Quotulatiousness

October 31, 2019

The Graveyard of Empires Strikes Back – The British-Afghan War of 1919 I THE GREAT WAR 1919

Filed under: Asia, Britain, History, India, Military — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published 30 Oct 2019

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» SOURCES
Adamec, L.W. Afghanistan, 1900-1923: A Diplomatic History, Berkley, 1967
Barthorp, Michael (2002) [1982]. Afghan Wars and the North-West Frontier 1839–1947. London: Cassell.
Beattie, Hugh: “Afghanistan”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2016-09-02
Heathcote, TA. The Afghan Wars (Spellmount, 2003).
Jacobsen, M H. The Third Afghan War and the External Position of India, 1919-1924. Defense Technical Information Center Archive report ADA195401, 1988.
Monro, Charles. “Despatch from His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief in India regarding the operations against Afghanistan, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Army Department”. Second Supplement to the London Gazette, 15 March 1920 https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/i…
Molesworth, George (1962). Afghanistan 1919 — An Account of Operations in the Third Afghan War. New York: Asia Publishing House
Robson, Brian (2007). Crisis on the Frontier: The Third Afghan War and the Campaign in Waziristan 1919–1920. The History Press.
Sykes, Percy. A History of Afghanistan vol II. (London Macmillan 1940)
Wyatt, Christopher M. “Change and Discontinuity: War and Afghanistan 1904-1924,” Asian Affairs, 01 September 2016, Vol.47(3): 366-385.

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A mathematical revolution in late medieval English ship design and construction

Filed under: Britain, History, Technology, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest installment of Anton Howes’ newsletter on the Age of Invention, he discusses how geometry and mathematics helped transform late Medieval English shipbuilding:

An English ship of a slightly later period: this is a replica of the Susan Constant at the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia. The original ship was built sometime before 1607 and rented by the Virginia Company of London to transport the original settlers to Jamestown.
Photo by Nicholas Russon, March 2004.

Since about 1500, an Italian and Portuguese method of making ships had come into ever wider use in northern Europe. This was to construct the ship’s skeleton first, and then lay the planking around it. This contrasted with the older “clinker” method, by which the planks were laid from the keel upwards, with each plank slightly overlapping the one below – the rest of the skeleton was filled in later to strengthen it. The new “carvel” method, instead of having overlapping planks, allowed for a smooth hull. But it also required more planning.

The master shipwright had to first design full-sized templates, or frames, which were placed along the keel to determine the width and height of the hull, like cross-sections up and down the length of the ship. To the edges of these frames were then fixed ribbands — long, pliable boards running down the ship’s length. Altogether, the frames and ribbands formed a temporary, basket-like structure, to guide the moulding of the ship’s permanent hull around it.

But calculating the size of the frames at each point was tricky. After the placement of the first few, which might be pre-specified in size, the next ones along were typically determined according to the curve of the ribbands. Calculation was certainly involved, but it took place in the form or marking and adjusting the wood itself. Design and construction both took place in the shipyard, and through the medium of wood.

What Matthew Baker did in the 1570s was to take the design process out of the shipyard, and onto paper. He drew his ships, to scale. And by using pen and paper, with geometry to make such drawings possible, he opened up grand new possibilities for design. His process allowed him to jot down the latest innovations from the Mediterranean, to speculate about the designs of Noah’s ark and the ships of the ancient world, and to cheaply conduct his own experiments. He drew out new designs for frames, using geometry to work out how any variation would affect the overall shape of the hull, as well as its weight and carrying capacity – all at the cost of only time, ink, and paper, and avoiding the huge potential waste of conducting experiments at full scale in wood. His process allowed him to innovate more easily, and even to design new measuring instruments.

The Legend of Vlad the Impaler

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Royal Armouries
Published 31 Oct 2017

Hear the story of the infamous tyrant Vlad Tepes, notorious for the grisly way in which he killed his enemies.

