(Part 2) Top products from r/polandball

You might want to check out Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer for a very thorough explanation of US redneck culture and its origins. Fischer traces four distinct British cultural folkways as they are transplanted and adopted in the United States. Originally regional, these cultures spread across the country as it expanded.

Fischer explains that Southern backcountry culture is derived from "Scots-Irish" (actually an intermingling of Irish, Scottish, and English) people on the borders of Northern England, Southern Scotland, and in North Ireland from the 1600s.

Some markers of the Southern backcountry culture are honor, clan-orientation, a tendency toward a warrior pride, and supporting willfulness in children. This is a result of the centuries of warfare in the borderlands where the original Scots-Irish settlers came from.

This is quite distinct from, say, Virginia culture, which was all about gentrification, hierarchy, the "gentleman" class, wealthy plantations, and the like. The other two cultural traditions traced are New England Puritan culture and Delaware-valley Quaker culture. All of these traditions are currently still regionally expressed and have spread to varying degrees across parts of the US.

http://www.amazon.com/For-All-Tea-China-Favorite/dp/0143118749

I am a little bit of a tea fanatic - for a yank - and also a nerd. This book is a great read on the subject - really fascinating stuff. Imperialism, drugs, botanical history, industrial espionage, Scottish dude passing himself off as Chinese...

They made better history back then.

Inspired by reading the first half of Forgotten Armies, a book about Britain's WWII in Asia. I was mostly prompted by one passage that mentioned British soldiers stationed in India rioting when they saw some Hindu swastikas used as decorations. Apparently they thought the Indians were expressing sympathy for the Nazis..

As for the first part, it's just a joke about how easily Britain was routed from Singapore, Burma, and elsewhere. The "little fellows" line is in reference to Sir Shenton Thomas, Governor of Singapore who used that term to describe the Japanese who would easily be defeated by the British.

> Where do you getting this from?

Largely from this book.

> Jogaila married Jadwiga to ensure Lithuania gets Christianized and stops Teutonic Order from attacking us, which they didn't, sadly, besides it was great start up path for Polish-Lithuanian alliance since they both had common enemy - Teutonic Order.

That's true as well, and was listed as the second of the reasons given in the book.

> Lithuania was never secondary culture where are you getting this bs? It just what happens when you're smallest of neighbours it was a natural process like in most nations that unify.

...yeah, that's basically what I said. Their position, as the smallest of the neighbors, meant that their culture remained held down by the dominating slavic culture.

There was a book about this published recently. Haven't read it but I've seen a few vids of the author talking about it. Interesting, at the very least. I don't think our friends up north are too fond of the idea though.

Oooo Brazilian Empire! There's a really good book I just read with you in it! https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ

Haha sorry! I was making a lame joke. Exorbitant Privilege is the title of a book by economist Barry Eichengreen. In it, he argues that the status of the American Dollar as a reserve currency means that it makes its goods and exports more expensive to export and thus damages its economy. In tradeoff, it acquires the ability to essentially borrow as much as it requires to finance its deficits.

In the same sense, I think the status of the United States as the sole superpower is a privilege. It allows the United States to dictate policy around the world as it sees fit with less input from other nations, certainly less than any other superpower in the history of the world has. However, that comes with the implicit responsibility for the state of the world, including what wars break out and how nations interact with one another. As the foremost state in the world order, other states will blame you for whatever the outcome of a situation is. Thus you are indeed damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Now I've been out of Polandball for a while, so in return I don't know and am curious what "pulling a De Gaulle" is!

From Third Reich to First

I read this book a year ago: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-World-Terrifying-Circumnavigation/dp/006093638X

About Magellan and his travels in Latin America and then in the Pacific. The dude was a literal psycho.

The quote actually isn't made up entirely, but it's usage regarding WW1 is. According to historian Richard Connaughton in Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear, the phrase was used by a British reporter in reference to the Kuropatkin's Russian Army. Only in the interwar period was it wrongly associated with the British Army in WW1.

I'll just leave this here.

Here I'd like to recommend a book about why Mexico being a shit hole isn't the fault of the US:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199754195?pc_redir=1398388753&robot_redir=1

TL; DR Latin America isn't as developed as the US mostly because of your own endemic corruption, which has stifled business opportunities and investment for more than a century.

I know this is Polandball and all, but let's face it: Latinos looooooove to blame the US like it's somehow our fault most of them are third world countries. When, in fact, it isn't. Get your shit together already.

His most significant writings were the Annales and the Histories, the former basically being an account of the Julio-Claudians, the latter picking up at the death of Nero and going to the accession of Nerva. This is essentially the first century of the Imperial period of Roman history, but unfortunately the texts are extremely patchy. The Annales is missing significant sections, most tragically the account of Caligula's reign, and the Histories only covers the (admittedly rather eventful) year 69 CE.

He also wrote a few other works, such as the Germania, which you are thinking of, and the Agricola about the career of the titular governor of Britannia.

His work is really good, and helpfully compiled into a great, single volume translation.

My name is Singapore and I like to whore

https://www.amazon.de/Sarong-Party-Girls-Cheryl-Lu-Lien/dp/0062448978

Also not sorry.

