• 906: At the end of the 2022 movie adaption of All Quiet On The Western Front an unnamed German general sends his troops into a suicidal attack against French forces out of sheer spite, only hours before the war ends. Did such an attack or such attacks really happen during the last hours of WW1?, submitted on 2022-11-01 04:47:24+08:00.
• 907: Author Tom Holland argues that it was not our Greco-Roman western heritage that lead to liberal values, but Christianity, and that the ancient world was notably cruel. Do historians mostly agree with this stance?, submitted on 2022-11-01 07:19:19+08:00.
• 908: Why were the Manchus assimilated into the Han despite ruling the last dynasty and never facing any widespread persecution?, submitted on 2022-11-02 04:12:47+08:00.
• 909: What motivated the Shōgitai and other pro-Tokugawa troops at Ueno to keep fighting after Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrendered in the spring of 1868?, submitted on 2022-11-02 04:55:48+08:00.
• 910: How did Mao learn about/of the idea of Communism?, submitted on 2022-11-04 00:36:29+08:00.
• 911: Sacks and the pope, hmmm, submitted on 2022-11-05 06:23:33+08:00.
• 912: Need help. Thanks, submitted on 2022-11-06 19:36:31+08:00.
• 913: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of November 7, 2022, submitted on 2022-11-06 23:13:10+08:00.

906: At the end of the 2022 movie adaption of All Quiet On The Western Front an unnamed German general sends his troops into a suicidal attack against French forces out of sheer spite, only hours before the war ends. Did such an attack or such attacks really happen during the last hours of WW1?, submitted on 2022-11-01 04:47:24+08:00.

—– 906.1 —–2022-11-02 04:27:39+08:00:

Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment as we do not allow answers that consist primarily of links or block quotations from sources. This subreddit is intended as a space not merely to get an answer in and of itself as with other history subs, but for users with deep knowledge and understanding of it to share that in their responses. While relevant sources are a key building block for such an answer, they need to be adequately contextualized and we need to see that you have your own independent knowledge of the topic.

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907: Author Tom Holland argues that it was not our Greco-Roman western heritage that lead to liberal values, but Christianity, and that the ancient world was notably cruel. Do historians mostly agree with this stance?, submitted on 2022-11-01 07:19:19+08:00.

—– 907.1 —–2022-11-01 16:36:15+08:00:

I suspect you may mean /u/J-Force in those two instances!

908: Why were the Manchus assimilated into the Han despite ruling the last dynasty and never facing any widespread persecution?, submitted on 2022-11-02 04:12:47+08:00.

—– 908.1 —–2022-11-02 05:57:08+08:00:

So I feel compelled to begin this answer by stating that almost all the premises of the question are wrong. Do not, however, feel discouraged: these are errors that are extremely common, especially in relation to this particular question, and carry some assumptions worth unpacking.

Were the Manchus assimilated into the Han? No, and especially not under the Qing. Manchus as an ethnic group remained separate – often in literal, geographical terms – down to the end of the Qing, thanks to the Banner system. By virtue of being part of the Banners, Manchus were entitled to housing in set-aside Banner quarters, as well as government stipends (not particularly huge ones, but enough to live on) as part of a broader organisation of imperial functionaries. Despite all the erosion of differences, Manchus continued to consider themselves both ethnically and culturally distinct from their Han neighbours, and vice versa: rhetoric of ethnic enmity would flare up dramatically throughout the latter third of Qing rule, from the Zhenjiang martial law crisis in 1841, to the Taiping War and Yunnanese revolt of the 1850s-70s, to the growth of radical politics in the run-up to the 1898 reforms and the 1911 Revolution. I go into more detail here, but in brief, anti-Manchuism was an incredibly widespread phenomenon, and one that would have made no sense whatever if Manchus had somehow ceased to be considered as different.

