All about history

[TimTim]

In the light of Viri's philosophy thread, i start this thread with the objective of exchanging interesting historical anecdotes that you might read or hear(preferably from reading as verbal accounts are usually unreliable from experience). It can be a significant but less well known part of the history to the world or even to your own countrymen, a historical twist that could have shaped the world the other way around and your admiration for historical figures. As general rule, keep the thread civil.

[Ironbound]

I am envious of your remarkable succinctness with the intro post. My thread's stretched a mile and didn't convey anything more than what you summarized in a neat five lines grumble grumble

Anywaus, I'm glad to see this take off, Hushie, and I'll be sure to contribute often even though the Gazebo itself is dusty from my inconsistency and try to come up with interesting things to discuss.

For a start, how about we talk about the eccentricities of Muhammad bin Tughluq?

[TimTim]

Welp, you will have to take the lead on this Viri and school me on this, forgive me for my knowledge of the sultan is limited to critiques of him being mixed and a controversial leader of his time. I may have to read up on this.

[Guest]

So like, I've been writing a story as of late, and it involves the life of a young boy in the mid 1800's in Germany. That's oddly specific, but, I just need some info in how life is kinda like in the 1800's in the European countries. Thanks if anyone can ever answer!

[Zephyrus the Priestess]

So like, I've been writing a story as of late, and it involves the life of a young boy in the mid 1800's in Germany. That's oddly specific, but, I just need some info in how life is kinda like in the 1800's in the European countries. Thanks if anyone can ever answer!

oh! around this time would be the Victorian Age, the Industrial Revolution, as well as what's frequently called the Age of Exploration or Age of Discovery... which is p inaccurate cause it assumes that cultures and peoples didn't actually exist -prior- to having met the Europeans, also kind of undervalues these cultures and peoples overall, too.

BUT ANYWAY.

you've already got electricity, cause this century is where this fun thing called the industrial revolution happens. daily living conditions were FUN for workers. they flocked to the cities (often, cities were build -around- the factories, because factories could be built anywhere now that steam power is a thing), so you had a surplus of labor (aka people were clamoring to have a job). because of this, workers were treated as expendable by their employers (i.e. they got rly shit pay). they also had really tiny houses, about 3x5 ft. so people were cramped together in such tiny quarters. with regards to apartments, the richer you were, the closer to the ground floor you lived; the poorest would be situated at the topmost floors, cause elevators weren't a thing yet.

like i mentioned earlier about the Age of Exploration, this was also the era in which the British Empire really made a lot of countries its bitches. special mentions are the portuguese, austrian-hungarian, and dutch empires. you'd have lots of ships going to places, slavery, conquest, and all of the other pretty things that come with subjugating strange, foreign, technologically-inferior peoples to your will (note: the british weren't really interested in having kids colonies at first; they really just wanted people to trade with. but some shit happened in india that changed their minds, making india into a colony directly under the british crown). westerners were also finally exploring asia too, if that's relevant to what you were lookin' for.

some of the significant people that existed in this era (in no particular order):

napoleon, jane austen, charles dickens, charles darwin, alfred nobel, leo tolstoy, nikola tesla, thomas edison, mark twain, louis pasteur, sir arthur conan doyle, jack the ripper, vincent van gogh, queen victoria, etc.

well idk if that helps but i do hope i've shed a bit of insight into the 1800's... which is kind of hard to summarize tbh a ton of shit happened and there's a whole lot of perspectives involved .w.

[Ironbound]

Yes, don't remind me of what those bastards did to us. You can understand the rare depth of my emotion if I, of all people, employ a pejorative, and a curse at that.

Anyways, to take my mind off that, I'm getting back to the topic of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, also known as the Wisest Fool.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq, the eldest son of Ghiyasudden Tughlaq of the Tughlaq dynasty of the Delhi Sultanates, ruled most of what is now North and Central India, Bangladesh and Pakistan from 1324 until his death in 1351.

Of all the Tughlaqs, his was the most distinguished figure.

