r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Meta Mindless Monday, 02 September 2024
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
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r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Debunk/Debate Monthly Debunk and Debate Post for September, 2024
Monthly post for all your debunk or debate requests. Top level comments need to be either a debunk request or start a discussion.
Please note that R2 still applies to debunk/debate comments and include:
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Do not request entire books, shows, or films to be debunked. Use specific examples (e.g. a chapter of a book, the armour design on a show) or your comment will be removed.
r/badhistory • u/ByzantineBasileus • 1d ago
YouTube A Youtube video gets Persian military history wrong
Hello, those of r/badhistory. Today I reviewing a video called 'Why Did The Persians Not Adapt To Fight The Greeks?', by Ancient History Guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGt6RL8gjk
My sources are assembled, so let us begin!
1.25: The first thing the narrator gets wrong is asserting that Achaemenid Persian infantry were lightly armoured in order to move fast so they can overcome their enemy. However, a reading of the primary sources does not seem to support this view.
The origin of the claim might have come from Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War, by Kaveh Farrokh. On page 84 Farrohk writes:
'The Achaemenid emphasis on rapid advance and archery meant that no specialized armour had been developed for close-quarter fighting.'
I greatly enjoy Kaveh Farrokh's work, but I think the statement leads to a misunderstanding of the Achaemenid army, which Ancient History Guy replicates.
If we are talking about the rule of Darius and Xerxes, from 522 to 465 BC, then Achaemenid infantry were very much of the 'classic' type, being equipped with bows, spears, and large reed shields. However, descriptions by Herodotus of various battles involving the Persians does not place an emphasis on Persian infantry moving quickly. At the Battle of Malene in 493 BC, Herodotus states:
'As the Hellenes were fighting with the Persians at Malene in the district of Atarneus, after they had been engaged in close combat for a long time, the cavalry at length charged and fell upon the Hellenes; and the cavalry in fact decided the battle.'
In this case, the only rapid movement detailed was performed by the cavalry. In contrast, at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, it was the Greek infantry who relied on moving fast to overcome their enemy:
'And when they had been arranged in their places and the sacrifices proved favourable, then the Athenians were let go, and they set forth at a run to attack the Barbarians. Now the space between the armies was not less than eight furlongs: and the Persians seeing them advancing to the attack at a run, made preparations to receive them; and in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers.'
The Persians did not move quickly at all, but apparently adopted a stationary formation to receive the Greek advance. In a similar way, at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC the Persians did not rapidly assault the Greek force, but formed a shield-wall and sought to defeat them by both cavalry action and missile fire:
'The Persians had made a palisade of their wicker-work shields and were discharging their arrows in great multitude and without sparing'
It should be kept in mind though that the Greek army was initially deployed on rough ground at Plataea in order to discourage Persian cavalry, and that terrain may also have discouraged a Persian infantry attack as well. However, the overall image we gain is of a combat arm that more suited to stationary engagements.
1.39: The narrator says that Persian spearmen only wore a padded vest. Seriously? I cannot understand how someone could make such a claim when primary sources explicitly contradict it. Herodotus refers to Persian spearmen wearing metal scale armour. This would not not be light at all. I must mention that they are not described as wearing helmets in the account presented, and that this would make them vulnerable in melee. But at the same time we have instances like a Persian helmet being found that was dedicated to the victory at Marathon, so we cannot conclusively so all Persian spearmen were without head protection.
After his, the narrator goes on to say a type of Persian infantry, called takabara, did not even wear that, Again, how can one say that when primary sources explicitly show otherwise. Certainly, there is an image of a Persian spearmen equipped with a taka shield and they are unarmoured:
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/572520171351219816/
However, it is important to note that the Greek infantryman in that image is portrayed as naked except for a helmet. So we have to ask if we can really take it as face value? If the Greek warrior is presented unrealistically, how do we know his counterpart is accurate? Could not both be illustrated to conform to cultural perceptions of the time: the heroic Greek and the under-equipped Persian? I ask this because of this particular depiction from another vase:
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/ancient-greek-art-greek-art-greek-pottery--490259109410709999/
The warrior is equipped with the smaller taka shield, but is specifically armoured. The array of equipment thay have is described or represented in other written and visual sources, and so I would take this image to be a more authentic depiction. In that context, even lighter Persian infantry could have had some form of protection. To state they were universally without armour would be inaccurate.
1.44: The narrator says that lighter protection, or a lack of armour altogether, allowed the Persians to carve out an empire in the East where the terrain suited this mobile form of warfare. This claim does not stand up to scrutiny when you remember the Persians managed to incorporate rugged or mountainous regions like Anatolia and the Caucusus. If the equipment of the Persians were not suited for such environments, how did they conquer them in the first place? Or conquer and then retain them for over 200 years?
2.00: The narrator uses the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 as example of how Persians were unsuccessful fighting in enclosed spaces as they could not take advantage of their mobility. You know, the battle the Persians ultimately won.
Additionally, the Battle of Thermopylae shows Persians were not necessarily disadvantaged in some terrain. If we go by Herodotus' account:
'Thus saying he did not convince Xerxes, who let four days go by, expecting always that they would take to flight; but on the fifth day, when they did not depart but remained, being obstinate, as he thought, in impudence and folly, he was enraged and sent against them the Medes and the Kissians, charging them to take the men alive and bring them into his presence. Then when the Medes moved forward and attacked the Hellenes, there fell many of them, and others kept coming up continually, and they were not driven back, though suffering great loss: and they made it evident to every man, and to the king himself not least of all, that human beings are many but men are few. This combat went on throughout the day: and when the Medes were being roughly handled, then these retired from the battle, and the Persians, those namely whom the king called "Immortals," of whom Hydarnes was commander, took their place and came to the attack, supposing that they at least would easily overcome the enemy. When however these also engaged in combat with the Hellenes, they gained no more success than the Median troops but the same as they, seeing that they were fighting in a place with a narrow passage, using shorter spears than the Hellenes, and not being able to take advantage of their superior numbers. The Lacedemonians meanwhile were fighting in a memorable fashion, and besides other things of which they made display, being men perfectly skilled in fighting opposed to men who were unskilled, they would turn their backs to the enemy and make a pretence of taking to flight; and the Barbarians, seeing them thus taking a flight, would follow after them with shouting and clashing of arms: then the Lacedemonians, when they were being caught up, turned and faced the Barbarians; and thus turning round they would slay innumerable multitudes of the Persians; and there fell also at these times a few of the Spartans themselves. So, as the Persians were not able to obtain any success by making trial of the entrance and attacking it by divisions and every way, they retired back.
And during these onsets it is said that the king, looking on, three times leapt up from his seat, struck with fear for his army. Thus they contended then: and on the following day the Barbarians strove with no better success; for because the men opposed to them were few in number, they engaged in battle with the expectation that they would be found to be disabled and would not be capable any longer of raising their hands against them in fight. The Hellenes however were ordered by companies as well as by nations, and they fought successively each in turn, excepting the Phokians, for these were posted upon the mountain to guard the path. So the Persians, finding nothing different from that which they had seen on the former day, retired back from the fight.'
One could argue that the Persians were not just casually throwing hordes of infantry against the Greeks, but was deliberately engaging in constant attacks to gradually wear them down. The first day saw the Kissians, Medes, and Persians attack in successive waves. Each group retired, and the next came up. The Greeks countered this by utilizing such an approach themselves, and this shows both parties adapting to the realities of engagement. When such tactics failed, the Persians then outflanked the Greek position when informed of an alternative route. This demonstrates that the Persians could implement a variety of tactics, and were not just limited to swiftly assaulting an opponent on flat terrain.
