It depends a lot on what the goods were, where they were going, etc. A lot of voyages were speculative and instead of wages, the crew would get a proportion of the profits from the voyage. How big a share you got was determined by your rank. So, you would sign on to sail to Goa and pick up spices. You'd go down and hopefully not die, then come back, or jump ship if there was a more lucrative looking offer, and sail back. When your cargo of spices are sold, it's accounted for and you're given an allotment commiserate with your rank and whether and for the length you spent on the ship during that voyage.

The other poster mentioned advances. Those became more essential and expected over time. Sailors needed money to support their families while they were gone if they had one. They had to settle debts. Etc.

Also, some things we don't count as wages were considered wages back then. The most important was the food and beer rations. Nicer food/beer was seen as a better wage. They also had the opportunity to pick up some rare goods to take back and sale on their own.

Also, if the vessel had passengers, the crew had opportunities to earn tips to supplement their wages.

There's a scholar named Lewis Fischer who did a lot of work on this topic. He's got a couple books out and if you've got JSTOR you can find papers.

Ultimately, yes Masters of the ship (merchant ships most often had just the master) carried some money with them to pay expenses

but for your exact cases situation is more complicated. Crew was usually hired for specific journey and payment was agreed to be done at end destination which often was at return to original port (to make sure your crew stays all trip). Some advance would be given before sailing (e.g. 4 months wages in some exploratory voyages). Payment would then be settled in relative safety and availability of funds in familiar port.

Additionally "banks" would often be involved and instead of actual cash, bank letters of exchange could be given. Not sure how widespread that would be but it was definetly an option to make sure not much cash was carried on the trip itself. If nothing else the master could withdraw cash at the port from a bank if he needed cash for wages.

The same goes for cargo, banking and exchanges were the norm. Just wanted to point out by then there was a separation of shipping and trading so while the master could buy and ship his own goods, he may just as well just sell space on his ship and let others deal with buying and selling goods

You might get cheques or letters of credit trading between European ports, banking had advanced that much by then. But ships trading with distant countries took gold or silver (depending on what was most valued) to pay for cargo, if they couldn't pay from sales of the goods they sold on the outbound journey. Crew would be payed when the ship docked, sometimes they'd only get their full pay when the ship reached its home port.

All excellent information for me. I found Shipping and trade (1750-1950) on Internet Archive with much of interest.

From my understanding, if a sailor or officer was violently seasick and didn't get over it after a day or two, that's a liability to the ship and was bad for morale, so it's in everybody's best interest to transfer him to a shore role (which probably limited their chances for promotion and so some refused). There were a ton of Navy jobs that didn't involve being on a ship. Some guys probably lied about how sick they were or just hung on out of sheer stubbornness, and they made it work, but that depended on their NCOs and CO letting things slide.

But, generally you'd want to figure this out before the guy was deployed somewhere where him being half-dead from vomiting the past 10 days straight might or not might matter. So, everyone went on a training cruise during basic training or OCS at least in part to see how they handled being on a ship in deep ocean. Worst case,l scenario, you find out on your first Atlantic crossing or the trip to Pearl Harbor, you suck it up and do your best until you get there, and they reassign you there.

Italy was actually quite populated, and Rome had managed to integrate central Italy quite thoroughly, particularly during the 4th century (for example, see the Latin Wars). This demographic advantage coupled with the thorough political integration wrought over the centuries ensured Rome could survive Hannibal's onslaught. But make no mistake, the toll was hard. In that sense, it was the payoff of Rome's policies of integration in generations prior. Those who abandoned Rome mostly were recent conquests.

The Allies mostly remained as such, later on leading to the Social Wars (91-87 BCE).

Defragged history has an excellent series about the 80 years war, they're on YouTube. She goes into great detail, is more or less impartial and she knows how to pronounce Dutch and Spanish names. She also has excellent shorter series about the Batavia shipwreck and the Kursk disaster.

Good question. I can't handle YouTube videos, they do tend to be childish and focused more on being witty and graphically interesting than informative (for example, false Smerdis doesn't have enough sources to make a five minute video, and can be covered with "rival power centers propped up options"). I was drawn into history by good authors like Voltaire, Gibbon, and Will Durant who know how to write, text books and academic historians don't seem to have that prejudice. If doing Rome, check out Mary Beard, she gives a vibrant and factual narrative.