He was the most eloquent and accomplished prince of his age. His letters, both in Arabic and Persian, were admired for their elegance long after he had ceased to reign. Besides a thorough knowledge of logic and the philosophy of the Greeks, he was much attached to mathematics and to physical science and himself used to attend sick persons for the purpose of watching the symptoms of any extraordinary disease. He was regular in his devotions and conformed in his private life to all the moral precepts of his religion. Nor was he a weakling; in war he was distinguished for his gallantry and personal activity, so that his contemporaries were justified in esteeming him as one of the wonders of the age. Yet all these talents and accomplishments were in vain, for they were accompanied by a perversion of judgement, which, even after every allowance for the intoxication of absolute power, left no doubt about some kind of insanity.

A remarkable aspect about him was his almost stupid oversight of practical constraint when formulating plans. He is credited with many farsighted plans which were sound and aimed at welfare, but was almost blind to the fact of their impracticability. This made him a tragicomic figure, and devastating as a ruler.

One infamous example of his good-sauce-for-bad-fish decisions was his great Shift of Capital.

In 1327, Tughluq passed an order to shift the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad (present day Maharashtra) in the Deccan region of south India.

He had sound reasons for this. Tughluq said that it would help him to establish control over the fertile land of the Deccan plateau. He also felt that it would make him safe from the Mongol invasions which were mainly done on Delhi and regions around in north India. (No thanks to Timur Lang) Also, it was felt that it not always possible to operate a large army from Delhi for the occupation of the Southern states. Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq himself had spent a number of years as prince to occupy and guard these states during the time of his father. Daulatabad, he reasoned, was also situated at a central place so the administration of the north and the south could be possible.

All good, of course. So what should have been done was to merely shift the official capital to Daulatabad, and himself move there, right?

WRONG! Tughlaq ordered all people of Delhi to proceed to Daulatabad as well, complete with all their belongings! Ibn Batuta, the Moroccan traveler who had resided in his court at the time, cites that the force was without any leniency. To quote his translation: "Without consultation or weighing of the pros and cons, he brought run on Delhi which for 170 to 180 years had grown in prosperity and rivaled Baghdad and Cairo. The city with its Sarais and suburbs and villages spread over four or five leagues, all was destroyed (i.e., deserted). Not a cat or a dog was left."

This is where the bizarre tragicomedy begins. To facilitate this terrible decision, Tughlaq was benevolent almost to the point of altruism. A broad road was constructed for convenience. Shady trees were planted on both sides of the road; he set up halting stations at an interval of two miles. Provisions for food and water were also made available at the stations. Tughluq established a 'khanqah' at each of the station where at least one sufi saint was stationed. Even a regular postal service was established between Delhi and Daulatabad! And yet, the forced migration was merciless. In the process, many died in the road due to hunger and exhaustion.

It gets worse, believe it or not. In 1334 there was a rebellion in Mabar. While on his way to suppress the rebellion, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague due to which Tughluq himself became ill, and many of his soldiers died. While he retreated back to Daulatabad, Mabar and Dwarsamudra broke away from Tughluq control. This was followed a revolt in Bengal. Fearing that the sultanate's northern borders were exposed to attacks, in 1335, he decided to shift the capital back to Delhi, and ordered all the populace to turn back! Needless to say, Delhi suffered greatly in size and stature, and Tughlaq's Treasury was severely compromised.

What's worse, this was not his only misadventure. The fool, ambitous of annexing kingdoms, invited nobles and leaders from those regions and gave them grants from his already burdened Treasury. Partly with their help and partly from his own kingdom, Tughluq raised an army of 37 hundred thousand soldiers in 1329. Barani has written that Tughluq took no step to check the ability of the soldiers or the brand of horses. They were paid in one year advance, and after being kept idle for one year, Tughluq found it difficult to continue paying for them. Therefore, he decided to disperse and dissolve the soldiers in 1329! What a waste! Many of these soldiers also perished in ill-planned mountain conquests.

The fool was pained by his monetary losses, so he had another horrible experiment to cap his litany of failures; token currency of brass and copper coins, that were equal in value to gold and silver. These coins further lacked any artistic finish, with the effect that every Smith and goldsmith was able to turn his house into a mint of worthless coins that threatened to collapse the economy and destroy Indian trade! It was a mercy for the country when he died.

