questions and answers about history

7/31/2019 Questions and Answers About History

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Questions and Answers About History Students of history invariably ponder questions of what if. What if Archduke Francis Ferdinand had

not been assassinated? Would World War I still have happened? What if the United States had lacked

aircraft carriers at the outset of World War II? Would Japan have won the battle for the Pacific?Historian Jerry H. Bentley, editor of the Journal of World History , ponders these and many other what

if questions in a series of historical inquiries ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to the end of the Cold

War.

Questions and Answers About History

Q: Without the use of aircraft carriers, is it possible that the United States could have defeatedthe Japanese in the war in the Pacific during World War II? How?A: In the absence of aircraft carriers, the war in the Pacific would inevitably have been a verydifferent affair. Aircraft carriers were prominent in several of the most important battles of World War II (1939-1945) in the Pacific, including the Battle of Coral Sea (May 1942), whichstopped the Japanese advance to the south toward Australia, and the Battle of Midway (June1942), which seriously damaged the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet and turned the tide of the warin the Pacific.Remember that Japanese forces also made use of aircraft carriers. These carriers played a crucialrole in Japanese conquests of Pacific islands and also in the attack on Pearl Harbor. If there hadnot been any aircraft carriers at all, the war in the Pacific would have been largely a naval andamphibious conflict. In this case, presumably neither Japanese nor American forces would havehad any significant advantage.On the other hand, if Japanese forces had had aircraft carriers and American forces had not, itwould have been exceedingly difficult for American forces to safely steam through Pacificwaters or to launch amphibious invasions. In that case, the United States likely would havesuffered staggering losses of both ships and men before winning the war in the Pacific.Q: Was the Allies targeting of German civilians in World War I morally and strategicallyacceptable in warfare?A: There were relatively few direct and intentional attacks on civilian targets during the GreatWar (also known as World War I), fought from 1914 to 1918. Aircraft of that era were notsophisticated enough to undertake the massive bombing campaigns that devastated civilianpopulations during later wars. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), for example, aerialforces caused extensive damage to civilian targets as well as military targets. By the time of World War II (1939-1945), aerial bombardmentincluding attacks on civilian targetshadbecome a principal tool of warfare.No amount of historical or military analysis can answer the question of whether attacks oncivilian targets are morally acceptable. The answer to that question depends on individual andcollective views on what is morally proper and what is not. Some might argue that wars (or atleast some wars) are conflicts between entire societies, not just combatants, so that the targetingof civilians is either morally justifiable or militarily necessary or both. Until recent times, civilianpopulations were generally vulnerable to attack by military forces regardless of moralconsiderations. During the 20th century, however, international law defined civilian populationsas inappropriate military targets. By this standard, attacks on civilians are not morally acceptable,


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whether they take the form of German bombardments during the Battle of Britain, the Alliesfirebombing of Dresden, or American deployment of atomic weapons in Hiroshima andNagasaki.Q: How has China managed to maintain its civilization for so long?A: China is in some ways a land of remarkable social and cultural continuity. Distinctive Chinese

forms of agriculture appeared as early as 6500 BC. The origins of Chinese writing trace back tothe 16th century BC. Elements of Chinese cultural traditions such as Confucianism and Daoismdate from the 6th century BC . For most of history since the 3rd century BC , the land that we nowcall China has been under the rule of a centralized state.Geographical considerations partly explain this Chinese social and cultural continuity. For thepast 3,000 years or more, most of the Chinese population has been concentrated in the highlyfertile valleys of the Huang He (Yellow River) and the Yangtze. Another consideration isgovernment policy. From the 3rd century BC to the present, Chinese rulers have invested heavilyin roads, canals, and railroad lines linking the far-flung regions of China.Let's not forget that China, while maintaining some social and cultural traditions over a longperiod of time, has also undergone tremendous change. While supporting Confucian and Daoist