Various state historical societies video tape their events. You can look for their youtube channels. My local societies is here: https://www.youtube.com/@oregonhistory/videos

There's similar ones for groups focused on more defined areas, like Gilder Lehrman has a channel for US Civil War stuff. https://www.youtube.com/@gilderlehrman

Gilder Lehrman recently had an event at Yale specifically for teachers. I they had a big wig there too. I can't remember if it was Eric Foner or David Blight

Also, CSPAN's author talks are fun. Or you can just search for authors and books you like to find talks by those people. Lots of bookstores started putting up their author events during the pandemic.

CrashCourse?

The turning point, at least among elites, began in the late 18th century. By the 19th century, the choices of the couple began to count for more and the traditional methods of arranged marriages had began dying out.

For example, Queen Victoria's mother and maternal uncle both wanted her to marry one of their Coburg nephews, but rather than outright arrange the marriage, they just invited Ernest and Albert to visit her often and hoped she would take a shine to one of them (which, as we all know she did). Victoria and Albert then used similar methods to marry off their nine children. Marriages weren't outright arranged as they had been in the 18th century and earlier, but the royal children instead were introduced to other suitable royals in hopes that they would meet someone they liked. This still isn't quite like modern dating and marriage, but it's still not traditional arranged marriage, either.

Among British nobility in the 19th century, there was also a change from more traditional arranged marriages to allowing some degree of choice with the birth of the London social season, which became the time for unmarried children of nobles and gentry to find matches. While they are fiction, Sense and Sensibility and Bridgerton both depict the London season.

It's more difficult to gauge changes among common people, but it is known that the Industrial Revolution is one main catalyst in the changing of marriage and courtship. One problem is that records of peasant marriages in the medieval and Early Modern Period are sparse, so comparing and contrasting is not as easy as it for royalty and nobility.

First, ask yourself why the old system was the default and when those factors that caused the old system to be the default changed. The old system wouldn't persist across millennia and multiple cultures if it didn't, as a practical matter, work.

Second, I think your recitation of the state of affairs was overly-cynical and so you missed the point. Marrying for love is not the historical norm because romantic love doesn't indicate success in a life that was fairly precarious. Romantic feelings for your partner were certainly a good thing, but marriage was more an extremely involved with each other business partnership. It was thought of in terms of: you were joining your life to this other person, and joining your families (at least to the extent that you might call on them for help but it'd be nice if they could work together e.g. raising a barn for the couple), and probably were subsistence farming together (so you were heavily reliant on each other's abilities in order to not starve), and rearing children together (who would take care of you when you were old). You need to pick someone who will be at least a minimum level of successful in life or you suffer and maybe die. Plus, your pool of potential partners is relatively small...people didn't travel and how many people of marriageable age were within a 1-day walk?

And divorce was very frowned upon in the Christian West. It was a very high-stakes decision that was very difficult to undo. Romantic love was not a factor that would make this a success or not, plus it was common that most couples would grow to love each other at least somewhat over time (Ned and Catelyn Stark in the book of A Game of Thrones is a good example, though obviously fictional and nobility), so romantic love was basically a non-factor.

So, you see older-and-wiser people basically making the decision by arranging marriages because they were making the best decision for those children in light of the likely consequences for making a bad decision. And you see things like older men marrying younger women because the man has proven he's successful enough, removing the risk for her. While she would be young enough that her risks in childbirth were (relatively) low and her energy and ability to care for a large (remember: farming) family were high, removing risk for him. It's not about exploitation but about reducing risk (though, of course, people are terrible and so you do see examples of exploitation).

For romantic love to be a dominant factor, you need to see the consequences of a bad choice of partner somehow be lessened or disappear. Or, put another way, you need to see a system with romantic love making at least as good a choice for.the couple as the old system. When and what those factors exactly were depends on the culture, time period, etc., and are something you can research, but there's a reason it correlates with industrialization.

Love marriages were always a thing in western society, but only when a lot of property wasn't on the line. Aristocrats continued the arranged marriage scheme, possibly even today, because of the economic and political concerns, as well as classism, that marriage and offspring create. Other societies that rely on arranged marriage almost always have a very strong class consciousness and a view of the family as the primary social organization; religious communities also tend to have matchmakers and such, Anabaptists and Jews come to mind, in order to keep the community going. You saw a greater acceptance of love marriages with the transition to a money based economy as property and real estate became less important and the position of women changed. Urbanism also increased the trend as children and wives became relegated to being biological toys and showpieces rather than equal partners in the family franchise.

There's a 1390 English cook book that's survived, The Forme of Cury.

The Inn at the Crossroads blog has medieval recipes for Oxtail Soup, Leek Soup, Beef and bacon pie, Pork pie, Fruit tarts, Apple crisps, Hildegard of Bingen's spiced cookies, Spiced plum mousse, Boiled beans, Almond milk, and Mulled Wine, amongst others.

