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My guess is that the population growth was outrunning the growth in food supply in the 19th century; Malthus did the characteristic thing for that era, and assumed that this local observation was true everywhere, anytime. Then he used it to justify his own warped idea of social justice.
Still, we're left with a few facts which he did draw attention to. Most species have the potential to produce more offspring than their unmodified environment can sustain, because that's what evolution rewards. A single cod squeezes out millions of eggs; if all of those larvae could grow up to be cods, the sea wouldn't have any room left for the water by now. The human species has changed the game by modifying its environment. We have made it our evolutionary niche to increase the maximum population our environment can support. We continue to do so today - but sooner or later we will either hit an absolute limit, or the rate at which our population expands will overtake the rate at which we can increase the capacity of our life support systems. I'm sure we could dig up some examples of local, small-scale versions of such endgame events, both in evolutionary and human-scale history. Either event can mean disaster. -
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CommentAuthorLabyrinthine
- CommentTimeApr 7th 2009
I think evolution also sort of works the other way round - most animals have the capacity to produce more children than the environment can sustain BECAUSE the environment is going to kill a certain percentage of them before they grow to adulthood. We're the ones with this crazy idea about an ideally 0% infant mortality rate. -
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- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeMay 15th 2009
Warren's Apparat historical novella thread reminded me of something.
Years and years ago I heard mention in an Asian history class of the Kuala Lumpur Mutiny during World War II -which was apparently a major uprising by Japanese troops against the Japanese government.
I've tried looking in the obvious online sources for more information about this but have zero info. In fact I'm starting to wonder if my lecturer was bullshitting. Can the professional historians here help me out? -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMay 15th 2009 edited
@Kosmo
I have to confess, I don't think I've ever heard anything about this. I know the garrison commander of Japanese forces at Kuala Lumpur surrendered immediately after the American Atomic bombings, but before most of the Japanese military and government at large. Is this perhaps what he was talking about?
I asked around (quickly) to some colleagues working on Second World War history. None of them have heard of the incident in question, but I'm not saying it didn't happen. Some of the Imperial Japanese Military's worst war crimes were perpetrated in Singapore and Malaysia, so imagining Japanese soldiers going against orders isn't too far-fetched. The only "incident" they knew of (off the top of their heads) was the execution of looters in occupied areas in the region by General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Upon discovering that his men had caused havoc at local hospitals and were now looting, he had them all rounded up and publicly shot. -
- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeMay 15th 2009 edited
I got the impression it was a lot earlier in the war than that. -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMay 15th 2009
The Japanese didn't gain a foothold on the city until '43. The soldiers had good lives, except for food rationing caused by the collapse of the local economy after the invasion. They were also led by some of the most fanatical, well-loved Imperial officers, so I can't imagine them rebelling... -
I can ask someone who would know better than I, but it's possible that you're mis-remembering some information. Could you be thinking of the Malaysian People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA)?
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- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeMay 15th 2009
Part of the specific information I was given was that some of the surviving mutineers joined up with the MPAJA and continued to fight with them after the end of the war when they became the MCP so I'm pretty sure that's not it. -
- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
Not sure how the historians here feel about alternate history but personally I really enjoyed this site. -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
I appreciate AH, if it's done well. Alternative History authors have a tendency to look a lot into the Great Man theory, but I tend to forgive it in the case of good authors (like Turtledove). I'm on something of a Historical Novel kick, getting started on the Sharpe series. -
I just have just discovered and read this entire thread.
Thank-you so much to everyone participating in it!
It has been a wonderful engaging intelligent delightful read.
The Irish famine discussion reminds me very much of the artificially created famine in Ukraine, the Holodomor.
Many people (including my ancestors) escaped to Canada and elsewhere at that time. Millions died.
Anyhow, I'm not a historian so I don't have much to contribute to this (but I am LOVING reading through this thread); this was merely what I (unsurprisingly considering my heritage) kept thinking of as I read through the details of the potato famine.
Yay! Thanks again. I love you guys and your smartypantsery. :) -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
Next week I start work on what should be my first major published work! It'll be one of those things that most pro historians read, but no one else has heard of. It will be a concise historiography of the study of the Ottoman Empire between the twentieth to twenty-first centuries in the US, focusing on new fields like Diplomatic, Environmental, and technological history. -
Are you contracted to write a historiographic essay, LN?
