Most Influential

I am thinking of starting a series of lists that deal with the most influential event, things, or people, in a particular period of history. This will be based on both reader input and my own research. Most of the lists will probably be small. Whit influential, I am talking about effect on history, this could be either in a good way, bad way, high-profile or secret. Please let me know what you think.

This is for HBG, it is urgent that Joy and Historyteacher get up to date on the latest announcements for the Guild. This includes choosing an Office (See a few posts below), changing the blogrolls, and so forth. Contact me as soon as you can, there are several issues that I also have to discuss.

Globalisation Part III: First Imperial Age

I know my two revious globalisation posts have been really long, this may have bored some of you to sleep before you recheached the 10th sentence. I will try to make this one shorter and more concise. If you want any things cleared up or simply want to comment, do so at the comments below.

Most of us, when we think of the Imperial Age think of that time in history when large European empires carved out and colonised large parts of Africa and Asia. However, there was another Imperial Age that I believe preceeded this. It almost directly followed the First Age of Global Markets. This era created a great rise in trading which made several kingdoms and empires tremendously rich. They expanded, taking over weaker and poorer nations. The approximate time of this era would be sometime after the Mongolian empire broke up, around the 1400s into about 1600. In this time, several large empires rose up in power and strenght in almost a chain all the way from China to Europe. They were the Chinese empire under the Ming dynasty, the Mughal Empire of India, the Safavid Empire of Persia, the Ottoman Empire of Turkey, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, and farther west Spain. I know I have excluded many nations an countries that have been historically significant, however, this was a list of empires. The Iitalian city-states, France, and England were not yet world empires. Spain already had a well-established empire in the America. Other American colonial powers belong in the Era after this. The empires I have listed dominated the "Old World" in politics, economics, travel, society, and technology. These were the superpowers of old. Particularly the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians. These empires were basically what most people immediately thought of when thinking world powers. Of course, war between them was inevitable, and several of the empires lost agains the other. However, more or less, none of these nations were able to completely vanqush another for a long time. Indeed, the first one to fall, the Ming, was simply succeeded by another Chinese dynasty, the empire remained more or less intact, the last to fall were Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Bitter rivals throughout history suddenly having to be allied in World War I, which they lost and led to their demise. For much of this time period, these empires directly controlled large parts of the known world and dominated much of the rest.

Constitutional Notes

Here is the newest issue, for those of you who do not know what this is, these are my observations and things that I noted while reading the American Constitution.

Article 1 Sect. 8: The Constitution only gives Congress the right to create and maintain armies and navies, it does not give a specific definition of these.

Sect. 9.2: The right to of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless there is a rebellion or an invasion. Again, these are not defined. Could the invation of ants count?

Sect. 9.6: Ships cannot be forced to enter another state, what about commonwealths and territories?

Sect. 9.7: "a regular statement and accout of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time." Speaks for itself.

10.3: States cannot keep troops 0r warships without Congress's permission unless it is being invaded or in severe danger of. Again, who decides?

Article 2, 1.7: Presidents will get a suitable compensation, does not have to be money.

2.1: President has power over militia, army, and navy, again these are not defined, nothing about marines, air force, or coast guard.
Yes I know, it's really picky, but this is the Constitution of the United States of America, this is what establishes our government.

Back IV: Some Old Traditions

Recently I have been posting quite a lot about the History Bloggers' Guild. This as taken up a lot of space and my number of history-related posts have been going down. To stop this I am getting 2 new goals. More "old-fashioned" posts, and more traffic. So here goes.

How to start? I haven't done this in a while. Well let's start with the Middle Ages. People so often just forget about the rest of the world when talking about the Middle Ages. They only think of what was happening in Europe. Why is this? Is it because all our schools put so much emphasis on European history?

This is just an announcement, so many of my linked blogs have not posted since Monday 14. It doesn't seem like meer coincidence. If you have one of those blogs and are reading this, please tell me why.

