Chat with The Mikado about cool history topics that interest you

[Tetro Kornbluth]

How does Einzige's (AKA Meursault) cowardice in refusing a manly duel rank in all time violations of the code duello?

[politicus]

What are your thoughts on Guamanian statehood?

Guam is tiny, though admittedly its population is far larger than the theoretical minimum size of a US state.  I would have preferred, if this was going to happen, for it to be part of a larger state including the former Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands, but we've since granted them all independence.  I think there's a credible case that Guam is too small to avoid territory status, but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to statehood.

Not the Northern Marianas (where the trusteeship ended in 1986 after they achieved commonwealth status in 1978). Even if Guam rejected them as "fusion partners" in 1969, they might accept if offered statehood.

[Mopsus]

Which was more important to the development of Jewish religion, culture, identity, etc.: the mythical exile in Egypt, or the actual exile in Babylon?

This is a loaded question, but I think it boils down to the question of whether subjects of the Kingdom of Judah prior to the Babylonian sack were recognizably "Jews" or whether "Judaism" as a religion only developed in the aftermath of that event.  Is this more or less what you were trying to ask?  I'll come back to this one later.

The heart of my question was, How does the importance that the Babylonian Exile had on the development of modern Judaism compare with the importance of the Exodus mythos on the development of Judaism in its embryonic stage, and which one was more influential? My hope in asking this question was actually that you would talk about how Judaism developed, which is a topic that's captured my interest lately.

[Vega]

What's your opinion of the Guano Islands Act? Should we give back the islands we took to their respective countries?

[The Mikado]

OK, the thing about the Judaism question is that it's going to either result in a very long post or a very incomplete one.  I'm still figuring out how to go about this because I don't particularly want to write a number of paragraphs on this topic, as interesting as it is. 

[Mopsus]

OK, the thing about the Judaism question is that it's going to either result in a very long post or a very incomplete one.  I'm still figuring out how to go about this because I don't particularly want to write a number of paragraphs on this topic, as interesting as it is. 

That's fine. I promise to be satisfied with whatever I get

[The Mikado]

Which was more important to the development of Jewish religion, culture, identity, etc.: the mythical exile in Egypt, or the actual exile in Babylon?

This is a loaded question, but I think it boils down to the question of whether subjects of the Kingdom of Judah prior to the Babylonian sack were recognizably "Jews" or whether "Judaism" as a religion only developed in the aftermath of that event.  Is this more or less what you were trying to ask?  I'll come back to this one later.

The heart of my question was, How does the importance that the Babylonian Exile had on the development of modern Judaism compare with the importance of the Exodus mythos on the development of Judaism in its embryonic stage, and which one was more influential? My hope in asking this question was actually that you would talk about how Judaism developed, which is a topic that's captured my interest lately.

OK, let's take a shot at this.  First off, I'd say that this is an impossible question much in the same way as asking if the Trojan War or the Peloponnesian War was more significant to ancient Greek development: you cannot just contrast two events that are separated by over half a millennium, one of which is a deep-seated cultural icon important to the formation of the mythos of the people and the other an (albeit spottily recorded) historical event.  I'm choosing to interpret this question as A. How important is the Exodus story to Judaism, and B. how fully-formed was Judaism prior to the Babylonian Exile vs the extent to which it was created by that epochal event.

A is probably the easiest one to dispense with.  If Moses is a fully legendary figure, which seems very likely, he is probably the single most influential fully legendary figure ever, rivaling King Numa and the Yellow Emperor and surpassing figures like King Arthur and Lycurgus.  The Exodus narrative is critical to the way that the early Israelites saw themselves and their place in the world: as exiled refugees and therefore outsiders in the land of Canaan, as a people who had formed a divine contract with a God far more powerful than the gods of the locals (let's sidestep the issue of whether the earliest Israelites were monotheists for now and focus on that they saw Yahweh as the all-powerful creator of the universe and therefore far superior to any other god that may or may not exist), as a people who had been plucked from the lowest ranks of society to a grand divine mission.  One could easily make the case that, while the Exodus myth faded from the consciousness a bit and was revived by Ezra etc. after the Babylonian Exile as a precedent for that event, the story was still one everyone was familiar with: a people exiled from the land of Egypt are given a set of laws and purpose by their relationship with their God, have violated that relationship, and met with calamity at the hands of the Assyrians and later the Babylonians.  The famous story of Ezra reading the Torah to the recently-returned first wave of Jews back in Jerusalem is a story of the Jews seeing how their ancestors had ignored these rules and disaster had struck.  Would this generation risk the same offenses?