Where to find us:

⚔Website: https://royalarmouries.org/home
⚔Blog: https://blog.royalarmouries.org/
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October 30, 2019

Homer, the Trojan War & the Late Bronze Age Collapse

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

History Time
Published 20 Mar 2018

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Shakespeare Summarized: Julius Caesar

Filed under: History, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 1 Dec 2013

Here we go again! It’s only taken me several months…

Sarcastified Shakespeare returns, this time with a look at that historical tragedy we all love to write essays about, Julius Caesar!

I think the real main character here was Brutus’s crippling self-esteem issues…

QotD: Trotskyism

Filed under: Europe, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00


[The word “Trotskyist”] is used so loosely as to include Anarchists, democratic Socialists and even Liberals. I use it here to mean a doctrinaire Marxist whose main motive is hostility to the Stalin regime. Trotskyism can be better studied in obscure pamphlets or in papers like the Socialist Appeal than in the works of Trotsky himself, who was by no means a man of one idea. Although in some places, for instance in the United States, Trotskyism is able to attract a fairly large number of adherents and develop into an organised movement with a petty fuehrer of its own, its inspiration is essentially negative. The Trotskyist is against Stalin just as the Communist is for him, and, like the majority of Communists, he wants not so much to alter the external world as to feel that the battle for prestige is going in his own favour. In each case there is the same obsessive fixation on a single subject, the same inability to form a genuinely rational opinion based on probabilities. The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with the Fascists, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference. The most typical Trotskyists, in any case, are ex-Communists, and no one arrives at Trotskyism except via one of the left-wing movements. No Communist, unless tethered to his party by years of habit, is secure against a sudden lapse into Trotskyism. The opposite process does not seem to happen equally often, though there is no clear reason why it should not.

George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”, Polemic, 1945-05.

October 29, 2019

Parallels between the current Brexit mess and the 1906 general election

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Sean Gabb writes in the Libertarian Enterprise on the clusterfail in Parliament and an interesting historical parallel from the beginning of the 20th century:

… the Brexit debate that only began with the counting of the Referendum votes has been a valuable education. So far as it blurs the lines of accountability, membership of the European Union has been a useful entrenchment of our ruling class. It has also helped provide a mildly liberal and cosmopolitan gloss to a domestic project that has been anything but liberal. Its refusal to honour the Referendum has torn aside what remained of the democratic veil behind which power is exercised. These people are not our servants. They are a hostile elite. Their interests are not ours. They despise us. They fear us. They are determined not to give us even the shadow of what we were – perhaps unwisely – promised.

I have given a quotation from Chesterton. I am increasingly minded of parallels between his day and ours. In 1906, the Liberals won a large and unexpected majority in the House of Commons. They set about transforming the country on the lines they had been discussing since the end of their last majority government in 1885. In doing this, they faced a wall of resistance from the old ruling class. The Conservatives controlled the Law and education and most of the administration. They possessed the greatest mass of the national wealth. Above all, they dominated the House of Lords. They used their majority here to block the Liberal Government until such time as the people could be persuaded at the next election to bring back a Conservative Government.

Now, in that contest, I would have sided with the ruling class. I think England had a better future under the Conservatives than under the Liberals. I think most of the Liberal changes were bad. Moreover, the Conservative strategy showed some evidence of working. The Liberals lost a steady stream of by-elections — most notably Peckham in 1908. Then the Conservatives went too far. In 1909, the Liberals brought in a deliberately populist budget. The Conservatives broke more than two centuries of convention by voting this down in the Lords. This gave the Liberals their excuse. With the cry of “The People against the Peers,” they attacked the Conservatives in their most powerful stronghold. After two general elections in 1910, the Lords were stripped of their blocking veto. Of course, the Great War then changed everything. But it is reasonable to suppose that, had the Liberals won another election in 1915, most of the domestic changes that we blame on the War would have come about, if more slowly.