HBG linking

In HBG each you would link to the blogger who recruited you, the other bloggers that person also recruited (the chapter you are a part of) and the bloggers you recruit, plus the Leaders. Now, how would you distinguish all those people? Here are some rules:

For a Leader put the word Leader somewhere in the name, or in the description if you use blogrolling.

For the blogger who recruited you put in Recruiter in the name or description if you have it.

For the bloggers in your chapter say Chapter in the name and/or description.

For the bloggers you recruit, say recruit.

This will help people who are coming to your site be able to navigate through HBG more easily. Also, each Leader will officially take on his/her responsibilities when the Leader chapter is officially complete. Then each Leader will start individually recruiting, I have no control over who they recruit, I just trust that the Leaders will follow the rules. Also, someone is not in HBG unless someone who already is has a blogroll to that blogger with one of the above characteristics.
Basically, update your blogrolls.

Trench Warfare

Just a little history post. In the last post I talked about how moden textbooks warped World War I. In here I will tell a little about WWI Strategy. This was the first war in which trenches were the major part of a stalemate for entire fronts. During the American Civil War's siege of Petersburg an eery early duplication of this was created. The problems in World War I and the Civil War were the same, higly advanced weapons, old-fasioned tactics. Generals still thought they could overwhelm enemies armed with mortars, artillery, and lethal infantry weapons by simply running at them. These were only successful during Napoleon's time. Europe found that out the hard way.

World War I Warp

History Teacher's main mission is to correct revisionist history. I've dedided to do a little of that too. In all the school textbooks America seems to have quickly and efficiently prepared to fight for World War I. Recently I have been reading To the Last Man, by Jeff Shaara. Great book. Also it seems he has done his research. In that novel, it is shown that the U.S. government barely did anything to prepare for the war. Industry was not fully mobilised, and many people simply had now idea what to do. It is sadening to see actual American History Textbooks giving so much warped info.

HBG Leader Offices

First, let me clear up the relations between Leaders and all other History Bloggers' Guild members. As I have said before, HBG is for blogs who devote at least a part of their blogs to history. Your blog does not have to be 100% devoted, if you make a few history-related posts a week from now and your site fits other qualifications, then you are welcome to join.

Leaders are basically information gatherers and "web scouts". They look around in the Internet and give general suggestions and advice to all Guild members. If you use Google Blogger, then Leaders are somewhat like Blogger Knowledge. In return for these services, Guild members must blogroll to Leaders, specifically distinguishing them as Leaders in the blogrolls. They also have to further spread what they learned from the Leaders and apply it to their blogs. Leaders don't control or order blogs around, they just advise and post important information. A non-Leader usually deals with the chapter he/she is part of.

Right now I am assigning each Leader "offices". These basically hand out specific types of responsibilities. The current offices are:

Scriptor (me)- Chief Diplomat: handle all general relations between Guild and other sites. Also Public Information and Relations: Tell others what Guild really is explain it.

History Teacher- Chief of Recruitment and Statistics: establish and maintain qualifications for being accepted, all other blogs must make sure a blogger follows these rules before recruiting him/her. Also is in charge of polls, every month a record of the total number of guild members will be compiled by using polls. Also votes will be held to find the opinion of the Guild on certain issues.

Empty- Chief of Blogosphere News: Searches the Internet to find the lates news and information related to blogs. Advises Guild members on what add-ons, services, etc. can best help their blogs.

Empty- Chief of Guild Issues and Opinions: Relies on Chief of Recruitment and Statistics to study what Guild members want done and how they feel about certain issues, analyzes this and discusses with other Leaders on what best to be done.

Empty- Chief of Promotion: Focuses on getting the description of the Guild presented by Chief Diplomat across to as many people as possible. In general, works hard to spread the word of the Guild.

Other responsibilities will most likely be added to the above offices, if you would like to be in a different office please tell me.