For B. I'd like to address terminology a bit.  There is a difference between the word "Jew" and the word "Israelite," despite their frequent conflation.  The Israelites refer to all twelve tribes at first and later to the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and its ten tribes.  The Jews are the heirs to the Judahites, or inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, after the other tribes seceded from rule by the heirs of David in the days of Rehoboam and Jeroboam, according to the Biblical narrative.  Whether the United Monarchy itself was a myth or not, the existence of the the two rival kingdoms is real enough, and until the wars with Assyria, the word Israelite is useful because the Northern Kingdom has radically different views on what the religious practices of the cult of Yahweh entails than their southern cousins.

There is a famous incident in the Second Book of Kings where King Josiah's men tear down an interior wall in the Temple during a renovation project and uncover an ancient "scroll of the law" containing various divine decrees that the Kingdom of Judah had never carried out.  There's a long-standing and rather convenient scholarly interpretation that that scroll was the Book of Deuteronomy, potentially forged by those scholars in the context of the crises of the late 7th century BCE.  If so, it reflects just how important the name of Moses was to the Judahite clergy: a forgery in the name of the grand lawgiver would give them all the excuses they needed to implement a program of radical monotheism, iconoclasm and destruction of pagan shrines, and the consolidation of all legitimate religious practice in the Temple of Jerusalem.  Of course, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel had existed, it pointed to the many designated holy spots in its territory (most famously the shrine of Beth El, where Jacob had had his vision of the ladder) as equally legitimate places for worship and sacrifice to God to prevent pilgrims from having to leave the country, but now the Judahite elite could firmly denounce any shrine to God that was not the Temple in Jerusalem as idolatrous and centralize legitimate worship in one Temple, a move that would prove dangerous indeed when Nebuchadnezzar razed the Temple a few decades later.

Pre-Exilic Israelite and Judahite faith had been marked by a strong rivalry between priests who claimed religious authority through their hereditary roles and rituals, and "prophetic" figures who claimed to circumvent all of the pomp and circumstance by speaking directly to the divine.  From the moment Isaiah had his vision of leaving the earthly Temple to enter its divine doppelganger, seeing God in all his splendor with the heavenly host crying "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts!  The whole of the Earth is his glory!" the priests had a powerful rival message.  Isaiah's radical egalitarian message is deeply at odds with a hierarchical religion: in light of the recently passed Day of Atonement, a fast day in Judaism, this passage is always appropriate.

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Figures like Isaiah pointed to the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians as punishment for its disloyalty to God and threatens Judah with the same fate if it continues its immoral politics.

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Of course, after the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Southern Kingdom of Judah became an autonomous, humbled vassal of the Assyrian Empire.  King Hezekiah sent the golden doors of the Temple to the Assyrians as a surrender tribute.  Isaiah's successors, especially Jeremiah, bear a similar message in the time of the last generation of the Kingdom of Judah.  Jeremiah reminds the Judahites again and again that it's not obedience to rituals God wants, but true good deeds and faith, and the faithless hard-hearted indulgence of the Judahites are leading to imminent destruction.

In short, already before the Exile you have a strand of people (Isaiah and his successors) reinterpreting God from being a tribal deity who will win wars and vanquish his people's enemies, to a universal deity who has a contract with one specific people but is willing to aid its enemies in smashing them if they refuse to hold up their end of the contract.  This shift of God from God of the Israelites to universal deity with a special contract with the Jews, a God who has an emphasis on righteous conduct and care for the impoverished rather than solely interested in rituals, is well underway in pre-Exilic Judaism.  The Exile forced the issue: there is no longer a Temple to sacrifice in or to worship God in the proper way that Deuteronomy suggested.  How can one still be a follower of Yahweh in the city of Marduk?  The messages of the prophets, both radical monotheism and an emphasis on conduct rather than sacrifice and prayer, helped provide an answer to that question.

[Mopsus]

That was an excellent response to an admittedly vague question. Thank you.

What do you think of Karen Armstrong?

[Lincoln Republican]

Was Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria a successful monarch?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Mikado, I'm curious as to your educational background as well as to your personal reading habits.

[Spamage]

Favorite English monarch prior to the Act of Union?

[The Mikado]

Favorite English monarch prior to the Act of Union?

This is a very difficult question because what "favorite" means is different to different people.  Success at achieving personal goals?  Edward III comes to mind as an amazingly successful figure.  Administrative innovator?  Henry II might be your man.  Military and diplomatic mastermind?  Henry V, obviously, but all of his gains in France were promptly lost under the minority and troubled majority of his son.  To take it before the conquest, I think a real case could be made for Canute for successfully, if briefly, creating a fascinating alternate England, one bound across the North Sea with Scandinavia and one that had the potential of achieving an unprecedented naval dominance.  Canute's England/Denmark/Norway is a tantalizing route not taken.