traditions, for example, China has also received cultural imports from abroad: Buddhism,modern science, and Marxism all traveled to China from other lands. And Chinese workersthemselves have a long history of devising technological innovations that have broughtconsiderable change to China: Paper, printing, the magnetic compass, gunpowder, and papermoney are just a few Chinese inventions.Q: Why did cities develop, and do we still need them?A: Human beings are social animals. Only a very few have lived outside society as hermits orrecluses. Almost all have lived in families, bands, villages, towns, or cities. The earliest humanswere hunter-gatherers, who lived by hunting and gathering wild food, and they existed mostly inmigratory bands of about 30 to 50 individuals. When humans began to rely on agriculture toproduce food, they settled in villages. Some favorably situated villages attracted many settlersand grew into towns where markets were available for the exchange of goods.The first cities appeared about 4000 BC in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). They differed fromvillages and towns in that they were political, military, economic, commercial, and culturalcenters from which the leaders of society governed the affairs of surrounding regions. Thesecities came into being largely because Mesopotamian farmers were reaping large harvests thatattracted numerous migrants to the region. Increasing population brought social problems, andcities emerged as the sites where specialists worked to organize public life and maintain order.Do we still need cities? It depends on what kind of society we want. A hunting and gatheringsociety does not need cities. A modern industrial society, on the other hand, needs cities, becausethey provide sites where people can deal conveniently with one another. Even an agriculturalsociety needs cities where buyers and sellers can find markets and government officials cansupervise public affairs. It looks as though cities will be with us for the foreseeable future.Q: How and why were Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev able to come to a diplomatic endto the Cold War?A: Personally, I would not say that United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War by diplomatic means. No two individuals started theCold War, nor could any pair possibly have brought it to an end.


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The Cold War, after all, was a complex affair. It arose from doubts and insecurities on the side of both Americans and the Soviets. Leaders from both sides fueled the Cold War and prolonged it,sometimes for their own domestic political reasons.By the 1980s it was clear that the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc were incapable of matching the United States and other capitalist societies in prosperity and economic productivity.

When Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985, he appreciated the difficulties that the SovietUnion faced, and he instituted several daring initiatives to invigorate the USSR. They did notwork, and by 1991 Gorbachev was out of power.Although political and economic structures helped set the stage for the end of the Cold War, it isalso important to remember that without the actions of individual human beings seeking tochange their societies, the Cold War could not have come to an end. Perhaps more importantthan Reagan and Gorbachev were the thousands of individuals like the Polish workers whofounded the labor union Solidarnosc in the face of opposition from the Communist authorities, orthe good burghers and university students of Leipzig who in the fall of 1989 held a series of nonviolent demonstrations in the face of East Germany's Stasi police force. Without actions likethese, which called for tremendous courage, the Berlin Wall would still be standing, regardless

of everything Reagan and Gorbachev did.Q: Does Egypt belong to Africa or the Middle East? It's on the African continent, but you alwayshear about it involved with Middle Eastern politics.A: It might seem that nothing could be more stable than geographical categories. Barringearthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural catastrophes, Earth's lands change verygradually. But geographical categories do not always coincide neatly with human affairs.Take the notion of continents. We call a landform a continent when there is a very long stretch of unbroken dry land. But people inhabiting a single given continent might well organize theirsocieties and their relations with others without regard to their status as inhabitants of thatcontinent.This is the case with Africa. The African continent is an unbroken stretch of dry land that runsfrom Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope. But it has always been quite difficult to travel by landbetween the northern and southern parts of Africa because of the Saharaone of the mostforbidding and inhospitable regions of the world. From ancient times, people traveled betweenEgypt and lands to the south and people from these regions communicated with one another;these contacts powerfully influenced ancient Egyptian society.Yet inhabitants of North Africa, including Egyptians, also had frequent and intense dealings withtheir neighbors in the Mediterranean and Southwest Asia (also called the Middle East). Since theexpansion of Islam and the Arab conquest of north Africa in the 7th century, Egypt has had evencloser relations with Southwest Asiato the point that the principal language spoken in Egypttoday is Arabic, not Coptic, the language of ancient Egypt.So Egypt is definitely in Africa, and Egyptian society has always reflected the influence of neighbors to the south. But Egypt has also had close relations with neighbors to the north andeast, and since the 7th century, these relations have been more influential on Egyptiandevelopment than those from the south. For an excellent book on the trickiness of relatinggeographical categories to human historical experiences, see Martin W. Lewis and Karen E.Wigens work The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography .Q: Why did Europeans, as opposed to Asians or Africans, take the lead in colonizing the worldin the 16th through 19th centuries?


