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1. • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
   • CommentTimeJul 29th 2009

    (5230.141)
   European and "Arab" ships had two big differences. Ships built in England, Most of France, the Scandinavian regions, etc. were built for the north Atlantic. They were designed to sail upon specific sea routes during certain times of the year, and to be incredibly robust (to survive the extreme Atlantic Storms and seas) instead of fast. "Arab" ships were designed for use mostly along the coast of North Africa and the Indian Ocean. So that ships wouldn't be limited strictly by the Monsoons, these ships had devices such as the Lateen Sail, which allowed them to sail against the wind. However, because of the nature of their design, these ships would almost always be destroyed in any protracted journey on the Atlantic. When Europeans started getting their hands on Arab (I use "Arab" in the historical sense, meaning that I'm talking anything East of Europe, so many of these things were actually of Indian or Chinese Origin, just referred to as Arab because that's where Europeans got them from) inventions like the sextant, compass, and most importantly, Lateen sail, they used them on their ships, meaning that they could take long journey to anywhere in the world in any season. Ergo, it was now faster for Europeans to sail by sea instead of walk
   
   This also opened up Serious trade with Sub-Saharan Africa. While they were mostly Muslims, many of the thing Europeans wanted from the east (especially Silks, Precious Metals, Salt and certain food items) could be manufactured and obtained in places like the Kingdom of Mali, Kingdom of Ghana, or the Sultanate of Songhai for a lower prices, and without having to support their direct enemies, the Arabs.
   
   Europe was also quickly running out of things to trade. Most trade goods from other parts of the world (China, India, Africa, the Mid-East) were more plentiful and of superior quality, especially in the realm of things like precious metals and manufactured goods. Europeans traded mostly with Wool, the one or two unique spices to Europe, and sometimes things like Olives and Wine. However, by the late middle ages, Eastern Cultures could produce all of these things, and the European Economy was hurting. Gunpowder helped slightly, but many of the previously named cultures already had it, and at the time firearms were of such poor quality that many generals preferred to still just use bows. This spurred long-distance trade because as European commodities became less valuable, merchants couldn't afford to pay the sundry taxes to pass through the near-east. Remember, before the 17th century, the central governments in the Ottoman empire didn't levy taxes, local Sipahis, Emirs, and Pashas did. So if a Merchant was stopped in Istanbul, he'd pay taxes. Then again is Izmir. Then Ankara. Then Aleppo. And every other territory in the empire he passed through. Things changed with tax reform in the 1600s, but by then it was too late and European trading focus had shifted. This is also why the Italians weren't so interested in things like American colonization; in addition to being small compared to the other European powers, the Italian states still controlled the fairly-lucrative Mediterranean trade, and still had quality items that were still valuable enough to trade and make a profit on.
2. • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
   • CommentTimeJul 29th 2009

    (5230.142)
   "Europe was also quickly running out of things to trade."
   
   Right up until the end of the 18th century, virtually the only thing the Europeans had that the Chinese would accept in trade were silver and gold.
   
   Most of the gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in the New World ended up in China - the Spanish shipped the gold from Mexico to the Philippines and then on to China and then shipped Chinese goods back to Spain.
   
   The Opium trade arose because it was about the only thing the British could sell in China and they were going broke.
   
   In India, virtually no British goods were competitive with local goods. Remember the movie Gandhi? Ever wonder why it was illegal for Indians to make their own cloth or salt? Because only by forcing Indians to buy from English sources could the British companies make a profit in India. The British also had to impose heavy tariffs on non-British imports to maintain their monopoly on the market.
3. •  
     CommentAuthorMrSmite
   • CommentTimeJul 29th 2009

    (5230.143)
   In regards to teaching history:
   
   Having nearly pursued a history degree, I might be a bit biased, but I thought I should mention that as an impressionable teenager who hadn't had much interest in history some things turned me around. First off, all the history instructors I've had were inventive and charismatic in some form or other, even one guy's class I sat in on for only one session, and they all were passionate about what they were teaching. Performance can be one of the strongest tools a teacher has, and I've seen it go a long way in other disciplines as well. I've had teachers tie history in with more current events, whether in terms of direct or indirect causality or simply comparison of events ("Does this remind you of someone/something?" was something one teacher liked to point out from time to time). These instructors taught me that history is a puzzle, something to be explored, figured out and learned from. So in effect, many didn't just teach what they knew about history, but how they viewed history.
   