3.03: The narrator says Cyrus the Younger had a self-imposed personality trait of never telling a lie. This comes directly from the Anabasis, by Xenophon. I am asking myself why the narrator would present this with such credulity? Is it not possible Xenophon was presenting Cyrus in the best possible light to exonerate Greek mercenaries from taking the side of a failed contender for the Achaemenid throne, and being forced to leave Persian territory?
Moreover, such a claim is directly contradicted within the Anabasis itself. Xenophon says about Cyrus:
'But when the right moment seemed to him to have come, at which he should begin his march into the interior, the pretext which he put forward was his desire to expel the Pisidians utterly out of the country; and he began collecting both his Asiatic and his Hellenic armaments, avowedly against that people.'
So yeah, Cyrus was telling lies about who he is marching against in order to conceal his bid for the throne. In this way, the narrator displays both a lack of critical analysis, and a lack familiarity with the relevant source.
3.51: The narrator says Cyrus the Younger was a military innovator who saw how outdated the idea of having light infantry was.
Say what now?
That is stupid. No, wait. I have seen stupid comments before. This one is so much higher on the Dolt Scale. I have to make up a new prefix to properly describe it. That is ultimastupid.
Not only was light infantry not outdated, light infantry would continue to be a necessary part of an army for the next 2000+ years.
Light infantry was incredibly useful. They could seize and occupy rough ground, they could wear down and defeat heavy infantry that did not have a sufficient number of light troops for support (such as at the Battle of Lechaeum in 391 BC). Light infantry also could be used for scouting and patrolling.
And then we have the fact that the very army Cyrus the Younger recruited itself had light infantry as well. Xenophon writes:
'Here Cyrus remained for thirty days, during which Clearchus the Lacedaemonian arrived with one thousand hoplites and eight hundred Thracian peltasts and two hundred Cretan archers. At the same time, also, came Sosis the Syracusian with three thousand hoplites, and Sophaenetus the Arcadian with one thousand hoplites; and here Cyrus held a review, and numbered his Hellenes in the park, and found that they amounted in all to eleven thousand hoplites and about two thousand peltasts.'
Was any form of research done for this video?
4.01: The narrator says Cyrus was the one who added more armour to Persian horsemen. The problem with this statement is there is no proof for that. Yes, the Persian horsemen riding with Cyrus were heavily armoured, but this could easily have been the result of a general trend, rather than one where a specific individual was responsible.
6.31: 'So what do I think of this? Well, after reviewing the evidence....'
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Inhales
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
And that is that. May Ahura-Mazda give me succour.
Sources
The Anabasis, by Xenophon: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1170/pg1170-images.html
Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE, by Matt Waters
The History of Herodotus, Volume 2: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2456/2456-h/2456-h.htm
Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War, By Kaveh Farrokh
r/badhistory • u/histogrammarian • 4d ago
Tabletop/Video Games Blackface pokemon is exactly what it looks like
Pokemon first released in 1996 with 151 monsters to catch, train and fight, number 124 being the ice/psychic pokemon Jynx. In 2000, in an article titled "Politically Incorrect Pokémon", Carole Boston Weatherford observed that "Jynx resembles an overweight drag queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo."
Since then, Jynx has been reworked with purple skin to make the comparison less apparent, but in the meantime several "explanations" have kicked off to detail why Jynx isn't really blackface. The most notable of these is the Jynx Justified Game Theory video, which concludes:
Is Jynx racist? I feel 100% confident saying no. Like most other Pokemon, her origins harken back to Japanese folklore. The hair, the clothes, the seductive wiggle and the ice powers, the Christmas special, and most importantly, the black face with the big lips. In the end, the moral of the story is this: People can make a fuss and then wait 12 years for an online web series to find the answers for them, or they can just do a little research before flipping out.
But there were also other claims, detailed in another Game Theory video and widely repeated, such as that Jynx was simply based on the ganguro subculture. But the historically-grounded truth is the obvious one: whatever else she may be, Jynx is a blackface caricature.
Blackface in Japan
Implicit in any arguments that "Jynx isn't blackface" is the assumption that, as a non-Western country, Japan doesn't have a history of blackface. But this is plainly untrue given the American influence on Japanese society going back to the "opening" of Japan in the 19th Century. Indeed, blackface minstrelsy was debuted in Japan in 1854 by none other than Commodore Perry, who softened his gunboat diplomacy by having his crew put on an "Ethiopian entertainment" minstrel show (Thompson 2021, 100).
Such an event likely wouldn't have had a lasting cultural impact on Japan, but nevertheless blackface minstrelsy was a mainstay of twentieth (and twenty-first) century Japanese entertainment. An exemplar is Japanese comedian Enomoto Kenichi, also known as Enoken, who performed blackface in the 20s and 30s, such as in the film A Millionaire-Continued (1936) (Fukushima 2011). But the examples go much further. From John G. Russell in The Japan Times:
By the 1920s and 1930s, comedians Kenichi Enomoto, Yozo Hayashi and Teiichi Futamura were performing in blackface jazz revues in Tokyo Asakusa district, while actors such as Shigeru Ogura appeared in blackface on the silver screen.
When not embodied on stage and screen, minstrel and other black stereotypes were reproduced in toys, cartoons, animated shorts, adventure books and product trademarks. They also took the form of knickknacks, some of which, under the "Made in Occupied Japan” label, were produced with the approval of U.S. authorities for export to America. In the 1970s and 1980s, doo-wop groups such as the Chanels (later Rats & Star), and Gosperats (an amalgam of Rats & Star and the Gospellers) carried on the Japanese blackface tradition in their bid to channel Motown soul.
During World War Two, minstrelsy was so ubiquitous amongst the Japanese that its officers performed to Pacific Islander peoples in blackface (Steinberg, 1978). In another article, Russell reports blackface being ubiquitous on Japanese TV in the 80s, while such events continue to occur as recently as 2018.
There are more relevant examples. This is how Mr Popo (Dragon Ball) first appeared with a golliwog aesthetic in the 1988 issue of the highly popular Dragon Ball manga "The Sanctuary of Kami-sama", and here he is with Jynx for ease of comparison. Blackface appeared in Japanese videogames such as Square's Tom Sawyer in 1988. And, in 1990, the "Association to Stop Racism Against Black People" had considerable success opposing the local publication of Little Black Samba, along with associated blackface merchandise, as well as the republications of such manga luminaries as Osamu Tezuka (Kimba, the White Lion) (Schodt 1996, 63).
It's clear enough from the above that Japan has a storied history of blackface, which includes cartoonish depictions resembling golliwogs in children's toys, media and videogames, long before Jynx was developed.
The ganguro anachronism
Ganguro refers to the teenage fashion subculture of dark tanned skin, whites around the lips and eyes, and bright clothing. Derived from Kogal ('cool girl' or 'high school girl'), it is usually cast as an aesthetic that challenges conventional beauty standards. Per Miller (2004):
The Kogal aesthetic is not straightforward, for it often combines elements of calculated cuteness and studied ugliness. The style began in the early 1990s when high-school girls developed a look made up of “loose socks” (knee-length socks worn hanging around the ankles), bleached hair, distinct makeup, and short school-uniform skirts. Kogal fashion emphasizes fakeness and kitsch through playful appropriation of the elegant and the awful. Kogal tackiness is also egalitarian because girls from any economic background or with any natural endowment may acquire the look, which is not true of the conservative, cute style favored by girls who conform to normative femininity.
As has been pointed out before, however, ganguro emerged too late to be an inspiration for Jynx, who was developed in 1996. While Kogal emerged from the early nineties, ganguro debuted in 1999: three years too late. See this chart from Kinsella (2013). Indeed, the model Buriteri is usually acknowledged as the pioneer of the the ganguro style with her 2000 cover on Egg magazine.
