Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[Galloglaich]

You have to remember that the textile industry was also the first in Europe as early as the X century with cities like Bruges, Bruxelles or Ypres central to the trade.

Yes, and in Florence, Venice, Bologna, Siena, Brescia, Genoa etc., and in Cologne, Strasbourg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Prague, Krakow etc. etc.

A lot of this was actually originally instigated by the Cistercian Monks and their predecessors going back to the late Carolingian era. The Textile industry (of which dying and coloring were a subset) was in many ways the most important, earliest and most developed in Europe.

The history of England in the middle ages, by the way, was dominated by their trying to figure out how to develop their own textile industry since the English kings were very frustrated that all the weaving of their wool was being done in Bruges and Ghent and therefore thats where all the money was going.

The local production was only meaningfull in the fringest places, like Ireland for example. There is a famous drawing from Dürer of soldiers and poors from Ireland that show in 1521 the relative backwardness of irish fashion.

In continental Europe, most of the work, like dying, was made in big cities. In Basel for example the Zunft zum Schlüssel ( Corporation of the Key) was one of the most important and united the merchant of fabric.
It was one of the «*Big Trade*» with a lot of wealth and prestige and central to the growth of the cities and of the bourgeoisie.

The sewing was mainly made locally but the production of textile was centralised early and one of the main force in the medieval international economy.

What one could wear in France or Germany was really early linked with what was made in those centers.

Exactly. This is what I was trying to tell them but I guess this is a difficult concept to grasp.

As for your earlier point on Carnival clothing - yes it's true, we have the same kind of societies (Confraternities, Sodalities, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs and so on) here in New Orleans trust me, that is basically who organizes Mardi Gras. But for every person in one of those Confraternaties, there are probably ten who are not and are just spectators, basically. Including myself for the most part.

In a Late Medieval Town, probably more people would be in Carnival societies, but it's still probably the upper third of the economic spectrum. Journeymen on up pretty much I think. Most day laborers and ordinary household servants for example would not be in a Confraternity. And those are the people really spending money on costumes (and other things like floats, tapestries, pageants, buying beer and candle wax and food, hiring musicians and so on for the celebrations). And not just for Carnival but for all the 180 or so Saints days and Holy Days throughout the year. Carnival was just the wildest and most debauched one.

More broadly, the main issue I'm pointing out is that Carnival costumes are surplus. Sure it may be your way to show off your wealth, but whatever you are putting into a Carnival costume is above and beyond your basic needs to cover your nakedness and protect yourself from the weather.

G

[Clistenes]

DrewID wrote:

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It sounds like the Technicolor Era version of medieval folk in all bright colors might be more correct than the "realistic gritty" Dung Ages versions of everyone in shades of brown.

And I answered:

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Both versions were probably true, to some extent... Europe is big, the Middle Ages were a long period, and different social classes could afford different stuff... plus the already mentioned Suntuary Laws would limit some people in what they could wear...

But yeah, at least high classes in Western Europe dressed in what we would consider too strident or garish colours during most of the Middle Ages, and low classes would do too, if allowed and if they could afford it...

Then you posted some images of richly dressed people from Flanders, Burgundy and Germany.

And I wrote:

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Mostly upper middle to high class urban dwellers from a region famous for its wealth, trade and textile crafts, and they were wearing their nicest clothes in the painting (and the painter may even have made their clothes a tiny bit nicer than they really were...).

At the other end of the spectrum you have places like Iceland or the Faroe Islands. Even in continental Europe there were very isolated places like Las Hurdes that saw very little trade...

If you look for long enough, yo will find a place and time that fits almost every trope...

Meaning that, as I said previously, Europe is big and the Middle Ages were very long, and society was complex and heterogeneous, so you will find examples of both Technicolor Era brightly coloured and/or fancyly dressed people and Dung Age peasants in undyed clothes, so both tropes are true to a extent...

I wasn't trying to contradict your post, just elaborating on what I had said previously...

[Galloglaich]

Yes, and it was something I was thinking about mentioning. In Scandinavia the truth to the best of my ability discern tips more towards pastel peasants than technicolour medieval. Medieaval Sweden e.g. was mostly extremely poor, had few towns, all of which were tiny in comparison to anything south of the Baltic. Trade wasn't as widespread only lightly touching most of the country as there wasn't a lot of interest to trade with long distances.

