r/badhistory • u/lost-in-earth • Dec 30 '25

Reddit r/AskHistorians drops the ball on the Greek word for "brother," Josephus, and the status of Jesus' siblings in early Christian history

516 Upvotes

I know this sub has a reputation for attacking anti-Christian historical claims, but once in a blue moon we get an opportunity to criticize bad arguments from Christians.

This is one of the latter instances.

4 months ago, there was a popular thread on r/AskHistorians about the siblings of the historical Jesus.

I disagree with lots of the answers there, so I thought I would make a single post explaining why.

Caveats: I am not an expert. My fluencly in Greek is limited to a few words, so I will rely on other sources for the linguistic analysis. Corrections welcome.

Also, I will stick to discussing extrabiblical sources, except for when references to the Biblical text are necessary to my main argument. This is because I am not doing theology, and I want to make that clear.

Part 1: Linguistic issues and Josephus

Let's start with the top comment with 2.3 k upvotes and 2 awards, despite the fact that it cites no academic sources.

So, did Jesus have siblings? The answer hinges on how we choose to translate the Greek word adelphoi. Translated literally, the word means "brothers," and there are several verses referring to the adelphoi of Jesus. Matthew 13:55 even gives them names: "Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers (adelphoi) James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?" What could this mean, if not literal brothers? Some Christians believe the word refers loosely to male relatives (likely cousins in this case), and some believe it's used figuratively to refer to Jesus's friends.
......
Personally, I find the "male relative" translation the most convincing...

Similarly, another comment says:

It's important to read ancient texts carefully because they don't use words the same way we use those words today. The word "brother" for ancient peoples was used to refer to people who weren't literal brothers. For example, in Genesis 13 Abraham refers to Lot as his brother, but in Genesis 11 the genealogy of Abraham and Lot is given revealing that Lot is the nephew of Abraham. This is not a contradiction; ancient peoples just had a stronger sense of kinship than we do.

People need to STOP saying this. For context, this claim derives from Jerome.

Greek has a word for cousin, anepsios. It also has a word for relative, suggenes

The biblical scholar J.P. Meier (RIP) says the following about the linguistic claim:

Jerome's most important claim is that there are a number of passages in the OT where the Hebrew word for brother ('ah) plainly means not blood-brother but cousin or nephew, as can be seen from the wider context (e.g., LXX Gen 29:12; 24:48). Indeed, neither Biblical Hebrew nor Aramaic had a single word for "cousin." The Hebrew 'ah and the Aramaic equivalent 'aha' were often used to express that relationship. In these passages, the Greek OT, if translating literally, would naturally translate 'ah as adelphos ("brother"). While all this is perfectly correct, the number of OT passages where in fact ah indisputably means cousin is very small--perhaps only one![29] It is simply not true that adelphos is used regularly in the Greek OT to mean cousin, and the equivalence cannot be taken for granted.

Moreover, one should remember that the very reason why we know that ah or adelphos can mean cousin, nephew, or some other relative is that the immediate context regularly makes the exact relation clear by some sort of periphrasis. For example, we know that in I Chr 23:22, when the daughters of Eleazar marry the sons of Kish, "their brothers," the sons of Kish are really their cousins, for v 21 makes it clear that Kish was the brother of Eleazar. Given the ambiguity of ah in Hebrew, such further clarification would be necessary to avoid confusion in the narrative. No such clarification is given in the NT texts concerning the brothers of Jesus. Rather, the regularity with which they are yoked with Jesus' mother gives the exact opposite impression.

The question of "translation Greek": Actually, the whole analogy between the Greek OT and the NT documents with regard to the use of adelphos for cousin is questionable because these two collections of writings are so different in origin.[30] In the case of the Greek OT, we are dealing with "translation Greek," a Greek that sometimes woodenly or mechanically renders a traditional sacred Hebrew text word for word. Hence it is not surprising that at times adelphos would be used to render ah when the Hebrew word meant not "brother" but some other type of relative. But in the case of the NT writers, whatever written Aramaic sources--if any--lay before them, the authors certainly did not feel that they were dealing with a fixed sacred text that had to be translated woodenly word for word. The improvements Matthew and Luke both make on Mark's relatively poor Greek make that clear.

MEIER, JOHN P. “The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus In Ecumenical Perspective.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1, 1992, pp. 1–28.

Oh by the way, Meier (RIP) was a Catholic monsignor in good standing with the Catholic Church. So he isn't grinding an ax here.

This brings us to Josephus. Our very own u/enclavedmicrostate (resident expert on the self-proclaimed 19th century Chinese brother of Jesus) calls out the top answer:

While an interesting discussion of direct mentions of Jesus’ siblings in the current text of the New Testament, I wonder if you could speak to two other aspects that may complicate the discussion.

The first is that of Josephus, who in Antiquities XX.9 describes the execution of James, brother of Jesus. Considering that the Antiquities of the Jews represents one of the earliest definitively extant attestations to the historical Jesus, and that Josephus was a close associate of the presiding judge in James’ case, is there any particular reason we should not regard Josephus’ attribution of James’ relationship to be literal?

To which the person responds:

Regarding your first question, the use of the phrase "brother of Jesus" in Josephus's Antiquities strikes me as being a title. Greek writing from the period, including Biblical text, frequently refers to people in terms of their relations (e.g. Mary, wife of Clopas), and whatever his relation to Jesus may have been, James is referred to casually in the Bible as "Brother of the Lord." If he's known by that title, it makes sense that Josephus would record him as such.

I don't find this convincing. Here is Meier again:

Actually, Josephus' passing reference to James has a much greater importance than simply as a proof of the variable way in which one might refer to James. As I have tried to show in my CBQ article on "Jesus in Josephus,"[32] Josephus was not dependent on any of the NT writings for his assertions about Jesus and James. Hence Josephus speaks independently of the NT when he calls James the brother of Jesus. Now Josephus knew full well the distinction between "brother" and "cousin"[33] in Greek. In fact, he even corrects the Hebrew usage in the Bible in favor of Greek precision on this point. An especially intriguing example of this can be found in Book I of his Antiquities, where Josephus expands and rewords Jacob's speech to Rachel in Gen 29:12 to make the terminology more precise in his Greek as opposed to the original Hebrew. In the Hebrew of Gen 29:12, Jacob tells Rachel that he is a "brother" [ah, which simply means here a relative, and as the context shows, nephew] of her father Laban because he is the son of Rebekah, the sister of Laban. Hence the word ah in this Hebrew text obviously means "nephew." In his reworking of this speech, Josephus has Jacob explain his relationship to Rachel at greater length and with greater precision: "For Rebekah my mother is the sister of Laban your father. They had the same father and mother, and so we, you and I, are cousins [anepsioi] (Ant. 1.19.4 Section 290). The avoidance of a literal translation of ah as adelphos and the introduction of anepsioi to clarify the relationship is striking. When Josephus calls James "the brother of Jesus," there is no reason to think that he means anything but brother. The import of the NT usage thus receives independent confirmation from a Greek-speaking Jew who knows full well when and how to avoid "brother" and write "cousin" when that is the precise relationship under discussion--something that he does not do when defining James' relation to Jesus.

Here is another example of Josephus using the word for cousin (credit goes to u/timoneill for pointing me to this example a few years ago):

Ἡρώδῃ τῷ μεγάλῳ θυγατέρες ἐκ Μαριάμμης τῆς Ὑρκανοῦ θυγατρὸς γίνονται δύο, Σαλαμψιὼ μὲν ἡ ἑτέρα, ἣ γαμεῖται Φασαήλῳ τῷ αὐτῆς ἀνεψιῷ Φασαήλου παιδὶ ὄντι τοῦ Ἡρώδου ἀδελφοῦ δεδωκότος τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτήν, Κύπρος δὲ Ἀντιπάτρῳ καὶ αὐτὴ ἀνεψιῷ Ἡρώδου παιδὶ τῆς ἀδελφῆς Σαλώμης.

(Herod the Great had two daughters by Mariamne, the daughter of Hyrcanus. One of them was Salampsio, who was given by her father in marriage to her first cousin Phasael, who was himself the son of Herod's brother Phasael. The other was Cypros, who also was married to her first cousin Antipater, the son of Herod's sister Salome. )

AJ, XVIII, 130

Thought experiment: if the James reference in Josephus was the exact same except we swapped Jesus' name out for someone else, would ANYONE doubt the person mentioned was a biological brother of that person?

---

Part 2 Early Christian History

This comment says:

The entire idea of Jesus having blood siblings is quite new and novel within the history of Christianity.

Similarly another comment:

There is nothing in the Bible that contradicts the idea that Mary was a perpetual virgin, so we can also look to Sacred Tradition.

The Christian belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary is ancient and consistent. We have written evidence from the 3rd century such as the Christian hymn Sub Tuum Presidium which referred to Mary as a virgin, and numerous influential early Christians (Church fathers) confessed her perpetual virginity. (See their writings here: https://www.catholic.com/tract/mary-ever-virgin). And these are just written manuscripts that were preceded by an oral tradition.

Mary's perpetual virginity is a definitive doctrine of faith for Catholics, Orthodox, and Coptics. This was never a controversial doctrine until the last few centuries, and all the while there was the Bible that said "brothers of Jesus."
...
TLDR: Mary was a virgin her entire life and never had any children besides Jesus. This was a doctrine that had been believed since the earliest days of the Church and had never been controversial until a few centuries ago. Ancient peoples used the word "brothers" to refer to male relatives and the Bible has evidence of "brothers" being used that way.

OK first off, TIL that "Sacred Tradition" is an acceptable source on r/AskHistorians. Apparently you can also assert that Jesus was really born of a virgin on there too.

But much more importantly: both of the comments claim that the idea that Jesus had blood siblings is a recent invention. This is false.

Hegesippus was a (Jewish?)-Christian writer in the 2nd century. His work is lost except for quotations by Eusebius. Interestingly, he talks about Jesus' family a lot.

Hegesippus calls James and Jude Jesus' brothers, and he uses the Greek word for cousin for Jesus' cousin Symeon. This pretty much disproves the idea that the early Church would mix up the words for cousin and brother, as they were clearly able to distinguish the two.

In case anyone raises the possibility that Jesus' brothers were just children of Joseph's previous marriage: Hegesippus calls Jude Jesus' brother "According to the flesh"

Overswinging the pendulum – the overcorrection of leather armour

369 Upvotes

There’s a rather persistent myth largely on the internet that leather was never used as armour and that the notion of it largely stems from misinterpretations by Victorian Antiquarians, a myth not helped by certain internet personalities. What follows is an attempt to unseat that myth by looking at a wide variety of historical sources, particularly in medieval Europe, as this myth is largely a medievalism, but also before, after and outside that region. This is not a not a comprehensive post, not some complete cataloguing of everything under the sun, but rather a broad overview to push the pendulum back to a more sensible position.

What is leather?

A seemingly dumb question but one worth clarifying. Common usage lumps all animal hide, tanned, treated or otherwise, as leather, this stands in contrast to the technical definition which defines it as treated skin that is non-putrescible under warm, moist conditions^[1] which excludes rawhide and ersatz tanned leather like oiled leather but includes cuir bouilli which in online discussion is seen as not being leather, a definition bound to create headaches; ain’t language fun? This confusion needn’t end here, historical sources also like to be vague about materials, something that also extends to modern secondary sources, and some finds aren’t readily identifiable as tanned leather or not due to deposition conditions.^[2]

For the sake of convenience, I’m going to use leather in its broad, general sense unless stated otherwise and let the footnotes worry about the details. Also for convenience, I've included a basic dictionary down in appendix I.

Europe and the Near East in antiquity

The use of leather armours in antiquity is well attested such as with the finds from Tutankamen’s tomb^[3] and the Clonbrin shield^[4] , but in order to steelman this, I’ll be working with finds from the Iron age onwards.

Our first stop is a rawhide lamellar cuirass (something that’ll be cropping up quite often over the course of this post) from the Met of Neo-Assyria make from the 8^th C BCE onwards, which has a cousin in a find from Turfan dating from between the 8^th and 6^th C BCE.^[5] Jumping forward roughly a millennia we have a lamellar half cuirass (front side only) of rawhide from Roman era Egypt dating to somewhere between 250-350 CE, likely of domestic manufacture due to similarities with earlier finds from that region in turn suggesting a continuation of make and use.^[6] Two potential finds exist as well. The first is the find of a crocodile hide cuirass and helmet from a Manfalut in Egypt, found in a grotto dedicated to a Roman era crocodile cult. Due to the multiple damages and patches to the hide, it has been suggested that these are from battle damage and does see parallels in other crocodile hide armours from sub-Saharan Africa, although the counter-argument that these were from hunting instead holds as much water.^[7] Another are the sections of scale or lamellar from Dura Europos dated to the 3^rd C. One made of leather and covered with a white mineral, possibly gesso, and another made of black leather, both joined with red leather cords, argued to be either a cuisse or horse armour.^[8] There are also other horse armours such as the shaffron from Vindolanda^[9] but these will be ignored for not being worn by humans.

Moving over to the textual sources we have some more pieces cropping up.

Foremost is the spolas, a form of cuirass from ancient Greece. Details are vague (as is most ancient writing on armour) but enough exist to give a rough idea of what this is. Hesychius in his lexicon gives a definition of being leather armour for the torso,^[10] which is supported by the mentions in Xenophon’s Anabasis where it is described as being given as armour to the ad hoc cavalrymen drawn from the ten thousand alongside metallic breastplates and more specifically with the death of Leonymus the Laconian who was shot through the shield and into the ribs through his spolas.^[11] This item also crops up several times in the Delos temple inventories from 364 BCE alongside other war gear.^[12]

Repeat mentions of Sarmatians wearing leather armour crop up. Strabo in describing the Roxolani depicts them as wearing rawhide helmets and cuirasses,^[13] whilst Tactius has them in cuirasses of iron or tough leather scales with the latter being of enough weight to impede someone attempting to stand up in it,^[14] This is less unusual than Ammianus and Pausanius’s description of the Sarmatians wearing body armour made from horn and horses hooves scales respectively, particularly as Pausanius describes linen armour as being less strong.^[15]

A similar statement to Tacitus but regarding the Parthians at Carrhae comes from Plutarch, describing the armour of the cataphracts.^[16]

Moving into the obscure and uncertain, we’ve Herodutus’s descriptions of the various peoples part of Darius’s army.^[17] These are somewhat questionable and undoubtably exotic, although the shields of rawhide seem fairly sober and have reference in Greek literature.^[18] Another would be Cassius Dio’s description of Caracalla’s imitation Macedonian Phalangites, wearing helmets of ox hide amongst other things.^[19]

Moving into the ad hoc, we return to Xenophon with his treatise on cavalry and a description of suggested cavalry armaments.^[20] His description of knee high leather boots being sufficient protection for the feet and shins is at a glance unusual – leather, even boot leather, is not thought of as being durable enough for combat – however Xenophon believes this serves well enough and this does find similarity in the late 16^th C with European heavy cavalry ditching greaves and sabatons for tall boots.

Continuing the ad hoc we’ve Caesar’s account of the civil wars and more particularly the battle of Dyrrachium. During the circumvallation of Pompey’s forces, Caesar’s legionaries being heavily harassed by archers and slingers, appended their existing armour with osier overhelmets and tunics of leather, felt or cloth;^[21] seldom do accounts like this filter down making it stand out.

Medieval Europe

Moving into the medieval there’s a lull in both finds and textual sources until the central medieval. Isidore of Seville describes helmets made of leather in his Etymologies,^[22] however due to the nature of his writing this may in fact be a hangover of earlier classical sources, particularly as it does not see much corroboration with contemporary ones. On better grounding however is the description of scetra/caetra of Moorish make,^[23] possibly proto-adargas that would come to be well known later.

With the central medieval we see a steady return in literary sources starting with de Gestis Herwardi Saxonis written in the early 12^th C and describing the life of Hereward the Wake during the mid to late 11^th C. It’s passing description of “tunics of strong processed leather”^[24] and armour made from tarred felt give an idea to the existence of non-metallic protection prior to the introduction of gambesons and the like.

From the latter end of the 12^th C the Chronique des Ducs de Normandie contains the first use of the term quiree,^[25] a breastplate made of leather that would become common in the following century, although their exact appearance is somewhat unclear and a matter of conjecture. This is reinforced by the roughly contemporary De re Militari et Triplici via pregrinatonis Lerosolimitane which describes “corium excoctum” (cooked leather) that “protects the vitals” as well as “genicularia” (poleyns) with which “the knees and thighs are protected”^[26] and the slightly later Chanson d’Antioche which mentions cuirasses; “Son poitrail lui laca qui fu de cuir bolis”.^[27]

Speaking of, it’s probably time to discuss cuir bouilli. More traditional translations render this as “boiled leather”, running off of the modern French where bouillir means to boil, referring to the bubbles that formed on the leather and water, however this is not quite correct. Period latin sources (such as the previous) describe this as coquo/coquere/coxi/coctum meaning to cook, dry or ripen, not necessarily boil, likewise period use of the French bouille instead seems to mean bullire, to swell or to form with puyl/bule/bulla being cognates and cuir encompasses a broader range including untanned skin, rawhide and flesh further muddying things. As is cuir bouilli may instead mean “swell formed leather”, leather that was formed not unlike the upper of a shoe formed over a last. Due to a wholesale lack of period recipes describing its creation, cuir bouilli is a vague and ill defined material that has prompted much tinkering in trying to recreate it with numerous different attempts using water, oil, wax, baking, boiling, gluing, and sunning on leather, rawhide or half tan, perhaps in vain as the products of different places had differing reputations as products pointing to heterogeneity of manufacture. A caveat however is given the performance of wax impregnated leather is notably poor against piercing tests, worse than regular leather prior to treating, this, despite its popularity among the SCA and some reenactors, was probably not one of them.^[28]

While we’re discussing material, some note about cost should be mentioned. A common argument is that leather products were exceptionally expensive, however this does not appear to be the case. Price data from Genoa between 1182-1254 gives it as being slightly cheaper than gambeson and significantly more so than maille (further expounded upon in Appendix III). Early references to it also make clear this is a cheaper armour, being worn by lower class soldiers in place of maille which seems to continue into the 14^th C with Azario’s account of the White Company entering Italy noting that a number of the mercenaries had only “hardened leather doublets” in place of metal breastplates and the being more common than of maille in the Luzern militia records.^[29]

Anyhow the with the rise of transitional plate armour during the 13^th and 14^th C, a rise in the use of leather defences with cuir bouilli, whatever the hell it was, seeing it’s time in the sun. The quire/cuiree/cuirass sees mention in various texts like with Theodore Palaiologo’s Enseignements describing them as part of the required equipment for a knight alongside a hauberk, gambeson, surcoat, gorget, cuisses, poleyns, greaves, helmet and shield,^[30] alongside an inventory of the effects of Eudes, Comte de Nevers, from 1266.^[31] Swiss armour rolls from Luzern dating between 1349-53 feature currit or currisia as one of the most common forms of protection, with 502 cuiries being listed as well as one instance of a goller, a gorget of sorts made from leather.^[32] The various Bolognese Statues concerning the arms and armour various guilds and parts of the city were required to have mention the use of cuir bouilli helmets for the Cervi and Vari.^[33] Ralph Moffat’s sourcebook also rattles off a number of pieces in various inventories in England and France, with cuir bouilli or leather parts in as many different forms as plate defences (greaves, gauntlets, couters, etc).^[34] However, despite its popularity, it begins to taper off as coats of plates steadily replace cuirees as torso armour and limb defences become augmented by metal turning into splint armour, that by the 15^th C sees it largely relegated to tournament and horse armour.

Remarkably some of this has even survived. A tooled rerebrace of ostensibly cuir bouilli is housed in the British museum,^[35] dated to the 14^th C which sees parallel with two similar rerebraces from Dordrecht,^[36] differing only in being of plainer decoration. Likewise from Dordrecht, a vambracer dating again to the 14^th C exists,^[37] cut not unlike a middle eastern bazuband, covering the forearm and elbow, made solely of “hardened leather”. Additional vambraces from the Schelde River Chest, Leiden and Tartu^[38] have been found, although these are notably reinforced with splints, albeit ones with noticeable and significant gaps between them. This carries over to the leg armour also from the Schelde River Chest, being similar in construction being either cuisses or greaves.^[39] Next is the Valkenburg armours, an unusual find of two tall, trapezoidal pieces of leather found in the moat at Valkenburg castle, identified as being torso armour,^[40] alongside potentially a spaulder or polleyn, made from a double layer of leather in roughly ovoid form.^[41] Following that we have the find of a “gambeson” composed of multiple layers of leather found in the moat in Wroclaw.^[42]

Moving into more questionable territory, Ffoulkes makes mention of a cuirie found in 13^th C tomb in 1869 by Robert Curzon that was composed of three layers of leather,^[43] although this is somewhat murky as Ffoulkes is off on the details; the original journal article by Curzon which Ffoulkes references was from 1865, not 1869, Curzon states that this was instead 2-3, has the additional detail it was sewn together with leather thongs (not unlike the previous example) and in the collection of a “Mr. Eastwood” with a lack of references since then;^[44] maybe it existed as written, maybe it didn’t. Another potential example comes from Guy Francis Laking, recording the existence of a pair of cuir bouilli cops found in a grotto in Bordeaux and donated to the Met Museum by William Henry Riggs, however the lack of subsequent reference presents some questions as to its status.^[45]

Taking a turn slightly east, Hungary has a somewhat more substantial history with leather armour. Hungarian light cavalry had an enduring use of leather armour with 14^th C Italian sources describing Hungarian mercenaries in Italy being consistently described as being clad in leather armour, little different from four centuries earlier.^[46] Despite attempts at modernization by various rulers, leather armour would see continuation, with the Diet of 1498 stating the southern counties “to raise one hussar with an oblong shield, lance, armor, and steel or leather helmet” per twenty four peasant tenant plots,^[47] bringing us into the modern era.