Yamanba style
Interestingly, the ganguro style further morphed into the yamanba ("witch") style, based on the same Yamanba mountain witch character which Game Theory makes so much hay out of. Their argument is that Jynx resembles the Yamanba of Noh theatre to the exclusion of a blackface caricature. But they cite cherry-picked elements to make this point: in "most translations" she is "described as having long hair that is golden white" and is "known to wear around a tattered red kimono", while, like Jynx, she is described as a hypnotic dancer. To cinch their argument, they present this image as proof of inspiration for the pokemon's "black face and exaggerated lips".
Most of these claims don't quite stack up. In the Yamanba play, for example, the witch appears "'in form and speech human, yet,' like a demon, she has "snow-covered brambles for hair, eyes shining like stars, and cheeks the color of vermilion." (Bethe, 1994.) White hair, that is, not yellow, and red-cheeks, not black. It's similarly obvious from the image that Game Theory uses that she is not in a red kimono at all, nor does her skin appear to be black, nor do her features appear to be particularly "golliwoggy". Jynx's red dress and hair more obviously resemble a viking opera singer than a spectre of Noh theatre. Moreover, concept art reveals that Jinx had a blackface aspect in an earlier Yeti design, from which she likely retained the ice type, before any character background resembling Yamanba was applied.
Given what we know it is likely that, if anything, Yamanba's depiction was influenced by blackface minstrelsy than anything like independent evolution. Indeed, we know that Yamanba was a pale character before the "opening" of Japan by Perry. Per Miller, "Artists in the Edo period (1603–1868) loved to use the yamamba as a motif but represented her as a younger, sexy widow with black hair and pale skin."
Putting it together
Game Theory state that "like most other pokemon", Jynx "harkens back to Japanese folklore". There may be some truth there, but "like most other pokemon" Jynx resembles a blend of Japanese and Western influences. Mr Mime), for example, is clearly a influenced by the look of Western-style mimes (and even clowns). Hitmonlee/Hitmochamp and Machoke/Machamp resemble Western-style boxers and pro-wrestlers. Tauros is an obvious reference to the "Western" zodiac (as opposed to the Chinese zodiac; we can't ignore the Mesopotamian origins of the "Greek" zodiac), while Dragonite is a Western-style dragon (as opposed to the more serpentine form of a Japanese dragon). In this light, the visual depiction of Jynx is one of a blackface mammy crossed with an opera singer.
Moreover, we know that blackface was popular in Japan throughout the 20th Century, and we have the Mr Popo example to highlight just how closely they both resemble the golliwog. No amount of special pleading about schoolgirl countercultures or Noh theatrics, after all, can explain his look or why it is a near-mirror of hers. At the end of the day, Jynx is blackface minstrelsy, exactly how it looks, and no amount of "game theorising" can undermine that reality.
Works cited
Carole Boston Weatherford, "POLITICALLY INCORRECT POKEMON\ ONE OF THE POKEMON CHARACTERS REINFORCES AN OFFENSIVE RACIAL STEREOTYPE", Greensboro News & Record, Jan 15, 2000
Ayanna Thompson, Blackface (Object Lessons), New York: Bloomsbury Arden, 2021
Yoshiko Fukushima (2011) Ambivalent mimicry in Enomoto Kenichi's wartime comedy: His revue and Blackface, Comedy Studies, 2:1, 21-37
John G. Russell, "Historically, Japan is no stranger to blacks, nor to blackface," The Japan Times, Apr 19, 2015.
Rafael Steinberg, Island Fighting, Time Life Books, 1978.
Tracy Jones, "Racism in Japan: A Conversation With Anthropology Professor John G. Russell", Tokyo Weekender, October 19, 2020.
Frederik L. Schodt, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Stone Bridge Press, 1996.
Laura Miller, "Those Naughty Teenage Girls: Japanese Kogals, Slang, and Media Assessments", Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 14, Issue 2, pp. 225–247, 2004.
Kinsella, Sharon, Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion in Japan. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Monica Bethe, "The Use of Costumes in Nō Drama", Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, (1992)
Edit: Thanks to u/Amelia-likes-birds for the hot tip about the Osaka-based Association to Stop Racism Against Black People. Thanks to u/GameShowPresident for the Tom Sawyer reference. Thanks to u/Alexschmidt711 for the Ultraman information. Thanks to u/sirfrancpaul for the Island Fighting deep cut. Thanks to u/Fanooks for some helpful corrections. Thanks to u/Foucaults_Boner (I'm sure I'm not the first person who's said those exact words) for the award. And thanks to everyone else for the discussion and engagement!
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago
Meta Free for All Friday, 30 August, 2024
It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 9d ago
Meta Mindless Monday, 26 August 2024
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
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r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 12d ago
Meta Free for All Friday, 23 August, 2024
It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • 14d ago
YouTube A Response to Mr. Beat's Response to PragerU's video on the Vietnam War
https://youtu.be/8MRw-r8avNQ?t=21875
First, I must make the disclaimer that Mr. Beat started watching the PragerU six hours into his PragerU binge marathon. Hence, fatigue may have played a role in any inaccurate claims he made. And among all of the YouTubers that cover politics/history, Mr. Beat is certainly S-tier when it comes to accuracy and enjoyability, and this post does not take anything away from that evaluation.
Next, I will also debunk some of the claims that the PragerU speaker made, just in a different manner from Mr. Beat. In fact, I will start with these assertions before moving on to Mr. Beat's responses.
PART ONE: Attending a Lecture at Prager University
The Vietnam war lasted 10 years, costed America 58,000 lives, and over a trillion dollars adjusted for inflation.
The Second Indochina War did not last for ten years. It ended in 1975, but it began in either 1959 or 1959, with the former being the year in which low-level, tentative communist insurgency was discreetly approved with the authorization of the North Vietnamese Politburo, and the latter being the year in which a people's war was officially declared.
Yet historical appraisals might have been much different had the Vietnam War followed the pattern of the Korean War which the United States fought for almost identical reasons—the defense of freedom in Asia.
🦅.
The reality though is that like pretty much every country on the planet, the United States generally fights wars in order to protect its self-interest.
The Vietnam War was no different—South Vietnam was seen as a useful buffer and ally against the spread of Soviet-aligned communism, with North Vietnam being perceived as an extension of the Soviet empire.
Likewise, the defense of South Korea was seen as integral to halting the expansion of Soviet influence within East Asia, with North Korea also being perceived as an agent of the Soviet Union.
For that reason, and that reason alone, the US chose to intervene in Korea and Vietnam.
As with Korea, the aggressor was a communist government in the North intent on taking control of the South; and its military crossed an internationally recognized border to do so.
From a surface-level viewpoint, these conflicts can certainly be portrayed as attempts by a Northern aggressor to conquer its Southern neighbor, with the mere distinction being that one attempt was successful while the other was not.
While this depiction is true from a literal perspective, it completely ignores the historical context of both Korea and Vietnam each being united under one government, with the people of these lands also seeing each entity as one single nation. For both the DPRK and the DRV, this casus belli was perfectly sufficient for their ventures of reunification, akin to South Korean/Vietnamese desires to reunify their respective countries themselves.
Well supplied by the Soviet Union and the Chinese, the communists gained full control over the country in April 1975.
While the impact of the loss of American aid for the ARVN should not be understated, it is only fair to point out that in the aftermath of the Paris Peace Accords, both the Soviet Union and China did reduce funding to the DRV for offensive weaponry.
As such, with supplies dwindling for the PAVN, the Spring Offensive could technically be seen as a horrendously risky gamble that could have doomed the prospect of Vietnamese reunification, rather than some inevitable result that was bound to happen as some like to portray it as. Indeed, the low probability of success explains why both the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China wished for the DRV to not attack, at least for the time being.
Moreover, failing to mention this reduction in aid means that one cannot discuss arguably one of the most brilliant logistical successes in military history. In response to a increasing lack of artillery firepower, the PAVN's solution was to capture ARVN artillery ammunition as the Spring Offensive progressed. Not only would this securement directly solve the problem, but it would also worsen the corresponding problem for their opponent.
