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      CommentAuthoroutlawpoet
    • CommentTimeMar 8th 2009
     (5230.1)
    Is there any fiction (books, movies, or otherwise) in English that portrays a Caliphate particularly accurately?
  2.  (5230.2)
    Anyone know if they had leprosy in newfrance/early colonial america?
    •  
      CommentAuthoraike
    • CommentTimeMar 8th 2009
     (5230.3)
    The earliest reference of leprosy in the US found is in 1758, in florida. (from the history of leprosy in the USA, by L.F. Badger, MD)

    This, however, does not mean that there weren't cases before then. In fact, given the living conditions, an the import and use of slaves from areas where leprosy was known to exist, it is very likely.
  4.  (5230.4)
    @Jigsy

    It's pretty common, but probably Suleiman I, also known as the magnificent or the lawgiver. Some of the stuff he had built is just amazing!

    @Outlaw poet

    I'm not really sure, to be honest. "Mehmed, My Hawk" is about a rural village just before and in the wake of the 1923 Turkish uprising. It deals with the ramifications in the country from becoming an Imperial world party to a secular democracy.

    @Rootfireember

    Aike seems to know more about it than me. The one tidbit I do know here is that Leprosy and other diseases were at least somewhat common in the Transitory slave centers, like many of the Caribbean islands.
    •  
      CommentAuthoraike
    • CommentTimeMar 8th 2009
     (5230.5)
    Nup, don't know a thing about it, I just happened to be looking at some stuff that was marginally related, so I looked it up :)
  6.  (5230.6)
    A very broad question about Ottoman history: what went wrong?

    In 1529 at the Siege of Vienna, the Ottomans were clearly a match for any European power both technologically and terms of logistics and leadership.

    The second siege of Vienna in 1683 sounds like a cluster fuck and from then onwards there's what looks to a layman like 200 years of more or less constant retreat.
  7.  (5230.7)
    That's a pretty debated question, but here's how i see it.

    Stagnation is what crippled the Ottomans. From the 1200's they had been unbeatable. The only empire in the world capable of opposing them at the time was probably the Mongols, and they were too far away to be a threat. Therefore, after taking most of the Balkans, their military forces (namely the Janissaries, but also the Sipahis) began to stagnate. They continued to use antiquated tactics and equipment. Most of them became administrators and petty bureaucrats instead of the skilled fighting force they'd been.

    They'd also lost a lot of their economic power. By the 1600's, the economic power houses were the ones making huge amounts of money from the Americas and Africa. They were losing money, but no one in power in the empire cared; they were making plenty of money by taxing their own people.

    Add on to that the fact that by that time, Europe had finally caught up to the rest of the world militarily. They were finally using professional armies up to par with the Janissary and Sipahi corps, and were finally utilizing modern units like light cavalry and mounted infantry. Their armies were increasingly led by officers elected to their positions based more on merit than on class.
  8.  (5230.8)
    I'd like to know more about Eurasian history, the Caucasus region &c. Who's historically been in charge of that at various periods and when has the ethnocultural mix changed?

    Also, do you know anything about ancient history? Because what we learned in history at school pretty much went Egypt: Greece: Rome: ~MIDDLE AGES~: Western Europe In The Last Three Hundred Years: Colonization. And I'm pretty sure there were more empires around in ye olden days than those three, but I have no idea where to start.
  9.  (5230.9)
    The Caucasus were ruled for most of history by one of the major Iranian powers: The Persian Empire, The Arsacid (Parthian) empire, and what have you. They were at different times conquerd by the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and then by a series of petty kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Armenia, the Empire of Georgia, and Empire of Trebizond, etc. The Sassanids came, and were replaced by the Umayyad arabs. The Seljuks (mongols) took over the Umayyads, and then the il-Khanids (Descendants of Mongols) took over the region. The Ottomans came next, and this lasted until the area was conquered by Russia in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The area has always been extremely diverse; I'd say the only times in which it had a unified culture would be under the Armenian and Georgian empires, and once russia took it over.

    The best place to start would be to find out about the world's major empires and cultures. I'd find out about the following, as their some of the major ones: Ancient Egypt, Hellenistic Greece, Alexandrian Empire, Roman Empire, Achaemenid Empire, The Mongol Khanates, Han (Chinese) Empire, Maurya Empire, The Hun Empire, The Seleucid Empire, The Hittite Empire, The Muslim Caliphates, etc. When reading about these, you'll hear about other great powers they were near, rivaled, or spawned, and then you can learn about them. The nice thing about history is that you can basically start anywhere, and work in any direction you'd like.
  10.  (5230.10)
    There's a great series of maps on wikipedia showing the world at various times in history - I used to have a direct link to the whole series but can't find it currently.

    It reminds you of all the empires that have pretty much disappeared from popular memory - the Khazars; the Gokturks; the Polish-Lithuanian Union; Pagan etc.
    • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeMar 10th 2009
     (5230.11)
    I'm trying to re-find a good academic site that had a good animation of the world's major empires at different times. It wasn't extensive, but it helps to put things in perspective... like that fact that most of the African Empires were the size of the european ones, and the ones in India and China were far larger!
  12.  (5230.12)
    Wow, that's great, thanks. I've at least heard the names of most of these somewhere, but some like Maurya are totally new to me. And I've been wondering about African stuff as well, we totally missed the entire history of Africa except as related to south African colonisation and a very specific period of Egyptian history.