This page on the website of the British Museum also includes recipes to recreate Medieval Creamed fish, Roasted steak, Mushroom pasties, Lamb stew, Haddock in sauce, Cherry pottage, Cream custard tarts, Rose pudding, and Mulled wine.

There are plenty of surviving medieval cookbooks (translations of many of which can be found here), but they're very difficult to use alone. because they tend to be maddeningly vague about measurements. This, for example, is a translation of a 13th century French recipe for pancakes:

>Here is another dish, which is called white pancakes. Take best white flour and egg white and make batter, not too thick, and put in some wine; then take a bowl and make a hole in it; and then take butter, or oil, or grease; then put your four fingers in the batter to stir it; take the batter and put it in the bowl and pour it through the hole into the (hot) grease; make one pancake and then another, putting your finger in the opening of the bowl; then sprinkle the pancakes with sugar, and serve with the "oranges."

What if's are overall quite pointless, but consider how in very few cases emigration truly solved everything. Ireland was never pacified, the emigration of puritans did not stop them from being pivotal in the English Civil War, etc. So, most probably, it would have mattered little. Remember that the Huguenots in France were also often well-off groups with vested interests and not necessarily with much incentives to abandon all that.

Interestingly French short lived colony in Brazil in second half of 16th century was a haven for Huguenots

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_Antarctique

In the US the narrative of colonization for religious reasons gets over played b/c it's a nice story. But what really drives colonies are institutions, usually financial. England was set up to make more money off of colonies b/c it's institutions, like corporations, banks, credit systems, shipping, etc. were set up to exploit those opportunities. The French just weren't at the same scale.

Likely not. For several reasons.

One, a number of powerful nobles had embraced Calvinism. John Calvin himself believed that the reason the Huguenots were able to flourish was the conversions of nobles like Jeanne III of Navarre and Louis I, Prince of Condé.

Two, the French crown was in dire financial straits, which would have made it unlikely for them to support expeditions in the Americas (which often failed). The lack of funding itself was a major reason why the Wars of Religion kept reoccurring: the crown lacked the funds to either enforce the majority of its edicts of tolerance or destroy the Huguenots entirely. This was because the constant warfare Charles VIII, Louis XII, François I, and Henri II had waged against Italians and/or the Habsburgs had drained the treasury and the reoccurring civil wars disrupted agriculture, which just created something of a vicious cycle.

Third, religious tension in Great Britain wasn't actually eased all the much by having colonies. While some Puritans were fine going off to Massachusetts Bay Colony, there were plenty of them that weren't, like Oliver Cromwell, and that other issues led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

We can look at another Catholic power involved in the Americas for some illumination. Spain didn't see the protestant issue, they saved all their persecution for Jews. What we have found is that many Jews were involved with the Americas (some even think Columbus was Jewish). They still stayed "crypto Jews" but didn't suffer the indignities that they would have in Spain, where you could be pantsed in public if you were suspected of being Jewish to see if you were circumcised. They maintained deep cover in the New world regardless, but they have found Jewish cemeteries in the San Luis Valley and through New Mexico and the southwest, the key point being that it wasn't until the 60s or so that this was discovered. So maybe the Huguenots could emigrate, but the political deal between the monarchy and church would probably keep them oppressed in the Americas, as it did for Jews in Spanish America.

The dissenters that left for America were in trouble for their proximity to people who would have bad outcomes if the dissenters prevailed, so moving to America relieved the political pressure. The dissenters also tended to be fans of living experiments, Quakers and puritans wanted a new society, but believed pretty much the same things as Anglicans, a geographic solution would work in this case.

You don't usually leave people who can recognize you and are highly motivated to do you harm in a position to act on that motivation. Especially if you plan to raid anywhere near here in coming seasons.

Plus, it encourages your next victims not to fight back (by running away as soon as they see you coming, in this case). Brutality now to prevent resistance from others later is a pretty common tactic.

>What would be the reason for killing those people? Why not just leave them behind?

Raiding was often mutual, and enmities and feuds were well-known. A raid could be opportunistic, or part of a long campaign against an enemy, to frighten their people, to weaken their economy, to gain renown.

It was common place for a long time, and leaving people alive after a conquest is usually a stage in social development. You see it in the middle east ancient history. For a long time it was a tribe coming out of the desert or hills replacing the existing people wholesale. Then you see people like the Assyrians taking slaves and relocating whole populations. The Babylonians would only take the leadership class and eventually the Persians took only taxes to everyone's acclaim (it has been offered that the messiah mentioned in the Tanakh was Cyrus or maybe Darius, ICR which).