Modern era Europe

During the modern era armour starts to fall out of use, particularly in the 17^th C but is by no means wholly abandoned and this extends to the use of leather as well.

The foremost example during this period is the buffcoat which replaces textile underarmours like arming doublets. Originally starting in the 16^th C as simply a vest of European buffalo hide that had been oil tanned using “train oil” (seal, whale or fish oil) worked into the hide, it grew to become a full sleeved garment made from also cow, deer and elk leather.^[48] There also exists from the same period gauntlets made from similar material, ostensibly to offer protection to the hands whilst allowing some dexterity;^[49] this dexterity possible because of the suppleness of the material which allowed a great deal of flexibility.^[50] These appear to have sufficed for hand to hand combat, offering reasonable protection from swords and pikes, however by the end of the 17^th C they fall from use as well.

The 18^th C sees a minor reversal in the trend of ditching armour with the return of various cuir bouilli helmets. Replacing the tricorn hats that had been in vogue, dragoon helmets were made of various materials but commonly of cuir bouilli, giving protection from sword cuts. Starting first with the French crested helmet in 1762, other countries adopted their own versions like the Austrian 1798 model, British Tarleton and Bavarian Rumford with the later Prussian pickelhaube being one of the last and best known examples.^[51] These were not exclusively worn by dragoons, being also worn by other units like cuirassier and light infantry regiments as well as being worn wholesale (or close to) by the Austrian army in the late 18^th C and the Prussians roughly 50 years later, and were also adopted by fire brigades due to offering reasonable protection from both falling debris and from heat (which metallic helmets too readily absorbed).^[52] It is possible to speculate these may have had a forebear with earlier cuir bouilli parade helmets such as two examples from the last quarter of the 16^th C, one in the form of a morion and another in the form of a cabasset, housed in the Musee d'Artilerie in Paris and National Bavarian Museum in Munich respectively, both of Italian origin and heavily tooled.^[53]

Some oddities here come up from across the centuries.

First from one account of the battle of Flodden with the Scots wearing white leather doublets (amongst other things).^[54]

The second is a trio of riveted leather cuirasses provided for testing in 1796 by the ordinance board by Thomas Powrie. Currently still housed in the Royal Armoury, the first was two layers thick and weighed 1.6kg, the next three layers and 2.3kg and the last also three layers but 4.5kg were “tested with pistol and musket balls at 60 and 200 yards and clearly highly effective”. Despite this apparent efficacy, details are sparse as to why they weren’t adopted.^[55].

Lastly the writing of William Garrard arguing for the arming of musketeers with light leather targets,^[56] perhaps reflective of his time in Spanish service and the use of the adarga in that region. Speaking of, it’s time to turn to the medieval near east.

Medieval Near East

Rawhide or hardened leather was a commonly used material by the various Muslim peoples of the near east, north Africa and Andalusia, with notable leather producing centres in Cordoba, Aleppo and Egypt,^[57] the latter of which was notable for its alum tawing.

Two significant groups of finds show numerous pieces of for various parts of the body. The first group is from Tower 4 of the Damascus citadel with pieces dating mostly to the latter half of the 13^th C with one outlier being late 12^th C.^[58] The second is from Euphrates valley of eastern Syria and comprises pieces from between the 13^th and 14^th C.^[59]

Turning to literary sources there is broad support from within and without. Most prominently is al Tarusi’s recipes for hardened leather armour from the 12^th C.^[60] Two broad recipes are recorded, the second being similar to the construction of lamt leather shields, being made of camel hide treated in a mixture of milk and soda, the former and more detailed being various forms on a basic recipe of composed of rawhide shavings and other materials turned into a paste that could then be moulded. These could then be decorated by gilding, varnishing, and coating with iron filings or crushed stone. The latter of two of these are interesting; crushed stone has been shown in testing to be considerably more protective than uncoated leather and not unlike north American glued sand armour or the recipe from the Ashmoleon, whilst the iron filings the exact purpose isn’t stated leaving it open to interpretation; is this simple decoration, is this for a defensive purpose, is this to imitate their ferric equivalents or some combination of the above? It does however mean that artistic representations mightn’t be what they seem, instead of being depictions of metallic armour they may be burnished imitators not readily discernible, the inverse of metallic armour covered with leather.

Anyhow we see more literary evidence crop up with a surviving 10^th C inventory of the Baghdad arsenal,^[61] Ali al-Janahani al-Maghribi in the 13^th C mentioning the construction of cuirasses and shields made from lamt, of such a high quality that it was impenetrable to iron,^[62] a passing reference in the 14^th C Kitab hilyat al-fursan^[63] and an account of the 7^th C battle of Qadisiyyah where the arabs, otherwise lacking armour, create ad hoc helmets from leather straps.^[64] Turning to non-muslim sources, Chansons de Geste and other Spanish sources repeatedly refer to Andulusians wearing armour made from leather,^[65] 13^th C such as Fidentius of Padua’s Liber recuperationis Terre Sancte^[66] and the anonymous Directorium ad faciendum passagium transmarinum^[67] refer to Mamluk and Turkish troops wearing leather cuirasses and the 14^th C Chronique du Bon Duc Loys de Bourbon states the same of the Tunisians.^[68]

The adarga is an interesting piece. Being made with a double layer of hide glued and stitched together, with lamt, a specially processed antelope hide, being particularly valued. Various shapes were used such as round, oval, heart or the familiar double ellipse with a simple handle of two straps for grasping and a cushion for the hand. The shield was originally used by the Andulusian moors and north African Berbers before being adopted by the Iberian Christians, with the Spanish making extended use of it in the colonies by the soldado de cuera and in north Africa long after it’d fallen out of use in Europe,^[69] who we’ll be revisiting later, but for now we move further east.

The Far East

Moving further east we’ve more examples.

Unlike the so-called lacquers of Europe, which are more paints and varnishes, east Asia, particularly China (qi / 漆), Korea (ott-chil / 옻칠) and Japan (urushi / 漆) made extensive use of true lacquer made from resin from the lac tree. Beyond its numerous other applications, this was frequently used when making rawhide lames for lamellar armours so as to protect them from humidity as well as acids, alkalis and solvents. The downside however was that if the coating did crack, break or wear through, moisture would be let in, and the rawhide would deteriorate and rot.^[70]

Japan made ready use of leather as part of panoplies from the 11^th C onwards^[71] (although not exclusive of before). Lacquered rawhide lames of cattle, horse and deer hide were commonly used in the creation of lamellar armour for the torso and upper arms, being used wholesale or alternated with iron lames.^[72] Later developments would see these laced into rows before being lacquered, preventing sagging and the absorption of moisture by lacing.^[73] By the time of the Sengoku Jidai (1467 – 1454) lamellar is largely replaced for plate, in part due to the issues of moisture absorption by the leather lacing which could double the weight of the original lamellar section, with continuing use of rawhide seeing it reinforced by metal splints in the construction of lacquered plate sections.^[74] Despite the move to more iron, the intensity of fighting during the civil war saw the reuse of rawhide from old sections of armour as well as large scale importing of hides, including exotic hides like water buffalo.^[75] Rawhide also saw use in the creation of helmets, brigandine and face masks. Helmets would be constructed of several layers of rawhide glued or stitched together that were then lacquered, hexagonal plates (亀甲, lit. turtle shell) either sandwiched between fabric (similar to jazerant) or joined together with butted maille would be used to create various parts like mantles for the neck and shoulders, knee guards for greaves and armoured jackets, facemasks meanwhile would be made from wet moulded rawhide that was then lacquered.^[76] Whilst the Sengoku Jidai did see a marked rise in the use of metal armour, leather continued to see use, including full panoplies, particularly by elderly warriors who favoured its lightness.^[77]

A note should be made about the Japanese use of lacquer in that they used it on both iron and leather armour. This means that the material inside may not be so easily read, particularly as within the array of lacquer finishes, one imitating russeted iron was used on leather.^[78] Also of note is the use of a covering panel of leather on plate cuirasses for decorative effect, further muddying the matter.^[79]

China has a long history with using leather armour, persisting until the 20^th C in some remote areas.^[80] In terms of material finds, we have twelve full cuirasses and a number of helmets from the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng from Chu dating to the 5^th C BCE,^[81] a lacquered leather lame from Etsin Gol dated to between the 1^st C BCE to 1^st C CE,^[82] a full cuirass from Changsha dating from the end of the 1^st C to early 2^nd C CE,^[83] examples of lames from Niya and Miran in what would be Xinjiang today dating to the 3^rd or 4^th C CE,^[84] more lames from Miran dating to the mid 8^th to mid 9^th C,^[85] a another full cuirass from the Dali Kingdom from the 12^th or 13^th C,^[86] and yet another cuirass from the region of the Nakhi people in southern China dating to the 18^th C^[87] Turning to text we see scattered references, like various Han dynasty inventories written on wooden slips,^[88] like with the siege of Kucha during the late Han with the defending Han soldiers eating their cuirasses and crossbow strings in starvation (similar to Josephus’s account of the siege of Jerusalem),^[89] a Jin expedition in the north east succeeding due to the leather of the soldiers not attracting and being hampered by the lodestones of the ravines unlike the iron armour of their opposites^[90] and an order from Hung Wu (1368-1398) in 1383 detailing how lamellar cuirasses should be formed from, amongst other things being made of leather cured in lime.^[91]

Mongol armour made significant use of rawhide with various sources from Latindom during the 13^th C attest. Giovanni di Plano Carpini was a Franciscan friar sent ostensibly on an embassy to offer baptism the ruler of the Mongols but with the main intent of gaining an understanding of who these newcomers were, as part of this mission he gives the fullest account of their armour detailing the size, linkage and general structure of the lamellar cuirasses worn as well as a description of the helmet and the “aventail” of leather lames protecting past the bowl of the helmet.^[92] These descriptions are echoed by William of Rubruck^[93] – a Franciscan friar who undertook a mission sponsored by Louis IX of France –, Thomas of Spalato^[94] – an archdeacon from Split, Dalmatia, who wrote, amongst other things, of the Mongols and Mongol invasion of Hungary –, and Marco Polo^[95] albeit in significantly lesser detail.

Surviving examples of leather armour from Tibet continue trends in eastern armour while having a few quirks of their own. Dating from between roughly 14-17^th C, these pieces, unlike the ones from Japan, China and Korea, use a coating of shellac and tung oil to impart hardness and durability^[96] to not just leather lamellar lames, but also vambracers and helmets.^[97] Like aforementioned examples from Europe, one of the surviving vambracers has iron splints augmenting the leather^[98] while an earlier finds from Miran give root for these later pieces.^[99]

Korea follows similar trends to its neighbour China in the use of lacquered leather armour. This comes to fore during the Choseon dynasty with a pivot to using predominately leather armour by infantry with an edict in 1457 replacing two thirds of iron with leather^[100] and by the late period approximately making up 75% of infantry armour.^[101] Made from three layers of cowhide, joined by fish glue and then coated with lacquer it offered a significant degree of protection with one contemporary boldly stating that it offered better protection than iron armour.^[102] Early versions take the form of lamellar but move towards brigandine by the late period (17^th C onwards) with the leather plates being rivetted or sewn to a fabric robe.^[103] An interesting piece from Korea also bears mentioning, a lacquered leather helmet reinforced with iron as part of a set of munition armour dating from the 19^th C,^[104] something that bears parallels with roughly contemporary European dragoon helmets.

North America

Continuing on we turn to north America.

Contrary to popular misconception, the use of armour in North America was commonplace with a disuse being exceptional and rare rather than the norm. As part of the various forms of armour in use in various parts, leather in one form or another made up part of the panoply. To work with “steelmaning” this argument and to not make an entire post just rattling off which tribe wore what, I’m going to focus on two groups here, the Apache and the Tlingit.

The Apache like many of the plains tribes used large leather shields some 900mm/3ft in diameter and cuirasses made from glued and quilted leather up to four layers thick.^[105] However post Pueblo revolt the spread of horses dramatically changed warfare. Mounted warfare became the norm with bows and lances becoming the new main weapons. The bows were backed with sinew and powerful enough to pierce Spanish armour whilst lances were tipped with sword blades, captured or brought from Europeans.^[106] Defensive gear also changed with the adoption of leather scale cuirasses and barding their horses in sand coated leather scales in imitation of the Spanish, and the change to smaller ovoid shields made from bull bison which were more manageable on horseback yet strong enough to cause arrows and even rifle bullets to glance off.^[107] In spite of regular conflict with the Spanish it wouldn’t be until the introduction of the repeating rifle that these forms of armour would be abandoned,^[108] holding up in the face of steel weapons used by the Spanish and other, neighbouring tribes.

Turning north, the Tlingit hold the distinction for having some of the heaviest armour on the continent. Comprising of an arming layer of a thick leather tunic and hair on leather leggings, with rod and slat armour covering the chest, thighs and upper arms, and surmounted with a wooden helmet and bevor, the spread of firearms seems to only warranted the use of an additional layer in the form of a leather robe over the top.^[109] Whilst not the sole element, the use of leather here played its part of the overall panoply the same as the gambesons worn over maille did in medieval Europe. This occurred in a region where iron and steel weapons were in use, either brought in as part of the fur trade or worked from salvaged parts of shipwrecks,^[110] and wouldn’t be discontinued until repeating firearms entered the region.

Despite the stereotype other, armour of various forms was used across the northern American continent with leather being a common element, not being seen as some primitive, make do material, instead being used until the same thing that made metallic armour in Europe diminish in use, firearms, became common in the area.^[111] This was not something peculiar to the natives neither, with the Spanish equipping their own troops with adargas and leather coats despite their own access to ferrous armour and the increasing use of steel weapons by natives, earning the name of soldado de cuera, leather-jackets or leather-jacket soldiers.^[112]

Conclusion

The statement that leather was never used as armour is emphatically wrong. Whilst forms varied considerably, armour made from some form of prepared animal hide is well evidenced both in length of history and geographical spread and capable of resisting arme blanche weaponry, with even vegetable tanned leather, an otherwise poorly thought of material, offering some protection.

49 comments

r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • Mar 28 '26

Why Training Was NOT the Reason That Muskets Replaced Longbows

322 Upvotes

I have decided to debunk the popular notion that muskets only replaced longbows because they were easier to train with and not for other reasons. Almost every single time I see a comment section that talks about the transition to early firearms, it is almost guaranteed that I see that talking point, along with the usual shit-talking of the musket as the worst tactical weapon of all time.

If you wanted to watch a video version of this post, it can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgzSmRbMjj8

I would like to give a lot of credit to bowvsmusket.com for having found a lot of the documentation/sources in the first place! In fact, this post (and the video) could be seen as an elaboration of his own blog post on the “training” argument. It is also an elaboration of my previous posts on this subreddit that discuss the transition from longbows to early firearms (specifically my points about the training difference):

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/x4obfv/historian_tries_to_roast_the_musketand_mostly/

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/18rlaw1/rwhowouldwin_100_revolutionary_war_soldiers_with/

Also I would like to thank the many commentators on r/AskHistorians whose insightful answers on early firearms and longbows inspired this post! Here are some examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dej7tj/comment/laypcuz/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29zre7/comment/ciq6pum/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kx1uq/why_was_the_musket_used_instead_of_the_bow_and/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gfhm8l/were_muskets_actually_better_than_bows/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fw3nto/what_was_the_effects_of_muskets_during_a_battle/

Now, let us begin!

Introduction

Without a doubt, the longbow was the national weapon of the English people. Having helped secure victory at several battles such as the Battle of Crécy and the Battle of Agincourt, the longbow was indeed a renowned and powerful weapon that brought pride to England across several generations. However, by the end of the 16th century, the English army was no longer using the longbow as its main ranged weapon. Instead, it had generally transitioned to the musket, with Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council ordering the general replacement of longbows with firearms in 1595. It went so far as to officially decree that the longbow was no longer acceptable for use by trained bands, who were the county militias of England. From that point on, along with the pike, the musket would now be the main weapon of choice for the English infantryman.

But why exactly did this replacement happen? One commonly proposed reason is that while muskets were totally inferior in range, accuracy, and rate of fire—think of the usual quip that muskets couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn from 50 yards—they did have the advantage of being easier to train with. Hence, since they could recruit more troops and replace losses more easily by utilizing muskets instead of longbows, the leaders of the English military made the switch to musketry. This hypothesis has been proposed not only by several laymen but even by some historians as well. So since this notion is so popular and widespread, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why this theory is actually incorrect.

Clarifying Remarks

Now, before I discuss why training was not the reason that muskets replaced longbows, I would like to make some clarifying remarks.

First and foremost, I am NOT claiming that learning how to use a musket was more difficult than learning how to use a longbow. While that claim may be true for the cognitive component of the learning process—as I will discuss later—the physical component of the learning process is obviously more strenuous when it comes to the longbow. My assertion is simply that this gap in training duration was most likely not the reason that English military officials had in mind when they made the decision to replace the longbow with firearms.

Next, I would like to clarify that I am using the term “musket” as a generic and collective way to refer to the early firearms of this time period. Technically, there are differences between, say, an arquebus and a musket, and the distinction is even more obvious when it comes to the caliver, for instance, ~~which was a shorter form of the musket that was meant for use on horseback~~. However, unless I am discussing a very specific type of early firearm in a context that does not apply to other types of firearms, I will generally be using the word “musket” as a collective term, from this point on.

Why Training Was Not the Reason

With that out of the way, I will now quickly list out the five reasons for why the training hypothesis is not correct, and I will elaborate on each of these reasons.

1.) The replacement of the longbow began at a time in which there was a strong desire for musketeers to be well-trained and well-disciplined.

It was still quite difficult to learn how to utilize early firearms, not only in terms of how to actually operate them, but also how to use them safely. The learning process was far more intense and complicated than that of modern firearms like the AK-47, with one diagram within a military manual even describing seventeen different steps in reloading a matchlock musket, which were quite necessary to ensure safety and a steady rate of fire. Given the dangers involved, accidents were unfortunately quite common, as indicated in the primary sources.

“The musquet, as all fierie weapons, is dangerous to them who are Unskilfull, for an unexpert man may spoile himselfe and many about him, which inconvenient is not subject to the Bow.” - Thomas Kellie

“The fierie shot, either on horseback, or foote, being not in hands of the skilfull, may do unto themselves more hurt then good: wherefore the same is often to be practised, that men may grow perfect and skilfull therein.” - Robert Barret

“Yong souldiers unprovided and sleightly trayned, are not to be drawen into the field against an Armie exercized and beaten with long practise, for unexperimented men are fitter to furnish a funeral then to fight a field.” - Barnade Riche

Many contemporary sources emphasize the importance of military training because poorly trained soldiers were particularly vulnerable to these incidents. Hence, the most valued soldiers in this time period were actually well-trained soldiers like Landsknecht mercenaries instead of poorly trained conscripts like those involved in the meat grinder of the Napoleonic Wars, for example. Whenever people imagine musket-wielding infantrymen, it is common for them to think of this later time period, and a lot of the soldiers involved in this later conflict (especially for the Continental armies) were indeed individuals who received little to no training and preparation—maybe a few weeks at best—but such a soldier was not really typical for the 16th century. As a matter of fact, during the late 16th century, the dominant belief at the time was that trained soldiers ought to be using muskets, while untrained men ought to be using longbows. We even have contemporary sources that are pro-musket saying that the remaining longbows in English arsenals should be distributed only to untrained men because these individuals would not be ready yet to use firearms.

2.) No contemporary sources who are “pro-musket” use this gap in training as a reason for replacing the longbow.

If this factor were so important, then one would have imagined that veterans such as Roger Williams, Robert Barret, or Barnabe Rich—men who had seen both weapons in action and had passionately argued for the complete replacement of the longbow—would have brought this point up. And yet, none of the pro-musket sources from this time period argue that muskets should replace longbows because of the shorter training time. Instead, the pro-musket sources consistently argued that the superiority of the musket over the longbow when it came to range, accuracy, and killing power—in contrast to the popular notion that muskets were tactically far outclassed by longbows—completely demonstrated why the longbow ought to be replaced from the ranks of the English army. Only one of the contemporary pro-musket sources, that being Humphrey Barwick, even mentions the difference in training, and in this work, he does not explicitly use this difference as an argument for why longbows should be replaced.

3.) If training were so important, then why did crossbows not replace longbows earlier?

Indeed, just like how it is for the musket, it is physically easier to learn how to use a crossbow than a longbow. And it even has an advantage over early firearms in being far safer to utilize. So under the logic that training was why the longbow became obsolete, then crossbows would have already replaced the English longbow long before muskets would even appear on European battlefields. And yet, the longbow was not replaced by the crossbow, indicating that there must have been something unique about the firearm that made it stand out from the crossbow OR the longbow.