Was Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria a successful monarch?

It's difficult to award kudos to someone who voluntarily signed up to join the Central Powers, but Bulgaria had been through some rough times in the Second Balkan War a few years earlier.  I don't have detailed knowledge of Ferdinand's career in power.

That was an excellent response to an admittedly vague question. Thank you.

What do you think of Karen Armstrong?

I have a positive attitude towards Karen Armstrong.  I used to be a big fan of hers and I've read about half a dozen of her books, but I haven't touched one since ~2008.

Mikado, I'm curious as to your educational background as well as to your personal reading habits.

I have both a Bachelor's and Master's in history.  I don't read quite as...intensely as I did in graduate school (no one should have to read 300+ pages a week), but my freereading can be considerably more eclectic and span more subjects now.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

At the time, how surprising was Italy's declining to enter the Great War before joining the Entente in 1915?

[Cranberry]

If you still do this, I have question for you which is quite a difficult to formulate.
In the time prior to World War II, Czechoslovakia was quite the only county in "Central" Europe (Central is a vague term, I know; but let's just say everything west of the Sovjet Union, north of Romania and Yugoslavia, and west of and including Germany, Austria and Italy) to keep democracy in our, modern, standards, and was quite social-democratic as well. Now, many industrial areas then were located in Northern Bohemia, the Eger Valley and at the border to Germany, in an area that post WWI was claimed by Austria. My question now, had Austria received/retained these areas after WWI, would have Czechoslovakia in all likelihood still been a quite democratic, quite social-democratic country, just in OTL. If not, what would have been the consequence, "just" being a more conservative, but still democratic country; or following the path of its neighbouring countries; or something completely different?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I also have a question about Czechoslvakia; and Yugoslavia as well for that matter.

Were their break-ups inevitable? Did a significant demand exist from either of those "countries" to be created, or were they Frankensteins created by the powers that be?

[The Mikado]

At the time, how surprising was Italy's declining to enter the Great War before joining the Entente in 1915?

Sorry for the delay. I don't know country by country, but I do know that the British and French had a secret agreement with the Italians that they would stay out of the war, and that the Germans weren't aware of this (obviously). That the Italians and Austrians despised each other was, obviously, not secret to anyone, but I do think that Berlin was surprised by Italian neutrality in August 1914. So...I suppose the surprise depends on which side of the war you were on.

To Cranberry's question, there wasn't any serious consideration of breaking up the historical region of Bohemia to pull the Germans into Austria, as the creation of Czechoslovakia was at least as much about punishing Austria (on the Czech side) and Hungary (on the Slovak side) and about building a large, defensible country as it was about self-determination and nationalism. It's always hard to entertain counterfactuals like "what would happen if the German parts of Bohemia ended up in Austria," but it would no doubt have helped at least a bit with rump Austria's "why does our country exist" problem. Of course, a Czechoslovakia that was only predominantly Czech and Slovak areas would be quite a bit smaller and poorer, which gets into the below question.

I also have a question about Czechoslvakia; and Yugoslavia as well for that matter.

Were their break-ups inevitable? Did a significant demand exist from either of those "countries" to be created, or were they Frankensteins created by the powers that be?

Inevitable is a nasty word that I'll avoid for now. There was a major idea at the time that "petty" or "minor" nationalities would not make viable states on their own, and that federations of related peoples was a viable alternative. In the case of Yugoslavia, the Serbs saw themselves as the equivalent of Piedmont-Sardinia to Italy or Prussia to Germany, and that their kingdom could annex the rest of the South Slavs, who all spoke highly related languages. Outside of the awkwardness of annexing Allied Montenegro, it was all taking territory off of defeated Austria and Hungary (and a bit off of Bulgaria) that no one in the Entente particularly minded. Pre-WWII Yugoslavia was hugely Serbian-dominated, and post-WWII was a far more balanced entity (Tito was a Croat, after all) that was determined to suppress the ethnic differences as far as possible.

Czechoslovakia is an interesting case, as it took in the Czechs from the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary and the Slovaks from the Hungarian half, who had not previously been united under any sort of jurisdictional unity. The southern half of Slovakia was heavily Hungarian, the eastern part of Czechia was hugely German, and of course, Czechoslovakia before the war had the awkward Subcarpathian Rus territory in its far east as a kind of tail (now the western-most chunk of Ukraine) that was neither Czech nor Slovak. The Czechoslovakian government was firmly committed to its binational character and did not even attempt to come to terms with its German, Hungarian, and Rusyn minorities, and it surprised few that the nearly 20% German minority did eventually clamor for annexation with Germany in 1938. It proved very easy for Hitler to enforce his solution of annexing the Czech half (as Bohemia and Moravia), giving half of the Slovak half to Hungary, and set up the rump Slovakia as a puppet state. When Czechoslovakia was rebuilt after WWII, it lost the Subcarpathian Rus to the USSR and expelled its German minorities en masse, resulting in a far more truly binational Czechoslovakia (ignoring the Hungarians in Slovakia). The end of union between Czech Republic and Slovakia following the end of Communism was amicable and likely avoidable, but has proven to be something of a blessing for the Czech half, which was and remains considerably wealthier than the Slovak half.

