Recent comments in /f/history

mybestfriendisacow t1_j0ggudx wrote

Reply to comment by Treeninja1999 in Drought encouraged Attila's Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest by ArtOak

Current farmer. Natural disasters destroy the land. And then nothing grows.

If there was an earth quake, the land gets disrupted (tore apart, split, etc) and you either can't plant into the empty spaces, or need to work the ground which would've taken ages to do back then with animals and small equipment. Large volcanic eruptions have the ash which smothers the land until it floats away or is worked into the ground, and the cooled magma turns into rock which you can't plant into.

Droughts don't just mean lack of water, but rock hard dry earth that you can't plant into. Too wet means plants drown, or quagmires you simply can't get into to plant. Too cold to plant on time means late crops, and if they do get going, your yeilds are reduced because of the shorter growing season.

All of this usually means weaker plants, which are more susceptible to diseases. The plants are not as nutritious, making you weaker and more susceptible to your own diseases. Diseases spread, more people get sick, especially if they're also not getting enough nutrition themselves.

Current farmers still face a lot of stuff from natural disasters. But we do get some lucky breaks now with our current technology (like weather forecasting), equipment size/strength, and how much faster we can do things. And we have also gotten better at producing higher yields of crops, and preventing plant diseases, which ensures the health of animals and people. So humans can flourish, be strong, and thrive.

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Tiny-Bus-3820 t1_j0gge7u wrote

Reply to comment by bangdazap in Bookclub Wednesday! by AutoModerator

If you enjoy Halberstam, you might like his book The Fifties. His main argument is that many of the innovations and changes in society accredited to the 60s actually began in the 50s I think you might find the book enjoyable.

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Wonckay t1_j0gchft wrote

Reply to comment by Alluvium in The Garamantes: Rome's neighbours in the Sahara. by AugustWolf22

CE is literally just AD with a different name. It definitely has nothing to do with the establishment of the Roman republic which collapsed before CE even started. These backwards rationalizations trying to ignore the actual origin of CE place unmerited importance on the period.

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ElvenCouncil t1_j0gccvm wrote

Reply to comment by kazkh in Drought encouraged Attila's Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest by ArtOak

Rome and the Persians were both still recovering from the plague (which was likely caused by natural disasters) and decided to have a generation long war of attrition. The Arabs did the same thing barbarians in the periphery had been doing for over a thousand years. Attacked when the agricultural empire was at a weak point.

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ElvenCouncil t1_j0gcba4 wrote

Reply to comment by kazkh in Drought encouraged Attila's Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest by ArtOak

Rome and the Persians were both still recovering from the plague (which was likely caused by natural disasters) and decided to have a generation long war of attrition. The Arabs did the same thing barbarians in the periphery had been doing for over a thousand years. Attacked when the agricultural empire was at a weak point.

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Sgt_Colon t1_j0gbwc3 wrote

Reply to Drought encouraged Attila's Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest by ArtOak

Can't say I buy the article's argument that this caused the Huns to become raiders, it seems especially ignorant of the relations steppe polities had with their settled neighbours.

An easy off the bat rebuttal is that the first time the Huns appear in Roman records is them rolling over the Goths and Alans in Eastern Europe (precipitating the migration of the Greuthungi and Tervingi into the Eastern Empire) that sees regular raiding into the empire from their on in, including during the Gothic war of 376-382.

Even so, steppe polities normally raided their settled neighbours to obtain various goods that were either unobtainable or in short supply on the steppe. The steppe being largely unsuited to farming and in turn unable to support any significant industry, raiding was a common activity to gain goods and wealth, helped significantly by the hardy steppe ponies they rode enabling them to engage in lightning raids able to move quickly and at distance. This isn't to say they were shiftless brutes that knew only to steal, trade was a significant interaction with their settled neighbours, but raiding often served as a means of political leverage with their neighbours.

An example of which is the Roman-Hunnic treaty of 422 which saw the demands of an annual tribute of gold by the Roman state and the return of any Huns fleeing Hunnic territory (being political rivals/dissidents of the new king Rua), this was forced into being by raiding into Thrace during the same year. The later Treaty of Margus was little different, with the tribute in gold increase, annual markets on the border and preventing the Romans from forming any alliances with Hunnic enemies. These were rather one sided affairs, favouring the Huns by new rulers eager to secure their legitimacy; something at odds with the article's claims of mutually beneficial arrangements.

It may also be worth noting that the data gathered is only for the Hungarian basin and may not be accurate for the larger steppe area, including the other parts of Eastern Europe the Hunnic empire encompassed.

With regards to the Eurasian steppe and the Huns in specific, Hyun Jim Kim is a current and notable publishing academic whose works like The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe or The Huns are well worth reading for a current grounding.

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