The lesson is that ruling classes often make strategic mistakes. Had the Conservatives before the Great War taken a more selective approach in their opposition, they might have won an election in 1911, and carried on with their own vision of the national future. As it is, they only lost the 1910 elections because the Liberals were able to rely on Labour and Irish support in the Commons. Because they overreached themselves, they eventually lost everything.

It may be the same now. Had our own ruling class pulled sad faces in 2016 and delivered a minimal Brexit — something like continued EEA membership and a Norwegian relationship — they might have put the issue to bed and continued riding us all to certain ruin. Instead, they went into a three-year filibuster, every so often drawing breath to suggest another referendum. The strategy appears to have failed. We may now have a more substantial Brexit than was intended. More to the point, the democratic veil has been torn aside. The continuing argument over Mr Johnson’s new Withdrawal Agreement is largely now unfinished business. The Agreement needs to be passed — but so we can go into a general election where the main issues will not be a new relationship with the European Union. These issues will be the nature and personnel of the country’s domestic government. I do not imagine that we shall become more “democratic.” But I can imagine that we shall find ourselves with a new ruling class that holds the mass of ordinary people in less vicious contempt.

Greenland to USA, Australia to war, and French Colonies to…? – WW2 – OOTF 004

Filed under: Africa, Australia, Europe, France, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 27 Oct 2019

In another edition of our Q&A format, Indy answers some questions about Greenland after the German occupation of Denmark, the state of Australia and the fate of the French Colonies.

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From the comments:

World War Two
3 days ago
We get a ton of questions about the war on a daily basis. A lot of them are already answered in the YouTube comments to you all directly, but because some questions are very interesting indeed, we like to showcase some of them on the channel. Because the YouTube comments are hard to navigate, we have made a section on our forum where you can submit questions to be covered in Out of the Foxholes. You can do that here: https://community.timeghost.tv/c/Out-of-the-Foxholes-Qs

Cheers,
The TimeGhost team

Building Angkor – A Clash of Gods – Extra History – #3

Filed under: Architecture, Asia, History, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published 26 Oct 2019

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Jayavarman VII, a Buddhist pacifist, was forced to give up his pacifism and rise to the throne at the age of 60. But once seated on the throne, he built Angkor Thom. The architecture was a fusion of buddhist and hindu stylings and included a comprehensive medical system. But will Angkor be able to stand after Jayavarman VII has passed?

Jayavarman VII the Great may be known as the greatest ruler of the Khmer, but he also wins the award for history’s best son. Making your mom the face for the goddess of wisdom is quite the Mother’s Day gift.

(Since folks have been asking for the metric conversions on our videos, 9 miles = 14.5 km at 4:52)

1918 Mauser Tank Gewehr

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 23 Aug 2015

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Germany was the first country to produce a purpose-built antitank rifle, in response to the major Entente tank attack at Cambrai. The design was pretty simple, basically a scaled-up Mauser 98 with 4 locking lugs chambered for the massive 13.2mm TuF cartridge. It would perforate about 20mm of armor plate at 100m, which was nicely effective on WWI tanks. By the end of the war more than 15,000 had been made. Interestingly, a bunch of them ended up at Springfield Armory, where they were used in the development of the .50 BMG cartridge.

QotD: The financial crisis of 33AD

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Law, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Let us next take a brief but important notice in Tacitus, for the year 33 AD:

    Meanwhile a powerful host of accusers fell with sudden fury on the class which systematically increased its wealth by usury in defiance of a law passed by Caesar the Dictator defining the terms of lending money and of holding estates in Italy, a law long obsolete because the public good is sacrificed to private interest. The curse of usury was indeed of old standing in Rome and a most frequent cause of sedition and discord, and it was therefore repressed even in the early days of a less corrupt morality. First, the Twelve Tables prohibited any one from exacting more than 10 per cent., when, previously, the rate had depended on the caprice of the wealthy. Subsequently, by a bill brought in by the tribunes, interest was reduced to half that amount, and finally compound interest was wholly forbidden. A check too was put by several enactments of the people on evasions which, though continually put down, still, through strange artifices, reappeared. On this occasion, however, Gracchus, the praetor, to whose jurisdiction the inquiry had fallen, felt himself compelled by the number of persons endangered to refer the matter to the Senate. In their dismay the senators, not one of whom was free from similar guilt, threw themselves on the emperor’s indulgence. He yielded, and a year and six months were granted, within which every one was to settle his private accounts conformably to the requirements of the law.