[The Mikado]

Let's do this again.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Let's do this again.

All right!

Recently, you've been discussing with Vega about the British Empire turning into a federal entity. Given all the feedback his thread received, what do you see as the most plausible scenario for such development?

[Maistre]

If World War I was postponed for a year, and Home Rule went into effect, would Britain have been able to get into the war? If not, how long would France and Russia been able to hold out?

[The Mikado]

If World War I was postponed for a year, and Home Rule went into effect, would Britain have been able to get into the war? If not, how long would France and Russia been able to hold out?

This sort of butterfly effect question is impossible to answer completely. First clarification is whether the crisis over the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand doesn't escalate into a general war in 1914 or if the assassination itself is averted. If the former, then Austria will have militarily occupied Serbia over Russian objections and Tsar Nicholas and his government will have done nothing about it, doubling the concerns from 1908 when Austria annexed Bosnia that the Russian government is unable to defend its Slavic brethren. A much weakened and discredited Russia might well take the next crisis event that came along as an opportunity to defend Russian "honor."

Let's get to your question: if the Ulster Volunteers and their sympathizers in the British Army launched an insurrection in 1914, how would the British have responded in 1915? There were already many, many skeptics of general war in 1914, but one of the most compelling arguments to go to war was that a general war might shove aside, at least for the time being, the Irish tensions in favor of a national united front vs a foreign opponent, a union sacrée in the style of the French one. In the event that Ulster and radical Unionists broke out into outright insurgency, this same call for unity (after all, the Ulster Volunteers' big objections revolved around radical loyalism, rather than separatism) might have been seen as a good opportunity to broker a domestic cease-fire and turn that violence outwards. Of course, UK intervention relies as it did IRL in the invasion of Belgium, not so much to get the government on board as to quell the opposition to the war in the House of Commons.

British neutrality (and the attendant neutrality of Britain's dominions and Britain's ally Japan) abolishes Entente naval supremacy and puts the Imperial German Navy as master of the seas, and dramatically lowers the Entente's strategic reach. The Ottomans don't have to worry about attacks from Egypt and Kuwait, the British Expeditionary Force isn't present to slow down German advances in France, without naval supremacy Russia falls under a harsh blockade...my money isn't on the Entente. I also doubt Italy would intervene on the Entente's side and the United States almost certainly would not. British neutrality is a road to a swift Entente victory.

Let's do this again.

All right!

Recently, you've been discussing with Vega about the British Empire turning into a federal entity. Given all the feedback his thread received, what do you see as the most plausible scenario for such development?

I don't see it working out in the long term for the same reason the French rapidly shied away from the idea upon touching it in the late 1950s: citizenship, especially after WWII, had come to mean more than political rights, it included social rights. Providing universal health care, unemployment insurance, pensions, etc. to all the subjects of British Africa (or, if done earlier, India!) would be unimaginable.

If you're talking about a pre-WWI federation with the "white" dominions, that is also impracticable: while still attached to the British in many, many ways, devolution was done for a reason, Canada had far more to gain by having its own parliament and government than it ever would by sending 25 MPs to Westminster.

[Vega]

Always the voice of realism.

I think that if India and Africa (save for South Africa and Kenya) would be granted independence, a country, if not a federation, could be made. This is assuming that health care, education etc. needs could be met. This is all very unlikely, sadly.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

British neutrality (and the attendant neutrality of Britain's dominions and Britain's ally Japan) abolishes Entente naval supremacy and puts the Imperial German Navy as master of the seas, and dramatically lowers the Entente's strategic reach. The Ottomans don't have to worry about attacks from Egypt and Kuwait, the British Expeditionary Force isn't present to slow down German advances in France, without naval supremacy Russia falls under a harsh blockade...my money isn't on the Entente. I also doubt Italy would intervene on the Entente's side and the United States almost certainly would not. British neutrality is a road to a swift Entente victory.

If Britain stays neutral, I doubt the Ottomans get involved.  The British provoked the Ottomans into the war, not so much because they wanted to fight the Ottomans, but because they had so little respect for them that they didn't bother to worry about whether the Ottomans would be provoked by their actions.