   Something else I've noticed reading your thread has been the degree of detail, and that also brings up the issue of knowing your audience. Firstly, all the material you're putting out in your posts is incredibly intricate and informational, which is great for the topic but can be overwhelming even to interested readers at times. As one art instructor once taught me, sometimes you just have to use bigger brushes. I really can't tell you much about specific engagements during the Seven Years' War, but I can tell you how the outcome shaped the world. When you're playing to a General Education audience, emphasizing the bigger picture is more probably more important, broader brush strokes, easier to digest and retain, so they actually remember something years later. Alternately, I've had one art history instructor who was interminable in her packed GE Renaissance class, but was fun and delightful in a small Medieval art history course where half the class were her Masters-level art history students, and she could geek out without leaving too many people behind.
4. •  
     CommentAuthorNygaard
   • CommentTimeJul 30th 2009

    (5230.144)
   Quentin Skinner said a beautiful thing while talking about "the use of history" - any misrepresentation of him in this paraphrase is mine - while we often look to history as a catalogue of dire warnings, history is probably much more "useful" as a resource, a storehouse of ideas that can be taken out and dusted off when needed. We need a memory that goes more than a couple of generations back, not because we shouldn't repeat the past, but because the past contains so many immediately useful things. (Did I mention this in here before? I've been babbling about this guy a lot lately...)
   
   He then went on to exemplify this in a suitably mind-blowing way by excavating the early modern republican, or "neo-roman" concept of freedom, which has the potential to make most modern political ideologies look rather silly.
   
   To me, that's what history is (it's more, of course, but a large part, to me, is this:) - our memory, which now goes back 6000 years or so. A failure of the discipline of history equals dementia on a global scale. (Yeah, if you want to be all cool and cynical about it, there's a good case in claiming it's already happened).
   
   Putting the big words aside, what makes history distinct from, say, a historical novel, is the claim, and the intention, to say true things about the past. That's a lot harder than it sounds, since many historians can't agree on the meaning of a single word in the sentence "Say true things about the past", with the possible exception of "the". I suppose that's a sign of a healthy discipline. On top of that, I might add the historian's stance, as someone who is describing past events from a position in the future, with the benefit (or obstruction) of hindsight, and ordering them in a narrative structure according to a stated set of criteria.
5. •  
     CommentAuthorLabyrinthine
   • CommentTimeJul 30th 2009

    (5230.145)
   Did anybody else read those Horrible Histories books as a kid? They were pretty much what got me interested in history in the first place. I mention this because I think the thing that did it was (aside from the illustrations and cartoons, because yeah visual learning for the win) the way they made history about people. I mean, the battle of this and the battle of that and the great tidal waves of the other, but everyone involved in all of those was a real person, and I think the poorer history teachers lose that. Now in senior history in high school we did mostly twentieth century stuff, so there were a shitload of sources not just about what HAPPENED but also about the personalities and social dynamics involved. Of course I love the really big picture as well, like the stuff you've been explaining here about the middle east, Looney, cause and effect in broad strokes - the bits I hated were always the fiddly details that didn't feel connected to either the people or the Proverbial Tidal Waves. I think a healthy balance is needed there.
6. • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
   • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009

    (5230.146)
   So a very, very specific and possibly stupid question.
   
   I've read a whole bunch of descriptions of sea voyages in the Age of Exploration, most recently I'm reading Samurai William an account of the first Englishman to reach Japan.
   
   Something keeps puzzling me. You're becalmed out in the middle of the ocean and running out of food and water. Wouldn't the logical thing to do be to use the ship's boat and go fishing? And did they really not think to make a solar still?
7. • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
   • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009

    (5230.147)
   Some sailors did think of water purification systems; there's evidence that many ships in the Chinese Treasure fleets used different methods for this, which I honestly can't explain because frankly I don't know much about them. But it was far easier to simply load a ship full of alcohol, which wouldn't spoil in anyway, and which most of the sailors expected anyway. Remember, for most of a crew there was very little to do on the ship for long periods of time, and it was easier for officers to keep them in line by keeping them heavily drunk. And there wasn't much scientific knowledge on board a ship; chances were the only people that could even read would be the Navigator, possibly the captain, and maybe one or two exceptional crewmen or priests, so scientific knowledge was quite limited.
   