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A: When seeking to understand the prominence of Europe in the modern world, we mustremember why Europeans first ventured into the larger world. From the time of Marco Polo(1254-1324), European merchants sought access to African markets, where they could obtaingold, and to Asian markets, where they could obtain silk, spices, and porcelain. Europeanswanted to get to Africa and Asia; Africans and Asians were not so interested in getting to

Europe. In exploring sea routes to Africa and Asia, Europeans found their way to the Americasas well.European peoples were no more economically productive than African and Asian peoples, sohow did they become so powerful? Here are two important considerations. The first has to dowith military strength. By the 16th century, Europeans had the best gunpowder weapons andarmed ships in the world, so they had military advantages over many other peoples. The secondconsideration involves industrialization. In the 19th century, industrial production made itpossible for Europeans to manufacture powerful weapons and inexpensive trade goods of highquality. Thus, industrialization strengthened Europeans both economically and militarily,enabling them to dominate much of the world.Q: How have the Freemasons influenced European and American history?

A: Freemasons have profoundly influenced European and American history but more asindividuals than as an organization. Let's start at the beginning. What is Freemasonry, anyway?The first Freemasons were actually masons: stonecutters and construction workers who helpedbuild the massive cathedrals and public buildings of medieval Europe. By the 17th century, asthe construction of stone buildings declined, the guilds of masons admitted members who weremerchants, lawyers, physicians, and professionals. Gradually, these groups functioned less astraditional craft guilds than as fraternal orders or social clubs. They provided opportunities tosocialize with friends, and they often provided charitable relief for needy members and theirfamilies.In some lands Freemasons fell under suspicion because they had secret rituals with muchunfamiliar symbolism. Roman Catholic Church authorities have often considered Freemasonrydangerous because many individual members have been critics of organized religion. In somelands the political authorities have launched campaigns against Freemasons out of fear that theirsecret organization could undermine the state. People love to imagine the existence of conspiracies!Individual Freemasons have made notable contributions to society in many different ways.Among the most prominent Freemasons have been Ludwig van Beethoven, Voltaire, WolfgangAmadeus Mozart, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, George Washington, Mark Twain, DavyCrockett, Oscar Wilde, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Duke Ellington, and John Glenn. As anorganization, Freemasonry has contributed more to society through its charitable activities thanthrough its ideology.Q: How has greed influenced the development of human civilization?A: What counts as greed? If greed means any acquisition or consumption beyond the bareminimum necessary for survival, then human history is little more than one big monument togreed. All prosperity, all comfort, all unnecessary pleasure would then be the fruit of greed.Perhaps we should adopt a looser definition and view greed as the desire for excessiveacquisition or consumption. Then we would create a new problem of determining what isappropriate and what is too much, but we might be able to bring some moral and historical issuesinto clearer focus.


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Excessive acquisition or consumption on the part of some can result in poverty and suffering formany others, so individual greed can have serious social costs. Selfish greed of individualsseeking their own comfort and pleasure without regard to social consequences is clearly anunhealthy and destructive influence. But what if affluent individuals use their wealth to supporthospitals, libraries, museums, foundations, educational institutions, and charitable organizations?

In that case, the excessive acquisition of some may benefit many others. Or what if the desire foraffluence motivates individuals to develop products or provide services that improve the lives of others? Then greed might even appear to be a positive and creative influence.Greed is a very slippery term. Assessing its influence in human history requires carefulconsideration of individual motives, the uses that affluent individuals make of their wealth, andthe larger social effects that follow from human acquisitiveness.Q: What kind of role did Latinos have in World War II, and how were they treated? Were theysegregated? How many Latinos served, and what was their main reason for joining the armedforces?A: About 500,000 Mexican Americans served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II.They mostly served in integrated units. But there were at least two units drawn exclusively from

Mexican Americans, largely because the military was interested in their ability to speak fluentSpanish. Mexican Americans in the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery units of the New MexicoNational Guard served in the Philippine Islands, where their Spanish fluency facilitatedcommunications with some of the local inhabitants. Most members of these units were killed orcaptured during the Battle of Bataan in 1942.Apart from those who served in the armed forces, many Mexican Americans worked in theUnited States, contributing to the domestic economy during World War II. The federalgovernment brought in teams of workers known as braceros (from the Spanish word brazos,meaning 'arms') to work on railroads and farms. From 1942 to 1945, about 240,000 bracerosworked as contract laborers in the United States. These braceros have been in the news quiterecently because apparently some of them were not properly compensated for their labor.Q: Were the witch hunts that occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages a manifestation of abacklash by men against the growing economic and social importance of certain groups of women (e.g. herbalists and midwives)? Or were they due to a pervasive and powerful fear of thesupernatural, brought on by works such as The Malleus Maleficarum ? Or might castingaccusations of witchcraft merely have been a convenient way to rid oneself of a troublesomerival?A: The witch hunts of late-medieval and early-modern Europe are some of the most difficulthistorical events to understand and explain. To make sense of them, we must begin byrecognizing the widespread conviction that supernatural agents intervened regularly in humanaffairs.Most people believed firmly that God ruled the world, but they also believed that Satan workedconstantly to undermine God's rule by inducing individuals to advance his nefarious designs.Only in light of these convictions was it possible for frenzied witch hunting to take place.It is likely that some individuals cynically used fears of witchcraft to destroy personal enemies oreconomic rivals. It is also likely that many individuals persuaded themselves that maleficentwitches caused their personal misfortunes. However, these kinds of personal grievances alonewere unlikely to fuel frenzied witch hunts, which depended on mass hysteria, large-scaleparticipation, and public support throughout the affected communities.