> Flirting with fascism

I think you meant flirting with totalitarianism. America is very far away from Fascism, but it flirts with totalitarianism with those acts you mentioned.

But your point was not wrong. Have you ever read "Ordinary Men"? Basically, the guys who shot jews in cold blood were often just normal guys, no weird background, or even crazy views...things just got out of control.

> When Sherman departed Atlanta on his infamous "March to the Sea one of the things he did was to issue a special field order regarding conduct on the march. This is known as Field Order 120

> Here are a few of the points in the order:

> > IV. "The army will forage liberally on the country during the march.^1 Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass,"^2

> The plan was to destroy the South's ability to wage war, as well as their economy. However it wasn't to be wanton destruction either, as such:

> > V. "To army corps commanders alone is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility."

> In other words, even though cotton drove the economy of the South, only army corps commanders had the power to decide when to destroy them, which meant that rarely would they be destroyed. Cotton bales already produced were almost universally burned though.

> > VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or bridges. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language^2, and may, where the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts, and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.^3

> In practical matters horses and mules were almost universally taken.

> Trudeau neatly summarizes the damage that was done to homes in March to the Sea (with a few notable exceptions such as to the governor's mansion in Miledgville)

> > Also topping the hit lists were government assets at all levels—town, county, state, and national. Almost everything else that suffered—in the built-up areas, at least—was what a later generation of military planners would term collateral damage. Houses unfortunate enough to be located adjacent to priority targets were often caught up in the flames and the general disinclination of Union officers to expend any effort to protect them. Exceptions, where dwellings safely distanced from the approved targets were torched, had a lot to do with circumstances or plain bad luck. The unexpectedly sharp Rebel rearguard action at Sandersville exposed much of the town to Yankee wrath, while blocked roads that held a Federal column in place for a while in Louisville also spelled trouble when bored soldiers turned to mob vandalism. When the columns kept moving and priority targets were sufficiently isolated, collateral damage was minimal.

> In other words, Sherman did not target entire neighborhoods, and for the most part his men did not target entire neighborhoods. He especially did not target the entire civilian population of the South, despite an entire mythology that's been built up about it.

> 1.) In addition Sherman took plenty of food along with him

> > The columns departing Atlanta on November 15–16 were not traveling lean and mean. Packed into more than 2,500 wagons were a twenty-day supply of bread; forty days of sugar, coffee, and salt; and three days’ worth of animal feed. Moving with the lengthy wagon trains were 5,000 cattle, representing a forty-day beef supply. Writing to his surrogate father [Grant]from Savannah, Sherman rejected the notion that he had been ;rash in cutting loose from a base and relying on the country for forage and provisions. I had wagons enough loaded with essentials, and beef cattle enough to feed on for more than a month, and had the census statistics showing the produce of every county through which I desired to pass. No military expedition was ever based on sounder or surer data.

> 2.) Was this rule broken? Of course it was. You don't have an army of 60,000 men marching through enemy territory without it being broken. However there's only one case of rape recorded where we know for sure the victim's name. There are cases of robbery and theft recorded and there seems to be a pretty liberal policy of looking the other way, but bodily harm seems to have been somewhat rare.

> 3.) Even though the Union Army foraged liberally there's not a single case of starvation recorded in the winter after Sherman passed through Georgia. Despite the devastation that's supposed to have been visited upon the people of that state and the endless atrocities, none of them died of starvation--a remarkable feat considering the size of the army that marched through, plus the countless number of slaves that attached themselves to the army.

> Source, Southern Storm by Noah Trudeau

Conclusion?

SHERMAN DID NOTING WRONG

>C'mon the situation of the time was very easy to go wrong, just because one Serbian was nationalistic doesn't mean that factor was that important. Saying his actions on its own were that big of a reason for the war is gross oversimplification. The whole situation was rigged to explode at that time, overarching reasons being the many diffrent alliances between the European powers and the eagerness of some European rulers to go to war. I'd say nationalism was important for rallying the people to go to war though.



I'd have up disagree. The black hand had members and supporters in the upper echelons of the Serbian government and military sending then arms and turning a blind eye to a regionally destabilizing terrorist group who were calling for the annexation of Austro-hungarian territories. It wasn't one Serbian, but an active quasi government supported terrorist group running arms to separatists on the A-H side of the border.

When assessing in a limited timeframe the start of the first world war cannot solely be blamed on either Austria-Hungarian bellicosity or Serbian nationalism, but a mixture of the two. Arguing that the world was a ticking time bomb or whatever and anything could have set a war off, and there was an inevitable walk to war due to a web of alliances ignores the facts that no matter how likely one may posit that war was in the summer of 1914, the war which happened was started by a group of Serbian nationalist terrorists conspiring to assassinate the Austrian heir apparent in Sarajevo. While the wholesale expansion of the war was generally due to the rather cavalier actions of Germany and the alliances and such which drew Russia and Britain and company into the conflict, the initial war was a regional conflict between Austria Hungary and Serbia. When one relegates nationalism to simply rallying 'the people' to war one ignores the political changes and new nations which were created after the war, a result of the widespread nationalism at the time. I'd recommend this as a source on the beginning of the war. Hew Strachan is quite a good reflection of the current historiography of the war. If you're at all interested in the first world war's beginning this book is a must read.