   Fishing was done. The problem is, fish tend to group together in certain areas. It's why your average English fisherman simply doesn't sail to a random point in the mid-atlantic and drop a net; chances are he won't catch anything worth eating. Dropping a line is difficult with hard tack, as many fish aren't going to try to eat something traveling so quickly through the water. The only way to avoid this was to spend extra time looking for a decent fishing area, putting up the sails, and hoping to catch something. Because the guarantee of actually catching something wasn't certain, and because the time that it would take simply to drop and raise the sails and bring the boat to a full stop, and then to find the wind again, might waste a whole day alone, many crews simply weren't willing to take the risk. Many preferred to save time, reach their destination quickly, and go hungry if they had to instead of coming to a dead stop and increasing their chances of entering a storm.
   
   That's if they could stop; in the age of exploration most of the sailing was done on a series of trade lanes discovered in the 15th century known as the Volta Do Mar; these were areas of the ocean where both the winds and currents moved in a certain way to carry travelers between continents if they could catch them at just the right time. Even with a lanteen sail a ship couldn't move fast enough into the wind to make it from africa to south america, or Asia to the Americas, or anything like that. Because the currents here are so strong, even putting sails up wouldn't be enough to slow the ship down enough to reliably catch any fish. You could leave the Volta, but then you run the risk of losing critical time, hitting storms, not finding it again, or some combination of the above. And the storms traveled on the Voltas; a stop on them would guarantee a storm hitting you before too long.
   
   And then there's the fire issue. Assume you've managed to stop, find a good fishing area, gotten enough equipment in the water and then gotten lucky enough to have caught enough fish to feed the whole crew, not been run-over by a storm, and found your way back on course in enough time so as to have not wasted many supplies and to have stayed on schedule (remember, most of these voyages were running on a fairly tight schedule, as the voyage investors wanted to see pay-offs in a timely fashion). Now you've got at least a hundred pounds of fish to feed your crew, probably numbering 40-100 men, possibly more. The ships galley is equipped with only a small stove on which you can cook, and it's only lit in calm water to quickly cook the command-crews' food. there's nowhere to start a larger fire; everything on the ship is canvas, wood, or hemp. Keeping the stove lit for any time is seriously dangerous; one large-ish wave or heavy wind is enough to cause an ember to fall out, which could easily ignite the ship. So at this point you've just got a lot of raw fish that may or may not be safe to eat.
   
   And there's a lot of indication that, as long as the ship stayed on course, the food supply wasn't a huge issue very often. Heck, columbus' first crews had enough energy to land and beat down a few local natives! There were a few long-term voyages where the food supply ran low (Magellan's stretch between india and south America), but most of the time your rations would last long enough to get you to a save port or your destination.
   
   The ultimate answer is that yes, they already fished, but only to supplant their rations. Doing any more would have been a massive risk, one the sailors weren't willing to take. It was easier, once the food was out, just to spread around a few strips of fish and keep your belly full with saw dust. It wasn't comfortable, but you'd survive.
8. • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
   • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009

    (5230.148)
   "And there's a lot of indication that, as long as the ship stayed on course, the food supply wasn't a huge issue very often. Heck, columbus' first crews had enough energy to land and beat down a few local natives! There were a few long-term voyages where the food supply ran low (Magellan's stretch between india and south America), but most of the time your rations would last long enough to get you to a save port or your destination."
   
   William Adams was on one of those disastrous voyages though. They were eating the leather from the rigging so you'd think they would have tried fishing.
9. •  
     CommentAuthorBrianMowrey
   • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009

    (5230.149)
   I do not imagine that a solar sill can work on a boat, because there is no temperature contrast between the warm ground of land and the cold night air. I don't think there's dew on the open ocean.
   
   Also, like looney said, no consistency of edible-size marine life when your in the open, equitorial regions, which is where you're most likely to be if you're calmed long enough to starve. A swarm of squid might pass through. I believe there is a swarm of squid at one point in Heart of the Sea which is the story of the Essex or maybe it was flying fish, but either way it wasn't much of a difference. They starved.
10. • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009

     (5230.150)
    And you have to figure, if they're at the point of eating rigging, there's a good chance they're starved to the point of being delerious. And it's possible the ship wasn't carrying any nets or tackle for fishing. Every bit of net and line you bring takes up valuable space that could be used for more food, ammunition, or trade goods. It's also possible at that point a lot of their tackle (if they had any in the first place) could have been used up and ruined; even modern fishing boats using nets and the like made from steel and synthetic materials still have their equipment broken and used up all the time. Or it's possible that they'd tried fishing without much luck.
11. • CommentAuthorRenThing
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009

     (5230.151)
    @looney
    
    This might be out of your specialization but do you have any suggestions for books on transportation, the deportation of convicts to Australia and Van Diemen's Land?
12. • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009

     (5230.152)
    @RenThing
    
    I honestly have absolutely, 100%, no idea.
13. • CommentAuthorRenThing
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009

     (5230.153)
    Well, thanks anyway. I have who's a librarian at Berkley, I'll see if any of his counterparts might know.
14. •  
      CommentAuthorBrianMowrey
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009

     (5230.154)
    Same book I referenced earlier, The Great Shame, deals extensively with transportation to Australia in relation to the Young Irelander Rebellion. It coveres 1830s to 1880s.
    