Sweden was largely rural, with only a few towns (Stockholm and Wisby on Gotland being the only two of real significance) and yet, it was not so poor. The Scania market - an area in what is now Southern Sweden on the Oresund but at the time contested between Sweden, German towns and Denmark, was the birthplace of the Hanseatic League.

Read the article I linked there if you don't already know the story, you may find it interesting.

Wisby on Gotland was also one of the most important trading cities in Northern Europe until it got sacked by the King of Denmark.

And Sweden was a bit unusual by European standards in that it had a lot of production in rural areas. Sweden produced a lot of iron in the middle ages, of very good quality, mostly seemingly from smallish rural estates. They were also, by the 14th Century, producing very well wrought, highly sophisticated iron and steel goods like firearms and cannon, mysteriously emerging from within their deep forests.

Sweden also had significant and well developed mining industries in regions like Dalarna.

Swedish peasants, finally, were apparently quite well armed by the late Medieval period including good armor and other kit (not just weapons). This seems to be related to their defeat of several armies of Danish and Danish-employed foreign mercenaries sent to tame them. Sweden also (more or less peacefully) conquered or annexed Finland from whence they got a lot of valuable trade (and they managed some trading centers in Finland too). And Swedish traders traded silk road goods with the Russians (whom they also frequently fought).

Swedes living on the Baltic coasts also seemed to be closely linked to some of the rather prosperous Baltic pirate groups like the Likedeelers and Victual Brothers.

In the High to Late medieval period, Sweden tended to be at a hot or cold war with Denmark (even when technically part of the same Kingdom) and more or less aligned with the mostly German towns of the Hanseatic League, with whom they played a substantial role in the development of trade and manufacturing in Northern Europe. In the 15th Century they also founded one of the more important northern Universities at Uppsala, modeled on Bologna. So while poor and rural to a large extent, I wouldn't call them as poor as say Norway, certainly. Sweden was kind of unique in the middle ages and quite interesting. They did not jump into Feudalism the way Denmark did but did not wallow or suffer in poverty quite as badly as the poor Norwegians did, and they had a hand in the development of the Hanse.

G

[Galloglaich]

Then you posted some images of richly dressed people from Flanders, Burgundy and Germany.

I made about 5 posts some of which were specifically of working class people and peasants, yes mostly in Flanders or Germany but Germany in particular was also quite heterogeneous and by no means universally a rich region. Like I said, I can post images from many other regions in the medieval world.

Conversely, maybe you could show me some realistic paintings of people wearing burlap and rat skins ala Monty Python?

Meaning that, as I said previously, Europe is big and the Middle Ages were very long, and society was complex and heterogeneous, so you will find examples of both Technicolor Era brightly coloured and/or fancyly dressed people and Dung Age peasants in undyed clothes, so both tropes are true to a extent...

I wasn't trying to contradict your post, just elaborating on what I had said previously...

I understand ... I was just hoping to clarify which images you meant, and more generally I'm just pointing out the weight tends to get placed on one end of that spectrum rather heavily, to a degree which I think is misleading.

I do concede there were many poor regions and places where they were too poor to die their clothes - the Grisons in what is now Northern Switzerland for example were called that due to the undyed clothing worn by the peasants there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_League

G

[Galloglaich]

But that is also, of course, an outlier, hence the name of the region...

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, and in Florence, Venice, Bologna, Siena, Brescia, Genoa etc., and in Cologne, Strasbourg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Prague, Krakow etc. etc.

A lot of this was actually originally instigated by the Cistercian Monks and their predecessors going back to the late Carolingian era. The Textile industry (of which dying and coloring were a subset) was in many ways the most important, earliest and most developed in Europe.

The history of England in the middle ages, by the way, was dominated by their trying to figure out how to develop their own textile industry since the English kings were very frustrated that all the weaving of their wool was being done in Bruges and Ghent and therefore thats where all the money was going.



Exactly. This is what I was trying to tell them but I guess this is a difficult concept to grasp.