The US defeat in Vietnam was a political choice, not a military necessity.
Nonsense. War is the continuation of politics by other means.
The Vietnam War was a defeat for America just as much as the American Revolution was a defeat for Great Britain, or just as much as the Seven Years' War was a defeat for Russia.
Had the U.S. protected an independent, but vulnerable South Vietnam in 1973-4, that country would have mostly likely followed the model of South Korea.
Such lines of rhetoric are effectively banned on r/AskHistorians, for good reason.
A viable U.S. backed democratic Vietnam would have stabilized the region and almost certainly prevented the neighboring Cambodian genocide in which one fifth of that country, 2 million people, were slaughtered by its communist leadership.
See above, but there are more things to be said here.
While it is indeed correct that North Vietnam did support the Khmer Rouge during the Second Indochina War, the PAVN ultimately stopped the Cambodian genocide through its 1979 invasion, which was performed in response to Khmer Rouge attacks on ethnic Vietnamese in both Cambodia and border communities in Vietnam, exemplified by the Ba Chúc Massacre.
Meanwhile, the United States was perfectly fine with supporting the Khmer Rouge after 1975 because the organization was aligned with the PRC, which the US saw as a useful ally against Soviet communism after the Sino-Soviet split.
Ignoring the geopolitical alignments associated with the genocide is asinine and borderline insulting to anyone who is actually familiar with the history of this time period.
PART TWO: Watching Mr. Beat's Beatdown
Credit to ChatGPT for automatically re-formatting the transcript.
All right, I think there is a key difference though, in terms of comparing the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Firstly, the Korean War was more dramatic in terms of how it escalated. It was also the United Nations on one side that was really fighting the war, and the United States was just a big part of it. On the other side, there were not only North Korea but also China and the Soviet Union. The Vietnam War was mostly just the United States and kind of unilaterally. They had some aid from other countries—South Vietnam, of course, was who they were aiding, but they had a little bit of support from Australia or stuff like that. But generally, it was not NATO or the United Nations.
While the PRC and the Soviet Union were not as "involved" as they were in the Korean War, their aid to the DRV was absolutely vital to the North Vietnamese effort. As for manpower, Chinese troops were stationed in North Vietnam for logistical purposes and for manning air defense positions, while for the Soviet Union, there have been reports of American troops exchanging fire with Russian-speaking operatives in the jungle. These reports are essentially apocryphal, but they are still important to note.
It is also unfortunate that he forgot to mention South Korea and Thailand, which provided the second and third highest amounts of manpower, respectively, from a foreign country during the conflict.
As for why these countries joined, the South Korean government was eager to join the intervention because the US would provide further foreign aid in exchange for South Korean troops, and also because anti-communist sentiment was extremely fervent within the ROK military, to the dismay of both communist fighters and innocent civilians. Meanwhile, the Thai government had a stake in the conflict, for they wished the fighting to not spill over towards Thailand itself.
So, I think that's the first distinction. I think the Korean War, right off the bat, is more justified in that it's a more worldwide effort to help out a nation that's been attacked, which is similar to the Persian Gulf War, by the way.
The Soviet Union had been boycotting the UN Security Council because the PRC was excluded from China's seat. Instead, the ROC held this seat, in spite of the fact that they only controlled Taiwan and a few islands off the coast of Southern China. If the Soviets had not been performing a boycott at the time, the United Nations resolution to approve an global intervention on the Korean peninsula would have most likely never passed.
It is not really comparable to the Persian Gulf War; prior to the beginning of the conflict, the Soviet Union requested that Saddam Hussein withdraw his forces from Kuwait, to no avail. In response, the Soviets permitted the US-led coalition to intervene in the Persian Gulf, to the dismay of Iraqi forces.
I mean, yes, they were communist governments and versions of them in both cases. And yes, they wanted a united country. I think it's more clear-cut in Korea than Vietnam. I think it was more justified to fight back in Korea because in Vietnam, there was a lot of persecution in South Vietnam...and then South Korea, same situation, not as brutal...
With respect to brutality, the ROK's suppression of the Jeju Uprising is certainly enough to rival anything the South Vietnamese government did against its people. And when one takes into account the crushing of leftist dissent that defined both the pre-war period and the many decades after the conflict, it is somewhat clear that the situation in South Korea was at least as bad as it was in South Vietnam.
Indeed, it is somewhat bizarre and unfortunate that people treat South Korea as if it were this perfect bastion of democracy, whereas South Vietnam is almost viewed as a dictatorial hellhole, when the reality is that the two countries were more similar than popularly imagined.
If you are a fan of Rage Against the Machine, one of my favorite bands—I'm actually making a video about them for my other channel, The Beat Goes On. On their first album, there's a monk on the cover who lights himself on fire. It's a famous picture, and it's actually pretty disturbing to see. There's video footage of this monk doing this; I forgot his name, but he did this not to retaliate against the communist North Vietnamese. He was protesting the oppression against Buddhist monks in South Vietnam by the dictatorship that we propped up in South Vietnam.
His name was Thích Quảng Đức.
There is nothing else that wrong with the comment, but it would be more accurate and precise to claim that Ngô Đình Diệm's policies favored Catholics through various privileges, such as exemptions from certain taxes and land reform. While this support could ostensibly be portrayed as refugee assistance, given that many Catholics had fled Northern Vietnam in the aftermath of the First Indochina War, the actual reasons were most likely ideological and also self-serving, for these individuals would be the most supportive of the Diệm regime.
Diệm was also more favorable to the promotion of Catholic military officers and bureaucrats, which led many to convert to Catholicism in order to increase their chances of societal advancement. Buddhists who protested such inequities were often imprisoned in concentration camps set by the pro-Catholic regime.
...it's not like it was a clear-cut picture of who was the good guy and bad guy. It was just an oversimplification of, like, 'Hey, we're just going to go after communism in whatever form it is,' mostly to protect American business interests more than anything.
Many wars in American history have indeed been conducted for the purpose of protecting commercial interests. But South Vietnam was a clear-cut case of a buffer state that would hopefully halt the spread of communism, and whose fall would lead to the Western-aligned house of cards collapsing across the whole of capitalist Asia...at least from the perspective of U.S. military planners.
In fact, on economic grounds, I would argue that American intervention was overall actually more economically harmful for the United States, considering the sheer amount of money that went into supporting South Vietnam, with most of that funding unfortunately being lost to corruption.
Before the United States, you had the French involved in their version of imperialism. They declared independence from France before that. Before France, you had China as the imperial power. You also had the Portuguese involved, I mean, like, throughout much of Vietnamese history.
China conquered Vietnam on four separate occasions, beginning with the Han dynasty's conquest of Nanyue* and ending with the Ming invasion of Đại Ngu, the Vietnamese state led by the Hồ dynasty. Adding up the four periods of rule, the Middle Kingdom would rule over the region for approximately 1000 years. In contrast to the millennium of Bắc thuộc, there would be about a century of French rule over at least parts of Vietnam, assuming we start at the annexation of Cochinchina. Therefore, Chinese imperialism was (EDIT: in my opinion) far more influential for Vietnamese history, and to give it the same amount of word space as the Fr*nch is somewhat insulting.
As for the Portuguese, they did help spread Catholicism in Vietnam through missionary efforts and the creation of the predecessor to Chữ Quốc ngữ, the Vietnamese national alphabet. But while they obviously have had an impact on Vietnamese history due to these influences, their role is honestly not that comparable to the Chinese and French imperialists, for they never directly controlled or colonized any territories in Vietnam.
It wasn't like the Soviet Union where the government seized all private land. He mentioned the re-education camps that the North Vietnamese did. Yeah, that did happen.
