History questions not worth their own thread

[shortguy]

persecution of jews and christians - why it was that hard persecuted and why it was succesful?,..

Christians were not always subject to particularly strict persecution. Until the middle of the 3rd century persecution of Christians was generally considered a local matter, and they were treated better or worse depending on the whims of the local magnates and populace. As to its success, I'm not sure there is a whole lot of evidence that it was successful. Christianity did grow fairly slowly until the 4th century, but how much of that is due to persecution is unclear; for most people, Christianity just wasn't much on their radar screen.

As to the Jews, they were persecuted about like any other troublemaking group would have been.

pagan religions - how common were eastern religions with Bhaal or Istar, what were kinds?,...

Eastern mystical cults were somewhat known among upper-class Romans at least by the mid 2nd century. I don't know that they attained a whole lot of general popularity outside of their countries of origin, because cult membership tended to be exclusive and expensive, but I can't say for sure. The Severans were fairly interested in eastern cults and promoted some of them (Isis, Serapis, Elagabalus) in Rome.

 

[LightSpectra]

Why did the German Confederation of 1815 take almost identical borders to the Holy Roman Empire? I understand that the former was meant to be a replacement of the latter, but why was that the case?

 

[aronnax]

Why did Parliament and nobles of the English Commonwealth wanted to restore Charles II to the throne? Why didn't they just redesign the Commonwealth into a working republic?

 

[LightSpectra]

Why did Parliament and nobles of the English Commonwealth wanted to restore Charles II to the throne? Why didn't they just redesign the Commonwealth into a working republic?

Interesting question -- it's like asking a failed general, "why didn't you just win the war?" The fact that the English faced so many disasters convinced them that monarchism was the only feasible form of government. Remember, the U.S. was the first actual republic to survive a good length of time (the Netherlands and Italian states were de facto hereditary monarchies). An argument could also be made that the majority of the roundheads didn't really want a republic in the first place, they just couldn't stand by Charles Stuart's grievously bad reign.

 

[innonimatu]

Why did the German Confederation of 1815 take almost identical borders to the Holy Roman Empire? I understand that the former was meant to be a replacement of the latter, but why was that the case?

My guess was that the european dynasties which had been badly shaken by the beginnings of nationalism elected stability and the most important criteria for borders. That's why the Congress of Vienna did not change those borders. Changes might also benefit one of the big powers against others, which also went against the aim of stability. And a partition would cause unrest on the occupied areas (as that of Poland had shown).

 

[ParkCungHee]

Interesting question -- it's like asking a failed general, "why didn't you just win the war?" The fact that the English faced so many disasters convinced them that monarchism was the only feasible form of government. Remember, the U.S. was the first actual republic to survive a good length of time (the Netherlands and Italian states were de facto hereditary monarchies). An argument could also be made that the majority of the roundheads didn't really want a republic in the first place, they just couldn't stand by Charles Stuart's grievously bad reign.

It is also natural for when a government fails, for you to move in the symbolically opposite direction. For example, you may ask why in 1919 after Willy Abdicated, the Germans did not set up a working constitutional monarchy, and the answer is because the failures of the monarch had discredited monarchism, as the failure of the republic in Britain discredited republicanism in general.

 

[Yeekim]

An argument could also be made that the majority of the roundheads didn't really want a republic in the first place, they just couldn't stand by Charles Stuart's grievously bad reign.

This feels like a place to ask what's the story with your avatar and custom title

 

[LightSpectra]

I like making fun of abysmally poor monarchs. Also, that mustache slays me.

Speaking of which, I guess it's time to do somebody new now.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Does anyone know how Khrushchev changed the bureaucracy after Stalin's death?

The biggest change was not to structure, but personnel. Khrushchev instituted a rotating office system to keep people from settling into administrative positions - or really any position - which went a long way towards fighting corruption, with the goal of eventually completely eliminating the nomenklatura system and replacing it with a solely merit-based one. However, these changes did not survive him, and Brezhnev was more than happy to re-institute them.