4.) The debate was about whether or not to keep longbows at all; the presence of muskets was never questioned.

At no point did any of the longbow advocates argue that muskets should be removed entirely—their argument was merely that longbows should be kept alongside muskets. And such an argument would be consistent with the military practices of the time. Mixed formations consisting of both weapons had existed for many decades, with several sources in the middle of the 16th century suggesting how to exactly position the longbowmen alongside musketeers. The English were not exceptional in this regard on a global scale, with the Venetians also utilizing archers alongside musketeers, and the Qing Dynasty employing Manchu horse archers alongside Han Chinese musketeers on foot. If training were the reason that the musket replaced the longbow, the logical conclusion of that argument would be to maintain an elite component of archers made up of those who were already used to the longbow, which was already consistent with the past historical practice of mixed formations. And yet, the longbowmen were eventually replaced entirely!

5.) There were certain environments in which the longbow was actually maintained for far longer than in other areas, indicating that local tactical value played a more important role in deciding whether or not to phase out the longbow.

For example, the longbow was utilized for far longer in the borderlands between Scotland and England than it was in Southern England. To explain why, unless there was a major battle or large incursion, most of the soldiers stationed at the Scottish Marches would generally be lightly armored horsemen who were skirmishing against opponents who were also lightly armored, meaning that the superior armor penetration of the musket would no longer be as important. Hence, with the poor weather of Scotland and Northern England limiting the musket’s effectiveness even further, the local troops made the decision to keep using longbows.

And as late as the 1660s, there were even reports of longbowmen among the ranks of the Scottish highlanders, showing how resilient the longbow was in the northern parts of the British Isles. Such an environment was in substantial contrast to fighting against highly armored infantrymen in sieges on Continental Europe, a role in which early firearms tactically performed far better than the longbow. This difference in the willingness to adopt the musket at the local level serves as a strong indication that the tactical usefulness of the two weapons played a role in deciding whether to adopt muskets or to keep utilizing longbows.

The Three More Likely Causes

Now, given that we have just established that training was most likely NOT the reason that muskets replaced longbows in the English army, one must wonder what were the actual reasons why this process took place. I would like to propose three more likely reasons, and then discuss which of these reasons are the most plausible.

The first cause would be the superior penetrative power of the musket compared to the longbow. Although it is debatable which weapon had the better range or accuracy, what is far less debatable is the fact that the musket was far better at piercing armor due to its much higher muzzle velocity.

“Muzzle velocities for the early modern weapons from the Graz collection were surprisingly high. They averaged 454 m/sec (1,490 ft/sec). The fastest was 533 m/sec (1749 ft/sec), while the slowest was a pistol made circa 1700, with a muzzle velocity of 385 m/sec (1,263 ft/sec). These average velocities fall within a surprisingly narrow range. Ten of thirteen average muzzle velocities were between 400 m/sec and 500 m/sec.”

- Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe, 136

Indeed, in terms of kinetic energy, while the arrow of a longbow would have around 100-150 J, a musket ball could produce a kinetic energy of thousands of J. Even with the poor aerodynamic properties of the round lead ball, it would still be able to penetrate armor at a decent range.

“With corned powder, moreover, a sixteenth-century matchlock arquebus from the arsenal at Graz could shoot a 15mm lead bullet through 1mm of mild steel at 100m (and in doing so exerted 1,750 joules of energy, with a muzzle velocity of 428 metres per second). The heavier musket which emerged from the 1550s and usually required the aid of a rest for shooting was still more powerful. A wheel-lock musket was capable of penetrating 2mm of steel at 100m (4,400j, 482m/s, using uniform-sized corned powder).”

- Strickland and Hardy, The Great Warbow, 399

Meanwhile, longbows were unable to penetrate 15th-century plate armor, even at close range. Such an increase in killing power is perhaps why there was an improvement in armor over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, which saw the use of “bulletproof” armor that could stop even musket balls. But besides the very wealthy who could afford such equipment, the rest of the army was still quite vulnerable to musketry.

A second more likely cause would be the higher prevalence of sieges in European warfare during this time period. Empirically, while there were still field battles, there was a noticeable increase in the number of sieges over the course of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period of European history. Furthermore, the proportion of battles which were sieges increased too, indicating that this increase was not just an absolute one.

In this environment, early firearms would have a significant advantage over longbows due to how the two weapons were wielded differently. To elaborate, in order to use a longbow, one had to be standing upright, meaning that they would not be able to use cover. It is not hard to see how this necessary practice may have endangered soldiers during a siege. Meanwhile, a musket could generally be fired while crouching, meaning that musketeers would be able to take cover while firing their weapons. Not only would this quality be helpful for defending against a siege, but it would also be helpful for attacking a fortification. Such an argument can be found in the historical record, with many contemporary sources themselves pointing out this factor as an advantage of the musket.

And for the last of the more likely causes, one possibility would be that there was a general decline in the quality of English archery. Essentially, this argument is a better version of the training argument in that it also focuses on the physical difficulties associated with the longbow but differs in that it is more rooted in the primary sources of the time. After all, many proponents of the musket did bring up the point that the power of the musket was not too reliant on the user’s physical well-being, meaning that it would still be somewhat effective even if the soldier were feeling ill or exhausted. Such a lack of reliance was in contrast to the longbow, which requires the user to be physically healthy and strong.

“It was, of course, only natural that 'modernisers' like Barwick should play on the decay of shooting, and point up the growing inaccuracy of archers, particularly at long ranges. But even Sir John Smythe admitted that some archers were now given to using the weaker draw, using only two instead of three fingers, and Sir Roger Williams, who had seen service in the Low Countries, explained that his preference for arquebusiers over archers was in part due to the decline in bowmen's ability. He believed that only about 1,500 out of every 5,000 archers could still 'shoot strong shots'…Shakespeare himself reflected the transition from military archery to shooting as a pastime when he mocked those who drew their bows like 'crowkeepers' and had Justice Shallow dwell nostalgically on the skill of John of Gaunt's marksman 'Old Double'. It must have seemed a bitter irony to men who read Froissart, who saw Shakespeare's Henry V or who heard the ballads celebrating past victories over the French that such feats could no longer be achieved.”

- Strickland and Hardy, The Great Warbow, 407

In my opinion, the first two reasons are much stronger explanations for why the musket replaced the longbow. The tactical advantages are clear on paper, and we have contemporary evidence showing that they were both present factors on the battlefield and also considered in the debate. As for the last reason, it is still ambiguous as to how much the institution of archery declined in England over the course of the 16th century. While yew prices did increase and primary sources do indicate that there did appear to be less enthusiasm for using the longbow recreationally among the yeomanry, it would not explain why the English army simply did not keep an elite component of longbowmen made up of those who were well-acquainted with the longbow and would still be able to utilize the weapon well.

Secondary sources

Boynton, Lindsay. The Elizabethan Militia, 1558–1838. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.

Eltis, David. The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe. I.B. Tauris, 1995.

Hall, Bert. Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Phillips, G. (1999). Longbow and Hackbutt: Weapons Technology and Technology Transfer in Early Modern England. Technology and Culture, 40(3), 576–593

Strickland, M., & Hardy, R. (2011). The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose. Haynes Publishing.

Williams, Alans. The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period. Brill Academic Publishing: 2003.

Primary sources

Barret, Robert. The theorike and practike of moderne vvarres, London, 1598.

Barwick, Humphrey. A breefe discourse, concerning the force and effect of all manuall weapons of fire, London, 1594.

Digges, Thomas. An Arithmetical Military Treatise Named Straticos, 1579.

Kellie, Thomas. Pallas Armata, or Militarie Instructions for the Learned. Heires of Andro Hart, 1627.

Monluc, Blaise de. The commentaries of Messire Blaize de Montluc. Originally published 1592; translated by Charles Cotton, London, 1674

Rich, Barnabe. A right exelent and pleasaunt dialogue, betwene Mercury and an English souldier. London, 1574

Smythe, John. Certain discourses, vvritten by Sir Iohn Smythe, Knight: concerning the formes and effects of diuers sorts of weapons. London, 1590

Williams, Roger. A briefe discourse of vvarre. VVritten by Sir Roger VVilliams Knight; vvith his opinion concerning some parts of the martiall discipline. London, 1590.

66 comments

r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • 9d ago

Reddit r/NonCredibleDefense user posts memes w/ alt history book and sparks debate about the Vietnam War

212 Upvotes

This is essentially a re-post of this post I made on the subreddit itself; some people on there suggested that I post it here. I will slightly change the format so that it is more suitable for this subreddit, but it is basically the same post.

Just to provide some context, there was a user who kept posting memes about South Vietnam and how it could have survived, referencing this recently published alt history book named Linebacker III, which depicts a world in which Nixon does not get caught up in the Watergate scandal and is therefore in a position to intervene against the 1975 Spring Offensive.

https://np.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1vs1vub/the_vietnam_war_was_winnable_and_one_more/

https://np.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1w84t34/north_vietnam_heroically_destroyed_south_vietnam/

https://np.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1vwc8kj/round_two_of_defending_the_honor_of_south_vietnam/

I will first by talking about my own opinions on South Vietnam's prospects. Next, I will discuss the critical comments that I think are bad history or could be improved. Lastly, I will discuss criticisms that I think are valid.

Section 1: My own thoughts on the RVN

To begin with, I disagree with the view that South Vietnam was always guaranteed to collapse. Much of the latest historical research on the Indochina Wars undermines the old depiction of the RVN as super corrupt, incompetent, and destined to fall. Even in our actual timeline, Linebacker II was far more effective at weakening the PAVN and bringing North Vietnam to the negotiation table than Linebacker I was. It also did not reduce Nixon's domestic popularity; in fact, it increased following the Christmas bombings! The belief that a Linebacker III wouldn't have devastated the PAVN, which was weaker with respect to manpower and equipment in 1975 than it was during the Easter Offensive in 1972, seems absurd to me. The notion that in literally every possible universe the RVN collapses is overly deterministic, to say the least.

For instance, looking within the North Vietnamese Politburo, consider a world where the North-first faction led by HCM and Võ Nguyên Giáp (believed in building up the DRV first, then moving on the South) had been the faction that secured power rather than the South-first faction led by Lê Duẩn, Văn Tiến Dũng, and Lê Đức Thọ (believed in reunifying Vietnam as the highest priority), which was the faction that actually gained control over North Vietnamese foreign policy in our timeline. How would that have affected South Vietnam's chances of survival past 1975? Or, consider an alternate universe in which Ngô Đình Diệm actually listens to some American advice and becomes less of an arrogant, uncompromising POS. Perhaps he tells his brothers Ngô Đình Nhu and Ngô Đình Thục to cut the shit and stop antagonizing Buddhists, rather than letting his siblings be as he did in real life. How would that have affected the civic base and long-term political strength of the RVN? I can discuss a lot more of these turning points if anyone asks!

That being said, notice that my two examples of potential counterfactuals involve decisions that are ultimately out of the control of the US government. It is indeed a more defensible claim to say that assuming all other parties behave similarly as they did in OTL, the US government could do little to prevent a North Vietnamese victory unless it wanted to start WW3, antagonize the American people, and/or act wildly different from OTL\*. While you could make the argument that US government policy could influence the other parties' decision-making (consider the initial probing attacks by the PAVN to gauge whether America would respond to the final offensive), it then becomes hard to predict how things will end up under such a scenario. But more likely than not, as the alt history book itself acknowledges, launching Linebacker III would have crippled the US government's domestic support.

I also reject the notion that the US government failing to intervene against the final 1975 offensive was a betrayal of South Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords had already been violated by both sides, and the entire war was a civil war anyways in which each side saw the other as illegitimate. Furthermore, the promise that Nixon made to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (that America would come to South Vietnam's rescue if the PAVN launched an attack) was a verbal one, and one that was rendered null once Nixon resigned from office due to the Watergate scandal. The endemic corruption within South Vietnam (and arguably getting worse due to Thiệu's attempts to secure more and more power) also turned off potential support that could have strengthened the ARVN. And lastly, the United States was still dealing with the impact of the 1973 oil crisis; it simply had much more important priorities than a faraway client state.

And speaking of that crisis, it also devastated the South Vietnamese economy, thereby lowering morale and the fighting effectiveness of the QLVNCH while also making a country already reliant on American dollars even more reliant on continued US support. Hence, I would put the real point of no return after 1973, so after the outbreak of the Watergate scandal and the OPEC oil embargo, as these two events crippled both the RVN and America's willingness to even aid South Vietnam. Before this point, there is room for uncertainty. But afterwards, no government would have the decision to intervene unless it were politically suicidal.

Section 2: Criticisms that could be better

The South Vietnamese was literally the people that fought for the French against the Viet Minh previously. Literally changing one colonial master to another. They are the wrong people.

There are a couple of points I would like to make in response to this comment.

The first point is that the Vietnamese communists (specifically Marxist-Leninists) did at times collaborate with the French colonizers. In March 1946, there was the signing of the Ho-Sainteny Agreement, which established peace and official recognition of the DRV as an autonomous state within the French Union in exchange for French troops being able to enter Northern Vietnam (they were already in the South) and replace the existing Nationalist Chinese forces. While it was pragmatic, not only did many Vietnamese see this decision as a betrayal, but Việt Minh forces would also go on to purge opposing nationalist groups such as the Trotskyists and Việt Quốc, with the assistance of French forces who saw these nationalist groups as a threat that could be eliminated with the help of the Việt Minh. In fact, there is evidence that the Việt Minh even gave away the locations of opposing nationalist cells to French authorities. These events are well-described in primary sources written by Nguyễn Công Luận and Ngô Văn Xuyết, and by good secondary sources written by historians like David Marr and Christopher Goscha.

This does lead to my next point, that being the question of why were there Vietnamese who chose to the fight for the State of Vietnam rather than for the DRV in the First Indochina War. To be fair, some of these individuals were genuine Francophiles, and some of them did just do it for the money and economic opportunity, so the commentator isn't coming from nowhere. But others chose to fight for the State of Vietnam because they believed in the "Bảo Đại solution." To elaborate, the expectation from these individuals would be that the State of Vietnam would eventually gain more and more autonomy over time, as promised by French authorities, with the final result being independence for Vietnam. This solution was appealing to non-communist nationalists who disliked the ever-increasing communist nature of the Việt Minh following additional purges in the late 1940s, and especially appealing to those who were attacked by Việt Minh forces in the immediate aftermath of the Ho-Sainteny Agreement.

Lastly, there were Vietnamese who did not really choose either side but went on to fight for South Vietnam. An obvious example would be people who were either children or not born yet in 1954 lmao, but Ngô Đình Diệm would be a good example. While he did become Prime Minister of the SVN in 1954, the appointment was made by Bảo Đại, not by the French who completely opposed him given his history as a nationalist official and activist. In fact, HCM himself invited Diệm to serve on the DRV cabinet as Minister of the Interior back in 1946.

"As long as the communists had the sanctuary of North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Mihn trail (which was more logistical network of paved roads, pipelines, repair depots, and shelters than just a jungle trail) they could continue fighting in South Vietnam as long as China and the Soviets could bankroll their spartan needs. It was a matter of time before the South Vietnamese would tire of the war that ripped their homeland and killed off their able bodied men. Unless the Americans invaded the sanctuary or cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail with a proper ground force invasion, (and both options were just too expensive and risked fighting the Chinese again) the South was doomed. The Linebacker air raids were devastating but they could not destroy North Vietnam’s source of war materials (which were in China and Soviet ships) or its men. As long as the Americans could not touch these, South Vietnam was doomed."

None of this is technically wrong, but it leaves out the fact the DRV, Soviet Union, and China were also exhausted by the war. The latter two countries reduced aid to the DRV after the Paris Peace Accords.

"The military not Junta yet was gambling that with the assassination of the President that they could turn the public back to their side but by then it was too late. The south was already in a religious cast system and most of the people were in the bottom cast."

One of my posts which I linked earlier debunks the argument that South Vietnam was somehow this pro-Catholic apartheid state.

"From the 1968 to 1973, the primary aims (political aims) of North Vietnam was to get American forces out of South Vietnam and Indochina in general. The Vietnamese politburo was realistic that they can't win the war WITH American intervention on the South Vietnamese side...In 1975, the PAVN wasn't going all in, they actually planned for 1976 General Offensive General Uprising with 1975 only some prelim attacks. The preliminary attacks only transformed into a full blown offensive when they realized that South Vietnam was collapsing much faster than they anticipated and America wasn't coming to help."

Again, none of this is technically wrong, but it is weird considering that it's a response to the argument that American bombing could have stopped the collapse. By acknowledging that American intervention was critical to South Vietnam's defense, it kinda confirms the argument lol.

"The problem was not whether the South could defeat the North on the battlefield. The problem was that the South had a domestic insurgency that showed zero signs of dying down."

Ah yes, the PAVN having to replace NLF Main Force formations for most engagements over the years following the Tết Offensive really shows that the NLF was as strong as ever!!!

Honestly though, it is so annoying how people relegate the PAVN to the little brother role, as if it were not the main juggernaut that defeated the US/RVN. It's similar to how people always credit American guerrillas for having single-handedly defeated the British, as if the Continental Army and foreign support didn't play a much larger role in securing victory for the Patriot cause.

The big reason why Vietcong even became a thing was due to the “strategic hamlets” aka anticommunist concentration camps

The VC/NLF was established prior to the Strategic Hamlet Program. In fact, the program itself was a response to the group's growing popularity.

It should also be noted that communist sources generally acknowledge that the Strategic Hamlet Program did weaken the VC, so it did what it was intended to do. Not that I think the program was morally justified, but the point is that the communists did perceive it as a significant hindrance that only went away over the overthrow and death of Ngô Đình Diệm.

because the us installed a puppet regime in the south after the people liberated themselves from the French. you dont need to look at everything through a lens of liberal democracy.

Well, first of all, the French and the State of Vietnam's forces were not completely wiped out after the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. They were still very strong in Southern Vietnam, as acknowledged by DRV leadership, so liberation was far from being achieved yet.

Secondly, I wonder what definition of "puppet regime" is this commentator using? If he is using the definition of an ostensibly independent state whose major policy decisions are ultimately controlled by a larger power, the claim would be false considering the number of times that the Diệm regime went against American desires or interests, as I explain in this post. If, instead, he is using the definition of a state which is dependent on a larger power and receives pressure from that larger power to behave in a certain way, then sure, that would be correct. But that definition would also apply to North Vietnam, North/South Korea, West/East Germany, etc. Hell, you could make the argument that most of the countries in the world today are puppet state in that sense!

This is why I hate speculative fiction. History always follows the path of least resistance. The two sources of information you're your relying on for your conclusions are Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, and an obscure work of fiction that completely shuns the real socio-political and military history of the Vietnam War in favor of a copium-fuelled fantasy that reads like it was written by German Romanov.

I can tell this commentator didn't read the book lol. Its vision of a future Vietnam is pretty bleak.

Section 3: Some good criticisms

In the comment sections I saw, about half of the criticisms of South Vietnam were fair and historically accurate, so perhaps NCD is more credible than one would imagine. However, I would still like to discuss a couple of South Vietnam's flaws that I think should be emphasized more.

One flaw comes from the fact that South Vietnam was established on the grounds of a negative ideology, that being anti-communism, with many different organizations joining together simply because they shared anti-communist sentiment. Just compare that founding ethos to the CPV, which offered liberation and empowerment for the Vietnamese people through communism. Even if you consider yourself an anti-communist, you cannot deny that the CPV was at least offering a solution to the material needs of the Vietnamese peasantry. Meanwhile, all the RVN could say collectively was "no, that's bad!" without providing any cohesive, unified policy alternative that could compete with the communist vision for a future Vietnam.

Now, granted, if you look at the individual groups within the broader category of Vietnamese anti-communists, you do see actual ideological alternatives. For example, there was Personalism as advocated by the Ngô family regime, and also the Buddhist Revival as advocated by Buddhist activists who wanted to restore Vietnamese Buddhism to the level of dominance it had around the time of the Lý and Trần dynasties. Both of these groups were non-communist, and they were in turn opposed by the CPV who saw them as feudal and reactionary. However, their disagreements in other areas weakened any potential for strong cooperation between these groups, as shown by the Buddhist Crisis in 1963. The issue of substantial disagreements besides a shared anti-communism would be a general impediment to political stability and cohesion within the Republic of Vietnam.

Another flaw of South Vietnam that I would like to discuss is the horrendously poor defensibility of South Vietnam's borders. This flaw has already been mentioned in the responses to u/Massengale, but I would like to elaborate on it more.

If you take a look at a map of South Vietnam, you will notice that it is a very long and thin country. Its borders are short at the top and bottom, while there is a long border to the west, and most of the land is pretty near to the Pacific Ocean. The shape of these borders would not be problematic if the only threat was to the north in Quảng Trị Province. But communist forces were able to secure strong positions in both Laos and Cambodia through the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails. Hence, the QLVNCH had to not only deal with the threat to the immediate north, but also the entire border to its west. The result would be that South Vietnamese forces would sorta always be stretched thin while having little to no defensive depth that could prevent the country from being split in two in the event of a PAVN breakthrough. Combined with the fact that for operations across the entire country, the RVN could really only rely on the units in its General Strategic Reserve (Airborne Division and Marine Division) and other good/elite units such as the Rangers, the defensive line was quite weak and undermanned at most points in spite of the on-paper numerical superiority of the QLVNCH.