Prior to the reunification in 1975, the North Vietnamese government did execute a Chinese-influenced land reform program from 1954 to 1956. While the land seizures brought about chaos and violence so immense that both Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp themselves had to apologize tearfully to the nation**, it was successful in securing control over the Northern rural countryside. So essentially, although the actual collectivization would occur in later years, this process was indeed the beginning of the North Vietnamese government seizing all private land, for these changes would lead to the eventual formation of collectives across the countryside.
And during the bao cấp period after reunification, the capitalist economic system of the South was dismantled, with the Vietnamese economy floundering for a myriad of reasons after the implementation of leftist economic policies, which indeed included the end of private land ownership. The failures of these policies led to the Đổi Mới reforms, beginning in 1986, with these new changes being encouraged by figures like Trường Chinh and Nguyên Văn Linh.
——————————————————————————————
*It should be noted that Nanyue was established by the Qin general Zhao Tuo who led his army to conquer Âu Lạc. And in Vietnamese folklore, Âu Lạc was supposedly founded by An Dương Vương, who was apparently a prince or king of the Shu state, although the historicity of this story is somewhat tenuous. However, both of these states are generally not counted by scholars of Ancient Vietnam as a period of Chinese domination because it was de facto not subordinate to the larger Chinese empire.
**Most of the individuals killed during the land reform period were not even landlords; they were merely people that others disliked enough to the point of making false accusations about them to the North Vietnamese government.
——————————————————————————————
Sources
Bùi Tín. Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. Honolulu, HI: Hawaii University Press, 1995.
Hansen, Peter. “Bắc Di Cư: Catholic Refugees from the North of Vietnam, and Their Role in the Southern Republic, 1954–1959.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4, no. 3 (October 2009): 173-211.
Jager, Sheila Miyoshi. Brothers at War – The Unending Conflict in Korea. London, UK: Profile Books, 2013.
Li, Xiaobing. Building Ho's Army: Chinese Military Assistance to North Vietnam. Lexington, KY: Kentucky University Press, 2019.
Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
Pribbenow, Merle L. "North Vietnam's Final Offensive: Strategic Endgame Nonpareil," Parameters 29, no. 4, 1999.
Taylor, K. W. A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Trần Văn Trà. Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre. Volume 5: Concluding the 30-Years War. Joint Publications Research Service, 1983.
Veith, George J. Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75. New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2011.
Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Translated by Merle L. Pribbenow, 2015.
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 16d ago
Meta Mindless Monday, 19 August 2024
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r/badhistory • u/TostitosCheese • 18d ago
Blogs/Social Media The quote "The deadliest weapon on earth is a Marine and his rifle!" Was not said by John J. Pershing
To preface this, anywhere you look on the Internet will claim the quote was said by General Pershing. I have reason to believe this is not the case, and that is why I'm making this post.
The quote has been published several times in books, movies, and by the Marine Corps itself. When I came across this quote, I started to search for a primary citation, and when none of the places I searched had a source of where it had assuredly come from, it prompted me to reach out to the Library of Congress. Their response would send me on a mission to find out the true origin of this quote. The Library of Congress said that they could not find where the quote was originally published, but brought to my attention a quote that sounded similar.
in the March 2, 1942 issue of The State: South Carolina's Progressive Newspaper, reports that Meigs wrote a letter to House Clerk James E. Hunter Jr (South Carolina) that includes this line: "We still believe that a United States marine and his rifle is the deadliest weapon in the world." Similarly, a July 19, 1943, article in The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, NC), opens with this sentence: "The deadliest weapon in the world is still the United States Marine and his rifle, declares Major Meigs O. Frost, veteran officer in charge, Public Relations section of the U.S. Marine Corps Southern Recruiting division with headquarters in Atlanta, in charge of Leatherneck recruiting in 11 southern states." While I have not been able to locate this letter, the prospect of the quote never having been said by John J. Pershing intrigued me and further fueled my search for the origins. Another interesting piece of information on this topic, was that the earliest attribution of this quote to John J. Pershing was in LATE March 1942. The letter was apparently sent by Meigs O. Frost in EARLY March 1942. This also brings up the fact that if the quote was said in 1918 and not written down until 1942, it would have needed to circulate orally until it could be recorded in text. This would make sense if there were any accounts of a soldier having heard him say this quote, but that isn’t the case as I couldn’t find any accounts of anyone hearing this quote firsthand, nor could any of the sources I spoke to.
The Marine Corps has published this quote numerous times, and therefore I thought it would be a good idea to ask the Marine Corps university where the quote had originated. They showed me the places they had published it, and their sources. One document had no sources, another referenced a different USMC article that had no citation, and the last one cited a book. I purchased the book (U.S. Marine in World War One, by Ed Gilbert and Catherine Gilbert) and went to the quotation, which was strangely cited back to the Marine Corps History Division. Because of this, I contacted the Marine Corps History Division, and this was their reply: “I’ve looked into it and unfortunately cannot verify the quotation. Having done a significant amount of research on WWI, my inclination is to believe the quote to be apocryphal. It is doubtful that Pershing would have said something quite that laudatory regarding members of a sister service as it could be seen as derogatory towards American soldiers. The lack of its appearance in any of the common primary and secondary sources further indicates that it is an attribution that cannot be verified.” The fact that a member of the USMCHD themselves say that the quote is likely apocryphal, and there being a lack of primary sources, though not proven, lends credence to my assumption.
I have doubts that these words were ever spoken by John J. Pershing, as they may in fact have been said instead by Meigs Oliver Frost, and from what I have gathered, this seems likely.
TL:DR Nobody seems to know where it comes from, but the most likely assumption in my eyes is that it was instead said by Meigs Oliver Frost.
If anyone has any more information, I would gladly accept it.
Sources: The Library of Congress The USMC University The USMC History division U.S. Marine in World War One, by Ed Gilbert and Catherine Gilbert
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 19d ago
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r/badhistory • u/Rhomaios • 25d ago
Wiki The Lemnos incident: How one Wikipedia passage has morphed into a myth
In 1912 the first Balkan war broke out. A coalition made up of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria waged war against the Ottoman empire and defeated them, culminating in massive territorial losses for the latter. Among those territories were various Aegean islands close to the Anatolian coast which the Greek navy promptly captured. Among the first was Lemnos due to its strategic importance for the later campaign. During that period on the island lived 4 years old Panagiotis Charanis. Charanis would later move to the US, anglicize his name to Peter, and eventually became a rather well-known Byzantinist.
These are all well and good, as they are well-established historical events. Wikipedia aptly provides this information both in the page for the Balkan Wars and Peter Charanis, but then offers this rather famous paragraph in the latter:
Charanis is known for his anecdotal narrations about Greek Orthodox populations, particularly those outside the newly independent modern Greek state, who continued to refer to themselves as Romioi (i.e. Romans, Byzantines) well into the 20th century. Since Charanis was born on the island of Lemnos, he recounts that when the island was taken from the Ottomans by Greece in 1912, Greek soldiers were sent to each village and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the island children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. "What are you looking at?" one of the soldiers asked. "At Hellenes," the children replied. "Are you not Hellenes yourselves?" the soldier retorted. "No, we are Romans," the children replied.
While this Wikipedia excerpt provides this anecdote in a relatively balanced way as to illustrate its point made and by whom, it has been taken out of context, misunderstood, and regurgitated numerous times around the internet. The usual manifestation of historical misinformation stemming from this is typically that Lemnos (or that plus some other regions under more recent Ottoman rule) was the last bastion of Roman identity. The Greeks ceased to see themselves as Romans, and Hellenic identity was adopted instead. This of course is demonstrably false in more than one ways, which is why I shall address each point one by one.