    However, it's a big ol' tranny mess of a book, also covering the Famine, emigration to American and the Civil War, the Fenians and Canadian invasion, and dropping a fair share of threads of thought along the way. Good for absorbing lots of contemporary context and specific personal stories, bad for providing a bare-bones narrative of the era.
15. •  
      CommentAuthormister hex
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009

     (5230.155)
    @ BrianMowrey - I am, apparently, distantly related to Thomas Kenneally, author of the Great Shame and Schindler's Ark. (The original title). There are a number of very good books on the convict transport. I like Peter Carey so even though it's a novel, Jack Maggs is good. And you gotta love Ned Kelly! Motherfucker had a suit of armor!
    
    I don't have Ingram at home but I can look up whatever you like at work tomorrow.
16. • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009

     (5230.156)
    The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes is pretty good.
17. • CommentAuthorJaron Todd
    • CommentTimeAug 21st 2009

     (5230.157)
    I guess I'll come out of lurking for a quick, semi-specific question.
    
    I'm working on a title that starts in Persia during the 4th Century BCE, with the protagonist travelling through Persia, India, Mesoptamia, Rome, Greece, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other interesting places I can find. What I'm missing is some farther Eastern influences. How much contact with, say, China did the Middle East and areas west of there have during the 4th Century BCE?
    
    I'm wanting to set this during Alexander's conquest with as much cultural influences as possible. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
18. • CommentAuthorlooneynerd
    • CommentTimeAug 21st 2009

     (5230.158)
    Well in the 4th Century, China was in an era known as the "warring states period". During Alexander's reign, the Zhou dynasty was pretty much gone, with the leaders of the different states (like Han, Qin, and Jin) declaring themselves as petty kings and emperors. The Chu state was probably the most powerful state in terms of area and military might, but the Qin (who would go on to unite China) were slowly gaining ground.
    
    Because of the disunity of China, it's trade wasn't yet as firmly established as it would eventually become. Many of the things that could be found in China could be more quickly and easily traded through the Persian (and later Alexandrian) empires from India. Knowledge of China within the Greek states was nearly non-existant as far as we can tell, and was largely viewed by most people as semi-mythological; for instance, even much of India, nominally ruled or claimed by the Persians or allied with them, was largely unexplored, and the average person, even within the empire, had no knowledge of it. The full extent of the "world" was normally considered to be from Eastern Europe to far-western India; even western Europe and Britain were known. Buddhism was slowly starting to seep as far West as Afghanistan at this point, and the slow and gradual development of the art and cultural movement known as Greco-Buddhism, but even that wouldn't become well established until the centuries after Alexander's death. Alexandria Eschate was the city founded by Alexander the farthest east, in modern-day Tajikistan, still hundreds of miles from the border of modern-day china, and thousands from warring states.
19. • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeAug 21st 2009

     (5230.159)
    In addition to what Looney said, China 4th century BCE saw a lot of interesting philosophical developments,
    
    Confucius had lived in the late sixth and early 5th century BCE but his by the 4tyh his teaching were spreading all over china as were the teachings of Lao Tzu who is generally believed to have been a contemporary of Confucius.
    
    After Confucius' death, the Legalists ans the Mohists fought over his legacy.
    
    The victory of the Legalists is one of the great tragedies of human history.
20. •  
      CommentAuthorJess
    • CommentTimeAug 21st 2009

     (5230.160)
    Not to be a killjoy, since I think the people answering questions have done a wonderful job thus far -- but I'd like to see you all help the people asking questions to do additional research on their own. Or at the very least, I think it would be nice if you gave some insight into the process of how you came up with your responses. Think of it as a teaching opportunity, you know? I never want my students going away just knowing the answers. I want them to go away with the skills to answer their own questions.
    
    Anyway, I'd be nice to see more of the interpretive side of things. Otherwise we let people think that we're just a bunch of loons who sit around memorizing books.