    It's very odd growing up in a country like Australia that essentially has 200 years of history controlled by one major group plus an indefinite period of "dreamtime" which we don't learn as history so much as mythology (and that very briefly) - and I assume the Aborigines pre-1800s HAD history, but they didn't write it down and after several generations of being seriously fucked with by the colonials I don't know a) how much oral history is left and b) where the hell to find it. So practically speaking we have 200 years of history. Compared to Eurasia it's really, really simple, which applies a lot to the USA as well, and I actually think that is very relevant to the way we construct things like racism and nationalism in these countries. Not that I could really articulate exactly what I mean by that, but it just seems logical that there's a particular way of looking at things when you have less history, a kind of insecurity...
    • CommentAuthorJigsy Q
    • CommentTimeMar 10th 2009 edited
     (5230.13)
    http://www.allempires.com/ is a good site for beginners, if you just want to look into what empires and states existed where and when. Their forums are pretty good too.
    • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeMar 10th 2009
     (5230.14)
    The good thing about America is the history of Native Americans is starting to be taught more and more. A lot of highschools are now at least covering groups like the Ohio Valley Mounbuilders. They're also talking about the earliest settlement of the Americas by Indians; It's not comprehensive, but it's a start. There's a growing push to move to a more through "world" history. While we can't teach school kids everything about everywhere, we're trying to throw in more stuff about Africa (teaching about the Songhai and Aksumite empires), China, and even smaller groups such as the Roma.
    • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
     (5230.15)
    Kind of goes with the topic without me having to make a new thread:

    Link

    Just goes to show, even when we think we know everything about a topic, something else pops up and totally changes our historical understanding and narrative!
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
     (5230.16)
    Looney - in that vein.

    A British housewife recorded the use of orange juice as a treatment for scurvy 40 years before mainstream science and 70 or 80 years before the British navy woke up to it.

    And there's an article in the latest New Scientist about a Japanese doctor called Nanaoka who discovered an effective general anesthetic 40 years before the concept was independently developed in the west.
    • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2009 edited
     (5230.17)
    Scientific history has always fascinated me. We always think we were the first ones to develop something, but it seems like someone always did it before us. Heck, if the Antikythera Mechanism works like we think it does, it can more accurately predict certain astronomical movements than many computers.

    Also, if we have any scientists around that know a lot about this stuff, I'm always interested in learning. I specialize in diplomatic and military history, so I don't know that much about tech history in general...
    •  
      CommentAuthorNygaard
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
     (5230.18)
    Oh. Oh!

    I'm looking at a part of the description for the Cultural Transformations project at the University of Oslo, trying to wrap my head around it. One of the talking points is materiality and aesthetics - apparently, they're interested in projects that explore the historical relationship between forms of aesthetic expression and various global culture-production-consumption complexes - how new media changes the positions of the participants in the public discourse, how the activity of sensing varies between cultures and epochs, what happens when new discourses arise to transgress old boundaries and so on. It's all very open and vague, but the whole thing intrigues me endlessly, while at the same time making me feel utterly ingorant. Naturally, I'm planning to apply :)

    You sound like you've got a grip on the "meeting of powers/cultures/traditions" part of this thing. Since I don't know the languages involved, I have no chance of doing anything in your field, like, say, the Turkish "westernization" projects, but I'd be really interested in what theoretical reference works you would recommend.
    • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
     (5230.19)
    Luckily, because of the emphasis on globalization within academia in most parts of the world now, a LOT of higher education institutions are turning to English. I know about half of the Universities in Turkey teach solely in English now, and all of them offer many courses in English. I know it's a similar situation in Nigeria (where my old adviser studies) and at many of the more prominent German Universities (a lot of the archaeological side of things in Turkey is done by the Germans, for some reason). The only reason most of us have to know multiple languages is because of our primary source reading; I have to know Ottoman Turkish if I want to be able to read anything at the Archives in Ankara. That being said, almost ALL of the secondary source materials (like reference works, text books, and even dissertations) are available in multiple languages.

    Unfortunately, at the current time (Five AM) I'm having trouble coming up with anything. For most of human history, most art for art's sake was only really available to the rich . The only art most people saw was in Churches or on statues, which were used mainly as teaching devices, not as art to be studied and appreciated. This really only started to chain in most places in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and my studies take place mostly before that.

    A few good sources that I do know of are text books. "Ideas That Changed the World : and "The World: A Global History" by Felipe Fernandez Armesto are both great sources (and I'm not just saying that because I know the guy). He's way smarter than I am, and covers everything from diplomatic to art history from a global perspective.

    Because I know Turkey better than most places, I know of two great books that cover at least a little of what you're talking about. "Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds" by Stephen Kinzer, and "The History of Turkey" are both good introductory reads that cover Turkey's difficult transition from the insular seat of the Islamic caliphate to a highly secular western power.
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
     (5230.20)
    "a lot of the archaeological side of things in Turkey is done by the Germans, for some reason."


    Probably the Schliemann link.

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