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Many historians believe that generalized fears of witchcraft degenerated into serious witchhunting when social, economic, or cultural tensions placed communities under unusual stress.The height of European witch hunting was the period from the mid-16th to the mid-17thcenturiesan era of intermittent warfare and constant turmoil with Roman Catholic and variousProtestant churches competing for European souls. When community anxieties ran high, political

or religious leaders sometimes sought to shore up their influence by organizing drives to identifyand punish suspected witches.About 110,000 individuals underwent trials for witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries,and about 60,000 were executed as convicted witches. Needless to add, witch hunting was amassively destructive affair for any society.Q: Did anyone in the United States government expect Japan to attack Pearl Harbor in December1941?A: There is no evidence or persuasive argument that anyone outside the highest circles of theJapanese military knew in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.Almost as soon as the smoke cleared, journalists and historians began to ask if President FranklinD. Roosevelt or someone else in the U.S. government had advance knowledge about the attack.

These suspicions arose because it was common knowledge that Roosevelt opposed Japaneseexpansion in Asia and sought ways to aid China, which had been at war with Japan since 1937.What few knew at the time was that U.S. and British intelligence agents were regularlyintercepting official Japanese radio communications and that they were beginning to break theJapanese naval and diplomatic codes.By December 1941, however, the U.S. and British intelligence agents had cracked less than 8percent of the Japanese code, and much of that was code for numbers. Only in 1945 were agentsable to understand some messages, which they had intercepted much earlier but could notdecode, that might have alerted them to Japanese intentions. In 1941, as the Japanese strike forceapproached Hawaii, it maintained strict radio silence, so there were no signals for intelligenceagents to detect. Japanese military officials developed their plans in such secrecy that not eventhe highest-level Japanese diplomats knew about the attack.Q: Why is the word philistine sometimes used to refer to a person who is ignorant or uncultured?A: Interesting question! Sometimes there are peculiar explanations for the meanings that wordsacquire, and this is one of those cases. First, let's talk about the Philistines. They were an ancientpeople who came from the Mediterranean area, probably from the island of Crete. They firstappeared in historical records after about 1200 BC, when they established a series of settlementsin the coastal region of Palestine, roughly the area now known as the Gaza Strip. The Philistineswere principal rivals of the Hebrews, who had migrated to Palestine shortly before them. TheHebrews and Philistines fought bitterly in the 11th century BC , as each group sought to establishits own state in Palestine.The Philistines were a sophisticated people. They produced olive oil and textiles, and they tradedwidely throughout the eastern Mediterranean region. They worshiped gods similar to those of many other peoples in the region. In contrast, the Hebrews worshiped only one deity, whom theycalled Yahweh, and regarded the deities of others as false gods. Hebrew writings portrayed thePhilistines as a crude people who were unable to appreciate the power of Yahweh. ThePhilistines left few written records and no historical accounts of their experiences. As a result theHebrew characterizations of the Philistines went largely unchallenged in the historical record,and later writers used the term philistine to refer to materialistic and uncultivated individuals,especially those incapable of appreciating artistic and literary creations.