I wonder if the American pop-history concept of this comes in part from all stories of American pioneers making their own cloth and clothing that we're told -- and the misunderstanding of just how far "off the grid" the American frontier was compared to the European states many of these people or their parents had come from.

[Epimethee]

More broadly, the main issue I'm pointing out is that Carnival costumes are surplus. Sure it may be your way to show off your wealth, but whatever you are putting into a Carnival costume is above and beyond your basic needs to cover your nakedness and protect yourself from the weather.

G

Agreed ! (And i enjoy your extensive answers.) but... Carnival is one of the more complex and strange celebration. The masks were often specifics with a lot of symbolical meaning and reserved to a special group of peoples, not only the richest but often the young and unwed men. The wild men you showed above are great examples of this kind of traditions and one of the more archetypal figure of Carnival. The celebration was highly codified with often the election of a King or Queen. In Basel, to this day, it start in the middle of the night, around 3am, when the drums start playing and the companies roaming the city.

This was the case not only in cities but also in more rural part of Europe, were some celebrations survive to this day. Take for example the Roitshäggäta in the alpine valley of Lötschental in the swiss mountains. Only a select few were authorised to wear the masks and a lot of work was put all year long in their elaboration that followed very strict rules. The main Population was wearing everiday clothes and the celebration was mainly the arrival of the masks in the village, disturbing the normal life.

In Lötschental, the general population start wearing mask of the more commercial persuasion only during the 20th century (as much as the sources are valid, there is not a lot of them prior to the XIX century), which correspond also with a taming of the traditionnal masks who could be quite violent in more ancient time.

Carnival is really special and we could Go really deeper down the rabbit hole. We are far from weapons of course but i Hope it is fair as long as we all learn and enjoy.

At last, i could argue that the surplus used in celebration mean more wealth and not less than the everyday needs. You just have to Look at the money people put today in Christmas decoration or in their vacations to see my ( very minor) point.

[gkathellar]

I can find people living in my own city today who live like cavemen, I pass a handful of them on the way to work every day.

I feel like, since we're on the subject of misconceptions about the past, that "lives like cavemen," would mean they're healthy, well-rested, and physically fit. :P

[Galloglaich]

Sweden was largely rural, with only a few towns (Stockholm and Wisby on Gotland being the only two of real significance) and yet, it was not so poor.

I guess the shorter more succinct version of all this is that in the high to late medieval period Sweden seemed to still have a lot of what you might call "yeomen" independent farmers, who were peasants, more or less (according to Feudal law anyway) but not necessarily so poor. Not serfs either.

Sweden didn't seem to have a lot of nobles or a lot of serfs. it was mostly rural and had few towns - but it was also integrated with the trade network of the urban economy of the Northern coast of the Baltic. In fact Sweden was an important part of building the Hanse.

This is often left out of Hanseatic histories which tend to be somewhat German-centric and often leave out the (IMO very important) Swedish contribution. That's one of the reasons why I'm being so forceful in pointing it out.

I feel like, since we're on the subject of misconceptions about the past, that "lives like cavemen," would mean they're healthy, well-rested, and physically fit. :P

True! Good point, I'm actually committing the very crime I decry. The people I pass on the way to work are living more like "Hollywood Cavemen".

I wonder if the American pop-history concept of this comes in part from all stories of American pioneers making their own cloth and clothing that we're told -- and the misunderstanding of just how far "off the grid" the American frontier was compared to the European states many of these people or their parents had come from.

yes I think THIS in a nutshell - when we try to understand Medieval Europe we tend to look at the 19th Century and project our way backward.

in the US this is doubly so because we don't have very many medieval castles (with the exception of a few Spanish forts down in Florida and the Gulf Coast and so on) or cities to look at.

We do a much better job with our 19th Century history by the way.

I think we also get a lot of our history from England and for the English, and their history got a lot more interesting, glorious and fun in the 16th Century. Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, Francis Drake and Shakespeare. before that it's pretty much Agincourt and then Vikings.

Kidding there but in general, I think the English put more emphasis on Early Modern history for understandable reasons. To understand history of Europe more broadly you have to combine together a lot of local historical data from 50 different countries and 200 different cities and so on, which is much more of a challenge.

in Continental Europe it seems to me like everybody knows their own local history (and how cool and unique and interesting their town / region / country was) but pretty much assumes the rest of Europe was like the Monty Python trope.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

I feel like, since we're on the subject of misconceptions about the past, that "lives like cavemen," would mean they're healthy, well-rested, and physically fit. :P

I think this is one where there's been a lot of pressure to swing way too far back the other way based on some rather dubious modern agendas.