Globalization Part II: First Era of Global Markets

I have changed Era of Trade to First Era of Global Markets. This is the time when merchants, traders, and travelers visited foreign nations and empires, sold goods they brought from home, and returned with new foreign goods to sell at their native lands. During this time the products carried along the Silk Route, which was overland, and the Spice Route, which was over water, no longer just stopped at the Middle East or Africa. Large numbers of Europeans, encouraged from what they heard from returning Crusaders, decided to see Palestine for themselves. Most of this trade between Europeans and the Middle Easterners first took place in Palestine, but then it spread. Chinese silk, Indian spices, and Arabian perfumes came into high demand in Europe. A chance for profit was obvious. Italy was really the first European place to take full advantage. Two of its port cities, Genoa and Venice, became immensely rich and powerful, quickly dominating Mediterranean trade, they also became rivals. Italy was not united at that time. During this time, European Crusaders and merchants also brought back many new ideas and inventions. The Arabs had recorded and greatly expanded previous Roman and Greek knowledge, now this knowledge was quickly spreading in Italy and other major European trading nations. Arabs also learned to value European products, especially wool, and perhaps timber and certain metals. The old trade routes started to thrive with the new traffic. At this point global markets fully came into use. Now people in one area buy products from many places. Merchants once limited to their own villages and towns, soon became rich by expanding their economic horizons and opening up new "markets" in foreign worlds. Because there now were vast new lands who wanted their products, Eurpean, Middle Eastern, and Oriental economies quicly grew.
The new merchants in Europe realized that they could also wield political power with their enormous wealth. They formed a new middle class, consisting of people who mainly lived in towns and cities. They put pressure on their governments to find ways to help them. In this period, many skilled craftsmen also realized their goods had great new demand, with charters from their governements they formed their own guilds. It is from these guilds that I derive the name of History Bloggers' Guild. These guilds were basically early labor unions, there were leather tanners' guilds, shoemakers' guilds. Now, whate separates these guilds from HBG is that these guilds had virtual monopolies of their craft in their cities.
As more people moved to the cities and found new wealth, the cities' power increased. Older feudal lords, who mainly relied on large farms, gradually lost their power to the kings and queens. These kings and queens no longer depended on feudal lords for support, they had the merchants and crafsmen.
In the Middle East and the Orient, great new empires emerged to control sections of this new trade, these empires grew extremely wealthy and powerful. It is also this time that the Persians, Turks, and Mongols rose to power. These people established empires that often overlapped the Silk Route. They became middlemen for the goods from India and China.
The kings and queens of Europe were pressured to do something. Some offered great reward for those who ventured out to sea to look for new trade routes, others tried to establish their own empires to combat the power of the Eastern Empires. Quickly, the First Era of Gl0bal Markets gave way to the First Imperial Age.

Messages to Readers

History Teacher, you're definitely not alone with the problems with comments, it is now a known issue in Blogger. This is a great barrier to communication between us two. I have a solution, both of us use discussion forums, mine can be found in the sidebar. For now all messages must be placed in the discussion forum.

There is one problem with accepting Joy, I can't find his blog. Guild members must have one and only one site representing them that is a blog. If you have a blog, please put a link or type up the address in the Forum. If your site matches the qualifications, then you're in. When you become a Leader, all you have to do is post about it, and blogroll to History Teacher and Historium, remember to identify these two sites as Leaders. For an example, check my link to History Teacher in the sidebar.

This entire problem with commenting raises an important issue, commenting is the most important form of communication in HBG. If this happened during a time HBG was fully operational, problems will definitely occurr. The only solution is to add non-Blogger message boards or forums to all the sites. These will be emergency forms of communication. I advise all HBG members to find a forum or message board.

HBG info.