I guess you could consider the new laws to be change to bureaucracy. Khrushchev did away with the Stalinist autocratic law system, which in a lot of ways resembled an old-school medieval despotism, and made the USSR a "nation of laws, not of men," so to speak. This greatly weakened the KGB and other internal intelligence services, because now they were bound by the law and not given free reign to try people and deliver verdicts as they wished. It effectively eliminated the show trial and ended the brutal ways of doing, well, everything, that characterized Stalin's reign and more or less ended with Beria's execution a few months after Stalin died. Now, instead of taking undesirables out back and shooting them, or shipping them off to a labor camp, the higher-ups were retired to some low-level management position out in some Siberian mining town or something of the like (put out to pasture, if you will) with a pension and a dacha, and lower-rung people were just fired. Fortunately, these efforts did survive him, and even though leaders -including Khrushchev - would find the change annoying at times, no one wanted to go back to the Stalinist ways of dealing with these issues, so they respected the laws and the system, and generally followed them and went through them. Needless to say, the Supreme Soviet became more powerful during this time.

EDIT: Oh, and Khrushchev got rid of the stupid reversal of Party Central Committee elections, which used to be elected by the party at Party Congresses, but Stalin reversed it and had the CC chosen by the Party Chair. So Khrushchev restored the democratic election of them.

 

[Agent327]

The biggest change was not to structure, but personnel. Khrushchev instituted a rotating office system to keep people from settling into administrative positions - or really any position - which went a long way towards fighting corruption, with the goal of eventually completely eliminating the nonklementura system and replacing it with a solely merit-based one. However, these changes did not survive him, and Brezhnev was more than happy to re-institute them.

That should ofcourse read nomenklatura; otherwise a decent summation.

 

[civ_king]

I'm going to write an essay on how the Moors were better than their European counterparts, I need a place to start, any suggestions?
I need sources (Wiki doesn't work)

 

[West 36]

Better at what? Or is that what you're asking? Because that's pretty vague.

 

[civ_king]

Better at what? Or is that what you're asking? Because that's pretty vague.

pretty much everything
life span, quality of life, inventions, culture (well that's harder to quantify)
I remember hearing they had pave roads, sewer systems, hospitals, all that cool stuff

 

[BananaLee]

Don't you have databases in your library you can access?

Or perhaps searching library catalogues for "Moor" + "history" ?

 

[Agent327]

I'm going to write an essay on how the Moors were better than their European counterparts, I need a place to start, any suggestions?
I need sources (Wiki doesn't work)

For an essay you may need to be more clear on this if it's your central theme. (I wouldn't know, for instance, what you mean by the "European counterparts" of "the Moors".) That might also help in searching for source material.

 

[civ_king]

For an essay you may need to be more clear on this if it's your central theme. (I wouldn't know, for instance, what you mean by the "European counterparts" of "the Moors".) That might also help in searching for source material.

I was going to do it on how life was vastly better as an average Moor than as an average European, because of things like free healthcare, sanitation, and life span being ~2x as long as an average European

 

[LightSpectra]

I was going to do it on how life was vastly better as an average Moor than as an average European, because of things like free healthcare, sanitation, and life span being ~2x as long as an average European

The Moors had free health care? Excuse me for being skeptical on this claim, do you have a source?

 

[Lord Baal]

I know the Moors had street lights in Cordoba, because the incredibly accurate Lawrence of Arabia film says so. That's about it for my knowledge in the area.

 

[civ_king]

The Moors had free health care? Excuse me for being skeptical on this claim, do you have a source?

I must have misread this:
"By Mamun's time medical schools were extremely active in Baghdad. The first free public hospital was opened in Baghdad during the Caliphate of Haroon-ar-Rashid. As the system developed, physicians and surgeons were appointed who gave lectures to medical students and issued diplomas to those who were considered qualified to practice. The first hospital in Egypt was opened in 872 AD and thereafter public hospitals sprang up all over the empire from Spain and the Maghrib to Persia." -Sir John Bagot Glubb

I know the Moors had street lights in Cordoba, because the incredibly accurate Lawrence of Arabia film says so. That's about it for my knowledge in the area.

because a movie said so is not valid

 

[Lord Baal]

I think you missed the obvious sarcasm. Lawrence of Arabia, for all its chewy goodness, is very inaccurate.