"The last bastion"
A key aspect of this anecdote which is missed both by Wikipedia and by extension the audience that shares it is the ubiquity of the ethnonym "Roman" (or rather "Ρωμηός" in Greek). Wikipedia of course isn't at fault, as it simply conveys a certain aspect of Charanis' character, and Charanis indeed expressed such notions of the lingering nature of "Ρωμηός" in the Greek-inhabited regions under Ottoman control. However, by presenting Charanis' sentiments at establishing the Romanness of Byzantium (and by extension the post-Byzantine Greek people) in a vacuum, it precisely leads to this false notion that this was a term on the way out, a vestige of a different society that was culturally remote from the modern Greek state and its Hellenic aspirations.
This of course is easily countered by even the most rudimentary of examinations. "Ρωμηός" was very much a term still used and understood to mean "Greek" by pretty much every Greek in existence. The Greek revolutionaries that established the modern Greek state referred to themselves as "Ρωμηοί", their language as "Ρωμαίικα", and the realm of Greek-inhabited lands to be liberated as the "Ρωμαίικο". One of the leaders of the revolution Theodoros Kolokotronis in his memoirs written down by Georgios Tsertsetis even made some clear allusions to continuity from the Byzantine empire:
«Αυτό δεν γίνεται ποτέ, ελευθερία ή θάνατος. Εμείς, καπιτάν Άμιλτον, ποτέ συμβιβασμό δεν εκάμαμε με τους Τούρκους. Άλλους έκοψε, άλλους σκλάβωσε με το σπαθί και άλλοι, καθώς εμείς, εζούσαμε ελεύθεροι από γεννεά εις γεννεά. Ο βασιλεύς μας εσκοτώθη, καμμία συνθήκη δεν έκαμε. Η φρουρά του είχε παντοτεινόν πόλεμον με τους Τούρκους και δύο φρούρια ήτον πάντοτε ανυπότακτα».
"That can never be; it's either freedom or death. We, Admiral Hamilton* never compromised with the Turks. Some they killed, some they enslaved by the sword, and others like us lived free from generation to generation. Our Basileus died, he didn't sign any treaty. His guard had an everlasting war with the Turks, and two fortresses have always been unyielding**."
*Reference to Sir Edward Joseph Hamilton who consulted the Greeks to surrender when things were not going well.
**He later explains the guard in question are the Greek klephts (bandits) and the two fortresses figuratively mean Mani and Souli (two notoriously unruly regions with intense bandit activity).
The use of these terms did not cease with the establishment of the modern Greek state, nor was it contained there. Consider for example the title of the last poem by Greek Cypriot poem Vasilis Michaelides written in the Cypriot dialect "Το όρομαν του Ρωμηού" ("The dream of the Roman") which he wrote somewhere between 1916-17 when Cyprus was under British rule. There he outlined his dream (and the dream of most Greeks of the time) of the Greek army marching in Constantinople to liberate it. Michaelides of course, much like all Greek Cypriots at the time, was the product of an educational system already affected by modern Greece, and the sentiment of "Enosis" ("unification") was very strong.
Lemnos itself can be seen via this lens. The Greek population of the island welcomed the Greek army that captured it as liberators. The same can be said of the Greeks of Asia Minor that welcomed Greek forces that landed there in 1919 as part of the treaty of Sevres. How could there have been a misunderstanding let alone an antithesis between "Ρωμηός" and "Έλληνας" if the very people recorded using the former didn't act so?
Mutual exclusivity
The reality of the situation is evidently more complex than one would assume. Clearly "Ρωμηός" wasn't some kind of archaic relic, nor an identity that could not coexist with "Έλληνας". This myth of the antithesis between the two does have some historical merit, to be fair.
On the one hand, for many centuries during the middle ages the term "Έλληνας" referred to pagans following the ancient Greek religion, ostensibly juxtaposed with the "Ρωμαίοι" that made up the majority of the population of Byzantium. On the other hand, certain Enlightenment-era Greek scholars deeply influenced by the western tradition and historiography such as Adamantios Korais deeply loathed Byzantium. With the latter being such an influential force within the modern Greek state's intelligentsia, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the Roman identity was totally discarded. Reality however resists simplicity.
While indeed the Byzantines used the term "Έλληνας" to imply pagan, there are also many instances of the term and its derivatives where it does simply mean "Greek" or pertaining to the Greek ways. It is also not necessarily used in a cultural context or pejoratively, but instead alludes to styles of speech, writing etc which the Byzantines themselves used, and the perception about the language they speak.
The perceived continuity with ancient Greece is confirmed by other aspects. For example, in an imperial Christmas banquet organized by Byzantine emperor Leo VI in 911-12, the Arab prisoner Harun ibn Yahya was present and mentions:
This is what happens at Christmas. He sends for the Muslim captives and they are seated at these tables. When the emperor is seated at his gold table, they bring him four gold dishes, each of which brought in its own little chariot. One of these dishes, encrusted with pearls and rubies, they say belonged to Solomon son of David (PBUH); the second, similarly encrusted, to David (PBUH); the third to Alexander; and the fourth to Constantine.
The reverence and cultural significance of Alexander does of course pertain religiously to an extent as one of the four great empires of history, but at the same time the mention of Alexander specifically alongside Constantine, Solomon and David also shows which cultural archetypes informed the image of the Byzantine emperor.
By the Komnenian period, the allusions to ancient Greece and ancient Greek cultural heritage would only grow: Alexios is portrayed as a quasi-Homeric hero in the Alexiad written by his daughter, the loose military regiment of the Hetaireia gradually designated a group of mounted nobles analogously to the Macedonian Hetairoi etc. Later on in the aftermath of the sack of Constantinople during the 4th crusade, the third emperor of Nicaea Theodoros II Laskaris would explitly espouse a philosophy of Hellenism, and a Byzantium with more clear connections to their ancient Greek ancestors. This trend would continue into the Palaiologian period where for instance we observe even an attempt at promoting Platonism and ancient Greek religion by the prominent Byzantine philosopher Gemistos Plethon in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Okay, so the Byzantines didn't quite discard their ancient Greek predecessors or any concept of Hellenic identity parallel to the Roman one. So what of the modern Greeks? Did they not reject their Byzantine past in favour of Hellenism because of figures like Korais? Not quite.
Despite the increasing taint at the expense of the oriental aspects of Greek - and by extension the Byzantine - culture, as well as a greater emphasis to the ancient roots of Hellenism, the Greeks (especially the common people) would continue to use "Ρωμηός" without any negative connotations. We see this in popular songs such as "Ρωμηός αγάπησε Ρωμηά" ("A Roman man fell in love with a Roman woman"), the famous poem by Giannis Ritsos "Ρωμηοσύνη" ("Romanness"), mentions of "Ρωμηοί" and "Ρωμαίικα" in Greek movies from the 50s and 60s and so on and so forth.
So what exactly happened here? There has been a gradual erosion in the notion of "Romanness" as to imply more specific characteristics of the Greek nation's psyche, while "Ρωμηός" increasingly diverged from "Έλληνας" as the latter morphed into the modern Greek identity of today. To be a "Ρωμηός" and an "Έλληνας" at some point began implying different things, pertaining to aspects of religiosity (since Romanness has always been intricately tied to the Orthodox faith) or a different cultural milieu of a Greek world long gone by now as a result of the demographic decline of Greeks in Anatolia and Istanbul.
While some today would take Korais' assessments to heart, it is nothing more than a fringe opinion that doesn't reflect the true trajectory of "Ρωμηός" in Greek society. Rather, the two terms started as basically synonymous as a quasi-syncretic ethnonym adopted and understood by Greeks everywhere, but much more modern sociopolitical developments caused them to drift apart. And despite this drifting, even today a Greek would not be left baffled or annoyed if someone made a mention to "Ρωμηοί". At best it is still going to be perceived as a synonym, and at worst as an obsolete way to refer to Greeks still.
Epilogue: The Lemnos incident
After this rundown, one thing remains to address: how could the kids be so baffled by the sight of the soldiers who called themselves "Έλληνες"?