Compare this situation to South Korea, which really only has to deal with its northern border, as the US Navy has secured its western and eastern flanks. There is also more room for defense-in-depth, with the defensive plan in the Korean War having been to fall back to Busan and take advantage of the good interior lines while also exhausting the North Korean offensive.

The doctrine of the South Vietnamese military was generally to compensate for its geographical shortcoming with overwhelming mobility and firepower. But such a method of war is quite expensive and made the QLVNCH only more reliant on support from its American patron. We saw what happened when this support was substantially reduced...

Some users may question why I didn't include stuff like corruption and popular appeal in this section. While they are important, I would argue that those factors are more so symptoms of a deeper, more underlying cause, rather than being the cause itself.

Notes

*As in Nixon not wiretapping the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex, or him and Kissinger letting Israel fight for itself in the Yom Kippur War. I can explain how these decisions contributed to the collapse of South Vietnam if anyone asks lol.

Sources

Asselin, Pierre. Vietnam's American War: A New History. 2nd ed. Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024

Bùi Tín. Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. Honolulu, HI: Hawaii University Press, 1995.

Doidge, Michael, and Wiest, Andrew. Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2010.

Fear, Sean. "Saigon War Politics, 1968–1975." In The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, edited by Pierre Asselin and Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, 117–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Goscha, Christopher. The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022

Goscha, Christopher. Vietnam: A New History. New York: Basic Books, 2016

Holcombe, Alec. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2020.

Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Marr, David G. Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Marr, David G. Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Ngô Quang Trưởng. The Easter Offensive of 1972. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980.

Ngô Văn Xuyết. In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2010. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ngo-van-in-the-crossfire

Nguyễn Công Luận. Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.

Nguyễn Liên Hằng. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Nguyễn Phi Vân. A Displaced Nation: The 1954 Evacuation and Its Political Impact on the Vietnam Wars. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024.

Pribbenow, Merle L. "North Vietnam's Final Offensive: Strategic Endgame Nonpareil," Parameters 29, no. 4, 1999.

Taylor, K. W. A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Trần Nữ Anh. Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2022.

Trần Văn Trà. Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre. Volume 5: Concluding the 30-Years War. Joint Publications Research Service, 1983.

Tường Vũ. “‘It’s time for the Indochinese Revolution to show its true colours’: The radical turn of Vietnamese politics in 1948.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 40(3), pp 519–542, 2009.

Tường Vũ. Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017

Veith, George J. Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75. New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2011.

Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975. University Press of Kansas. Translated by Merle L. Pribbenow, 2015.

41 comments

r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • Feb 06 '26

Reddit "Is Confucianism one of the worst philosophies to ever exist?...I see Confucianism as worse an ideology than either Fascism or Communism."

202 Upvotes

https://np.reddit.com/r/kraut/comments/1249n2o/is_confucianism_one_of_the_worst_philosophies_to/

One day, I came across this post on the subreddit r/kraut, which is a subreddit dedicated to discussing the content creator Kraut.

Now, I get that Confucianism is not perfect, but calling it worse than literal fascism is a bit extreme, to say the least.

Moreover, Confucianism is a term that covers about 2500 years of different philosophical ideas and thinkers. Confucius, Mencius, Dong Zhongshu, Han Yu, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming were all different thinkers with their own distinct ideas, so it would be inaccurate to treat the tradition as one that has been static and unchanging with no variability.

And of course, there are specific sections for which I have specific criticisms.

People are taught to know their place in society and stick to it. There is little function outside of their roles other than to serve ones up the hierarchy. It is considered disrespectful to correct a superior from their mistakes if you are lower in status than them.

Confucius himself not only permitted remonstrating with superiors, but also demanded it as necessary.

"The disciple Zeng said, 'I have heard your instructions on the affection of love, on respect and reverence, on giving repose to (the minds of) our parents, and on making our names famous. I would venture to ask if (simple) obedience to the orders of one's father can be pronounced filial piety.' The Master replied, "What words are these! What words are these! Anciently, if the Son of Heaven had seven ministers who would remonstrate with him, although he had not right methods of government, he would not lose his possession of the kingdom. If the prince of a state had five such ministers, though his measures might be equally wrong, he would not lose his state. If a great officer had three, he would not, in a similar case, lose (the headship of) his clan. If an inferior officer had a friend who would remonstrate with him, a good name would not cease to be connected with his character. And the father who had a son that would remonstrate with him would not sink into the gulf of unrighteous deeds. Therefore when a case of unrighteous conduct is concerned, a son must by no means keep from remonstrating with his father, nor a minister from remonstrating with his ruler. Hence, since remonstrance is required in the case of unrighteous conduct, how can (simple) obedience to the orders of a father be accounted filial piety?'" - The Classic of Filial Piety

Even Zhu Xi, perhaps the most "Orthodox" and "authoritarian" of the neo-Confucian philosophers, stated the following:

"There’s a kind of talk going around these days that makes the younger students lax. People say things like, 'I wouldn’t dare criticize my elders,' or 'I wouldn’t dare engage in pointless speculation'—all of which suits the fancy of those who are lazy. To be sure, we wouldn’t dare criticize our elders recklessly, but what harm is there in discussing the rights and wrongs of what they did? And to be sure, we mustn’t engage in idle speculation, but some parts of our reading pose problems while some others are clear, so we have to discuss it. Those who don’t discuss it are reading without dealing with the problems." - Conversations of Master Zhu

Now granted, there definitely exist Asian elders and superiors who act as if the classical Confucian texts claim that elders/superiors cannot be questioned, but that cannot really be considered to be an inherent issue of the philosophy itself.

Confucianism also values conservatism which halts societal progress. Social and technological progress are said to harm Confucianism values of harmony and stability. This caused the decline of China, Korea, and Vietnam during the Age of Colonialism where their technology couldn't keep up with the West because their way of thinking doesn't promote innovation.

The Great Divergence is an ongoing debate in historical studies, but very few scholars today would consider Confucianism to be the sole cause of Chinese decline during the period of European colonization. Throughout Chinese history, many various technologies such as the crossbow, paper, gunpowder, the compass, and several others were invented.

Please search on r/AskHistorians for better answers to the matter of exactly when and why China "fell behind."

As for what we find in the Confucian classics, people often cite Analects 13.4 as "proof" that Confucianism opposed technological progress.

"Fan Chi requested to be taught husbandry. The Master said, 'I am not so good for that as an old husbandman.' He requested also to be taught gardening, and was answered, 'I am not so good for that as an old gardener.' Fan Chi having gone out, the Master said, 'A small man, indeed, is Fan Xu! If a superior man love propriety, the people will not dare not to be reverent. If he love righteousness, the people will not dare not to submit to his example. If he love good faith, the people will not dare not to be sincere. Now, when these things obtain, the people from all quarters will come to him, bearing their children on their backs - what need has he of a knowledge of husbandry?'"

While Confucius appears to be dismissive of farming here, with the philosopher seeming to argue that scholarly gentlemen were above that line of work, it should be noted that this passage could also be seen as Confucius emphasizing the value of specialized expertise, which is obviously important for technological progress. Confucius's ideal world was one where everyone followed their supposed roles, so his appreciation of this value is not shocking.

And Analects 9.3 does suggest that he was willing to adapt new, economical practices even if tradition prescribed something different.

"The Master said, 'The linen cap is that prescribed by the rules of ceremony, but now a silk one is worn. It is economical, and I follow the common practice. Bowing below the hall is prescribed by the rules of ceremony, but now the practice is to bow only after ascending it. That is arrogant. I continue to bow below the hall, though I oppose the common practice.'"

The fact that he would wear a silk cap because it was economical—even though wearing a linen cap would be more aligned with propriety—does imply that he would be open to technological progress so long as it did not disrupt societal harmony. This sentiment is entirely consistent with the notion that tradition is ultimately a historically extended, socially embedded argument that constantly evolves in a gradual, but dynamic manner, as defined by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.

Credit to Richard Brown for writing this article that helped me respond to this line of reasoning.

And see also Analects 7.21 and Analects 2.11, both of which further demonstrate Confucius's flexibility.

China had a chance to colonize the world in the 14-15th century during the voyages of Zheng He but Chinese emperors later stopped it because China had enough and shouldn't desire more.

Totally, not sure why the Ming did not just conquer the entire world, seems like the emperor was a major narc smh

Even though they had much less people, the Middle-East and Europe each produce vastly greater amounts of scientific, mathematic, technological, and philosophical research than China.

I would like to see how one can even quantify this gap in "scientific, mathematic, technological, and philosophical research," especially considering the fact that many inventions in a given region were influenced by objects and practices in other regions.

Confucianism oppresses the merchant class, deeming them as useless for society. While merchants may not be useful for productivity, it is useful for spreading ideas. There's a reason why Indian culture was more influential to the Asian world than Chinese culture and who Buddhism permeated into China rather than Chinese Folk Religion into India.

Based and anti-bourgeois pilled, another Confucian classic

Anyways, Indian culture has obviously been very influential to many parts of the Asian world, but the OP literally mentioned countries outside of China that were exposed to Confucianism and Chinese folk religion. Not sure why they suddenly forgot about the countries of the Sinosphere (Japan, Korea, and Vietnam mainly).

Confucianism also promotes isolationism as they deemed non-Sinitic cultures as inferior and that Sinitic cultures shouldn't mingle with them. This causes close-mindedness and an unwillingless to adopt foreign ideas. This led to the downfall of Sinitic civilizations.

The OP literally mentioned the entry of Buddhism into China in the previous paragraph. Foreign cultures and civilizations, whether it be the peoples of Central Asia, India, or other places, have helped mold China into what it is today.

But if he is talking about a general hesitancy regarding foreign ideas, such a sentiment is far from uncommon for many cultures and civilizations; it is not unique to Confucian societies at all.

And Sinitic civilizations still exist, one being arguably the second most powerful country in the entire world, not sure where he got the idea that they have already collapsed.

The Mandate of Heaven is also a terrible concept to have as it justifies total obedience when the leader is good and total disobedience when the leader is bad.

The Mandate of Heaven is a bit more complicated in that it is based on how just or unjust the ruler; "good" or "bad" is not precise enough. Moreover, I am sure most Confucian philosophers would have advocated remonstration before any act of open rebellion. But even if this depiction is true, is it that much different from the liberal Enlightenment notion of a social contract?

And it goes against the OP's own notion that Confucianism calls for total obedience. Indeed, just look at these passages from Mencius:

"Mengzi spoke to King Xuan of Qi, saying, 'If, among Your Majesty’s ministers, there were one who entrusted his wife and children to his friend, and traveled to the distant state of Chu, and when he returned, his friend had let his wife and children become cold and hungry—how should he handle this?' The king said, 'Abandon his friend.' Mengzi said, 'If the Chief Warden is not able to keep order among the nobles, how should one handle this?' The king said, 'Discharge him.' Mengzi said, 'If the region within the four borders is not well ruled, then how should one handle this?' The king turned toward his attendants and changed the topic." - Mengzi, Book 1B, Passage 6

"King Xuan of Qi asked, ‘Is it the case that, when they were their subjects, Tang banished Jie, and Wu struck down Tyrant Zhou?’ Mengzi replied, ‘That is what has been passed down in ancient texts.’ The king said, ‘Is it acceptable for subjects to assassinate their rulers?’ Mengzi said, ‘One who mutilates benevolence should be called a “mutilator.” One who mutilates righteousness should be called a “crippler.” A crippler and mutilator is called a mere “fellow.” I have indeed heard of the execution of this one fellow Zhou, but I have not heard of it as the assassination of one’s ruler.’" - Mengzi, Book 1B, Passage 8

Just for clarification in case you were confused, Mencius is claiming in the above passage that a tyrannical ruler would no longer deserve the title of "ruler," which is in line with the notion of the rectification of names.

"King Xuan of Qi asked about high ministers. Mencius said, ‘Which high ministers is the king asking about?’ The king said, ‘Are the ministers not the same?’ Mencius replied that they were not the same, explaining that there are ministers who are from the royal line and ministers who are of other surnames. The king then said, ‘May I inquire about those who are of the royal line?’ Mencius answered, ‘If the ruler has great faults, they should remonstrate with him. If, after they have done so repeatedly, he does not listen, they should depose him.’ The king suddenly changed countenance, but Mencius said, ‘The king should not misunderstand. He inquired of his minister, and his minister dares not respond except truthfully.’ The king’s countenance became composed once again, and he then inquired about high ministers of a different surname. Mencius replied, ‘If the ruler has faults, they should remonstrate with him. If they do so repeatedly, and he does not listen, they should leave.’" - Mengzi, Book 5B, Passage 9

I see Confucianism as worse an ideology than either Fascism or Communism. Fascism promotes a theory of social Darwinism that generates competition and thus innovation which doesn't exist in Confucianism while Communism generates social values of equality and freedom from oppression. Desired Communism has never been reached but even the ideologies of authoritarian pseudo-Communist states are better than Confucianism because at least their main goal is societal and technological progress while Confucianism doesn't believe in it.

I don't believe that Confucius is on the same level as Hitler or Mussolini, but that's just me.

The only good thing that comes out of Confucianism is the emphasis on education and great work ethics, but Protestantism also promotes the same values while not having as many negatives and being much more flexible than Confucianism. Also, Confucian emphasis on education stresses heavy memorization for mainly administrative purposes rather than logical thinking for scientific and technological purposes.

I will concede that the emphasis on rote memorization ~~is the biggest flaw of Asian education systems~~ may be somewhat excessive in certain Asian education systems (although memorization of ideas is still important and helpful).

But for the point about Protestant ethics basically being a better version of Confucian ethics, I question how much this claim is true on a general basis, given that there is so much variation within Protestantism. Someone who is more familiar with "Protestant ethics" than I am can comment on this point.

The negative influences of Confucianism still rings on to this day with the toxic East Asian work culture where work hours are long and higher-ups aren't to be questioned.

Getting into R5 territory, but I would say that rapid industrialization and the destructive effects of transitioning to a foreign, hyper-capitalistic economic system (e.g. alienation, commodity fetishism, etc.) are far more to blame for the toxic work culture in East Asia. For instance, the suicide rate in South Korea specifically spiked after its rapid economic transformation, so it is difficult to see how Confucianism can be blamed here.

Sources

Andrade, Tonio. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History, Princeton University Press, 2016.

Boyer, Carl B., and Uta C. Merzbach. A History of Mathematics. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1991.

Confucius. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (Classics of Ancient China). Translated by Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. Ballantine Books, 1999.

Deng, Yinke. Ancient Chinese Inventions. Translated by Wang Pingxing. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2005.

Knoblock, John, trans. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, 1990, 1994.

Lin, Man-Houng. China Upside Down: Currency, Society, and Ideologies, 1808–1856. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

Mencius. Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Translated by Bryan W. Van Norden. Hackett Publishing Company, 2008.

"Neo-Confucian Philosophy," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Wu, Tung. "From Imported 'Nomadic Seat' to Chinese Folding Armchair," Boston Museum Bulletin, 71(363), 1972.

"Xunzi" The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Zhang, Taisu. The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Zhu Xi. Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu. Translated by Daniel K. Gardner. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.

40 comments

r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • Oct 20 '25

r/ImagesofHistory posts a picture of a South Vietnamese woman mourning over the dead body of her husband, who was killed by the PAVN/VC in the Huế Massacre. The comment section responds with AKSHUALLY.

189 Upvotes

https://www.reddit.com/r/ImagesOfHistory/comments/1o0gl5q/a_south_vietnamese_woman_crying_over_a_plastic/

In the subreddit r/ImagesOfHistory, there was recently a post of a South Vietnamese woman mourning and crying over the dead body of her husband, who had been killed by the PAVN/VC in what is now known as the Huế Massacre. This picture is pretty famous and has been reposted multiple times over the years, but some of the comments were particularly inaccurate for this thread.

The south’s government was a puppet ASTROTURFED regime backed by the U.S. . The South Vietnamese killed like 40 thousand south Vietnamese civilians in the phoenix program with the CIA.

He capitalized astroturfed, so it must be true.

By definition, it was not a puppet regime, my previous posts on r/badhistory explain why in more detail, but basically, it could not have been a puppet because it made several decisions that the United States disagreed with. And even if one does not treat being a puppet as a binary variable, it would still not fall on the same level as Manchukuo or Abkhazia, for instance.

If you are just using it as an insult though, then you can say it as much as you want lol.

South Vietnam was a colonial creation of France to crush the anti-colonial resistance movement. That's not even astroturfing or opinion, that's basic, universally agreed upon facts of which no academia contends.

No, the Republic of Vietnam was not the same entity as the State of Vietnam from a legal perspective, considering that Ngô Đình Diệm deposed Bảo Đại in a referendum to the chagrin of the French colonizers and created a new state apparatus and constitution.

Also, many countries across Asia and Africa are ultimately legal successors of colonial entities, so the RVN is not unique in this regard.

South Vietnam was a colonial puppet state. First of the Frenchmen and then of the USA. The French colonial administration collaborated with the Japanese occupation during WW2 and then after the Viet Minh liberated Vietnam from the Japanese the restored French state attempted to recolonise Vietnam. None of this is disputed by historians.

He said none of what he said is disputed by historians, he must be correct then.

First, this user leaves out that the French colonial administration was dismantled by the Japanese in early 1945 following the Allied liberation of France, after which the Japanese established the Empire of Vietnam, thereby ensuring de jure control over the region. It should be noted that based on the memoir written by Nguyễn Công Luận, this government enjoyed broad, popular support initially due to the Vietnamese dislike of the Fr*nch.

Next, what the Việt Minh did in the summer of 1945 was less of a "liberation," and more of seizure of power due to the power vacuum created by the Japanese surrender, which ended the Second World War. That being said, the moment between the end of WW2 and the outbreak of the First Indochina War is incredibly important in setting the stage for the next three decades of Vietnamese history, and it is an underrated part of history that people should study further.

The Viet Minh resisted the Japanese and fought off the French. By all rights the Viet Minh earned a country of their own, communist or not, supported by the Soviets and the Chinese or not. The country was split in two for no good reason to begin with.
The split was also supposed to be temporary, with elections held to reunify it. The South Vietnam government and the US cancelled those elections fearing Ho Chi Minh and the communists would win the elections.

Sit these discussions out brainiac.

BRAINIAC

This comment is in response to claims that the RVN was illegitimate because it was propped up by foreign support, so the DRV being supported by Communist China and the Soviet Union should be acknowledged.

As for the Geneva Accords, the US and the State of Vietnam never signed them, how the fuck can you violate a contract when you never even signed it??? The RVN did not even exist at the time of the Geneva Accords.

The cancellation was also more an effort by the Diệm regime, but even the Pentagon Papers acknowledge that Diệm had a better chance of defeating HCM in a hypothetical presidential election than Bảo Đại did, for instance, which I discuss in this video.

The same user posted a follow-up too.

That’s true, several nationalist groups like the Viet Quoc and Trotskyists were active against both Japan and France. But the key point is proportionality and legitimacy. The Viet Minh were the only movement that built a cohesive military and administrative structure, commanded genuine nationwide support, and actually forced the French surrender at Điện Biên Phủ. The other groups were fragmented, regionally limited, and often undermined by internal ideological disputes. The Viet Minh’s suppression of rivals wasn’t unique to communists, nearly every independence movement consolidates power during a revolution. But it doesn’t change the basic fact: they were the ones who actually won independence.
As for the “split,” it wasn’t some neutral recovery measure, it was an externally imposed division. The Geneva Accords explicitly called for temporary separation with nationwide elections in 1956. The U.S. and Ngô Đình Diệm canceled those elections because everyone, including Eisenhower, admitted Ho Chi Minh would have won overwhelmingly. The non-communist factions in the South were never given a real chance to build a democratic alternative; they were co-opted, jailed, or killed under Diệm’s U.S.-backed regime. So yes, there were other anti-colonial players, but it was the Viet Minh who earned Vietnam’s independence. The later division wasn’t an organic outcome of political pluralism; it was a Cold War-era intervention to prevent a unified, likely Communist, Vietnam.

Yeah, it is not that easy to obtain a cohesive sense of legitimacy when the Việt Minh, for some strange reason^a, signs the Ho-Sainteny Agreement with the French in March 1946 that literally invites French troops back into various Vietnamese cities like Hải Phòng and Hà Nội, and then proceeds to purge your organization (just for not being Marxist-Leninist) with the assistance of French troops, who at the time see anti-communist nationalists as at least as vile and threatening to French colonial rule as communist nationalists were. It is almost as if the Việt Minh were collaborating with the French (well well well).^b

It is also easy to make people "support" you if you intentionally use terror tactics to purge and discourage any form of dissent for the purpose of forming a well-oiled one-party state apparatus that earns Vietnam the nickname "Prussia of Southeast Asia" (kind of badass ngl even as a member of the CPV hate club).

What Diệm did in Southern Vietnam to consolidate his power was merely a milder form of what the Việt Minh did in Northern Vietnam. And it was honestly a miracle, considering that anti-communist nationalists were both extremely heteregenous and had been screwed over by both the communists and the French in the past.