Hard to sell people your "paleodiet" books if you can't convince them that the people who (never actually) ate that way were super-awesome-healthy.

[Beleriphon]

in Continental Europe it seems to me like everybody knows their own local history (and how cool and unique and interesting their town / region / country was) but pretty much assumes the rest of Europe was like the Monty Python trope.

G

As Canadian about European history and you get one of to things: We left British rule eventually after the British beat up the French in Europe/North America, or the British are bullies and the French king abandoned us to the English.

[Galloglaich]

Agreed ! (And i enjoy your extensive answers.) but... Carnival is one of the more complex and strange celebration. The masks were often specifics with a lot of symbolical meaning and reserved to a special group of peoples, not only the richest but often the young and unwed men. The wild men you showed above are great examples of this kind of traditions and one of the more archetypal figure of Carnival. The celebration was highly codified with often the election of a King or Queen. In Basel, to this day, it start in the middle of the night, around 3am, when the drums start playing and the companies roaming the city.

This was the case not only in cities but also in more rural part of Europe, were some celebrations survive to this day. Take for example the Roitshäggäta in the alpine valley of Lötschental in the swiss mountains. Only a select few were authorised to wear the masks and a lot of work was put all year long in their elaboration that followed very strict rules. The main Population was wearing everiday clothes and the celebration was mainly the arrival of the masks in the village, disturbing the normal life.

In Lötschental, the general population start wearing mask of the more commercial persuasion only during the 20th century (as much as the sources are valid, there is not a lot of them prior to the XIX century), which correspond also with a taming of the traditionnal masks who could be quite violent in more ancient time.

Carnival is really special and we could Go really deeper down the rabbit hole. We are far from weapons of course but i Hope it is fair as long as we all learn and enjoy.

At last, i could argue that the surplus used in celebration mean more wealth and not less than the everyday needs. You just have to Look at the money people put today in Christmas decoration or in their vacations to see my ( very minor) point.

Great post. Trust me I understand all this, all the nuances... I just can't fit all that into every post.

Just a couple of quick points as i already spent too much time today commenting here.

• Carnival in the towns vs countryside was very different. There was broader participation and less formality in the towns very generally speaking and people outside of the Confraternities did also wear costumes. The Confraternities pageants and processions of course did have very strict and meaningful rules on every detail sometimes - it's the same here in New Orleans today. Even their own music and languages. It gets very deep.
• In the towns in Europe, it also varied a lot from place to place. The Church tried to crack down on Carnival with mixed success. After converting to Protestantism they had more luck and it was banned in several places (though by no means all) in the 16th or 17th Centuries.
• Carnival in the country is linked to all the Krampus stuff everybody now knows about. Google "Wilder Mann" to see images of 12th Night Carnival costumes from all over Europe. Jacob Grimm (yes that Jacob Grimm) has very good and well researched / sourced descriptions of the practices from all over Central Europe going back to the medieval period in his Deutsche Mythologie

In addition to New Orleans and our own rural Carnival which is in the Cajun country I've personally experienced Fasching in some towns in Southern Germany, the Koln (Cologne for us Anglophones) Carnival, womens carnival night or whartever they call it, plus Carnival in Nice and in a couple Carribean Islands.

never experienced Basel yet but would love to go one day, it's the birthplace of Joachim Meyer.

Speaking of which, there are strong links between Carnival and the culture of fencing in Germany / Central Europe. Google "Sword Dance Nuremberg" for example no time to get into it but it's an important activity and was part of Carnival. These were organzied mainly by Journeymens Confraternities in certain crafts like the Furriers and Cutlers. There are variations of it all over Europe.



Fechtbucher (fencing manuals) in Central Europe are also linked to Carnival.

G

[Galloglaich]

I think this is one where there's been a lot of pressure to swing way too far back the other way based on some rather dubious modern agendas.

Hard to sell people your "paleodiet" books if you can't convince them that the people who (never actually) ate that way were super-awesome-healthy.