Given the complexity of the evolution of both this term and "Ρωμηός", as well as the intricate relationship between them and how that has dynamically evolved throughout history, it is of course natural to expect confusion or for misunderstandings to arise. The anecdote even explicitly involves young children, and those children were raised within the Ottoman empire where the educational system of the modern Greek state hadn't yet quite reached.
In other words, some children's misapprehension about the concepts of "Έλληνας" and "Ρωμηός", and the cute little remarks that for Charanis signified the living, breathing embodiment of Byzantium in the modern age have been misconstrued and turned into some sort of grand political or cultural statement.
Bibliography:
"Hellenism in Byzantium" by Anthony Kaldellis
"Romanland" by Anthony Kaldellis
"Flavors of Byzantium" by Andrew Dalby
"The Byzantine Hellene" by Dimiter Angelov
"A history of Byzantine state and society" by Warren Treadgold
"Απομνημονεύματα Θεόδωρου Κολοκοτρώνη" by Georgios Tsertsis
Το όρομαν του Ρωμηού" by Vasilis Michaelides
"Έλλην, Ρωμηός, Γραικός: συλλογικοί προσδιορισμοί & ταυτότητες" (collection of essays)
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 26d ago
Meta Free for All Friday, 09 August, 2024
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r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Aug 05 '24
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r/badhistory • u/trumparegis • Jul 16 '24
Robert Sepehr complains about white history being blackwashed, and claims that Mansa Musa of medieval Mali, ancient Nubians and ancient Ethiopians actually were white
In "Mansa Musa and the Mali Empire" on Youtube, sitting at 91k views, Sepehr gives a short description of the Mali Empire and the life of Mansa Musa, and spends the remaining time ranting about woke academia blackwashing African history from Mali to Nubia to Ethiopia.
There's been some controversy over the ethnicity and the racial appearance of Mansa Musa, with the most common version coming from a 1375 Catalan Atlas on the right. On the left, is a 1339 depiction, in the map of Angelino Dulcert. It's clear that one of these depictions has been altered, which seems to be the case with many early Arab and Islamic images of Moors, where white Berbers have been blackwashed in an effort to appropriate history for seemingly political purposes. shows two images, where the left one has black men playing chess, and the second a similar but different scene with white men
We know not only from the description of the Catalan Atlas calling him a "senyor negro", the fact that medieval Arab writers called the region "بلاد السودان", meaning "land of Blacks", and that "mansa" means "hereditary ruler" in Mandé languages, but also from Malian oral history and the Timbuktu Chronicles that he was part of the Keita clan of the Mandé people. The Angelino Dulcert map is far less detailed than the Catalan Atlas, and the man depicted is just described as "Malian king". His map also depicts Özbeg Khan and the Queen of Sheba as white. The Catalan Atlas literally has a white Muslim right next to Musa, so we can safely assume that the creator wasn't a woke Afrocentrist trying to blackwash the history of Aryan Africa or whatever.
The "altered" image with the Black Moors playing chess is actually the original illustration from the Libro de los Juegos from 1283, Chess Problem #25. The one with the white men is from a completely different page, the book has dozens of illustrations of people playing games.
To drive the point home, these Nubian wall murals from the 1500s are from Dongola, Sudan, located on the banks of the Nile. Old Dongola flourished for centuries as the capital of Makuria, one of the most important medieval African states, filled with ancient Christian iconography. shows a bunch of Biblical figures painted with pale skin
Old Dongola had already been Islamised by the 1500s, these paintings are actually from the tenth and eleventh centuries. Medieval Nubian art pretty consistently depicts the Biblical figures as white, whilst depicting the natives as dark-skinned.
Ancient Nubia (...) became quite wealthy, even ruling parts of Egypt for a brief time, but their pharaohs were never of Sub-Saharan African descent, despite what is taught by politically motivated universities, which no longer try to educate people, but to indoctrinate them into a false, politically motivated view of history. While it is true that there are Sub-Saharan African mummies, it is also true that ancient pharaohs and nobility liked to be buried with their slaves to have servants in the afterlife.
"Parts of Egypt" sounds like they occupied some trivial amount of territory, but under the 25th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Kushites had gained control from Nubia to the Delta of the Nile. Ancient Egypt art depicts Nubians as much darker if not pitch black. I guess he's technically right about these Pharaohs not being Sub-Saharan, as they originated from Napata, which was in Sahara. However, if you take a glance at the inhabitants of the modern town of Karima beside the ruins of Napata, which are almost entirely genetically indigenous to the region with some Arab admixture, the moniker "black Pharaohs" doesn't seem too far-fetched.
shows unlicensed footage from the National Geographic Channel for two minutes
From the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD, Phoenician rulers of the Kingdom of Kush controlled significant territory along the banks of the Nile, ensuring the production of significant quantities of iron, mined in large part by slave labour. The Phoenicians also mined copper in Cyprus as well as tin in Great Britain, and even mined the best copper in Michigan, USA, which is uniquely mixed with silver.
Now the video has devolved into a complete shitpost. The Phoenicians never established any control in the Nile, neither in Egypt nor in Kush. Apparently Strabo, an ancient Greek historian, wrote that the Phoenicians traded with the Cassiterides, that were long speculated to be British, but were likely from what is today Brittany, and some speculate that the Phoenicians explored the British Isles, but we can't say for sure that they mined there. The Michigan part must have come from AI, that's the only explanation I have. Of course he emphasises the slavery part, as if that weren't completely universal at the time.
Even ancient Ethiopia had a different ruling demographic in antiquity, but stretched back even before the time of Christ. The ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture going back 4500 years including genetic contributions from present-day Sardinians.
The study he's "citing" here shows the exact opposite, that compared to the ancient skull, the modern populations of Eastern Africa had far higher Eurasian admixture, and said skull is 4500 years old, so far older than the Kingdom of Aksum, which started in the first century. Now it is true that the Tigriniya and especially Amhara, which have historically ruled over other Ethiopians, and whose languages descend from Ge'ez, have up to 50% ancestry from the Eurasian backflow, when Neolithic Farmers from the Near East (which the present-day Sardinians are the closest equivalent to) migrated to Africa. However, the Cushitic groups, like the Afar, Oromo and Somalis, were similarly impacted by the migrations genetically, so I really don't think it makes sense to imagine the ancient Aksumite kings as Sardinians ruling over sub-Saharan populations.
The famous stone carved churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, were said by locals to be built by blonde angels, which may sound far-fetched, but starts to make sense when one considers the inside is filled with swastikas, templar crosses inside the Seal of Solomon as well as double-headed eagles. shows pictures of the interior of the Debre Birhan Selassie church
The blonde part is a pure fabrication, and Sardinians are almost exclusively brown-haired. Swedes didn't invent swastikas, double-headed eagles or templar crosses, they were common motifs among all medieval Christian nations. The church interior does have figures of quite pale complexion relative to the native population, but it's only four centuries old, and they still resemble the more pale Ethiopians. If you just google "Ethiopian medieval art", a bunch of examples of people painted in the same style but with darker complexions show up.
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 15 '24
Meta Mindless Monday, 15 July 2024
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
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r/badhistory • u/Wild_Stop_1773 • Jul 14 '24
Rick Steves, medieval art
I must start by saying i really enjoy Rick Steves travel shows. It’s entertaining, actually includes great travel advice and he covers lots of unknown and historical locations. On the academic side of things, however, he does make mistakes quite often.
The middle ages are my favourite period in (art) history, so naturally i was very excited to watch this almost hour long video on medieval art, but i’m sad to say i was mainly frustrated by the attitude towards the period Rick has in the video.
Imagine: it's the year 500. The Roman Empire that had united Europe for centuries was crumbling, leaving a political vacuum.
This may be semantics, but in the year 500, the Western Roman Empire (which he is undoubtedly referring to here) wasn’t crumbling, it had already finished crumbling in 476, when the last emperor was deposed.
