Hot answers tagged europe
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China (or at least its core) had a central, unifying culture built around philosophers such as Confucius and Lao-tse that was attractive to people over a wide land area. Also, the Chinese written language was developed from pictograms that represented "words," which although pronounced differently in different locations, could have the same meaning over wide ...
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To sum it up: The costs simply outweighed the benefits.
You have to consider that Germania at this time was essentially one huge forest, which was very, well empty. No cities to conquer, the first German cities were actually founded by the Romans, like e.g. Aachen, Cologne or Trier. The Germans were primitive tribesmen and had little too offer to the Roman ...
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They were not supermen by any means :)
But yes, temperatures were higher, by more than 1 degree (Kent and Wales were famous for their wines, right now it's far too cold there for that for example).
And don't forget that in the Roman era, wars were fought in summer almost exclusively, later expanding into spring and autumn as the conscript army was replaced ...
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It is important to note that the modern Western conception of homosexuality as an essential property of a person did not exist in Antiquity: men and women might perform certain acts, but everyone was expected to marry the opposite sex and procreate. No "deeper" theories about these inclinations were entertained, at least not by most. One "was" not ...
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Another simple but important reason besides economic changes starting at this time is the spread of printing technique. A scientific community really only works when scholars can cite each other and share their ideas in a cheap and fast way, thats why internet boosted scientific progress in our time. If you study the link, the Gutenberg printing technique ...
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There are many reasons, and I'm going to present the materialistic one championed by the Marxists (collective thud as the audience of History.SE falls off their chairs and faints).
One of the requirements for having scientific progress is economic - you need enough surplus to enable the resources devoted to scholarship. This was enabled at the beginning of ...
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Your question embodies large amounts of modern fantasy.
Firstly, imagine that nothing can be bought or sold by the vast and overwhelming majority of the population. Coin does not exist or circulate for most people.
There obviously would have been farmers, creating and selling produce in markets
Nope. Farmers are a modern institution related to ...
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The Burgundians were originally a Germanic tribe that settled the area that became known as Burgundy. Because it was so deeply in the heart of "French" territory, it adopted the French language and culture as soon as the Franks started pushing back the Saxons under King Charles Martel, and his grandson, Charlemagne. After the death of the latter, it ...
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Partly it's because you are reading the history books of those countries and a certain amount is spin.
Islamic countries were the principle source of science between the Romans/Greeks and the 16C - inconvenient if you are a christian country and especially if you are a university that is essentially a religious institution. So you claim that these Arabs ...
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It's a bit of a long write-up, but the best reason is fairly easy to trace on a map.
The southern border of Russia between Caspian and Black seas is pretty defenseless as far as natural features (same is true for other borders). So historically, Russia worked/fought to extend its borders to defensible ranges, in case of this specific area, the Greater ...
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As I've understood it, selling entire tribes or large parts of it was already an ancient use. This was useful to the victors for money, as well as power and the guarantee that the particular tribe wouldn't attack them in the near future.
Furthermore, slave trade deep into Africa was also in use by the Arabs, who, like the Europeans did at first, bought the ...
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That's not exactly how it worked. As not everybody was able to become a knight (especially without richness), many squires were adult, sometimes more than 30 years old, and because of their experience, they were well-trained fighters. Don't think of heavy cavalry only as knights.
For example, the regular heavy cavalry unit in Poland was called Chorągiew ...
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I'm afraid any answer to this question must begin by considering what is understood to be the 'Renaissance' and the 'Scientific Revolution'. And that consideration, in turn, inevitably reveals a number of historiographical difficulties.
The first of these is that neither of these were 'events', at least, not in the sense of a war or an assassination. They ...
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Your question assumes that some kind of a formal decision was made and that most countries explicitly agree that there is an official demarcation. As this boundary is mostly cartographical, no country has ever, to the best of my knowledge, made an issue out of this location. It's been the practice to just use whatever demarcation that other cartographers ...
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According to Wikipedia, the average human handwrites at about 22 words per minute or 1300 words an hour when copying something. The bible has about 800,000 words and the Gutenberg has about 1200 pages so that's 660 words per page. Along that logic a person can copy around 2 pages per hour. The wikipedia entry suggests about 4 pages per hour by the way. ...