    Hence followed a scarcity of money, a great shock being given to all credit, the current coin too, in consequence of the conviction of so many persons and the sale of their property, being locked up in the imperial treasury or the public exchequer. To meet this, the Senate had directed that every creditor should have two-thirds of his capital secured on estates in Italy. Creditors however were suing for payment in full, and it was not respectable for persons when sued to break faith. So, at first, there were clamorous meetings and importunate entreaties; then noisy applications to the praetor’s court. And the very device intended as a remedy, the sale and purchase of estates, proved the contrary, as the usurers had hoarded up all their money for buying land. The facilities for selling were followed by a fall of prices, and the deeper a man was in debt, the more reluctantly did he part with his property, and many were utterly ruined. The destruction of private wealth precipitated the fall of rank and reputation, till at last the emperor interposed his aid by distributing throughout the banks a hundred million sesterces, and allowing freedom to borrow without interest for three years, provided the borrower gave security to the State in land to double the amount. Credit was thus restored, and gradually private lenders were found. The purchase too of estates was not carried out according to the letter of the Senate’s decree, rigour at the outset, as usual with such matters, becoming negligence in the end.

So far as we can understand what was happening, the passage largely explains itself. An old law restricting the rate of interest is suddenly revived. This invalidates a large class of loans above the official rate made on short term but renewable contracts. An indulgence is given of eighteen months, during which the now illegal loans are systematically called in. The result is a liquidity crisis in which land prices collapse. The crisis is dealt with by emergency lending by the Emperor.

There is nothing unusual about this sort of crisis. We are passing through something similar at the moment. What Tacitus is showing is a developed economy with much integration of capital and land markets. We can see how easily land can be sold, and how responsive prices are to the forces of demand and supply. Again, special pleading can be brought to bear on the story to try and minimise the extent of market behaviour. But, so far as this crisis can be analysed in terms of standard economic theory, the simplest explanation is to conclude that the economy of the early Roman Empire was, in its essentials, like that of the modern world.

Sean Gabb, “Market Behaviour in the Ancient World: An Overview of the Debate”, 2008-05.

October 28, 2019

The Surrender of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Historigraph
Published 26 Oct 2019

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Hetzer – a German mobile armoured coffin

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published 26 Sep 2019

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The Hetzer (or Jagdpanzer 38t) – it is a “cool”-looking vehicle, and a favourite with WW2 tank enthusiasts, but was it all that great to fight in?

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QotD: Latin versus English

Filed under: Britain, Greece, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In a sensible language like English important words are connected and related to one another by other little words. The Romans in that stern antiquity considered such a method weak and unworthy. Nothing would satisfy them but that the structure of every word should be reacted on by its neighbours in accordance with elaborate rules to meet the different conditions in which it might be used. There is no doubt that this method both sounds and looks more impressive than our own. The sentence fits together like a piece of polished machinery. Every phrase can be tensely charged with meaning. It must have been very laborious, even if you were brought up to it; but no doubt it gave the Romans, and the Greeks too, a fine and easy way of establishing their posthumous fame. They were the first comers in the fields of thought and literature. When they arrived at fairly obvious reflections upon life and love, upon war, fate or manners, they coined them into the slogans or epigrams for which their language was so well adapted, and thus preserved the patent rights for all time. Hence their reputation.

Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930.

October 27, 2019

Hitler is Disappointed by his Allies – WW2 – 061 – October 26, 1940

Filed under: Germany, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 Oct 2019

Hitler finds out that not everyone is ready to do his bidding. Much to the frustration of Hitler, Franco, Petain and Mussolini all have their reasons to take the high road.

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Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

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