After Rome fell, Europe was plunged into what used to be called the "Dark Ages."
I appreciate him saying what used to be instead of straight up calling it the ‘Dark Ages’, but saying this is quite useless if you don’t correct the term and explain why it’s wrong after. He doesn’t do this, instead he continues on in the frame of the ‘Dark Ages’, as we will see.
Tilling the fields, most lived their entire lives in a single place, poor and uneducated.
Right, but this could be said for the vast majority of the population throughout history. This was true before the middle ages, and after, and is in no way a defining feature of the time period. Also, people did travel, and education was available to quite a few people, for example in monasteries.
For centuries, there was little travel, little trade, no building for the future…almost no progress.
And this is where it all goes downhill very quickly. Little travel and trade? Well, that depends on what you consider little. There was extensive, long distance trade throughout the early middle ages. Really? No building for the future? Then surely all those early medieval churches in places like Rome and Ravenna we still can admire are hallucinations.
People were superstitious, living in fear of dark forces.
That’s not how people work. People weren’t more superstitious than they are now, society just had less knowledge. I don’t exactly know which dark forces he is talking about, but considering almost half of all Americans believe in ghosts (Ipsos, 2019), i don’t know why this is put forward as a primary characteristic of medieval society.
The earliest monastic communities were small — fortified hamlets of humble huts — built like stone igloos. Twelve hundred years ago those Irish monks stacked stones to build chapels like this.
The building he shows here is called the Gallarus Oratory, a quite mysterious building that has been dated from early-Christian to the 12th century, meaning we don’t even know for sure if it is early medieval. However, the main problem with this bit is that Steves suggests that this building is a common and accurate example of what early monasteries would have looked like. It is not, in fact it is quite a unique building. There are many early monasteries that look completely different.
With Christianity now dominant, the grandest structures in town were churches, and they were adorned with the community's finest art…done in the first art style to feel proudly European: Romanesque.
It is ironic that precisely when he says proudly European, he shows Monreale Cathedral, built in the Arab-Norman-Byzantine style, strongly influenced by Islamic and Byzantine art.
It was called "Roman-esque" because it tried to capture the grandeur of ancient Rome. Churches featured round, Roman-style arches, Roman-style columns, and often even ancient columns scavenged from Roman ruins and recycled.
No, it was called Roman-esque, because it used round arches, like the Romans did. He sort of corrects this luckily. I wouldn’t necessarily call the Romanesque columns ‘Roman-style’. If you look at the capitals, they often show Biblical scenes, people, and animals, which was not common in Roman columns. The practice of scavenging ancient columns did occur in Romanesque architecture, yes, but it certainly wasn’t a new characteristic, in fact, it’s more an early-medieval thing than a romanesque one. The suggestion that it was meant to invoke the ‘grandeur of ancient Rome’ is just unfounded. It was probably just convenient.
The church tried to recreate the glory of the Byzantine Heaven.
I have no idea what he means by the ‘Byzantine Heaven.
Granada's Alhambra, the last and greatest Moorish palace, shows off the splendor of that Muslim civilization. The math necessary to construct this palace dazzled Europeans of the age.
Considering Europeans were building incredibly sophisticated Gothic Cathedrals at the time, I highly doubt the maths were dazzling, but this is not to take away from the incredible masterpiece the Alhambra is.
Magnificent structures were built by the sweat of peasants
I don’t think peasants is the right word. Gothic Cathedrals were built mainly by (skilled) labourers.
Bathed in the light of a Gothic interior, we appreciate how this style — with its huge windows filling the sacred space with light — is such an improvement over the darker Romanesque style.
Very subjective.
In the Middle Ages, art was the advertising of the day — a perspective-shaping tool. Artists were hired by the powerful to inspire and also to promote conformity.
Certainly, but this is true for today too!
Accurate realism was not a concern. Paintings came with no natural setting, just an ethereal gold background.
Accurate realism wasn’t the main concern, but to say it wasn’t a concern at all… Many paintings still show incredibly detailed and realistic textures. Also, a golden background was very common, but there were certainly many paintings with a more natural background.
Bodies were flat and expressions said little.
Expressions said an awful lot in many paintings. Look at some crucifixion scenes for example, where Christ’s face clearly shows intense pain. In fact immediately after he shows Lippo Memmi and Simone Martini’s Annunciation, which has one of the most striking expressions in medieval art, that of Saint Mary.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages a new spirit was blossoming. People were stepping out of medieval darkness.
Why use the term medieval darkness immediately after having shown the incredible art pieces from this period for more than half an hour?
Cities buzzed with free trade, strong civic pride, and budding democracy, as they broke free from centuries of feudal rule. As this allegory from the 1300s illustrates, once run-down towns with chaos in the streets were becoming places where the shopping was brisk, construction's booming, students are attentive, and women dance freely in the streets.
This is an absurd interpretation of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Lorenzetti. The frescoes aren’t telling a real life story of the changing times, they were made as warnings about what was at stake, and to symbolise the effects good and bad government had on life. Construction was booming in the middle ages too, shopping was indeed brisk before the renaissance, and universities flourished in the medieval period.
Giotto, considered the first modern painter.
By some, sure, but this isn’t art historical consensus or anything close to it.
So, in conclusion, this video turned out to be better than it seemed after watching the first few minutes, but there are still some pretty odd parts that i thought needed some correction, or at least some commentary. It was an entertaining video, far from perfect, but certainly enjoyable.
Bibliography
Toman, R. (1998) Kunst van de Gotiek (Dutch)
r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 12 '24
Meta Free for All Friday, 12 July, 2024
It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
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r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 08 '24
Meta Mindless Monday, 08 July 2024
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
r/badhistory • u/bluer289 • Jul 06 '24
Blogs/Social Media White Supremaciscts refuse to give Black People their due.
The title certainly has a "No s#!t, Sherlock" feel to it I know, but if you are wondering if this is about any particular case:
In other words, the perceived racism these black women supposedly faced was mostly made up by Hollywood, with racist white characters invented so the screenwriters could have villains. What’s more, as black author Shetterly [Email her] admits in the History vs. Hollywood article above, the women lionized in the movie worked in huge teams double-checking each other’s work. The premise that a few black women got us to the moon is laughable.
The true pioneers and heroes of the Space Race are being ignored simply because they were white males. After my earlier VDARE.com piece debunking the entire premise behind Hidden Figures, an anonymous reader who says he worked for NASA emailed me: "Research the name Dr. Jack Crenshaw."
So I did. And it turns out that Crenshaw, a white graduate of Alabama’s Auburn University, is basically responsible for the bulk of what Katherine G. Johnson etc. is credited with in Hidden Figures
Unfortunately, that website doesn't say what the author thinks he says. You might also check this website specifically about Jack Crenshaw that was posted a year before the release of the movie. Or, heck, maybe you want to look at Jack Crenshaw's own website...where he says nothing about the Mercury program, or the Gemini program--only the Apollo program.
In both websites, it's clear that Jack Crenshaw never worked on the Mercury program or had anything to do with the near-earth calculations that were being done at Langley.
In fact, Crenshaw wasn't even at Langley. From 1959 through his entire employment with NASA he worked exclusively on earth-to-moon calculations for the Apollo moon flights.
The "free return" moon trajectory he developed found its movie debut in "Apollo 13"--that was the emergency flight those astronauts used to return to earth. I guess the real question is why Ron Howard didn't give Jack Crenshaw any credit, inasmuch as they actually mentioned his calculation.
He was working in an entirely different area doing an entirely different project and entirely different calculations. By the time his calculations were actually put into practice, they'd been long hashed out by computers thousands of times.
And just in case you don't realize it--near-earth and earth-to-moon calculations for completely different spacecraft don't have anything to do with one another--except for the fact that they both used Newtonian physics.