Did they never face widespread persecution? The answer would be no. Both the Taiping and the Yunnanese had strong anti-Manchu agendas, and the radicals of the 1890s-1910s similarly subscribed to such beliefs. Social Darwinist approaches like Liang Qichao argued that Manchus had to be forced to miscegenate with Han so that their bloodlines would survive a presumed race war between white Europeans and East Asians. 30,000 Manchus, mostly civilians, were massacred in Nanjing by the Taiping in 1853; 20,000 were slaughtered in Xi’an by the revolutionaries in 1911. Mass killing never took place on a national scale, but there were extraordinary acts of anti-Manchu violence in more local contexts where sufficiently hate-fuelled Han had sufficient means to do so. Again, see the linked answer above. But while overt, mass violence was rare, quieter, simmering hatred and discrimination were not. Self-identification as Manchu was extremely rare between 1912 and the 1980s, but not because of assimilation – rather, it was because of fear. Fear of reprisals, fear of stigma, fear of hatred. The post-1980 resurgence in Manchu identification is a clear sign of how Manchu identity had to persist underground, but persisted regardless.

Does it matter that few speak Manchu natively, or that few uniquely Manchu practices survive? Not really. The possession of an identity does not rely on the existence of unique cultural practices, nor is it up to people exogenous to a group to determine what the ideal package of behaviours is that certifies someone as authentically part of that group. Scots are still Scots even if fewer than 100,000 people speak Scots Gaelic; Austrians are not Germans even if they all speak German. It is true that Manchu language use declined precipitously. It is not self-evident that identifying as Manchu and forming a community of fellow self-identifying Manchus is predicated on speaking Manchu, or performing particular practices. All that needs to happen is that identification, and that community-building. Granted, identities need some kind of element to make them meaningful: they must, to borrow some terminology from Mark Elliott, ‘cohere’ around something. But by the later stages of Qing rule the source of this coherence was the Banner system, the privileges and obligations it entailed, and the communities that formed in the Banner quarters, and not some idealised ‘Manchu Way’ promulgated in the 1750s. Modern Manchu identity may not be predicated on cultural practices, but it doesn’t have to be as long as there is something that makes identification as Manchu a meaningful statement.

Which is why the Manchus have remained as a distinct minority. Manchus are the fourth-largest of the 56 recognised ethnic groups in China, sitting between the Hui and the Uyghurs with around 10.5 million members and making up 0.78% of the population. They are relatively geographically scattered compared to some other minorities, but no more so than the Hui, whose coherence as an ethnic group is basically never questioned the way the Manchus’ is. What I hope I have managed to demonstrate is that Manchu identity has continued to exist, and that it is not particularly unique in context for doing so, even if perhaps the level of apparent acculturation is more extreme than many comparable examples.

—– 908.2 —–2022-11-02 08:50:08+08:00:

So again, the issue here is that you’re taking an approach to Manchu identity that is rooted solely in the notion that it revolves around some kind of inherited cultural practice. The reality is it doesn’t, because if it did, Manchus wouldn’t keep calling themselves Manchus. The act of identification, in and of itself, is what creates an identity that is distinct. Manchus may be indistinguishable from Han in terms of appearance or day-to-day behaviour, but the difference in identification is fundamentally all that needs to exist for an identity to do so as well. I can’t say I know with any certainty what it is that has led many to take up the Manchu label again after decades of both hard and soft persecution. But clearly there is some motivation behind doing so.

And it is important to note that an ethnic identity is not a cultural one: an ethnic identity is one that is, by definition, defined by descent. Such descent can be real or invented, or somewhere in between, but that’s the key thing here. The existence of an ethnic identity is not predicated on the existence of a cultural distinction from other neighbouring groups, even if that is often what happens in practice: ‘usually’ and ‘must’ are distinct categories. We can say that Manchus are, by and large, ‘acculturated’, that is to say that their cultural practices have almost entirely aligned with the majority Han. But they are not ‘assimilated’, in that they do not consider themselves a subset of Han.

I hope that’s helped explain where our difference in approach and interpretation lies: I’m talking in purely ethnic terms, because I am more or less only concerned with ethnic identity here.

—– 908.3 —–2022-11-03 17:13:08+08:00:

It’s a considerable oversimplification at best. ‘Hui’ is a complex catch-all that mostly encompasses Sinophone Muslims, but from a wide variety of genealogical backgrounds, including historic Han converts and the descendants of Turkic migrants. The concept of a ‘Hui’ identity emerged out of the notion that they were essentially different from the Han, whatever their background, and that this underlying difference was then performed and reified through Islam. But to paraphrase one of my other comments in this thread, there’s a difference between ‘usually’ and ‘must’ that can be drawn here: in the 1850s for instance we see Muslim leaders in southwest China lamenting a decline in religious sentiment, but their wording implies that those who effectively dropped out of the ummah would still be ethnic Hui.