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Q: Could the Phoenicians have sailed to the New World?A: The Phoenicians were quite capable of sailing to the Americas, as were several other peoplesbefore Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage of 1492. The Phoenicians established aseries of trading cities in Phoenicia (present-day coastal Lebanon) in about 2500 BC . Since theirnarrow strip of land had limited agricultural potential, the Phoenicians turned to the sea and built

a flourishing trading economy. They produced glassware, metal goods, and high-quality textiles,which they traded throughout the Mediterranean basin. From 1200 to 800 BC they dominatedMediterranean trade and established numerous trading colonies throughout the region. Theirmost famous and powerful colony was Carthage, in what is now Tunisia.The Phoenicians sailed beyond the Mediterranean into the Atlantic Ocean. They traded at coastalsites in Portugal, France, the British Isles, and the Canary Islands. From the Canary Islands, theycould easily have ridden the trade winds west across the Atlantic to the Americas, although aftergetting there they may well have had trouble finding a convenient route back.Indeed, the trade winds blow so reliably from east to west that some peoples of coastal WestAfrica also could have crossed the Atlantic before Columbus. However, there is no evidence thateither Phoenicians or Africans sailed to the Americas. What is certain is that Viking explorers

crossed the North Atlantic and established the colony of Vinland (in present-day Newfoundland)in about AD 1000.Q: Why did so many people from Romania immigrate to America from the 1880s to 1910s?A: For almost a centuryfrom about 1850 to 1914Europeans migrated to other world regionson a scale never before witnessed in world history. So it was not just Romanians migrating to theUnited States. Rather, it was a case of individuals migrating from European lands in massivenumbers. This series of migrations is one of the really important large-scale processes of moderntimes.Between 1800 and 1914, approximately 50 million Europeans migrated to other parts of theworld. About 32 million went to the United States; most of the rest went to other lands intemperate regions, such as Argentina, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The vastmajority of the migrants came from southern and eastern Europe, where many ethnic andreligious minorities were unhappy with the heavy-handed policies of the Austrian empire (calledthe Austro-Hungarian empire after 1867).After the French Revolution, authorities harshly suppressed the nationalist efforts of minoritypeoples within the multicultural Austrian and Austro-Hungarian empires. After imperialauthorities squelched the revolution of 1848, many individuals decided to leave Europealtogether to seek opportunities in other lands. The United States seemed attractive to manybecause it underwent a process of rapid industrialization after the Civil War in the 1860s; thus,many jobs were available in the industrial cities of the Northeast. Many migrants also went toother lands where they hoped to find opportunities in agriculture, crafts, or trade.Q: Is the United States the most powerful nation in the history of the world?A: There can be no serious question that, in absolute terms, the United States is the mostpowerful nation in the history of the world. The United States is capable of mustering moremilitary power than any nation or empire in earlier times. It is the wealthiest nation in worldhistory. It enjoys the most extensive educational system and the most effective medicaltechnologies ever devised. The United States also benefits from open communications and aremarkable pool of intellectual and cultural talent.So far we have been talking in absolute terms. What if we speak in relative terms? It might wellbe that during the 19th century the British Empire was more powerful with respect to the rest of


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the world than the United States is today, or that during the 16th century the Spanish Empire wasmore powerful. It might even be that during the 6th century BC the empire of Persia was morepowerful in relation to the rest of the world than the United States is today, even though Persianinfluence obviously did not extend as far as U.S. power today.Of course, tremendous power does not necessarily enable a nation to do whatever it wants in the

rest of the world. Even powerful nations must cooperate and negotiate with others, or else theywill fritter their resources away in needless and avoidable conflicts. Remember also that powerbrings responsibilities. Powerful nations have special obligations to consider the interests of others and resist temptations to use their power unfairly to their own advantage.Q: Would World War I have happened if Archduke Francis Ferdinand had not beenassassinated?A: Europe was such a tinderbox in 1914 that it is tempting to regard some kind of militaryconflict at that time as almost inevitable. All the major European powers were armed camps.They had ambitions that conflicted with their neighbors plans, and they nourished grievancesfrom previous conflicts. They had entered into secret treaties and alliances that called on them tosupport others in the event of war. Perhaps most dangerously, they eagerly looked forward to

war, thinking that their own arms and allies would enable them to crush their prospectiveopponents with relative ease.Yet many historians, myself included, would argue that developments like World War I are notinevitable. As it happened, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to thethrones of Austria-Hungary, triggered a series of events that culminated in a massive anddestructive global war. But it was by no means inevitable that such a ruinous conflict wouldensue. Political and military leaders throughout Europe chose, for a variety of reasons, to take theassassination and the events that followed as pretexts for war, but they could have chosendifferently. Even if they went to war, they could have chosen to pursue a limited conflict ratherthan the total war that marred the early years of the 20th century. Alas, World War I in all of itshorror was a matter of choice, not fate.Microsoft Encarta 2009. 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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