This is a post that I hope will clear up some questions or concerns you may have about the History Bloggers' Guild. History Teacher has recently posted about this too, I advise you read it. These are the benefits: You are part of a chapter with a total of 5 bloggers. That means there are 4 other bloggers in the chapter you are a part of. Those 4 bloggers should be regularly visiting your site, while you do the same to them. You can give each other tips, info, sugestions, and comments. Basically help them improve their blogs. If one of you has found something interesting that could help the blogs in your chapter, then you can quickly tell the other bloggers. If you found something really important, you can tell a Leader. Something that won't happen to you is having the Leaders boss you around. The Leaders should be searching the Internet trying to spread the word of HBG and looking for other important things. You should visit their sites every now and then to receive important news. Now when it comes to links, when you are recruited by a blogger, you should have a blogroll to him/her, you should also blogroll to all 5 Leaders, now the person you recruited will have recruited other bloggers, if there are 4 of those, you and those 4 form a chapter. Those bloggers are most of the time most important to you. Of course you link to them. Now you may start recruiting when you are part of a full chapter, whoever you recruit you should blogroll to. Except for the Leaders, all the people who I have mentioned that you should blogroll to should also blogroll to you.
One last thing, if you quickly join now, you will be a Leader, in other words, every person in the Guild will blogroll to you. I have 3 open positions left. Please join.

Constitutional Notes

Article 1, Sect. 6.1: Congress member cannot be arrested for crimes when going to and returning from sessions, can't a Senator or Rep say that he/she is going, even though the next session might be several weeks away?

Sect 7.2: The President can withhold a bill from Congress for three days without signing, if Congress is adjourned before those three days, then the bill dies. Coincidentally, the President is allowed to adjourn Congress when he thinks it is necessary.

Sect. 8.7: Congress may establish post roads, or roads over which mail is transported, nothing about delivering mail.

Sunday Review

This is about the movie Troy, which opened last summer. It claims to have been inspired by Homer's Illiad. In my opinion, I don't think many of the cast or crew even read the Illiad. They just knew the basic story. As a movie it was okay, the battle scenes were not bad and all. However, if you want to see an accurate depiction of Illiad, don't go anywhere near this film. It uses battles that never occurred or were mentioned in the book, twisted several characters, and they left out way too many duels. Now I know no one is completely sure whether there ever was a 10-year siege of Troy by the Greeks. But if the movie says anything about being related to Illiad, then it should be faithful to the original story. First of all, the movie managed to turn an epic siege into a two week adventure. Yeah yeah I know 10 years is long, but you see, if you ever read the Illiad, you would first notice that it takes place in the last year. Most people know what happened in the beginning and all, and if they didn't, a voiceover together with some flashbacks would have sufficed. Another thing, I recently watched a commercial for it on TV, it showed an battle scene. When I saw it I wondered where else I saw the same tactics being used, oh yeah, Spartacus. The Trojans were all densely packed together while the Greeks charged them like an infuriated mob. If you took away the giant city of Troy itself, the battles would have seemed like those between Roman legions and Germanic armies. Last of all, why is the landing on the beach so much like in Saving Private Ryan, the whistling arrows sound so much like whistling machine gun bullets. Counting in accuracy in relation to original source, I give this a 2/5.

Site News

This is some info on the globalisation series. It will mainly focus on the economic globalisation from the Middle Ages to the present. My definition of economic globalisation is: the development of international economic links that affect many different people and economies of different civilizations.

About the History Bloggers' Guild (HBG) I am still looking for more people. You can comment here or on the previous post if you are interested. If you decide to join then all you have to do is tell me, link to me and the other Leader, History Teacher, and put up a post on your blog about HBG. Then if you see a blogger who you think could join HBG and is interested refer them to me. Once I have 4 other Leaders, each one of them can start recruiting on their own, as long as the bloggers they accept have at least one blog that fits the qualifications: regularly posts about historical information, post at least 3-4 times a week, respect the study of history and knows why it is important, provide balanced, unbiased, straigtforward information, and not use any profanity or other extreme information unrelated to history, unless it is in a historical quote.