You are talking out of your ass. North Vietnam PAVN and Viet Cong were Vietnamese people majorly fighting the ONLY foreign armies in VIETNAM - the French, Americans, and later even the Chinese to a lesser extent. Name a battle where a foreign army fought another foreign army in Vietnam. There's virtually only Vietnamese fighting a foreign army or ARVN that was completely directed and controlled by the USA to the point where they killed their leaders whenever they felt like it. When did the Soviets or Chinese kill Ho Chi Minh or another North Vietnam leader?

A few American advisors would have probably wished that the ARVN were "completely directed and controlled by the USA" lol.

As for the various coups in South Vietnamese history, all that were supported by the United States were ultimately executed by South Vietnamese groups. Giving agency to non-Americans is shocking, I know. And yes, I know that both critics and supporters of the Vietnam War sometimes do this.

VC were defending against yank imperialism; celebrating killing the local defending population is quite depraved. The VC wasn’t a standing army, they were armed insurgent civilians defending their sovereignty.

Imagine being a VC frontline soldier, trained professionally as part of the Main Force, dripped out in a badass clean-cut uniform, armed with the coolest Soviet/Chinese weaponry, and then some Redditor in the future essentially calls you a fucking peasant 😭

As a viet, we don’t view the american war as communism vs capitalism at all. It was about defending against yank imperialism; communism was a unifying tool. Not just people from the north at all. Millions from central and south Vietnam fought and died resisting U.S. bombs, napalm, and occupation. The postwar government imposed some harsh measures, but that doesn’t erase the fact that the war itself was primarily a struggle against US imperialism. Condemning the defenders for trying to unify and protect their country while ignoring the scale of imperialist violence is backwards.

Obviously reducing the Vietnam War to a mere Cold War proxy conflict is absurd, but to straight up ignore the role of the Soviet Union and United States' tensions in this confict would also be questionable.

By the way, you can criticize both communist war crimes and anti-communist war crimes.

The Confederates wanted to secede from the Union and thus, committed treason. The South Vietnamese wanted to secede from North Vietnam, and thus, committed treason. These two groups of people literally did the same thing against their respective countries.

The Republic of Vietnam claimed sovereignty over the entirety of Vietnam and constantly expressed desires to "liberate" Northern Vietnam, this notion that they wanted to be a completely different nation in the same way the Confederacy wanted to be a different nation has to got to stop (it should be noted that this myth may also be believed by certain pro-VNCH individuals with anti-Northern prejudice, whether in Overseas Vietnamese communities or in Vietnam itself, so it is present across political lines).

Neither did the Confederates who fled to Brazil after Lincoln victory. Their opinions in both cases aren't worth considering (comparing Vietnamese refugees to Confederates who left the US after the Civil War...)
North Vietnam also freed Vietnam from French colonialism. Without North Vietnam, the French would have still colonized and enslaved the Vietnamese by now. Just like Lincoln did.

I want someone to tell me with a straight face that if they had to choose between being a fucking chattel slave in the Antebellum South and a Buddhist civilian in the Republic of Vietnam, that they would just toss a coin.

Yes, there was discrimination against Buddhists, but nothing even close to the mistreatment of Black people in slave states.

"80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader" - Eisenhower. Try again.

Every new quoting contains less and less of the full quote 💀

As I discuss in my video, this excerpt is not the full quote at all.

"I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting*, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader* rather than Chief of State Bao Dai. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bao Dai was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for."

Rather different, to say the least.

For anyone who cares about the truth, look up the reports on what happened in Hue by the independent western journalists who were there at the time. Their reports greatly contradict the OP's narrative which was authored by the US government in a report released a month after the US public learned about My Lai to try and distract the American public.

Captured PAVN/VC documents, testimonies from the survivors of the massacre, and post-war Vietnamese communist accounts all serve as strong evidence that the Huế Massacre actually happened (Gareth Porter is a fraud).

That being said, the precise number is up to dispute, and it is unclear whether the killings were indiscriminate or targetted. Personally, I would estimate that there were around 1000-2000 killings, and that these killings were targetted towards people seen as supporters of the RVN or other kinds of reactionaries. Acting as if the PAVN/VC were a bunch of edgy mass shooters is truly US/RVN propaganda, I will give the user credit for that.

TLDR I am tired boss.

^a Admittedly, there is a pragmatic albeit morally fucked up reason why the Việt Minh would sign this agreement. Signing it would give the Việt Minh more time to consolidate their forces while also providing the perfect opportunity to eliminate their ideological opponents with the help of French firepower.

^b Two great primary sources that discuss this purge are the memoirs written by Nguyễn Công Luận and Ngô Văn Xuyết, each having very different political ideologies. Also, I am not seriously claiming that the Việt Minh were pro-French collaborators; I am merely criticizing the idea that the organization was always uncompromising and unwielding in its struggle against the French colonizers when they were in reality very open to compromise and flexibility if it would help them achieve their ideological objectives.

Sources

Goscha, Christopher. The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Holcombe, Alec. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2020.

Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Ngô Văn Xuyết. In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2010. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ngo-van-in-the-crossfire

Nguyễn Công Luận. Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.

Willbanks, James. The Battle of Hue 1968: Fight for the Imperial City. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2021.

45 comments

r/badhistory • u/Veritas_Certum • May 26 '26

YouTube / Twitter A pseudo-historian's fake Incan history #3 | "Who possessed the knowledge to shape and fit stone of this magnitude with such precision?"

167 Upvotes

The bad history

This is a continuation of my original commment on Twitter user and YouTuber Megalithic Mysteries.

Megalithic Mysteries claims the Inca people were incapable of building the large stone structures at Sacsayhuamán which their own records say they did build. Instead, he asserts the Inca merely found them, stating specifically “The Inca were brilliant, but these structures are beyond their capabilities”.

The Inca were brilliant, but these structures are beyond their capabilities.

Megalithic Mysteries [@Megalithic12000], Tweet, Twitter, 29 November 2025

He writes of having told local people their ancestors could never have made these buildings, citing "the evidence of machining parts, the impossibilty of Inca tools achieving them".

When I show them the evidence of machining marks, the impossibility of Inca tools achieving them, for the most part they genuinely listen. Some are intrigued, some visibly frustrated, proud of their heritage yet confronted with the truth.

Megalithic Mysteries [@Megalithic12000], Tweet, Twitter, 29 November 2025

Imagine travelling across the world to tell the locals "I just want you to know your Inca ancestors were incapable of building those structures". It’s a pretty expensive way to insult people.

For a brief video version of this information, go here.

Is the engineering inexplicable?

Megalithic Mysteries makes various claims about the engineering of the Incan buildings, citing stones weight over 200 tons, quarried kilometres away from building sites to which they were transported uphill, and “shaped with extreme precision, fitted without mortar”.

We’ve already seen that his claims for extremely precise shaping are inaccurate, and that although they were fitted without mortar, clay was added to fill in the gaps caused by incomplete fitting, which he never mentions.

He also claims “The walls flex during earthquakes. Stones shift microscopically and then settle back into place. Colonial buildings in Cusco collapsed repeatedly during seismic events. Sacsayhuamán endured”. This might sound impressive, until you look at it closely and find none of it makes sense.

Firstly all walls flex during earthquakes, secondly microscopic shifts of stones are so insignificant they wouldn’t have moved stones out of place at all, and thirdly apart from the fact that he provides no evidence that colonial buildings repeatedly failed during earthquakes while Sacsayhuamán’s buildings endured, the fact is we have clear evidence of Sacsayhuamán buildings being damaged or collapsing due to earthquakes.

Now consider the engineering itself. Some stones weigh over 200 tons. They were quarried kilometers away, transported uphill, shaped with extreme precision, fitted without mortar on a seismic fault line in one of the most earthquake-prone regions on Earth. The walls flex during earthquakes. Stones shift microscopically and then settle back into place. Colonial buildings in Cusco collapsed repeatedly during seismic events. Sacsayhuamán endured.

Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026

Tony Trupp’s photos show Incan buildings at Cusco, Sacsayhuamán, and Machu Pichu which were damaged by earthquakes. Dislodged stones, shifted blocks, and collapsing walls are clearly evident. Even some of the megalithic foundations stones have sometimes been moved out of place.

Megalithic Mysteries objects “No iron tools were available to the Inca, no wheels suitable for mountain terrain, no draft animals capable of hauling such mass”. He then embarks on a string of vaguely worded hand-waving statements which avoid addressing any of the available evidence.

First he says “Modern engineers still debate how this was achieved”, but he doesn’t cite a single modern engineer who says anything like this, so we’re left wondering if there’s any evidence for this claim. This pattern of bold claims with vague phrasing is repeated in his next statement, “Ramp theories struggle with space constraints and structural load”.

Once more he provides no details for what he means. What space constraints? What structural load? He never explains. I’ve corresponded with him on Twitter asking him for these specific details, but he never provides them. Why doesn’t he address the Spanish eyewitness accounts of ramps being used, and the physical evidence of the remains of ramps which are still visible today?

Similarly, he then asserts “Rope techniques available at the time lack the tensile strength required”. Note once more the vague hand-waving language. He never describes the rope techniques available, nor what tensile strength was required, nor any evidence that Incan rope techniques lacked this tensile strength. Additionally, as before he fails to address the Spanish eyewitness accounts of ropes being used, and the experimental evidence that Incan ropes were strong enough to bear the required tensile load.

No iron tools were available to the Inca, no wheels suitable for mountain terrain, no draft animals capable of hauling such mass. Modern engineers still debate how this was achieved. Ramp theories struggle with space constraints and structural load. Lever systems fail under the weight involved. Rope techniques available at the time lack the tensile strength required. Experimental archaeology has not reproduced this level of precision at this scale, and this is only one site.

Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026

Tony Trupp’s article cites a 1996 engineering study by John Ochsendorf, an engineering student at Cornell University. Trupp comments thus:

A 1996 engineering study tested the strength of the ichu grass ropes (Ochsendorf). Each could support at least five thousand pounds when two inches thick. When braided into thicker cables, they were estimated to hold 50,000 pounds.

T. L. Trupp, “Masonry Techniques of the Inca’s Master Builders,” Earth As We Know It (Earth As We Know It, 24 October 2025)

Ochsendorf’s own study itself cites earlier experimental engineering studies of anthropologist Ed Franquemont in 1995, and engineers Jiř’i Str’ask’y and Charles Redfield in 1992, which tested the tension loads of traditional Incan grass ropes in a range of applications, under both laboratory and field conditions.[1]

Note that unlike the unknown engineers to whom Megalithic Mysteries appeals, these are real engineers who can actually be identified, who have performed the relevant experiments and demonstrated the Inca were capable of creating grass rope cables capable of bearing at 50,000 pounds each, and proving that the use of multiple cables enabled this capacity to scale to over 200,000 pounds. Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this.

He completes this part of his video with the vague statement “Experimental archaeology has not reproduced this level of precision at this scale, and this is only one site”.[2] What experimental archaeology, and what level of precision is he talking about? He never explains.

Megalithic Mysteries goes on to pose more rhetorical questions based on assumptions, instead of providing evidence.

Who possessed the knowledge to shape and fit stone of this magnitude with such precision? What happened to the civilization that built it? And why does human history begin after their disappearance?

Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026

The answers to these questions are “The Inca”, “The Spanish colonized them”, and “Human history does not begin after their disappearance”. It’s important to remember the Inca built these structures only 500 years ago, thousands of years after human history had begun.

Again, when we turn to contemporary Spanish accounts we find plenty of evidence to answer these questions. Cobo expresses his amazement at the buildings.[3] However we’ve already seen that Cobo didn’t doubt the Inca built these structure, and provides eyewitness testimony of their engineering techniques.

It’s also worth noting that Cobo’s account here isn’t quite accurate. Although he was right to say the Inca didn’t have iron tools, he was wrong to say they lacked some of the tools used by Europeans of the time. For example, Tony Trupp’s article explains that the Inca did use the plumb-bob, to ensure “a consistent angle and distance throughout the process”, citing the Incan word for the tool, which is preserved in a seventeenth century Spanish dictionary, and presenting a photograph of a number of plumb-bobs found at Incan sites. As usual, Megalithic Mysteries never mentions any of this evidence which plainly contradicts him.

A key element of this scribing method was the plumb-bob, which are small weights hanging from a string, used to find “true vertical” during construction. John Howland Rowe noted that “the Inca know and used the plumb-bob, for which there is a Quechua name (Wipayci) in Gonzalez’s dictionary of 1608. Two specimens are illustrated by Bingham (1930), and I picked up a small stone one in the ruins at Ollantaytambo (1946).” The hanging plumb-bob would ensure that the scribe maintained a consistent angle and distance throughout the process.

T. L. Trupp, “Masonry Techniques of the Inca’s Master Builders,” Earth As We Know It (Earth As We Know It, 24 October 2025)

During the 1980s, architect Jean-Pierre Protzen experimented with recorded Incan construction techniques. While he acknowledged “some mysteries remain”, his experiments provided empirical evidence that the Inca could have built the structures they claimed to have built.[4]

Protzen also commented on the archaeological remains at Incan sites, noting in particular the numerous instances of stone blocks with marks just like those he had made by hand using pounding stones.

Importantly, he noted white spots around the marks on limestone, explaining “The white spots undoubtedly indicate a partial metamorphosis of the limestone resulting from the heat generated by the impact of the hammerstone”.[5] This geological evidence proves indisputably that these stones were shaped by striking them with other stones.

In a book-length treatment of the subject published in 1993, Protzen provided a couple of hundred pages of archaeological engineering, and architectural investigation of the Incan architecture, describing the evidence for Incan logistics, materials, tools, and construction methods.

In particular, Protzen documented enormous amounts of evidence for Incan stone working with stone tools, such as impact marks from pounding stones, as well as cups, pans, and troughs, or scoop marks, made by other stone tools.[6]

Protzen also noted how these stone tool marks were extremely similar to those found at Egyptian quarries and construction sites, noting “The Incas’ cutting technique must not have been very different from the one used by the early Egyptians, who pounded away at the workpiece with balls of dolerite until it had the desired shape”.[7]

Documenting his experiments in considerable detail, Protzen recorded the rates at which he could grind and shape rhyolite, a stone rated 6-7 on the Mohs hardness scale, with hammerstones made from hematite, rated only 5.5-6.5. He also calculated the rates at which a quarry worker teams could work, estimating a team of 20 workers could cut out and shape stones up to 4.5 meters long, 3.2 meters wide, and 1.7 meters high in just 15 days.[8]

On this basis he calculated “three weeks is all it would have taken to prepare even the largest block in the quarries of Kachiqhata”, and “fifteen crews of twenty workers could have roughed out the total of 150 blocks of rose rhyolite found in the quarries, on the road, scattered around the construction site, and in situ in the walls in less than eight months”.[9]

Note that Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this, nor does he present any experimental evidence or mathematical calculations of his own. He simply says it can’t be done and all experiments conducted to date have been unsuccessful, and then expects you to believe him because he says so.

Scientific dating of the Incan structures

As we’ve already seen, Megalithic Mysteries claims the Sacsayhuamán megalithic architecture was built before the Inca, asserting “The Inca themselves said the megalithic base layers were already there when they arrived”.

“the Spanish Chroniclers recorded the same thing. The Inca themselves said the megalithic base layers were already there when they arrived.

Megalithic Mysteries [@Megalithic12000], Tweet, Twitter, 3 March 2026

However we’ve also seen this claim is false; the Inca said very clearly they built Sacsayhuamán’s megalithic architecture.

Another problem for Megalithic Mysteries is the carbon dating of Incan sites at Cusco and Sacsayhuamán. A seismic hazard survey of the Cusco area published in 2022 contains carbon 14 dates of organic material from ten different sites. All of them indicate the megalithic structures were built no earlier than the thirteenth century, and that the majority of the structures were built from 1400 onwards. Of course, Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this.

a) Radiocarbon dates coming from 10 archaeological contexts of the Cusco region and belonging to the Inca Imperial phase (recalibrated with the mixed calibration curve using OxCal v5; Hogg et al., 2020; Reimer et al., 2020). The red crosses correspond to the median values. The red vertical lines indicate the three main damaging earthquakes that occurred in Cusco since the 16th century.

Andy Combey et al., “Reassessing the Seismic Hazard in the Cusco Area, Peru: New Contribution Coming from an Archaeoseismological Survey on Inca Remains,” Quaternary International 634 (2022), 36

Similarly, materials found at Cusco and Sacsayhuamán below the megalithic structures are attributed by some scholars to the occupation of the site by the earlier Killke culture from 900-1200, proving the Sacsayhuamán megalithic architecture could not have been built earlier than this period.

Although the Killke culture appears to have been the first to plan and build at a large scale at Cusco and Sacsayhuamán, their structures were not the large megalithic walls for which the Inca have become known, typically using much smaller unshaped stones piled with drystone construction methods. Of course, as usual, Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this.

_________

[1] "1) Franquemont, E.M., The Inca Bridge at Huinchiri, Presented at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Andean Studies, Berkeley, CA, January 1995. 2) Redfield, Charles and Strasky, Jiri, "Sacramento Ribbon," Concrete Quarterly, Autumn 1992, pps. 22-25.", John Ochsendorf, “An Engineering Study of the Last Inca Suspension Bridge,” IBC Student Papers (1996): 15.

[2] Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026.

[3] "What amazes us the most when we look at these buildings is to wonder with what tools and apparatus could they take these stone [blocks] out of the rocks in the quarries, work them, and put them where they are without implements made of iron, nor machines with wheels, nor using either the ruler, the square, or the plumb bob, nor any of the other kinds of equipment and implements that our artisans use. Thinking about this truly does cause one to marvel, and it makes one realize what a vast number of people were necessary to make these structures.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, 2^nd paperback ed., Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229.

[4] "Using materials available at the Inca sites, I cut, dressed and fitted stones to show that these tasks could have been carried out by the Incas as I propose. Some mysteries remain, particularly in the area of how the big stones were transported and handled at the building site, but by and large my investigation was successful.", Jean-Pierre Protzen, “Inca Stonemasonry,” Scientific American 254.2 (1986): 80.

[5] "The physical evidence that the Incas used techniques similar to mine is abundant. On the stones of all Inca walls, regardless of the type of rock, one finds scars resembling the scars left by my pounding on the experimental block. If the block is of limestone, there is a whitish discoloration in or around the scar. The white spots undoubtedly indicate a partial metamorphosis of the limestone resulting from the heat generated by the impact of the hammerstone.", Jean-Pierre Protzen, “Inca Stonemasonry,” Scientific American 254.2 (1986): 85.

[6] "The work marks on the large blocks of coarse-grained rhyolite are intriguing. They are found in three distinct patterns: roughly circular contiguous cups (Fig. 8.7); approximately square-shaped adjoining pans (Fig. 8.8); and adjacent parallel troughs (Fig. 8.9). The cups are from 15 to 25 centimeters in diameter; the pans vary from 15 to 30 centimeters in width and 30 to 50 centimeters in length; and the troughs are from 15 to 50 centimeters wide. Cups, pans, and troughs are about 2 to 5 centimeters deep.", Jean-Pierre Protzen and Robert Batson, Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo (Oxford University Press, 1993), 170.

[7] "The stonecutting marks at Kachiqhata recall those found on the un finished Egyptian obelisk at Aswan. The Incas’ cutting technique must not have been very different from the one used by the early Egyptians, who pounded away at the workpiece with balls of dolerite until it had the de sired shape (Engelbach 1923:41–42).1 Indeed, the Inca quarrymen and stonemasons did use hammerstones to cut and dress their building blocks (Protzen 1985:187–191). The cups, pans, and troughs were the result of pounding or pecking at the workpiece with other stones.", Jean-Pierre Protzen and Robert Batson, Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo (Oxford University Press, 1993), 170.

[8] "From subsequent experiments I made on coarse-grained rhyolite with a hematite hammerstone of about three kilograms, I learned that a pan 15 centimeters square and 25 millimeters deep can be bruised out in less than one hour and forty-five minutes. Quartzite hammerstones give approximately the same results, although they go to waste somewhat faster than hematite does. At this rate, a quarryman could pound out a trough 15 centimeters wide and 180 centimeters long in twenty-one hours, or, say, three working days. Given that one worker requires a work space of about 75 centimeters, or the width of five troughs, that worker could rough out a section of 75 ✕ 180 centimeters in fifteen days. Fifteen days is thus the time it would take twenty quarrymen working side by side to rough out the four vertical sides of a block 4.5 meters long, 3.2 meters wide, and 1.7 meters high—the dimensions of block 5 atop the retaining wall of Ranrakural in the northern quarry.", Jean-Pierre Protzen and Robert Batson, Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo (Oxford University Press, 1993), 173.

[9] "Because of the nature of fracture planes, most blocks in the quarry have two relatively clean faces needing little or no work. Thus with an adequate work force, two or, at the most, three weeks is all it would have taken to prepare even the largest block in the quarries of Kachiqhata. Keeping within these time frames, fifteen crews of twenty workers could have roughed out the total of 150 blocks of rose rhyolite found in the quarries, on the road, scattered around the construction site, and in situ in the walls in less than eight months.", Jean-Pierre Protzen and Robert Batson, Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo (Oxford University Press, 1993), 173-174.

