.

No idea what the actual weapons the Afghans had, but they basically had every advantage. It wouldn't have taken great weapons for them to win that battle.

 

[Dachs]

I dunno much about Afghan effectiveness against the Brits but I did know that the jezail looked awesome and that a lot of them were rifled, so I figured I might as well mention that if that's what the debate was about.

 

[Cobalt Command]

Why did Buddhism never spread West in significant amounts in antiquity?

 

[West 36]

This I can answer. Longbows were actually more effective than the early riflemen in European history, though it took a great deal of training to be even sufficient at archery; whereas anybody could pick up a rifle from the get-go. It was far cheaper to exclude archers altogether.

Yep, quick and extremely cost effective (in terms of training).
Just like the pike, a group of men could be taken and given basic training in a very short period of time and become effective on the battlefield.

Ah. Sort of sad, it'd be epic to see longbowmen in more recent times. Alternate history??

 

[Dachs]

I'm not so sure about how "little" training using your average firearm was, actually.

 

[Captain2]

I read somewhere that the US got France to agree that in the event that the revolution worked out well enough that Canada became part of the states that New France would become American rather than go back to France.

My question of course is, why would France, a country sending the Americans their lifeblood, accept that deal?

 

[say1988]

'm not so sure about how "little" training using your average firearm was, actually.

Relative to the years to use a bow effectively, a gun was pretty quick to train. And no you wouldn't get a good soldier with just a bit of rapid training, but you would get a useful soldier.

I read somewhere that the US got France to agree that in the event that the revolution worked out well enough that Canada became part of the states that New France would become American rather than go back to France.

As far as I know there was never a real possibility of the Quebec going back to France.
For example, the articles of confederation pre-approved Canada's admission to the Union.
And Canada was pretty much out of the question by the time the French joined the war.

Claiming that the Canada would go back to France was used as propaganda during the revolution and the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars/War of 1812 by both sides (depending on who you wanted on to help you), but was never a big deal or likely to happen.

 

[Lord Baal]

Why did Buddhism never spread West in significant amounts in antiquity?

Not my area of expertise, but I think it basically ran into the Persians, who were uninterested. It made it to Afghanistan and travelled East. Basically, it converted people who didn't already have some sort of strong religious foundation, whereas the Persians were happy with Zoroastrianism, and despite Asoka's missionaries, it never really had the chance to spread past Persia. I think.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Yes. The Persians were just fine with Zoroastrianism.

 

[Tee Kay]

Why did Buddhism never spread West in significant amounts in antiquity?

Not my area of expertise, but I think it basically ran into the Persians, who were uninterested. It made it to Afghanistan and travelled East. Basically, it converted people who didn't already have some sort of strong religious foundation, whereas the Persians were happy with Zoroastrianism, and despite Asoka's missionaries, it never really had the chance to spread past Persia. I think.

Yes. The Persians were just fine with Zoroastrianism.

Probably this. Buddhism tend to fare poorly where monotheist religions are dominant in general. Instead of spreading west past Persia it went into China.

 

[LightSpectra]

I offer an explanation that one of my theology professors, whose expertise was Christian-Buddhist relations, gave me. This is heavily simplified, but bear with me:

Eastern religions are fundamentally based on a different theory of reality than the West. In ancient Greece, there was a debate between two schools of philosophy. The followers of Heracleitus argued that the reality is in flux, and change is an illusion (pluralism); whereas the followers of Parmenides argued that reality is of a single substance, and difference is an illusion (monism). These particular philosophies are extremes, but generally, a moderated form of monism became adapted by Aristotle, which became the norm in Western philosophy.

It's the exact opposite in Eastern philosophy; reality is a process more than a web of things. Hence the parable of how life is like a candle wick, constantly in change but approaching its source as time goes on.