History questions not worth their own thread

[Eran of Arcadia]

I am, for once, not picky about semantics . . .

 

[ParkCungHee]

But this is an issue where you should be picky about semantics. But if you were interested in something a bit more...destructive, there was the Wars of the O'Neils in which the English resorted to burning crops to force starvation and capitulation in Ulster.

 

[Dachs]

Peloponnesian War featured yearly Spartan invasions of Attica to destroy Athens' willpower, food supplies, and economic livelihood. Didn't really work, though. They ended up having to go after the grain pipeline through the Straits, and that took decades.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Do most historians think that the Indus Valley Civilization did or didn't develop independent of Sumer?

 

[Dachs]

I am given to understand that the consensus, insofar as one exists, leans towards there having been significant Sumerian influences on the development of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro et al.

 

[Agent327]

There were certainly trade and cultural contacts between those civilizations.

 

[Mathalamus]

sumer and the Indus Vally traded? do you know how far they are apart?

 

[Dachs]

Yes and yes. So?

 

[Mathalamus]

how did they get that far to trade? aren't there still hunter gathers ( or barbarians) blocking their way? and moreover did they go cross country or did they contruct a road?

 

[Huayna Capac357]

The sail was invented in Sumer in c. 3000 BC. The first Indus cities are about 2500 BC. So thus, they could and did conduct sea trade.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Do most historians think that the Indus Valley Civilization did or didn't develop independent of Sumer?

The first Indian crops were the same crops that were in Sumer previously several centuries earlier. I'd say India was not independent (although it domesticated others too).

 

[Lord Baal]

To get away from this whole debate for a minute...

Mary Stuart was born 6 days before her father died and became Queen. If her father, James the V had died a week earlier, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran would have inherited the throne through vague connections, and a day later James V would have a direct. Arran's potential plotting aside, according to normal lines of European Succession, can someone gain a throne that they would have inherited had they been born at the time? Or would the child be completely out of the line of succession?

There is a French king known as "the Posthumous" because he was born after his father's death. Legally, the child is supposed to inherit, but in practice they had a nasty tendency to get killed or thrown in a prison somewhere.

 

[Steph]

Beside, he lived only 5 days.

 

[vogtmurr]

I don't know about a specific doctrine, but the way in which Edward III and his son went about it was total war. Their practices weren't necessarily unique, but the intensity of it, and its various effects set precedents for their time and place.
- massive pillaging raids not just to obtain supplies or deny them to the enemy, but create unrest against the enemy crown. Worked rather well too.
- treating civilians as enemy combatants, to the extent of disallowing starving refugess passage through their siege lines, and massacres in towns that opened their gates to the enemy.
- Demanding huge ransoms from captured kings and princes, even without the prospect of getting full payment, which bankrupted and destabilized the country.
- supporting and maintaining unpopular rebels and rulers in other countries, as long as they supported the war effort and maintained their hostility to the common enemy.
- enforcing blockades and otherwise disrupting or preventing trade with the target state.

 

[GinandTonic]

Another question while we are at it . . .

Did anyone (before the American Civil War) pursue "total war" as a specific doctrine, the way Sherman did, rather than just as a sort of revenge or something? In other words, they justified attacking the enemy's economy as a war measure, rather than just looting on a massive scale?

Ploughing salt into the olive groves?

 

[Yui108]

Because Russia did not invade Poland, it occupied the territories because the Polish state ceased to exist and there was nothing to stop Nazi Germany from occupying the whole of the country.

The historian must have no country - John Adams.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

But what I mean is, did anyone explain that they did this as a strategic measure?

 

[Dachs]

But what I mean is, did anyone explain that they did this as a strategic measure?

Thukydides did.

 

[GinandTonic]

But what I mean is, did anyone explain that they did this as a strategic measure?

As far as I understand it - and lets face it that isnt far - that is how it was explained. The ever returning threat is permanently removed by dismantling components of it's economy.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I remember reading that the "sowing salt in Carthage" did not happen. Salt was so rare and so valuable that soldiers were payed in it (the word salary comes from that), so to use the incredible amounts of salt that would be required to sow the grounds to a meaningful degree and area would be a tremendous waste that no one would ever do.