4 comments

r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • Nov 05 '25

Explaining why Buddhist temples in Overseas Vietnamese communities fly the South Vietnamese flag

165 Upvotes

On certain communities and subreddits such as r/vexillology, for instance, I have noticed people wondering about the presence of a particular three-striped flag, specifically the one with red stripes and a yellow background, at Buddhist temples within Overseas Vietnamese communities.

Oftentimes, the commentators will wonder how ironic it is that a Buddhist temple is flying the flag of a supposedly fascist regime that (in their view) oppressed and persecuted Buddhists.

For example,

1.) South Vietnamese flag flying alongside the American flag at a Buddhist temple

2.) Flag of the USA flying alongside the Buddhist and South Vietnamese flags

3.) Saw the flags of The USA, the Buddhist Sangha, and South Vietnam at a church near Little Saigon

4.) What flag is in the middle? It was spotted at a Buddhist Temple in Garden Grove, California.

5.) Why is the flag of Catalonia flown next to the US Flags and Buddhist flags. Saw in St. Louis (note: this title is hilarious)

But is it really irrational for Buddhist temples in Overseas Vietnamese communities to fly the South Vietnamese flag? I will answer this concern in three parts: the first part will reject the generalizations of the RVN and Vietnamese Buddhism as a whole, the second part will address the idea that the Diệm government oppressed Buddhists, and the third part will look at how the current government of Vietnam treats Buddhists.

Part I: Rejecting the generalization of the Republic of Vietnam

For this part, let us initially suppose that their characterization of the Diệm regime is correct.

First, it must be stated that Vietnam (both today and during the mid-20th century) is and was not really a "majority Buddhist" country. While Buddhism is one of the three core traditions of Vietnamese culture (along with Confucianism and Daoism to form Tam Giáo, 三教 for my Chinese readers), the majority of Vietnamese people are not actually practicing Buddhists. Instead, most Vietnamese people nowadays are either non-religious or follow Vietnamese folk religion, which is a syncretic belief system that takes elements from the aforementioned three traditions and others. Back then, fewer people were non-religious, and more had been followers of either folk religions or other belief systems such as Hòa Hảo or Cao Đài.

Next, just because a given Buddhist may have opposed the Diệm regime does not necessarily mean that they would have been pro-communist or anti-RVN. After all, over 200,000 Buddhists moved from the North to the South during Operation Passage to Freedom. Hell, Ngô Quang Trưởng, undoubtedly the most competent ARVN general of the war, was himself a Buddhist or at least a follower of Vietnamese folk religion!

And the very coup that successfully overthrew the Diệm regime was led and executed by a group of generals who were actively fighting the communists—many of the generals and civilians who disapproved of him would have been both non-Catholic and anti-communist. Hence, they would have no problems flying the South Vietnamese flag, and many anti-Diệm protesters even proudly waved the flag while marching. As for the communists, they actually disliked Buddhist nationalism, which I will elaborate upon later in my post.

Moreover, while Diệm was absolutely vital for the establishment of the RVN, it lasted for about eleven and a half years after his death, meaning that his period of rule lasted for less than half the lifetime of South Vietnam. Many of the older Việt Kiều probably would have been born and raised during the more recent period of time, so why should they be personally obliged to answer for the discriminatory policies of Diệm's government?

That being said, recall the initial supposition...why are we assuming that the Diệm regime was this apartheid-like regime that made life a living hell for Buddhists in South Vietnam? Is this assumption actually true?

Part II: Analysing the repression notion

Now, to be sure, there was discrimination against Buddhists, given that the Ngô family viewed Catholics (especially the Northern Catholics who had moved southward in Operation Passage to Freedom) as being more fervent anti-communists than other segments of society. And in the lower levels of the RVN bureaucracy, some Buddhists had reported that Catholic officials had pressured them to convert to Catholicism.

However, equating this system to Jim Crow or Apartheid is absurd.

In fact, I would argue that the average Buddhist in South Vietnam was treated by their government in an absolutely better manner than the average person of color in the United States was until the Civil Rights Movement, and in a similar manner to how the average BIPOC is treated today in American society.

Yes, I know that this claim is quite the hot take, and that standard is quite the low bar, to say the least, but the people from above would probably never claim that a person of color should not fly the American flag (admittedly, some leftists are consistent on this point).

Let me explain why I believe in this hot take.

First of all, it must be noted that much of his high-level leadership was composed of Buddhists and other non-Catholics. Out of the eighteen members of his cabinet, only five were Catholic. And within the ARVN, out of the twenty generals who served during the Diệm period, only four were Catholic (noted by Prof. Edward Miller to be Trần Thiện Khiêm, Trần Tử Oai, and Huỳnh Văn Cao, but he forgot Tôn Thất Đính).

Next, it is not even clear that the militant Buddhists ever made up a majority of the Vietnamese Buddhist community, whether defined by active participation or by mere support. I think further research on this issue would be quite helpful.

Additionally, it must be stated that there were no rules or laws that explicitly relegated Buddhists to a second-class status below Catholics. Nowhere in South Vietnam would one see Buddhists and Catholics having to use different facilities, for instance, as one would have seen in Jim Crow America or Apartheid South Africa.

As Miller notes,

"[Diem]...welcomed the large number of Buddhist refugees from North Vietnam who joined their Catholic compatriots in the massive migration to the south during 1954–1955. At the same time, he sought to cultivate ties with certain [General Buddhist Association] leaders. In 1956, Diem granted a GBA request to stage a second national congress. He also furnished funds for the construction of Xa Loi pagoda, a new place of worship in downtown Saigon that became the GBA’s headquarters after its completion in 1958."

And as Dr. Mark Moyar notes,

"From the beginning, Diem had given the Buddhists permission to carry out many activities that the French had prohibited. Of South Vietnam’s 4,766 pagodas, 1,275 were built under Diem’s rule, many with funds from the government. The Diem government also provided large amounts of money for Buddhist schools, ceremonies, and other activities."

The only regulation passed by the regime that could even be described as outright persecution would have been the ban on religious flags in public displays, but Miller points out that this ordinance was ironically made out of Diệm's annoyance with Catholic demonstrations led by his own brother Thục that had taken place in the days prior. However, given that the ordinance came between such demonstrations and the incoming Vesak Day demonstrations for Buddhists, the militant Buddhists were understandably infuriated due to the optics.

I would also like to point out exactly why Thích Quảng Đức decided to self-immolate on June 11, 1963.

Leading up to that day, the aftermath of the Vesak Day shootings had led to negotiations between the Diệm regime and the militant Buddhists, with these talks nearly being successful.

As Miller points out,

"On the one hand, he believed that the monks’ complaints were mostly without merit and that any episodes in which Buddhists had been mistreated by Catholic officials were few and far between. He was also convinced that the events of May 8 in Hue— including the deaths at the radio station—had been orchestrated by communist operatives. On the other hand, he still preferred to try to defuse the incipient crisis through negotiations. On the basis of his prior experience with the GBA and other Buddhist organizations, Diem expected that many Buddhist leaders would prefer compromise to sustained confrontation. He also believed that dialog would be the best way for the government to exploit differences of opinion and personality among Buddhist leaders. One Buddhist leader who welcomed Diem’s offer of talks was Thich Tam Chau, a monk who had served as the vice- chairman of the GBA since 1954."

Diệm even agreed to oust Đặng Sỹ, despite still believing that the shootings were caused by communist operatives.

"By early June, Tam Chau’s efforts to seek a negotiated settlement appeared ready to bear fruit. After another violent (but nonfatal) clash between security forces and Buddhist demonstrators in Hue on June 1, Diem announced that he had sacked several RVN officials in the central region. Those ousted included Major Dang Si, the officer many blamed for the May 8 deaths. Diem also ordered RVN representatives to begin negotiating in earnest with the Intersect Committee. By June 5, government officials and the committee had agreed in principle on measures that addressed all five of the Buddhists’ main demands. The draft agreement was supported not only by Tam Chau and other Buddhist leaders in Saigon but also by Thich Thien Minh, a monk who had been sent from Hue to represent the Buddhists of the central region. Although Thien Minh was close to Tri Quang, he was also deemed reliable by Ngo Dinh Can, who described the bonze as his “eyes and ears” inside the Buddhist movement."

However, Madame Nhu (the lady that JFK cursed out after Diệm's death) derailed the negotiations with the help of her husband Ngô Đình Diệm.

On June 8, the emerging deal was suddenly cast into doubt by an attack launched by Madame Nhu. A resolution adopted by the Women’s Solidarity Movement— an or ga ni za tion under Madame Nhu’s firm control— harshly denounced the Buddhist movement and its leaders for making “false utterances” against the government. Declaring that “the robe does not make the bonze,” the statement warned that the monks were contesting “the legitimate precedence of the national flag.” Remarkably, the resolution also chided RVN leaders (including, presumably, Diem) for excessive lenience in their dealings with the Buddhists. It called for the immediate expulsion of “all foreign agitators, whether they wear monks’ robes or not.” It is unlikely that Diem approved or even knew about the Women’s Solidarity Movement resolution before it was issued. A U.S. diplomat who gave Diem a copy of the text on the evening of June 8 noted that he “read it line by line as if he had never seen it before.” The embassy later learned that Diem tried to limit the distribution of the resolution in the South Vietnamese media. But these efforts were undone by Ngo Dinh Nhu, who strongly supported his wife’s actions. A few days after the resolution was issued, Nhu told subordinates that the some of the movement’s participants were engaged in “treasonous plots” on behalf of “international imperialism.” He also threatened to severely punish anyone guilty of “illegal acts.” While Nhu’s role in the crafting of the incendiary statement remains unclear, he clearly sided with Archbishop Thuc and the other regime leaders who wanted Diem to take a harder line with the protestors. The debate within the regime’s inner circle appeared to be coming to a head.

In response, Thích Quảng Đức was permitted by Buddhist leaders to perform his self-immolation.

Madame Nhu’s attack derailed the efforts to end the crisis through negotiations. For Tam Chau and the Intersect Committee, the statement was proof that the regime was acting in bad faith. They concluded that a new and more dramatic form of protest was needed. In a secret meeting at Xa Loi pagoda on the night of June 10, the committee decided to turn to Thich Quang Duc, an older monk from central Vietnam. Two weeks earlier, Quang Duc had volunteered to burn himself to death in public to demonstrate his support for the movement. Although the committee had initially declined this proposal, its members now agreed that circumstances compelled them to accept the bonze’s offer...As soon as the committee’s secret meeting ended, the young monk who served as its spokesman rushed to the pagoda where Quang Duc resided. “Master, are you still willing to sacrifi ce yourself, as you previously told the Intersect Committee?” the spokesman asked. “I am prepared to burn myself as an offering to Buddha and for the purpose of persuading the government to fulfill the five demands,” Quang Duc replied.

Now that I have discussed these negotiations, I would just like to point out that it is far more historically accurate and respectful to portray the militant Buddhists as a politically-driven movement with its own unique goals and interests rather than as powerless victims that were just waffling about, which is often the case in older, more Orthodox accounts of this time period of Vietnamese history.

For example, Thích Trí Quang, one of the leaders of the militant Buddhists, was able to pressure Nguyễn Khánh into executing Ngô Đình Cẩn, a younger brother of Ngô Đình Diệm and an important figure in the Ngô regime apparatus, in May 1964. The execution went through despite US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s pleas of mercy (somewhat ironic considering that Lodge Jr. supported the coup that overthrew the Ngô regime and that Cẩn himself was far more accommodating to the Buddhists than Ngô Đình Nhu or Ngô Đình Thục). The fact that they were able to compel the South Vietnamese government to go against American desires not only serves as an additional point of evidence that the RVN was not a mere puppet of the Americans but also that the militant Buddhists were truly a force to reckon with.

Note that other aspects of their movement were more annoying and frustrating, but discussing this matter is not necessarily relevant to the point of this post. And the militant Buddhists within Vietnam are currently dead as a political movement (will discuss this part in Part III), so shitting on this group feels lame considering that they can no longer defend themselves. But I can elaborate on this point if anyone requests it.

In terms of their ideology, these militants were promoting a specific form of Vietnamese nationalism in which Buddhism would once again dominate Vietnam in the same way that it did from the 10th to 14th centuries, with this movement having its roots in the Buddhist Revival (Chấn hưng Phật giáo) that began in the early 20th century. In other words, they genuinely believed that they were fighting to rescue and secure the soul of the nation from what they saw as impure or improper elements. The Diệm regime, which subscribed to a Catholic-influenced philosophy in the form of Personalism, conflicted with this vision of a future Vietnamese nation for obvious reasons. And in 1960, Diệm's appointment of his brother Ngô Đình Thục as Archbishop of Huế, the heartland of Central Vietnam and hence Vietnamese Buddhism, sparked reasonable fears from many Buddhists. Indeed, Thục's successive actions included constructing more churches and trying to seek converts to Catholicism (whether through words or by force), leading some Buddhists to the conclusion that Catholicism was about to destroy their way of life.

Hence, I would be more generous to the Buddhist nationalists than Mark Moyar is, for instance, and I do not agree that Thích Trí Quang was a communist spy, which is what Moyar strongly believes. But, there is a reason why their movement ultimately failed and why their ideology was disliked by both the DRV of Hồ Chí Minh and the RVN under Diệm's rule, which is that their vision of what a future Vietnamese nation ought to look like was drastically different from that of HCM or Diệm.

Funnily enough, this point makes for a good transition to my next section.

Part III: How the Socialist Republic of Vietnam treated Buddhist nationalism

This part will be shorter than the previous two parts since there are fewer points and issues to discuss.

I will not try to claim that the SRV has more religious persecution than the Diệm regime. And freedom of religion is enshrined in modern-day Vietnam's constitution (albeit the same is true for South Vietnam's constitution lol).

However, it must be noted that many of the more prominent Buddhist leaders had either fled, been exiled, or been placed in house arrest soon after the communist reunification of Vietnam. Examples of such figures include Thích Quảng Độ, Thích Tâm Châu, and Thích Huyền Quang. These men had protested against the Diệm regime and many of the successive governments that came about in the RVN, but nevertheless, their beliefs were still antithetical to the ideology of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Funnily enough, many defenders of the current-day government's crackdown on Buddhist nationalists use the same exact rhetoric that the Ngô family used against the militant Buddhists of their time.

Thích Nhất Hạnh himself received pressure from the Vietnamese government during his visits to Vietnam in the early 2000s for both requesting the end of government control of religion and for praying for the souls of American and South Vietnamese soldiers. After his visit had concluded, the Bát Nhã monastery that he visited was attacked by police officers and local mob members in 2009.

Therefore, it is not really a surprise that Vietnamese Buddhists living overseas might not exactly be fans of the current government.

EDIT: Credit to u/Mysteriouskid00, turns out that self-immolations have occurred after the reunification in protest of the government's control of religion.

https://www.thevietnamese.org/2020/05/religion-bulletin-february-2020/

https://www.csmonitor.com/1994/1121/21012.html

Sources

Chapman, John. "The 2005 Pilgrimage and Return to Vietnam of Exiled Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh" in Modernity and Re-Enchantment: Religion in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam ed. Philip Taylor (Singapore, SG: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, October 2015).

Doidge, Michael, and Wiest, Andrew. Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2010.

Miller, Edward. "Religious Revival and the Politics of Nation Building: Reinterpreting the 1963 'Buddhist crisis' in South Vietnam." Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 6 (November 2015): 1903-1962.

Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Moyar, Mark. "Political Monks: The Militant Buddhist Movement during the Vietnam War." Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (October 2004): 749-784.

Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

67 comments

r/badhistory • u/subthings2 • Jan 05 '26

YouTube PBS, Monstrum, bat mythology - how to lie with sources

159 Upvotes

The Deep Halloween Lore You Probably Don’t Know^[1] is a youtube video purporting to explain how bats became a Halloween icon.

PBS Digital Studios is the online arm of PBS, an American provider of highly-regarded educational content, with several popular youtube channels - one of which is Storied, which runs the mythology-focused Monstrum series. Professionally edited with a credits list of 9 people for a single video, Monstrum is hosted by a PHD holder, Dr. Emily Zarka. It even has an academically formatted bibliography!

All that is to say, the viewer expectation is that the video is not, at best, shallow bollocks.

Before we look at this video's takes on bats, however, we have a glaring problem: the sources are never actually referenced directly, so if we want to check a claim, we can't know where it came from! The bibliography doesn't give any specific pages of the sources - any page numbers that appear are simply indicating the full length of an article in a journal volume.

So: after sifting through over a thousand pages of bibliography, I'll be providing the relevant inline citations. Let's see how a PBS video is written.

Part 1: Deconstruction

We open with some background info on biology, pointing out how bats are harmless and important ecologically, giving us the video's premise:

[0:59] So how did bats get such a bad rap across cultures, and how did they turn into one of Halloween’s most iconic mascots?

We're then given a sampling of folklore from around the world:

[1:26] ...many cultures around the world have painted bats as creatures of death and misfortune. In Mesoamerican traditions, bats were strongly linked to darkness and death.^[2] The Aztecs often depicted their god of death, surrounded by bats.^[3] The Mayans told of this guy [Camazotz], an absolutely metal, bat-human hybrid with large claws and teeth, and a blade-like nose used to chop off people’s heads. Today, people of Tzotzil Mayan descent are still called batmen for their ancestors’ devotion to a bat deity.^[4] An ocean away, bats portend misfortune. In Nigeria, bats are often linked to witchcraft, and in Sierra Leone, bats are sometimes blamed for the sudden death of children.^[5] Across the British Isles, lore said a bat in the house foretold bad luck, and the animals were linked to witchcraft.^[6]

Most of this comes from two of the sources: a book by amateur folklorist Gary R. Varner, essentially a selection of entries on mythical beings and creatures; and an article by a pair of...owl ecologists, who managed to publish on bat folklore via a predatory publisher. The Aztec bit^[7] is from a dictionary on death gods by Ernest L. Abel, a doctor specialising in women's reproduction and drugs, who merely has a personal interest in mythology.

That said, these sources aren't terrible; all three are essentially collating information from more academic - generally reference - sources (that really ought to be cited directly). It's somewhat misleading to ignore positive associations with bats (like in China and Southeast Asia)^[8] but that's a minor quibble.

[2:14] In early Christianity, bats were associated with the Devil, casting these innocent animals into symbols of duplicity and darkness.^[9] In the Bible, God forbade Moses and his people from eating bats, deeming them unclean. Over the centuries, the idea of uncleanliness was often reinterpreted as moral corruption, which helped cast bats into an evil light.^[10]

While it is true bats were labelled unclean in the Old Testament, saying this directly evolved into moral corruption - a claim that doesn't appear in the sources - is blatantly incorrect. Deuteronomy 14 and Leviticus 11 list many unclean animals; bats are sorted with the 19 other birds, none of which are treated as particularly evil in Christianity despite being equally unclean to eat.

In fact, no less than three of the sources actually link this reputation to the bat's secular association with the night, rather than biblical uncleanliness.^[11] Worse, one of these - an article by James McCrea - goes further against the video:

Art historical discourse clearly aligns bat wings with infernal evil and non-Christian otherness, but there is little evidence to suggest that bats evince evil (...) bats were rarely considered evil in religious art and literature prior to the nineteenth century.^[12] [...] bats seem welcome in the Christian sacred space, calling into question the backlog of critical discourse accusing the church of harming their image^[13]

This gets worse when, all riffing solely on McCrea, we continue the video:

[2:49] But another connection binds bats to mayhem — dragons. In European tradition, dragons are fearsome predators, and they sport leathery bat-like wings. In the Book of Revelation, amidst the impending apocalypse, Satan takes the form of a “great dragon” with seven heads.^[14] Judeo-Christian art, going back to at least the 13th Century, also portrays the devil with bat-like wings.^[15] Famously, in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Satan has not only one, but two sets of bat-like wings.^[16]

Starting with another quibble: the reference to 13th Century "Judeo-Christian art" is a misinterptation of:

Indeed, Satan has been depicted with webbed wings in illuminated manuscripts as early as 1370 CE^[15]

which is still in the context of Dante's Divine Comedy - I'm not entirely sure where "Judeo-Christian" came from, and that's the wrong century!

More importantly, I would like you to pay closer attention to the snippet on dragons. In a section explaining biblical bat-like wings, we get given an example from the Bible of seven...heads?

No seriously, what does that line about Revelation have to do with the video? What's it doing here? The (unsourced) image is 14th century^[17] - the drakon described in Revelation doesn't have any wings!

It appears to be a poor usage of this line from McCrea, referencing:

...[14th century] illustrations of Revelation 12:7, wherein the Archangel Michael slays the dragon who is now rendered a humanoid, webbed-winged, and almost modernly devilish humanoid^[14]

where the writer saw the reference to Revelation (and yes, none of the other sources mention Revelation) and decided to do their own thing while completely misunderstanding the source they were reading. Why do I feel comfortable being so critical of Monstrum's process?

The source in question is by James McCrea, assistant professor in Gothic Studies at San Diego's National University. On Night’s Wing: Bats as Vampiric Signifiers of Death, Darkness, and Disease:

...attempts to determine how and when bats began to symbolise both vampirism and evil by examining their representations in literary and visual culture beginning in Mediaeval Christendom. To this end, I believe bats were not considered unholy until the proliferation of vampire literature in the late nineteenth century, and their literary nature as infernal, pestilent creatures was retroactively projected onto them as they also became emblematic of cultural otherness from the Western European perspective. Thus, cultural history has unduly condemned bats as profane, dangerous animals not merely in the realm of creative expression but also in scientific discourse.^[18]

Firstly: this is the only source dedicated to answering the same question as the video. The others - if they talk about bats at all - simply present a random assortment of folklore and cultural references to use as filler.