His ideas behind the steps he took were great. But his impatience failed him to imply them properly. As a result his policies became a reason behind the huge decline of his kingdom. While he was tolerant of all faiths, open minded and impartial, he also lacked all sense of proportion as a statesman, which proved fatal to his dynasty.

[Zephyrus the Priestess]

haha, don't worry. we too were once- and still are- victims of such ambitious foreign rulers; i understand where you're coming from.

i do wonder, why'd he want the entire populace to move cities? was there a lack of subjects in Daulatabad?

[Ironbound]

No, it was just total royal pique. Apparently the populace of Delhi didn't like the fact that they weren't to be the capital anymore, and this annoyed him, so he ordered them to abandon the city they valued more than his command, and forced everyone, even the elderly and the infirm, to pack up and move or be killed.

A strange fellow, indeed.

[Zephyrus the Priestess]

... well, hubris certainly does make a person do funny things and cause their downfalls :s

kinda like what Mao Zedong did with china and communism really

things were going okay until he got excited and started the Great Leap Forward... theeeeen things went to hell. two of the things that messed it up was that steel was produced in the backyards of every common household in china (read: inexperienced people taking metal things and melting them into steel), and that Mao actually launched an attack on sparrows to stop them from eating the crops... which let to the proliferation of pests like insects, which were hella harder to stop.

[ZEL]

So like, I've been writing a story as of late, and it involves the life of a young boy in the mid 1800's in Germany. That's oddly specific, but, I just need some info in how life is kinda like in the 1800's in the European countries. Thanks if anyone can ever answer!

Oh, oh, oh! I'm a bit too rusty on the details to give you a rundown on German history at that time, but if you're gonna write a store set there in the mid of 1800, absolutely do look up "Biedermeier period" and the March Revolution of '48 (as well as Vormärz and the Frankfurt Assembly). (While said revolution failed, it was actually quite interesting, and introduced the black-red-gold flag that you'll know as our current national flag!)

Europe experienced a lot of unrest during the first half of the century - you could say that we went a bit revolution-happy there (with varying degrees of success).

Early 1800 marked the definite end of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Germanies of the 1800s were nowhere near anything you could call a united country! So your portrayal of the culture and people in the story will depend greatly on where your character lives, because there wasn't actually such a thing as "Germany" at the time. (The German Confederation is worth looking up here, though.)

There were efforts made to conjure a sort of national spirit among the German people, but it kinda fell flat. Part of the reason was the rivalry between Prussia and Austria, of course.

If you're going further towards the 60's and 70's, you'll have to keep in mind that the Austro-Prussian War took place in 1866, disbanding the German Confederation, creating the North German Confederation, and very importantly, ending Austria's grip on German territory.

This period marked the victory of the prussian-preferred "Kleindeutsche Lösung" (unifying the Northern German states), as opposed to the Großdeutsche Lösung which sought to add the sourthern states and Austria.

There's lots of political shifts going on in 1800's Germany, but if you're going to describe the life of a common person, your best bet is to start off by looking up information about the specific region they are supposed to live in.

A boy living in the Westphalia region would have a completely different experience than one living in Bavaria or Brandenburg, and even the city can make a difference. Different regions experienced different cultural and political changes and phases.

You'll probably have to do a lot of research on the condition of the German working class, as their demands and opinions played an important role in the revolutions.

Important people to read up on would include Otto von Bismarck, William I, and, of course, Karl Marx.

I could probably try to dig up my history notes, but honestly, 1800 is a really, really turbulent era for Germany, and it'll take you a lot of research that I couldn't even cover in one post if I tried.

It's totally worth it, though, because if you understand what happened in German in the 1800s, it'll greatly help you in understanding the mess that is the first half of the 1900s.

[Guest]

TEXT WALL 1

No worries, I'm sure this will help!! Thanks Zephy!!!

TEXT WALL 2

And I've actually done some research already! Haha, and yes, it's very very turbulent. Lots of stuff happened and lots of details.

But to specify, the time period in the 1800's I'll be really focusing on is from the 1840's-1860's, because some timey-wimey stuff happens in my fic. Haha.

[laggless01]

I'd recommend Extra History, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz (just scroll down and you'll find it).