Not really an expert but i remember that Nebuchadnezzar II 606BC-562BC destroyed the kingdom of judah . The destruction of Jerusalem(597BC) led to the Babylonian captivity as the city population (semits) were deported to Babylonia .

I dont know if this was helpful or not but its the first thing i remember

Throughout medieval and into modern western history, there was always prejudice against people with different religious beliefs. This applied not just to non-Christians, but among different Christian denominations as well. However, in the case of Jews, what I see happening is a transformation from religious to racial prejudice.

From what I can tell, Jews in Europe were viewed as white people who practiced the wrong religion. Benjamin Disraeli's family converted to Christianity when he was ten. Had they not done this, it is unlikely that he would have become prime minister, but his Jewish ancestry did not prevent it. During the 19th century, many Jews converted to Christianity and some changed their last names.

Hitler viewed Jews as a separate race. During the Holocaust, there were people who didn't know they had Jewish ancestors until the Gestapo researched their ancestry and showed up at their door. This sort of racial view of Jews seems to be the prevailing view of anti-semites today.

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So like, the Eastern Mediterranean especially in the time after Alexander was super religious syncretic. The Greeks didn't posit Zeus as superior to Amun due to their conquest of Egypt, they took a more practical route to integrate into the existing Egyptian systems by equating Zeus to Amun and worshipping them as the same deity.

The obvious exception were the Jews, who became a little more ethnically closed off in opposition to the polytheism around them. You start to see writers of other ethnicities like Manetho around them talk about how strange and stupid their religion was. That's kind of a proto-antisemitism.

Eventually, you had the Romans come long and conquer the whole Mediterranean but maintaining the syncretic religions as long as their subjects acknowledged the Roman Emperor as divine. This wasn't going to fly in Judaism. You see kind of an escalation where the Romans suppress Jewish religion like destroying their Temple and Jews looking towards the Romans enemies like the Persians for help in gaining their autonomy (and who doesn't want autonomy from a militaristic Empire?). Pretty soon the Jews are viewed as subsersive elements within the Empire who collaborate with the enemy, which should sound kind of familiar.

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This is a really conplex question that’s super well documented down a thousand rabbitholes. But I’ll attempt to summarizes. Some of this may be insulting to some or surprising to others, but it’s important to think of all this through the context of the cultures of the day.

In very broad terms, we were involved in WW2 long before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. That became the flashpoint that allowed the politicians to openly propose entering the war to a public that was now super angry. But we were already supporting in a few key ways (arms, lend-lease, etc).

America always has pockets of people who openly support any belief. There were fairly large (by the era) Nazi gatherings and a long history of open racism and anti-culture bias against whoever came to an area after whoever were already there. All of these also had many (and usually larger) counter protests. Again, all in super broad strokes.

But the largest general sentiments were to either stay out of it because it wasn’t-our-problem isolationism and it being “all the way over there” (we were very late to WW1 even), or support for Britain and France out of kindred spirit camaraderie and “why can’t they just leave we’ll enough alone). Plus of course the folks behind the scenes securing and shipping the arms that knew the truth:

The technical progression just from the beginning of WW1 to the end was enough that the same progression from WW2 beginning to end was going to lead to ICBMs or at least long enough ranged missiles, and likely with nukes, the war was going to hit North America. The Axis knew this too (Zimmerman note, sub attacks). And what America had which Japan and Germany didn’t was basically infinite natural resources. So if they could keep us from entering the war, all the best. And we knew if the Axis did win, they’d get those resources from the conquered territories.

The reasons for the Axis to even start the war are as complex and as deep as the particular question you have. But I hope the above helps.

Eugenics was a common belief among the movers and shakers of many regions of the world. This is a very nuanced question and although I think fighting the war to "stop" the Nazis was important it was not a moral decision by goverment. IBM made a fortune off the Holocaust. Henry Ford was an anti semite and eugenisist. In my opinion moat of this stems from the idea that you can perfect humanity and human societies. It always end in tears for large groups if people.

The USSR, for example, was far more conservative, had a pact with Germany, and even seemed quite sympathetic towards the Axis powers in 1939-1941. However, it is hard to imagine that its alliance with Germany would have lasted forever. In the 19th century, European countries did not have many ideological differences, yet they were constantly at war with each other.

It's still a custom in many societies today.

Lycurgus, mythic lawgiver of Sparta.

Raven Steals the Light, by Bill Reid is fun read. an number of Haida stories of the Trickster Raven, and a few others.

Well, the first and most obvious question is whether or not you can read German, because most of what's been translated into English comes from foreign language newspapers that would rather avoid the issue of victory altogether.