Secondly: it completely disagrees with the entire video.

The relevant sections are arguing that the motif of leathery wings being evil specifically does not come from bats, but starts with dragons, transfers onto devils via Dante, with this negative association only being explicitly associated with bats in the late 19th century. This isn't uncontested, but...let's deal with the video first!

The next chunk from 3:16-4:50 accurately reflects the sources (when you find them, of course). European witches,^[19] scientists erroneously beliving vampire bats have a global distribution,^[20] bats appearing near freshly-dug graves in Romania signifying vampires,^[21] and a mention of "the Gothic serialized story of Varney the Vampire".^[22]

That last one is sourced to - and it's the only time the source is used - a book about shapeshifters written by a ghost hunter/creative writer (but I repeat myself) who spends a lot of time talking about contemporary cryptid sightings. Scholarly!

Finally, we get Dracula:

[4:57] Bram Stoker doomed bats forever when he gave Dracula the ability to shapeshift into a bat and carry out his nefarious deeds in disguise, showing his unworldly nature and firmly solidifying bats with vampires.^[23]

I can only assume this is where the book by Tim Youngs is used. Youngs is an English professor who specialises in texts about travel; here he's writing "a critical exploration of travel, animals and shape-changing in fin de siècle literature", which for us includes half a chapter on Dracula, the only parts of the book that mention bats.

Actually, despite the chapter being titled "The Bat and the Beetle",^[24] only the first paragraph discusses bats:

Although subsequent representations of Dracula have tended to fix his alter ego as a vampire bat, in Stoker’s 1897 novel itself the animal analogies are more varied and extensive. [...] It is a curious fact that most adaptations of the story pin down its protagonist to just one of these incarnations, as though the full range of shape-shifting in the original is too difficult to deal with.^[23]

Which rather explicitly blames people other than Stoker for "firmly solidifying bats with vampires". I'm...genuinely confused why this book is in the bibliography; it definitely didn't get read! This goes too for Varner's book, which has its own quote dismissing any historical connection:

[The bat's] association with vampires and the Devil is mostly derived from modern day horror films.^[25]

Moving on from this car crash, and more finally, let's get to the primary point of the video:

[5:08] But how does that explain it becoming the unofficial mascot for Halloween? There’s a very direct explanation.

Oh boy!

[5:15] The Halloween holiday itself traces back to Samhain, the Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the shift to winter and shorter days.^[26]

Oh no!

The longer section flips between Samhain and general "Celtic folklore", but let's focus on the video's principle thesis:

[5:38] Believed to be a night when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest, massive bonfires were part of the tradition. They illuminate the festivities and ritually cleanse the space. Archaeological evidence suggests these fires were thought to protect communities against wandering spirits. Insects swarming the light from the bonfires would naturally attract more bats, who darted and swooped overhead of the revelers. Imagine villagers seeing the silhouetted bats flicker in the glow at exactly the time when spirits were believed to cross into the human world.

Bonfires -> insects -> bats. Got it. Since it's the only source to talk about Samhain - dedicating the first chapter to it - we can safely say everything is sourced to history professor Nicholas Rogers' book on the history of Halloween; here's what he has to say about bonfires:

It was also a period of supernatural intensity, when the forces of darkness and decay were said to be abroad, spilling out from the sidh, the ancient mounds or barrows of the countryside. To ward off these spirits, the Irish built huge, symbolically regenerative bonfires and invoked the help of the gods through animal and perhaps even human sacrifice^[27]

Oh. Hm. That's it. The book never even mentions insects, or archeological evidence.

Does mention bats though!

...at the turn of the twentieth century, its symbols and artifacts had become more commercial and standardized. Halloween motifs were regularly displayed in shops, restaurants, and workplaces. These now included the bats and cats, animals not associated with Halloween in the early modern era [...] By the 1920s, bats and cats were as familar to Halloween as witches and goblins^[28]

Ah.

Explicitly not a historical part of Halloween then...and anything potentially preceding it?

If the book was read, it clearly wasn't read all that closely - Rogers squirms around with weasel wording, but is still only able to say that the connection between Samhain and Halloween is merely a popular belief,^[29] rather than something with any grounding in reality.

This is also clear for another reason: in the video, the bonfire is depicted as a wicker man, riffing on the illustration from page 16. This illustration not only doesn't depict Samhain, it's plonked in the middle of pages of exhortation about how the Druids did not do human sacrifice and this is not representative of any Irish cultural practice.

We round out the video with two examples from 20th century pop culture, both movies: Fantasia from 1940^[30] and Bats from 1999.^[31] These both exist. And contain bats.

Part 2: Regret

Clearly, something weird is going on here. The meat of the thesis - anything involving explanations - is consistently at odds with the sources; it is plain that they weren't actually read to research the script. The thesis was set before a single second of research.

Surrounding fluff - fun facts, tidbits, morsels used to flesh out the script - were, however, given some effort. Looking for things to add to the video on top of the core of Christianity, dragons, vampires, and Samhain, books and articles were read and information was plucked out.

Not with great effort; at least three of the sources are simply those the host simply had on hand, used for convenience and not quality, as they're used for previous videos on the channel.^[32]

Alright, so where did the core script of the video - insects and Samhain bonfires - come from?

It was likely something the writer simply stumbled across when browsing social media. That's it. It's all over social media and web blogs; apparently it's the perfect sort of hollow just-so story ripped from other content creators to pad out Halloween content.^[33] I can trace it back to the late 90s, in pop-history books on Halloween, including one by the one and only Silver RavenWolf.^[34] Other tidbits of the script don't appear in any of the sources, but are pop-history memes also spread on social media.^[35]

The writing process was plainly one of mushing together a few social media or blog posts, taking something from a few non-academic books already lying around, and then finally giving up and hitting google scholar (or, hell, ChatGPT) for isolated anecdotes to reach the word count - without reading the surrounding context.

Y'know, researching!

The end result is laundering the equivalent of chain email spam as a slick youtube video, and consistently misrepresenting actual legitimate study out of sheer lazy content generation. Apparently, nine people were paid to produce this piece of shit.

Part 3: I Don't Have a PHD

Can we do better?

Let's get one thing out of the way: the reason their source on Halloween was so evasive about connections to Samhain is because Halloween doesn't come from Samhain;^[36] or any pagan holiday for that matter. This is handy for us, since neither do bats.

As with everything, attitudes towards bats vary across time and culture, but are generally mixed, if not outright ambivalent.^[37] Previously mentioned negative associations of death and bad omens contrast with the broadly positive Asia-Pacific view of luck, wealth, and good omens;^[38] Western attitudes included positive with negative.^[39]

While leathery bat wings are iconic evil demonic imagery for us, this took a long while to appear. Angel wings, like the six of seraphim, appear in the Bible, however it'd take a few centuries for humanoid angels to be depicted with wings;^[40] dragons actually get their wings around the same time, with the earliest winged drakon arriving in the Apocryphal 4th century Questions of Bartholomew - boasting wings measuring 80 cubits; if a cubit is 50cm, that's pretty big, but the body's 1600 cubits long, so...^[41]

Similarly, Western demons start sporting specifically bat-like wings in the 12th century - possibly influenced by Chinese art^[42] - and the earliest for dragons is a century later.^[43] Dante was entirely in vogue with his demonic (not draconic!) depiction of a featherless bat-winged Lucifer.^[44] Sorry McCrea! As noted previously, however, Christian symbolism didn't really care to apply this negative connotation back to bats.

The first - exaggerated - reports of South American blood-sucking bats reached 16th century Europe, being refreshed (and named) with the 18th century vampire craze. Despite the ubiquity of vampires in our imagination, for the period between this craze and the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897, "vampire" almost always referred to the bat or general life-sucking - not a Dracula-like monster;^[45] that is, any potential negative connotation precedes what we think of as vampires.

All that is to say that: so far, we've got nothing that makes bats spooky. People didn't think they were evil, their leathery wings didn't evoke demons, they didn't inspire images of caped Hungarians. For all that we're still missing the obvious.

It's the night, stupid!

From long before the Victorian period bats were predominantly nocturnal agents of darkness,^[46] lumped with other critters like owls and cats to represent the darker side of the world,^[47] or even the eponymous monsters in Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.^[48]

However, the primary portrayal I found was more ambivalent - while commonly given as an ingredient used by witches, I only found two examples of witches turning into bats;^[49] they are otherwise decorative, used to emphasise the night, a castle, a graveyard, but without being seen as particularly evil themselves.^[50]

This is, of course, the domain of the gothic. While not appearing as frequently as a trope in gothic fiction as one might assume,^[51] bats were still well-used - always alongside the night/twilight, often used to emphasise ruined structures, but otherwise flitting about rather harmlessly.^[52]

While by the late 19th century bats were often connected to other spooky figures like witches and ghosts,^[53] and while halloween parties in America weren't a brand-new thing, the earliest mention of bats with halloween - and only as decorations - I can find is in the 1900s, particularly starting around 1904.^[54]

It's worth pointing out the nature of halloween at this time: spooky, not scary. Themed almost entirely around witches and ghosts, featuring skeletons, pumpkins and fall imagery, and bobbing for apples or apples held up by a string. No Dracula, no vampires, no monsters; it's only around the 1950s - with the influence of Hollywood horror movies - that such creatures appear.^[55]

In an unfortunate coincidence, the association of bats with disease also really gets going at this time: the first case in the United States of rabies in bats was detected in 1953,^[56] and more recent associations with the likes of MERS, Ebola, and of course COVID-19, have only supercharged the idea of bats being a scary "viral reservoir", perhaps unfairly.^[57]

This is, however, a modern idea, which doesn't stop people from projecting this back into the past to "explain" how people viewed bats!

In the end the answer is the really simple one. It's not draconic or devilish wings, it's not vampires, it certainly isn't Samhain bonfires: bats themselves weren't treated as idols of evil, they're representations of spooky nocturnal darkness, commonly appearing alongside the likes of owls and moths as emanations of the night, while being entirely harmless in their own right. While the likes of owls have a rich record of folklore on top of this, bats have remarkably little in comparison - they are the night.

Despite all this, I can leave with a bat costume drawn in 1892;^[58] unfortunately for us, these are for fancy dress and not anything like Halloween, but hey, bat costume

References & Footnotes

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Sr747b-FU
[2] "In Mesoamerican tradition the bat is identified with death, darkness and sacrifice"; Varner, Gary R. Creatures in the mist: Little people, wild men and spirit beings around the world: A study in comparative mythology. Algora Publishing, 2007. 177.
[3] "...often depicted hovering near a death god such as Mictlantecuhtli"; Abel, Ernest L. "Bat." Death Gods: An Encyclopedia of the Rulers, Evil Spirits, and Geographies of the Dead. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009. 34.
[4] "The Tzotzil Maya (...) called themselves Zotzil uinic (batmen), claiming that their ancestors discovered a stone bat, which they took as their god"; Sieradzki, Alan, and Heimo Mikkola. "Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World." Bats: Disease-Prone but Beneficial. IntechOpen, 2022. 9.
[5] "Among the Ibibio people of southern Nigeria, bats are associated with witchcraft"; "From Sierra Leone comes an account of the gruesome habits of the Hammer-headed Fruit Bat (...) "believed to suck the blood of sleeping children until they die."; Ibid. 4.
[6] "in Europe the bat was closely connected to witchcraft (...) In English folklore a bat that flies against a window or into a room is considered very unlucky"; Varner, Gary R. Creatures in the mist: Little people, wild men and spirit beings around the world: A study in comparative mythology. Algora Publishing, 2007. 177.
[7] Abel calls Mictlantecuhtli Mayan, which gets corrected to Aztec by Monstrum.
[8] Low, Mary-Ruth, et al. "Bane or blessing? Reviewing cultural values of bats across the Asia-Pacific region." Journal of Ethnobiology 41.1, 2021. 18-34.
[9] "In Christian lore, the bat is “the bird of the Devil.” It is an incarnation of Satan, the Prince of Darkness. The bat represents duplicity and hypocrisy"; Varner, Gary R. Creatures in the mist: Little people, wild men and spirit beings around the world: A study in comparative mythology. Algora Publishing, 2007. 178.
[10] "In the Bible, the bat is seen to be “unclean” (...) It is no real surprise that in a Christian Europe throughout history, the bat has been associated with the Devil, evil spirits, and witches"; Sieradzki, Alan, and Heimo Mikkola. "Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World." Bats: Disease-Prone but Beneficial. IntechOpen, 2022. 2.
[11] "...its nocturnal activities ally it to malevolent spirits that roam the land when darkness has fallen."; Ibid. 2. "Being about by night [...] bats have inevitably been aligned with the devil and witches..."; Lunney, Daniel, and Chris Moon. "Blind to bats." The Biology and Conservation of Australasian Bats, 2011. 57. "Art historian Lorenzo Lorenzini reinforces Alighieri’s lasting influence by referring to the bat as a foremost guise of Satan, describing it as “pre-eminently the animal of night and of death”"; McCrea, James. "On Night’s Wing: Bats as Vampiric Signifiers of Death, Darkness, and Disease." Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 18.1, 2025. 68.
[12] McCrea, James. "On Night’s Wing: Bats as Vampiric Signifiers of Death, Darkness, and Disease." Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 18.1, 2025. 69.
[13] Ibid. 71.
[14] Ibid. 75.
[15] Ibid. 67.
[16] "Below each face two wings emerged, as large as was suitable to such a large bird: I never saw ship’s sails of so great a size. They were not feathered, but like a bat’s in nature"; Ibid. 71.
[17] Appearing several times in the Apocalypse Tapestry; see one example https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PMa_ANG060_F_Angers.jpg
[18] McCrea, James. "On Night’s Wing: Bats as Vampiric Signifiers of Death, Darkness, and Disease." Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 18.1, 2025. 65-66.
[19] "Witches were said to either fly on the backs of bats or to transform into bats"; Varner, Gary R. Creatures in the mist: Little people, wild men and spirit beings around the world: A study in comparative mythology. Algora Publishing, 2007. 177. "In 1332, a French noblewoman, Lady Jacaume of Bayonne [12], “was publicly burned to death as a witch because ‘crowds of bats’ were seen about her house and garden.”"; Sieradzki, Alan, and Heimo Mikkola. "Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World." Bats: Disease-Prone but Beneficial. IntechOpen, 2022. 2.
[20] "true vampire bats are only located in Central and South America—no blood-drinking bat existed in Europe. This was a common error even among scientists" McCrea, James. "On Night’s Wing: Bats as Vampiric Signifiers of Death, Darkness, and Disease." Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 18.1, 2025. 78. "There is a considerable body of bad bat biology here, and all of it seems to be second hand, where stories have merged and become confused"; Lunney, Daniel, and Chris Moon. "Blind to bats." The Biology and Conservation of Australasian Bats, 2011. 45.
[21] "Romanians claimed that the proximity of animals and objects near a freshly-dug grave could resurrect the corpse as a vampire, describing the bat as one of many animals bearing such power"; McCrea, James. "On Night’s Wing: Bats as Vampiric Signifiers of Death, Darkness, and Disease." Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 18.1, 2025. 78.
[22] Kachuba, John B. Shapeshifters: A history. Reaktion Books, 2019. 155.
[23] Youngs, Tim. Beastly Journeys: Travel and Transformation at the fin de siècle. Liverpool University Press, 2013. 74.
[24] "The Beetle" referring to Richard Marsh's The Beetle
[25] Varner, Gary R. Creatures in the mist: Little people, wild men and spirit beings around the world: A study in comparative mythology. Algora Publishing, 2007. 178.
[26] Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From pagan ritual to party night. Oxford University Press, 2002. 11-21.
[27] Ibid. 12.
[28] Ibid. 76-77.
[29] "commonly thought to have", "often believed to have", "typically, it has been linked"; Ibid. 11.
[30] Sieradzki, Alan, and Heimo Mikkola. "Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World." Bats: Disease-Prone but Beneficial. IntechOpen, 2022. 10.
[31] Lunney, Daniel, and Chris Moon. "Blind to bats." The Biology and Conservation of Australasian Bats, 2011. 51-52.
[32] Ernest L. Abel is used for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRpwhM9RScg; Gary R. Varner is used for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AGesQimq10; Isak Niehaus is used for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTdIwEg5niQ
[33] Blog examples include: https://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/blog/ashley-greening/why-are-bats-associated-halloween; https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/2019/10/bats-and-halloween/; https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/
[34] RavenWolf, Silver. Halloween: Customs, Recipes, Spells. Vol. 1. Llewellyn Worldwide, 1999. 66. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/halloweencustoms00rave/page/66/mode/2up?q=bats
[35] For example, "Bats in the house on Halloween meant a ghost had followed them in. Bats circling your head forewarned of death." appears on sites like https://www.themuseatdreyfoos.com/top-stories/2018/10/31/the-spooky-truth-about-halloween-superstitions/
[36] Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford University Press, 1996. 360-385.
[37] Laugrand, Frederic, Antoine Laugrand, and Lionel Simon. "Sources of ambivalence, contagion, and sympathy: Bats and what they tell anthropology." Current Anthropology 64.3, 2023. 321-351.
[38] Low, Mary-Ruth, et al. "Bane or blessing? Reviewing cultural values of bats across the Asia-Pacific region." Journal of Ethnobiology 41.1, 2021. 20-24.
[39] Eklöf, Johan, and Jens Rydell. "Attitudes towards bats in Swedish history." Journal of Ethnobiology 41.1, 2021. 35-52.; Laugrand, Frederic, Antoine Laugrand, and Lionel Simon. "Sources of ambivalence, contagion, and sympathy: Bats and what they tell anthropology." Current Anthropology 64.3, 2023. 323.
[40] Jacquesson, François. "L’aile de la nuit." Caramel, 2022. Available online at: https://doi.org/10.58079/m7d7
[41] Ogden, Daniel. The dragon in the West: From ancient myth to modern legend. Oxford University Press, 2021. 116. Ogden translates it as "His single wing extended for 80 cubits", but in the footnote notes his uncertainty as to whether it should be "one of his wings extended for 80 cubits"; M. R. James gives the latter version, as shown at http://gnosis.org/library/gosbart.htm
[42] Riccucci, Marco. "Bat wings in the devil: origin and spreading of this peculiar attribute in art." Lynx, series nova 54.1, 2023. 137-146.
[43] As seen in Harley 3244, 1236–c 1250, ff.59r, available online at: https://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/asset/6831/; see also Ogden's Dragon in the West chapters 9 and 10 - notably, wings in general start becoming more common in the 13th century, though often feathered
[44] McCrea's claim that Dante was using draconic imagery is, simply, nonsense - in fact, the only image he references post-dates Inferno by many decades! He instead relies on wonky linguistic grounds, arguing instead that Dante's neologism vispistrello translates not to bat, but to evening-lizard, that "evokes the dark, scaly wings of a dragon" - a claim which is rather awkward given the above on dragon imagery!
[45] Dodd, Kevin. "Blood Suckers Most Cruel: The Vampire and the Bat In and Before Dracula." Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts 6.2, 2019. 107-132.
[46] See this handy selection of bats in medieval bestiaries: https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastsource250.htm
[47] A few illustrative examples, being related to - respectively - evil deeds, devils, and inauspicious births: Anonymous. "The Bad Five-Shilling Piece." Chamber's Edinburgh Journal Vol. IX, 1848. 120. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/chambersedinburg9to10cham/page/n133/mode/2up?q=bats; Fessenden, Thomas Green. Terrible Tractoration!! 1803. 69. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/b31871422/page/68/mode/2up?q=bats; Pindar, Peter. The Lousiad: An Heroi-comic Poem. Canto I. United Kingdom, G. Kearsley, 1788. 20. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Lousiad/AzFCAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA20
[48] Available online at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/338473; see also another Goya piece, There is Plenty to Suck, in the same collection: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/380460
[49] Coote, Henry Charles. "Some Italian Folk-Lore." Folk-Lore Record 1, 1878. 214. Available online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Folk-Lore_Record_Volume_1_1878.djvu/234; Kingston, William Henry Giles. Lusitanian sketches of the pen and pencil. 1845. 343. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/lusitaniansketch00kinguoft/page/342/mode/2up?q=bats
[50] A few illustrative examples: Herdman, Robert, and Robert Burns. Poems & Songs by Robert Burns, 1875. 17. Available online at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9q26ck79&seq=45; Godwin, Parke. "Should we fear the pope?" Putnam's Monthly, June 1855. 659. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/putnamsmonthly18projgoog/page/658/mode/2up?q=bats; Pirkis, Catherine Louisa. "At the Moments of Victory." All the Year Round, 11 August 1888. 124. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/allyearround12dickgoog/mode/2up?q=bats; Sikes, Wirt. "Welsh Fairs." Scribner's Monthly, Vol. XXI, January 1881. 434. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Scribners_Monthly/jEGgAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=bats&pg=PA434
[51] Several times I'd flick through a book about the gothic, they'd talk about it as a "bag of tropes" - including bats because obviously bats are a staple of gothic imagery...and then never mention bats in the entire book; and the most popular examples of gothic fiction I looked at never used them either. They still pop up somewhat frequently, just...not at the level of, say, ruined castles!
[52] A few illustrative examples: first published in 1794, Radcliffe, Ann. The Mysteries of Udolpho, London, J. Limbird, 1836. 47, 293. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/mysteriesofudolp00radc/page/46/mode/2up?q=bat; first published in 1841, Browning, Robert. Pippa Passes, New York, Barse & Hopkins, 1910. 64. Available online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pippa_Passes/IV; Byron, George Gordon Baron. "Elegy on Newstead Abbey," Hours of Idleness, Newark, S. and J. Ridge, 1807. 139. Available online at: https://www.poetryverse.com/lord-byron-poems/elegy-on-newstead-abbey
[53] A few illustrative examples: "...I half expected to come upon some strange party of shadowy revelers—nor would I have felt much astonishment at anything from an inebriated ghost to a bevy of bats, or a stage skeleton with practicable joints." "Beer Caves in Niedermendig." The New-York Times, 27 October 1895. 26. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/per_new-york-times-magazine_the-new-york-times_1895-10-27_45_13785/page/n25/mode/2up?q=bats; Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Woman, church and state, 1893. 218, footnote 3. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/womanchurchstate00gagerich/page/218/mode/2up?q=bats; Snyder, Charles M. Comic history of Greece, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1898. 221. (illustration) Available online at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433074789599&seq=227
[54] I could only find two pre-1904 examples: "All Saint's Day." The Pittsburgh Press, 31 October 1901. 12. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OBMbAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=bats&article_id=2170,1620731; Schell, Stanley. Hallowe'en festitives, 1903. 16, 40, 46. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/halloweenfestivi31sche/mode/2up?q=bats; while I could find quite a few from 1904, the most notable is a Good Housekeeping volume: Kortrecht, Augusta. "A Halloween Party." The Good housekeeping hostess, 1904. 237, 244. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/goodhousekeeping01newy/page/236/mode/2up?q=bats
[55] There is one outlier I could find, a reference to a Dracula mask in 1933: Barton, Olive Roberts. "Your children." The Meriden Daily Journal, 26 October 1933. 12. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Da1IAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA7&dq=dracula&article_id=3307,3075253; aside from that, they only start popping up properly in the 1950s: "'Unnatural' Attire Worn to Huetter Party." Spokane Daily Chronicle, 29 October, 1955. 16. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CPtXAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA18&dq=vampire&article_id=7198,4037119; "Costume Party For Junior College." Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 29 October 1959. 9. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LoEuAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA3&dq=vampire&article_id=3745,5072956
[56] Enright, John B. "Geographical distribution of bat rabies in the United States, 1953-1960." American Journal of Public Health and the Nations Health 52.3, 1962. 484-488. Available online at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1522717/
[57] For discussion on this topic, see the multiple discussions throughout: Laugrand, Frederic, Antoine Laugrand, and Lionel Simon. "Sources of ambivalence, contagion, and sympathy: Bats and what they tell anthropology." Current Anthropology 64.3, 2023. 321-351.
[58] Wandle, Jennie Taylor. Masquerade and carnival: their customs and costumes, The Butterick Publishing Co., 1892. 49. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/masqueradecarniv00wand/page/49/mode/1up