Ok I'll bite .... (hahahahahah ahahahah hahahaha ... ahem, sorry*) what did they eat?

G

* kind of hungry time for a late lunch break

[The Jack]

I think we also get a lot of our history from England and for the English, and their history got a lot more interesting, glorious and fun in the 16th Century. Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, Francis Drake and Shakespeare. before that it's pretty much Agincourt and then Vikings.

Kidding there but in general, I think the English put more emphasis on Early Modern history for understandable reasons. To understand history of Europe more broadly you have to combine together a lot of local historical data from 50 different countries and 200 different cities and so on, which is much more of a challenge.

in Continental Europe it seems to me like everybody knows their own local history (and how cool and unique and interesting their town / region / country was) but pretty much assumes the rest of Europe was like the Monty Python trope.

G

Well it isn't the mainland, but when I was schooled in the UK, I never felt like we learned much about ourselves in history. I went to schools that were considered good, and it still felt lackluster.

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Egypt, Rome. Victorian england (maybe with a bit of earlier industrialization), Henry's wives, the Blitz, the atlantic slave trade, Francis Drake (who was important to our region) Trench warfare.

There was never a general understanding of what was going on. We got narrow focuses, which weren't particularly relevant, or we got broad generalizations.

We never learned about:
England before the romans
England between them and the vikings.
England between the normans and the tudors
And colonial era britain was basically limited to the slave trade.

and a whole bunch of other stuff. There's a few little tidbits I'm missing out on. Good thing I really liked reading. I didn't pick history as further study, but all I heard was that they learned about Prussians and napoleon.

I spent a single year in Australia when I was 15/16. History there was a waste of time. "we're really sorry for that whole aboriginal genocide and we really want you to know it, we've had a few prime ministers, we helped a bit in these wars" If I was a more confident student, I would've just skipped class. Thinking about it, history in school was easy, but that was it's fundamental problem; I didn't understand things, I just knew about them.

Also, our history studies really weren't the kind to inspire nationalism. Sure, WWII's western front was all us and that's the front that mattered, and the accounts of fighting against the spanish Armada would give the impression that britain always won, but most of it's either "this happened" or "this was ****ty"

Australia was "We're great, except this bit, we're sorry for this bit, and it's great that we're sorry" and it'd blend in to other classes. You ever heard of original Australian cuisine? The teacher was surprisingly insistent that it was a thing.

[rrgg]

@Galloglaich You left out 1066, the year William the conquer single-handedly invented feudalism all by himself. ;)

It's probably worth noting that even in the Early Modern period fashion was never really this consistant thing. Some years dark, drab clothing might be in while other years the fashion might be to wear a variety of bright colors. Sometimes women would be expected to wear clothing which revealed very little skin, but other times it was considered the height of elegance for to walk around while letting your boobs hang out as much as possible. etc.



I know it's even harder to make broad generalizations about the middle ages. But the sense I get is that most people back then did care a lot about the clothes they wore. And even if dyed clothing was expensive for a peasant to afford at times, I suspect many would have been perfectly willing to save up the money anyways (which might in turn explain the high prices and just how lucrative many of these industries were)

[Mr Beer]

I think this is one where there's been a lot of pressure to swing way too far back the other way based on some rather dubious modern agendas.

Hard to sell people your "paleodiet" books if you can't convince them that the people who (never actually) ate that way were super-awesome-healthy.

I agree. My own competely nonscientific take on it is that Im completely willing to believe that hunter gatherers may well have generally lead a healthy life, with a good diet and plenty of outdoor exercise, leisure time etc etc.

But at the same time, those good times would be over the moment they snapped a femur or got an infected cut or their internal parasites reached the level needed to make them chronically unwell.

Though of course it was probably a much better life than you could expect working in a factory during the industrial revolution for example.

[Kiero]

I agree. My own competely nonscientific take on it is that Im completely willing to believe that hunter gatherers may well have generally lead a healthy life, with a good diet and plenty of outdoor exercise, leisure time etc etc.

But at the same time, those good times would be over the moment they snapped a femur or got an infected cut or their internal parasites reached the level needed to make them chronically unwell.