909: What motivated the Shōgitai and other pro-Tokugawa troops at Ueno to keep fighting after Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrendered in the spring of 1868?, submitted on 2022-11-02 04:55:48+08:00.

—– 909.1 —–2022-11-04 00:23:46+08:00:

So, I reposted this question mainly to test a couple of new moderation features, so getting an answer – especially one of this depth – was an unexpected surprise! Thanks!

—– 909.2 —–2022-11-04 03:23:50+08:00:

Actually, a bit of a follow-up: Yoshinobu may have had a relatively small clan holding himself, but what of the estates passed down the Shoguns? Was it simply that he hadn’t had enough time in power to get them organised, or were there legal barriers to their full utilisation?

—– 909.3 —–2022-11-04 07:37:16+08:00:

Ahh, I see now – I think I was misreading some of the chronology you presented. Thanks for clearing things up!

910: How did Mao learn about/of the idea of Communism?, submitted on 2022-11-04 00:36:29+08:00.

—– 910.1 —–2022-11-23 18:07:20+08:00:

A really interesting answer that admittedly left me with a question or two, namely around the influence of anarchism. How far was anarchism understood as a political philosophy before large-scale exposure to Marxism? Was it comprehended much more coherently, or was it still only really known about in relatively vague terms, just less vague? And if anarchism was the key early influence on Mao and his cadre, to what extent should we see Maoism within the context of the history of anarchism as opposed to – or in conjunction with – that of Marxism? To suggest a provocative extreme, was Maoism just anarchism with a Marxist coat of paint?

—– 910.2 —–2022-11-24 00:57:16+08:00:

Goodness me, I am absolutely blown away. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer!

911: Sacks and the pope, hmmm, submitted on 2022-11-05 06:23:33+08:00.

—– 911.1 —–2022-11-05 22:18:51+08:00:

Thank you for your submission to /r/badhistory! Unfortunately, it has been removed for the following reason(s):

Your submission is in violation of Rule 2. Your submission Is a question and should be directed at one of the weekly free for all posts or history subs that allows these like AskHistorians.

If you feel this was done in error, or would like better clarification or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to message the moderators.

912: Need help. Thanks, submitted on 2022-11-06 19:36:31+08:00.

—– 912.1 —–2022-11-07 17:58:18+08:00:

古韵圆茶 – gu3yun2 yuan2cha2: archaic round tea

思一园茶行出品 – si1yi1yuan2 cha2hang2 chu1pin3: Product of [the] Siyiyuan Tea Company

普洱茶【熟茶】– pu3er3cha2 (shu2cha2): Pu’er tea (ripe tea)

净含量：200克 – jing4han2liang4 er4bai3ke4: Net weight: 200 grams

913: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of November 7, 2022, submitted on 2022-11-06 23:13:10+08:00.

—– 913.1 —–2022-11-07 19:07:05+08:00:

I have more or less planned out a wargame scenario that I may run as a participation game early next year, based on the 1864 Shimonoseki Expedition. I’ll be using Daniel Mersey’s The Men Who Would be Kings with a couple of minor tweaks, mainly to do with movement (which I can elaborate on if anyone really wants to know).

The overall plan means I need to do up 60 figures for the Europeans: 24 Royal Marines, 24 British sailors, and 12 French sailors. I have most of what I need for the Japanese force, but I’ll need to do up an extra unit of 16 armoured pikemen, as well as a few extra unarmoured swordsmen. The big thing is that I’ll need a battery of coastal artillery, so it’s a question of budget+table space in terms of where on the scale of 3 to 5 guns I do, especially as I’ll also need to do some terrain-building for a breastwork to actually mount the guns behind.

—– 913.2 —–2022-11-08 20:32:54+08:00:

Similarly, early career history and history-adjacent academics have relied on Twitter for networking for a long time, and it’s also been a space that has allowed a reasonable amount of public history work to be done on an open platform. There just isn’t really an alternative to that at this stage. Mastodon is being floated as an option, but the relative insularity of communities could be an issue and essentially create a network of historians with little public visibility.

—– 913.3 —–2022-11-08 22:59:16+08:00:

But is anyone joining other than economists?