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When it comes to western Europe, medieval Latin would be closer to an "official" language, especially for international affairs. The Roman Catholic Church's power and influence at the time was unparalleled and several major events of the era started with a Papal Bull. Here's a short list of Papal Bulls that were political in nature and were addressed, ...
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In Europe, armies were often of generally the same size and makeup (at least in the instances you mention) and tactics codified, so in open engagements equipment and (that being equal) minor differences in proficiency could well mean the difference between winning and losing a battle.
In the Chinese example you mention, sheer force of numbers caused Qin to ...
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As "Vikings," the Normans were good SHIP builders. Once they reached land, it wasn't much of a stretch for them to transfer their skills to building churches and other buildings.
The Normans adopted a style of architecture that is known as "Romanesque." It was originated by the Romans, but later imitated by many west Europeans, chief among them the Normans. ...
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Greek and Roman civilizations allowed individuals to profit from their work, and not just the king. Individuals were also protected, for the most part, from arbitrary whims of a despotic ruler. This led to innovation through scientific inquiry and open debate of ideas. This kind of openness and freedom was typically restricted in other societies, such as in ...
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This is most likely a bad translation from Chinese (or more specifically, bad translation from English to Chinese, then literally translated back into English).
Original text was 蓝色风暴共和国： - literally translated as "Blue storm Republic".
If you google "Blue Storm Republic" or "The Council of the European Union" "blue storm" most of the links are Chinese ...
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It is a wrong assumption that Europe was never unified politically.
First, in the ancient times the cultural development of different European peoples was very diverse. The most advanced peoples of Europe adopted the Greek culture, alphabet and gods. You can see this on the example of Etruscans who used the Greek alphabet and worshiped the Greek gods. The ...
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As legend says, after they lost Battle of Kosovo (1389) Serb units, most notably their light cavalry, have spread to Hungary and then further over Europe.
In Medieval Hungary, these became known as hussars since about 1432 (Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, p. 306); they were greatly developed by Matthias Corvinus ...
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Here's my proposition, basically it's just a set of Caucasus characteristics making this region especially interesting. By which we mean: there're numerous languages, 3 distinct language families, characteristic just for this region.
My first point is, language diversity / fragmentation is normal for regions without a strong state / commerce / any unifying ...
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My knowledge about the topic is rather narrow, but I know about at least of one such situation.
So called "Gypsy revolt" happened in Gypsy Family Camp in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It's known as the unique act of resistance inside of the camp. Official website of the Museum writes about it in the following words:
The Germans intended to exterminate the Roma ...
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First note that besides Chechnya there are some related and similar peoples in the North Caucasus: Ingushs, Dagestan peoples, Adygh people, Circassians etc. That is Chechnya is only a part of greater North Caucasus community.
The ancient lifestyle of most of these people, and especially, of Chechens was making raids on neighboring settlements, capturing ...
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All the sources I've perused can, just as Wikipedia does, only surmise on the how and why gunpowder made its way to Europe.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology offers a nutshell overview of the possible routes that might have been taken:
Just how the secret of gunpowder traveled west-ward to Europe will probably never be ...
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South East Asia (SEA) isn't totally full of sky-scrapers-- just the wealthy cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, or Shen Zhen. What all these cities have in common is fast, recent growth and limited space. England or France, or many other European states have been developing for hundreds of years. 200 years ago, there was no technology for sky scrapers; so, ...
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In the case of Conway (and most other places on borders) - it's more a castle than a town.
There is no point in having a well fortified castle, if around it you have an undefended town to give your attackers a base to live in while they attack you. The walled part of the city is really just the first line of castle defence for a siege.
Conway s part of ...
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It is difficult to characterize the reactions of whole organizations, and to separate out the reaction to the speech from the reaction to the 20th Party Congress as a whole, and to the other events of 1956.
Many groups were internally split between those who saw it as a call for renewal and others as a betrayal. Because the Russian Revolution had progressed ...
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First of all, Monaco was annexed by revolutionary France and was part of it from 1793 to 1814.
Before 1793 and from 1814 to 1860 it was surrounded by lands belonging to House of Savoy. (So for that specific timeframes, it would be pretty hard for France to annex Monaco without annexing Savoy's lands).
Monaco is surrounded by France from 1860 as a ...
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