Though of course it was probably a much better life than you could expect working in a factory during the industrial revolution for example.

They had a better life than the early farmers. However, that was in the good times. In the lean times, when game was hard to find and foraging not very plentiful, they starved. They also routinely practised infanticide to keep their numbers to a manageable level, over and above what must have been pretty high infant mortality.

[Epimethee]

As a continental European i’m always surprised by how little people know about the history that surround them. There is of course a lot to learn and a lot to discover but mainly everybody know the most emblematic pieces, one or two half-legends that put them in a glorious light. They often sit next to treasures without noticing.

I come from a place with more than 6’000 years of continuous documented occupation, with megalithic, celtic, roman and catholic funeral sites, three castles in a city of less than 30’000 peoples, not to mention the houses, painting, archives of every kind, the oldest manuscript from the IX century. less than 30 minutes of driving from there you could find one of the last complete monastic treasure in western Europe, defiled neither by the Reformation nor the Revolution. A King of Burgundy was crowned there and i could go on and on... Of course, everybody and his nephew know the castle, the monastery, and could tell the same old Stories, Cesar was here, Napoleon never paid his due to the inn were he stayed (and the french president refused to clear the debt some 2 century later when the owner of the place had the funny idea of giving it to him)... droping a name is not that hard. But more is often too much to ask. Even in your own backyard you only know a few things and the rest is left to the tropes...

To be fair there is so much, it’s really demanding even to draw a simple sketch. I enjoy local history cause i think it’s great to walk in the past, to look around seeing another time. But for many there is nothing to see.

Yeah... i think it was some kind of rambling...

[Vinyadan]

About the house in the prairie, that was something I found explicitly used as a comparison for late Roman country life: that a farmer was not living like that. He and his family would have been part of a complex economy, would have owned some small piece of land, but would have worked for money in different properties as well as mines, and be paid with money. With the money, he'd have bought ready made pottery, often imported from Africa, and clothes, as well as many kinds of food. The produce he had been paid to grow could then be sent anywhere in the Empire. One of the reasons why the barbarian invasions stroke so hard was that this interconnected economy was sent to hell, which caused widespread poverty and was one of the reasons for the population decrease during the V-VI centuries.

[Clistenes]

About the house in the prairie, that was something I found explicitly used as a comparison for late Roman country life: that a farmer was not living like that. He and his family would have been part of a complex economy, would have owned some small piece of land, but would have worked for money in different properties as well as mines, and be paid with money. With the money, he'd have bought ready made pottery, often imported from Africa, and clothes, as well as many kinds of food. The produce he had been paid to grow could then be sent anywhere in the Empire. One of the reasons why the barbarian invasions stroke so hard was that this interconnected economy was sent to hell, which caused widespread poverty and was one of the reasons for the population decrease during the V-VI centuries.

Yep. I have read the argument that, while urban society degenerated at the end of the Roman Empire (mostly due to the flight to the countryside of the higher classes, due to increasingly higher taxation and more and more unpopular duties imposed on them without compensation), the hardest hit against the cities was the loss of the transmediterranean trade economy due to the Muslim invasions (before those there were whole regions focused towards the mass production and export of some produce or craft).

About African pottery, amphorae were used to transport wine and oil in such quantites they didn't know what to do with empty amphorae im Rome, and they made small hilks out of broken, discarded ones...

[Berenger]

Well it isn't the mainland, but when I was schooled in the UK, I never felt like we learned much about ourselves in history. I went to schools that were considered good, and it still felt lackluster.

I'm german. The only things we got about the UK was "Colonialism & Atlantic Slave Trade", "Cradle of Industrialization" and the vague impression that they were junior partners of Team America in WW I and WW II.

We also skipped german history before the romans (which is kind of disturbing since some parts of modern germany never had any romans) and everything between the romans and Vormärz with a brief exception for Martin Luther which involves literally disgusting hero worship at least at some schools ("Name three reasons why [person X] is your hero." as an assignment in a test seems like a pretty big red flag to me).

We also learned basically nothing about those tiny specks of land east of our modern eastern border and west of Hawaii prior to the 20th century. Yes, that includes stuff like "relationship with eastern neighbours", "parts of the Holy Roman Empire" and "the crusades".