I'm working on pitching a conference paper (perhaps panel...who knows?) at the moment. -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeJun 4th 2009
While writing the book, I hope to do a few articles on the topic. If I like them, they'll be submitted either to the Midwestern Middle Eastern Studies Journal, or the Middle Eastern Studies Journal of America, or the Turkish Review Journal.
Which conference? -
SHARP/SHEAR for 2010. Not entirely sure what my chances are of getting accepted, but the CFPs are out. I'd like to give a paper a dry run at a conference before I submit to a journal.
A book, huh? I'm impressed. Dissertation work? -
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CommentAuthorLabyrinthine
- CommentTimeJun 4th 2009
Cripes, V, I can't believe I've never heard about either the Holodomor or the Census thing. My dad's family has lived in Ukraine forever, I'm going to have to ask them about it. (My mum's family're the ones that like to tell family history stories, and most of them would've been in either Leningrad or Siberia at the time :P) -
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Here in the kingdom of xenophobic cartoons, the debate about the monarchy is raging. Once again. Specifically, whether we want one at all. Which led me to wonder, has any monarchy ever been dismantled peacefully? I can't think of one that didn't involve some sort of war/revolution, and often major royal bloodletting...
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CommentAuthorBrendan McGinley
- CommentTimeJun 5th 2009
Maybe Cincinnatus, if that counts. -
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- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeJul 27th 2009
Let's see: our general topic today is "Why is the Middle East So Fucked?". The immediate subtopic at hand is "What was the impact of the Mongol invasion".
Personally, I think people tend to overthink the reasons why Arab science and scholarship declined after the Mongol invasion, pointing to things like anti-intellectual trends in Islamic thought. This I think tends ot overlook the largest and most obvious impact - Arab scholarship declined because most Arab scholars died in the Sack of Baghdad and msot of the great libraries and universities of the arab world were destroyed during the Sack.
Most people in the west today don't seem to understand that Baghdad was probably the largest city in the entire world and the centre of the most powerful and technologically advanced state outside of China.
It's destruction was probably greater in impact in the region than the sack of Rome in European history. (For one thing, Rome had been declining in power for centuries and money and power had been filtering out to other centres. Baghdad fell virtually overnight to an enemy originating thousands of miles away that had been almost completely unknown ten years before.) -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeJul 27th 2009
So to take up the Mongol discussion being had in the politics thread...
Firstly, when people think "Mongols" they think of a United Horde, which, especially starting in the 1250s and 60's ceased to be the case as the different Hordes and Khans assimilated local cultures. When Baghdad was sacked, most of the Mongol army doing it wasn't actually Mongolian; it was made up of Turkic tribesman, Persians, Kurds, and dozens of other groups and factions. By 1270's, the Mongols that had taken Baghdad were known as the Il-Khans (literally, "The Khans") and more closely resembled the Seljuks they had conquered than the "Golden Horde' of Ghengis or the Russian "White Horde". In fact, after Hulegu took Aleppo, there was a large civil war between different Khans ranging from the Il-Khans in Persia to the Khans in Northern India, and In China, and in Mongolia itself. By this time, even their armies looked wildly divergent, with the Mongolians in Mongolia still using strictly Horse-Archers and light cavalry, the Mongols in China having adapted siege warfare and heavy infantry tactics from the Chinese, the Mongolians that had adapted to Indian style warfare were using war elephants, and the "Persian" Mongols using local guerrilla tactics utilized by local Ghazis. So it's impossible to say "The Mongols only burned everything down" or "The mongols only taxed people". Because as they expanded, they ceased to be a unified empire in all but name, with the "Great Khan" having very little real authority over distant leaders in Baghdad.
And we don't think that everyone in Baghdad was killed; just those that got in the way during the looting before the Khan could reign in his men, and the most important leaders. Seljuk culture rapidly assimilated into il-Khan culture, at a rate and breadth so large that it's unlikely they simply copied it from the ruins around them. There is strong evidence to support that many of the artists, poets, architects, engineers, etc. were spared for one or another reason, as were less important religious leaders and even some of the less-senior Ayatollahs, which would explain the relatively quick conversion to Islam by the local mongols, which would have been nearly impossible had the major Islamic religious structure in the area been totally annihilated.