Generally speaking though, one of the major problems for Germany was the question of what "victory" even meant: while the idea of defeat was "unthinkable," especially with the police looking over everyone's shoulder, Germany was a rather bizarre mixture of believing itself the victim in the war, and expecting to make material gains.

As such, depending on who you asked, ending the war without war reparations or territory losses could be a "victory," as could annexing most of Eastern Europe. Few would disagree with the former (at least openly,) but how many genuinely expected the latter before Russia's collapse is a much more open question.

After Russia's collapse, most people would have likely expected to keep the territory gained, but that made Germany's subsequent reversal all the more shocking, and presumably despairing, since the German government was clearly more afraid of ending up like the Tsar than admitting defeat by the end.

>about how plenty of Germans believed that they'd been stabbed in the back

It depends on how you define 'plenty'. Some thought that, but it was mainly a post-war myth.

>november criminals

Pardon, the who?

>Everything i read says that lots of germans thought that they were winning the war because of propaganda

'Everything' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. What says that, for instance? And, did most Germans believe their own propaganda? In the face of enormous amounts of casualties that were so extensive they couldn't be hidden, food shortages, massive inflation, and so on.

German troops were tired but optimistic after Russian defeat, but this only lasted until around the middle of 1918, when German offensives were exhausted, and they were pushed back almost to their own border. Between March and July alone the Germans took about a million casualties. Their offensives had been bogged down because of German troops stopping to raid French and British supply depots to steal wine, bacon, and white bread, which they had seen little of for four years. Reinforcements sent to replace casualties deserted in large numbers. There were mutinies of entire units who refused to obey orders. Some officers believed the home front, where strikes were common, was responsible for 'corrupting' the troops, and blamed the 'radical left' or 'the Bolsheviks', but it was quite apparent after German offensives ground to a halt that the troops themselves no longer believed the war could be won. The British, interrogating prisoners, found there was a massive drop in the morale of German troops, and that most of them now believed that Germany could not win the war. Straggler collection posts, which Germans set up because of increasing problems with deserters, were busier than ever, and in the last month of the war, were overwhelmed with tens of thousands of soldiers. Surrenders increased in number too, with 385,000 prisonsers taken in four months, which is more prisoners taken than in any single year of the war.

German troops on leave and in letters home told their families quite a lot, and would often be brutally honest. The food supply in Germany in 1917 had been severely cut short, with an official ration of 1,100 calories. Home district commanders warned that the longing for peace was widespread throughout all classes. There were strikes in April 1917 with more than 300,000 workers participating because the bread ration was reduced. The German high command constantly told themselves it was purely political, but strikes were usually around some combination of hours, wages, and food, and typically cutting the hours, increasing wages, or relaxing rationing, did the trick. The populace knew the war was not going well.

Penicillin and vaccine that saved billions of people, the eradication of smallpox (which killed 300 million people on the 20th century alone), the end of high infant mortality rates, mass literacy, the end of massive war in the West, lasting peace in Western Europe for the first time in millennia, in 1900 around 70% of humanity lived in extreme poverty now it’s closer to 20%, …

Yes things may look bad. But we live in the best era of humanity.

The efficacy of nonviolent protest.

The invention of the washing machine. Widespread literacy. Child labor laws. Increased enfranchisement.

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The Nazis were opposed to reparations of any kind, to any country. They weren't in power, or even close to it, but they were, from their inception, completely opposed to the Treaty of Versailles in its entirety.

Because indigenous people of North America were not only conquered and colonized but ethnically cleansed and genocided.

First of all, their are many Native Americans living traditional lives, they just use updated equipment. However, research the history of boarding schools for native children, the founder of the system is on record as wanting to "kill the Indian and save the man". The various native cultural expressions, like ceremonial dances and such, were outlawed and being a member of a historical society that helped to keep traditions alive were also outlawed.

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Probably the Battle of Cannae, where Hannibal defeated a larger Roman army. He didn't use shield walls but tight formations that trapped the Romans... and he slaughtered them all. It's considered one of the greatest victory in military history.

I cannot think of a single dictatorship that ended with a peaceful transfer of power. The non-violent exchange of power is what distinguishes a demorcacy from a dictatorship. So finding a book about specific dictatorships and peaceful transitions of power seems hard. I would suggest looking into political science or philisophical works to address those topics.

There is not one single piece of evidence.

There were attempted crusades around that time that involved children, but they were not crusades led by children, made up entirely or even mostly, of children. The latter idea is a fanciful creation added on to misunderstandings, or outright mythmaking.

Wikimedia's got you. There are population pyramids for nearly all the countries, and for the major ones you got several from the early 20th century.