[Brother Oni]

Kidding there but in general, I think the English put more emphasis on Early Modern history for understandable reasons. To understand history of Europe more broadly you have to combine together a lot of local historical data from 50 different countries and 200 different cities and so on, which is much more of a challenge.

I think it depends very much on the school and when you were taught in the UK.

When I was taught, the main events in chronological order were: Roman Britain, Vikings, 1066, the Crusades/Magna Carta, Elizabethan Times then jumped straight to WW1, missing out Ollie Cromwell, Republic England and the Napoleonic Wars as key Early Modern era national identity forming events (exception for our annual ritual burning of a Catholic traitor).

[The Jack]

were junior partners of Team America in WW I and WW II.
.

But the USA was hardly in WW1. They came very late, did relatively little fighting, and made a good deal of fuss about not wanting to use british helmets (which they did). It shouldn't even be worth a discussion.

Their largest contribution in WW2 was supplies and weapons. A little under half the troops on D-Day were american, (and they used british ships) But US forces did far less in africa, and were absent for norway. The british spent more lives by the end of the war.

In the Pacific, colonial forces are all but forgotten, despite their significant numbers, in favour for the american island hopping campaign which gets such media attention, but most of the US contribution to that war was naval battles so...

Ultimately, the eastern front should have overshadowed everything, but the cold war was on and the americans were good at making movies, so we've got the common perception we do. It doesn't help that most of my school's ww2 education was on how we got bombed to ****. Everyone also gets their sources/opinions skewed by nationalism (I highlight the british, but mostly to contrast against the americans)

[Berenger]

For clarification: that was the general impression my history classes in school left me with when I was about eighteen, not a statement to be taken at face value.

[The Jack]

Yeah, but it's still a trigger of mine.

I honestly feel like I could give students a better (and more entertaining) overview of history in a week than a public school could give in six years.

[Max_Killjoy]

"More people from country X died than from country Y" is hardly a great metric of contribution to a war...

[Kiero]

I think it depends very much on the school and when you were taught in the UK.

When I was taught, the main events in chronological order were: Roman Britain, Vikings, 1066, the Crusades/Magna Carta, Elizabethan Times then jumped straight to WW1, missing out Ollie Cromwell, Republic England and the Napoleonic Wars as key Early Modern era national identity forming events (exception for our annual ritual burning of a Catholic traitor).

I studied history up to A-level, but I've learned a lot more in my own personal reading since leaving full-time education than I ever did at school.

[awa]

so I'm trying to find out about Asian crossbows particularly in the region of Tibet and Nepal if anyone knows that specific but ill settle for china
how much they were used and how they compared to bows in ability/ penetration and what have you.
I'm interested in both the repeating kind and the regular kind.

[Brother Oni]

"More people from country X died than from country Y" is hardly a great metric of contribution to a war...

There's a quote I read that's stuck with me - three things won the Second World War for the Allies; British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood.

so I'm trying to find out about Asian crossbows particularly in the region of Tibet and Nepal if anyone knows that specific but ill settle for china
how much they were used and how they compared to bows in ability/ penetration and what have you.
I'm interested in both the repeating kind and the regular kind.

Could you narrow down which period you're interested in, please?

Qin, Yuan and Qing era bows and crossbows were all used very differently to each other since that timespan covers nearly 2 millennia.

The repeating crossbow or Cho Ku Nu/Zhuge nu was legendarily attributed as an invention of Three Kingdoms Shu strategist Zhuge Liang, but the only concrete information is that the earliest copies date back to Han era China (~3rd Century AD). It's typically regarded as a civilian or a siege defence weapon due to its low power giving it poor range and the texts say the bolts were dipped in poison to give it some semblance of lethality. Experimental modern reproductions of the Cho Ku Nu seem to confirm the low power of the bolts, but with the caveat that modern reproductions of western medieval crossbows can't match their historical performance listed in period texts, so the Han era repeating crossbows could be more powerful than expected.

[awa]

Could you narrow down which period you're interested in, please?

Qin, Yuan and Qing era bows and crossbows were all used very differently to each other since that timespan covers nearly 2 millennia.

its intended for a non-historical game so a bit of anachronism is fine but I'm aiming for around 1000 CE give or take a few centuries