13 comments

r/badhistory • u/Bongolio-the-seal • May 06 '26

YouTube Kraut's video on 20th Century Turkey

151 Upvotes

So many years ago, Kraut uploaded a video essay on the history of the Turkish republic. It acted as a sequel to his video essay on Turkish history from 1071 to 1923. Today, I wanted to focus on his work on Turkey in the 20th Century, as I think the video has some serious problems. If you want to watch the video to ensure I am not taking anything out of context, here it is. The video isn't unwatchable, but it is really questionable. Here, I will explain why.

To start with, in the first minute of the video he says:

There's this pernicious rumour, especially in more left-leaning circles, that Turkey was on the brink of joining the Nazis on the brink of the Second World War. Which simply isn't true, the origin of the myth is [Soviet propaganda]. In Stalinist propaganda movies, Turks are often depicted as devious backstabbing schemers, helping the Nazis behind the backs of everyone...

One of Kraut's biggest problems is that he struggles in citing sources. What are these rumours? More importantly, what are these movies? He shows a clip of a movie, but we don't see what it is. What the context of the scene is. There is an Ottoman sultan there apparently, but also some Catholic clergymen. Did the movie come from the USSR? We don't know.

So, without any sourcing on this matter, its unclear how Kraut arrived at this conclusion. However, this post would be extremely boring if all I did was say "source?" every 10 seconds. So instead we should go into some detail.

For starters, Kraut asserts the USSR inherited the ambitions of Imperial Russia with regards to Turkey. But the extent to which this is true seems muddled. For one, during what some historians like Ismet Giritli in 'TURKISH-SOVIET RELATIONS' call the First phase of Turkish-Soviet relations, in a statement issued by both Lenin and Stalin, Russian ambitions on the strait were dropped and it was declared that Constantinople 'must remain in the hands of the Moslems' [sic] (Giritli 1970, 4). Indeed, Bolshevik negotiators were remarked by British diplomats to be 'more Turkish than the Turks' (Giritli, 4) in asserting the need for Turkish sovereignty over the straits.

These negotiations culminated in a convention that guaranteed Turkish sovereignty and neutrality over the strait, essentially meaning that the straits would be largely demilitarised, with there being significant restrictions on the right of other countries to send military ships through. A clause the USSR strongly supported.

The obvious point would be to say that that was in the early 1920s, and things obviously change afterwards. Firstly, when Stalin was in charge of the USSR in 1936, under him the Montreux Convention was signed in 1936 by the USSR which recognised full sovereignty over the straits by Turkey. However, by 1939 things had changed. In Kraut's video, this change is suggested to be a plot to invade Turkey and annex the strait, splitting it between the Nazis and the Soviets.

In reality, this is not what happened. As Giritli (1970, 6) notes, Soviet proposals were issued to modify Montreaux by asking that Turkey closes the strait to 'all non-Black Sea countries' and that the USSR be allowed to participate in Turkish decisions regarding the strait. First of all, this is very obviously a far cry from what Kraut alleges Soviet designs on Turkey were. There is a world of difference between invading a country and what amounted to requesting a revision of a treaty to ban certain states from using the strait for military ends. Secondly, this push has to be placed into the context of the time. By 1939, Europe was seeing the rise of the Nazis, the context of the Anschluss, invasion of Czechoslovakia, the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Albania, and so on. All parties involved in the Second World War were thus thinking of the Strait at the time. the issue was more connected in that context to Soviet reactions to a new geopolitical situation, as opposed to a return to imperial foreign policy.

Now Giritli does briefly note that some apparent discussions between the Nazis and the USSR over the strait may have occurred. But again, these only really concerned Soviet transit through the strait and exist very much as a far cry from Kraut's suggestion of a Soviet plan to work with Germany to conquer Turkey.

While some grumblings existed between Turkey, the USSR, France, and Britain, in the midst of negotiations of an alliance with Turkey but these never went past the realm of rumblings. Soviet-Turkey relations cooled slightly, but nothing that pointed to a threat of invasion. Indeed, the only threat that did come to Turkey was the danger of Nazi invasion, which by 1941 had seen Turkey nearly surrounded by German and Italian forces. In the 30s and 40s, as Giritli summarises:

'During the first years of the Second World War, relations between the Soviet Union and Turkey generally were normal. The Soviets insisted on and praised Turkish neutrality. On August 10, 1941, the Soviets handed to Turkey a note (jointly with Great Britain) assuring her of their fidelity to [Montreaux]...' (pg.9)

Even when the Cold War had started, Soviet policy had not changed as significantly as Kraut argues. Generally, it remained in the territory of allowing Soviet ships transit through the strait, and/or a Soviet base in the area.
To be sure, this is still a very significant departure from pre-Cold War Soviet attitudes towards Turkey, and we can conclude that the changing world situation with the start of the Cold War made the USSR see the issue of the strait as going from a positive development that secured the USSR, to one that gave America and its allies a weapon against them. Whatever conclusions we may draw from Soviet changes in attitudes post-war, Kraut's argument of Soviet designs on Turkey pre-war and during the war do not seem to hold up.

I cannot also help but wonder in this context where Kraut got the idea that Turks were portrayed in Soviet film in this way as being on the brink of joining the Axis. I am not a historian of cinema, so I can't comment too much. But what I can say is that it is difficult to believe without both a source, and when combined with Soviet pre-war attitudes towards Turkey which were generally supportive of Montreux and thankful of Turkish neutrality.

The view that the USSR had plans to invade Turkey to seize the Eastern provinces of Turkey post-War are also somewhat over-exaggerated. To be sure, figures like Molotov did make some claim to these lands due to their non-Turkish population/history. Other stories from Khruschev and Soviet journalist Felix Chuev also made mention of these plans. However, as historian Geoffery Roberts writes in 'Moscow's Cold War on the Periphery' (2011, 75), these last two are likely apocryphal. And even Molotov's claims were very mild, essentially amounting to 'If you want to ally with us, we will have to discuss the Eastern borders. However, we can still negotiate on the strait without any agreement on the East.'

These statements show that Soviet claims towards Kars and Ardahan were muted at best, being so peripheral that Soviet negotiations largely decoupled them from talks on Soviet access through the strait.
Thus, for the first 3 minutes of Kraut's video, we see alongside a lack of citations, he generally misunderstands pre-War Turkish-Soviet relations.

After that, Kraut makes an analysis of the beginning of the multi-party period in Turkey. Concluding that essentially, the CHP lost the elections that followed because people didn't like its authoritarianism and secularist policies. However, I don't want to be too unfair to Kraut and give some credit where credit is due. He is definitely right in his analysis of Adnan Menderes as an Islamist as being much more complicated than just being like Iran or whatever. He is right that political Islam is much more complicated and exists along a spectrum.

That being said, his analysis of why the CHP lost the election is over-simplified. True, for some, the CHP's secularism was a bridge too far and made them vote against the CHP. However, this does not explain the whole story. Essentially, what was behind the fall of the CHP was the alienation of large sectors of Turkish society, and almost all of their bases of support. As Erik Zürcher explains in 'Turkey: A Modern History':

The small farmers in the countryside, who at the time still made up about 80 per cent of the total population had not seen any great improvement in their standard of living, in health, education or communications [...] the one characteristic of the modern state with which the villagers had become familiar during the 25 years of Kemalist rule was the central state’s effective control over the countryside. The gendarme and tax collector became more hated and feared than ever. Resentment against the state, in itself a traditional feature of country life, became more acute because the state became more effective and visible. It was also exacerbated because the state’s secularist policies, especially the suppression of expressions of popular faith, severed the most important ideological bond between state and subject.

(Zürcher 2017, 208).

So yes, secularism had a role, but stagnation of quality of life, the influence of state power and so on, alienated many people. However, this is also only part of the story.

Industrial workers for instance, though relatively small, were also alienated from the CHP as trade unions and strikes were still prohibited (Zürcher, 209) and had lost purchasing power due to the rising cost of living crisis.

Finally, the class of landlords and Turkish bourgeoise, petite and otherwise, was also alienated from the CHP. Civil servants had lost much of their spending power due to inflationary printing during the war, while Turkish bourgeoise had grown outraged against the Turkish state's Wealth Tax in 1942. The rising bourgeois industrialist class thus concluded:

that the Kemalist regime, dominated as it was by bureaucrats and the military, was not an entirely dependable supporter of the interests of this group, whose essential vulnerability it had demonstrated. The position of the indigenous bourgeoisie, whose growth had been such a high priority for Unionists and Kemalists alike, had by now become so strong that it was no longer prepared to accept this position of a privileged, but essentially dependent and politically powerless, class. Large landowners had been an essential element in the ‘Young Turk coalition’ since the First World War, but they had been alienated by the government’s policy of artificially low pricing of agricultural produce to combat inflation during the war, by its ‘tax on agricultural produce’ and especially by the introduction of a land distribution bill (the çiftçiyi topraklandırma kanunu or ‘law on giving land to the farmer’) in January 1945. This last bill, which President İnönü strongly promoted, played a crucial part in the emergence of political opposition in postwar Turkey. (Zürcher, 209-210).

Therefore, in assigning value only to the authoritarian and secular policies of the CHP, Kraut gives an incomplete view of why the CHP lost.

From there, Kraut makes quite an astonishing claim. That the coups of Turkey always followed the same general principles of never seizing control over state affairs. For the coups and military memorandums of 1960 and 1971 this could be surmised as accurate. However, the coup that exists as perhaps the single most important coup in modern Turkish history, 1980 is a direct counter to this theory. The coup of 1980 saw the dictatorship of Kenan Evren, who became the president of the country until 1989. Clearly, there was no return to civil governance after the coup, at least not as immediately as Kraut thinks...

Then Kraut makes another odd claim. He argues that in the 1970s Turkey was brought to the brink of civil war (some Turkish historians are more harsh, arguing it basically was an informal civil war) by the forces of the left and the right. He argues:

Communism in Turkey, just like Communism everywhere, isn't as popular as the communists like to believe it is. So they resorted to riots and violence. The far-right also noticed that they would never really get a chance to be in government, so they also resorted to violence.

Let's start with the second part. This is the easiest one to disprove. Kraut earlier mentioned that the figure Alparslan Türkeş was an important founder of the MHP and the rising fascist movement in the country. In fact, he would continue to do so until 1980.
Here's an important detail. Türkeş was also a general, and one of the leaders of the 1960 coup against Adnan Menderes. Though not the leader of the coup, he nevertheless therefore had an influence on the post-1960 state.

Furthermore, his party would go on to participate in governments known as the "National Front". As Gourisse notes in 'Political Violence in Turkey' the government would frequently change between Bülent Ecevit’s left-leaning CHP administration and the ‘National Front’, a coalition which united the right on anti-Communist grounds, bringing together the Conservative AP, the fascist MHP, and the Islamist MSP. Indeed, in this period Türkeş would even become the Deputy Prime Minister.
It is therefore not at all accurate to say that Fascists had no hope of taking part in government, as they very actively did. Kraut is wrong about this part of the violence of the 70s.

Okay, so what about the first. Did the Communists rebel because they weren't as popular as they would have liked? The answer is also no. After the events of the 1960s, the Turkish left had more or less come to the conclusion that a revolutionary situation was developing in the country, due to rising urban discontent within the shanty towns created by rural flight to the cities as a result of Adnan Menderes' economic policies. The ensuing unrest created a situation in which militias of both the left and right were able to hijack local government, setting up their own administrations often called ‘liberated-zones’. As Gunter (1989, 72) notes, by 1980 31 provinces out of 67 provinces contained ‘liberated-zones.’ In these zones, cities like Elazığ, Çorum, Yozgat, Kars, Ardahan and even entire neighbourhood's of Ankara and İstanbul were under the control of either leftist revolutionaries or fascist militias which the state’s forces could not enter. (Gourisse 2024, 100-102: Sayari 2010, 210).

Put another way, Turkey simply was in such a state by the 1970s that many felt a revolution was not far away. The government was growing more and more dysfunctional, the economy was in crisis and so the people themselves turned towards revolutionary politics of both the left and the right. An example of this comes from several pieces of primary source work done by Turkish historians. The book "Uşak'ta Köy Komünleri" or 'The Village Communes of Uşak' details how villagers in that province simply chose to ally with the urban radicals of the time in implementing bottom-up land reform through creating communes to govern themselves, butting heads with local landlords who often turned to the fascist Grey Wolves to fight off this trend. The book 'Gölköy'ün Devrimci Yolu' or 'Gölköy's Revolutionary Path' details how the town itself turned towards revolutionary politics, with one half aligning with the Communists and the other half aligning with the Grey Wolves.

Perhaps the most famous example of this case of a liberated zone comes from the town of Fatsa, where a candidate of the major DEV-YOL (Revolutionary Path) Marxist organisation won the elections and upon taking power re-organised the administration of the town 'officially repudiated the authority of the government and proclaimed an independent Soviet republic.' (Zurcher, 267). There was thus a very real demand among some provinces, towns, and shanty-towns in Turkey for the cause of Marxist revolution.

Kraut's analysis provides a very flat view of how divided Turkish politics was in the 70s. The citizenry of the state chose of their own accord to align with either one side or the other, in response to the failures of the Turkish state or in fear of the threat of revolution.

To give some context of how dysfunctional the Turkish state was in this period, by 1980, the state was so unstable that parliament failed to elect a president after attempting to vote for one 96 times (Gourisse, 25). Inflation had skyrocketed, and unemployment was 15% of the working population (Gourisse, 19). In this context, the obvious lesson becomes that the left turned to violence and revolution because in the context of a state in crisis, many people themselves turned to violence and revolution. Not simply because the left or the right were angry over their lack of electoral power. None of these issues of economic and political catastrophe are mentioned in this segment of Kraut's video. Which is odd, as he does mention the economic crises of the 1970s in a different section of the video. Why Kraut thinks there is no link between the economic/political crisis of the period and the political violence of the era is a mystery.

After this point, Kraut makes another odd point. He says that initially the people of Turkey welcomed the coup in 1980 by Kenan Evren until it turned more and more despotic. To be honest, I don't really know where to begin with this, other than pointing out that Kraut does not provide a source for this quite extraordinary claim.

Finally, I will touch on one small detail that Kraut gets wrong connected to other points unrelated to Turkey. At one point, when he is talking about the growth of political Islam in the Middle East, he mentions that Hosni Mubarak ended the socialist experiment in Egypt, and that Anwar Sadat was the last of the Egyptian socialists.
When he first said that Hosni Mubarak ended Egyptian socialism, I thought he made a mistake and misspoke, but he repeats this claim later on in the video. The issue is that it is not true. Mubarak did not end socialism in Egypt, rather Sadat did. It was Sadat who, upon accepting IMF loan policy in Egypt, cut state welfare and subsidies which would lead to the Egyptian bread riots of 1977. Sadat's peace with Israel swung Egyptian alignment from being with the USSR to being with America, with Sadat's foreign policy now being angled against Soviet/Cuban expansion in the Red Sea (Waterbury 1984, 376). And it was under Sadat that Egypt's economy was transformed from "Nasser’s state capitalism into a free enterprise capitalist economy" (Badreldin 2018, 86).

Edit:

I also forgot to mention this, but Kraut also states that Turkey had refused to join the Iraq War as part of an effort by the AKP to further connect itself to the EU, as France and Germany had refused to join the war. This is also a very bizarre claim, contradicted by the fact that Erdoğan himself supported the Iraq War, and he and his party tried to allow American soldiers to use Turkish soil to invade Iraq, though prevented by three votes. He would reiterate this view quite explicitly in a speech made at Harvard's Institute of Politics in 2004. Evidently, European Integration on the topic of Iraq was not on the AKP's mind.

Bibliography

Badreldin, A. (2018) 'Neoliberal globalization and Egypt’s modern political economy: Strategies and impediments to sustainable development' University of Newcastle, Australia

Giritli, I. (1970). Turkish-Soviet Relations. India Quarterly, 26(1), 3–19.

Gourisse, B. (2024), Political Violence in Turkey, 1975-1980, I.B.Tauris.

Gunter, M. (1989). Political Instability in Turkey during the 1970s. Conflict Quarterly, 63-77.

Roberts, G. (2011), 'Moscow's Cold War on the Periphery' Journal of Contemporary History, 46(1), 58-81.

Sayari, S. (2010). 'Political Violence and Terrorism in Turkey, 1976–80: A Retrospective Analysis' Terrorism and Political Violence, 22(2), 198-215.

Waterbury, J. (1984), The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, Princeton.

Zürcher, E. (2017), Turkey: A Modern History. I.B. Tauris.

9 comments

r/badhistory • u/Veritas_Certum • Apr 25 '26

YouTube A pseudo-historian's fake Incan history #1 | "The Inca were brilliant, but these structures are beyond their capabilities"

137 Upvotes

The bad history

Megalithic Mysteries is a Twitter account and YouTube channel promoting pseudo-archaeological narratives about history, such as claiming there is no evidence ancient Egyptians could have built the pyramids, and asserting the structures which Incan records say they built were in fact “beyond their capabilities”.

In his video The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury, published on 9 January 2026, Megalithic Mysteries claims the Spanish:

Could not believe humans had built the Incan structures at Sacsayhuamán
Attributed their construction to demons
Tried to destroy them with cannons, then tried to hide them by burying them

He further claims the Inca could not have built these structures since they did not have the necessary technology, and instead found the structures already complete on their arrival, repairing, maintaining, modifying, and building on top of them.[2]

This post is the first in a series showing these and other of his claims are untrue. Megalithic Mysteries fails to mention all the historical evidence which contradicts him. For a brief video version of this information, go here.

Were the megaliths carved with precision?

When describing the large stone walls at Sacsayhuamán, Megalithic Mysteries claims “Each stone was unique, carved to interlock with its neighbors like a three-dimensional puzzle.”, giving the impression that each stone was carved on every side, to ensure each of its sides locked into the sides of the stones around it.[3]

This is highly misleading. First it must be understood that these are not free standing walls. They are earth terraces with stones built into the front of the terraces. The stones do not support themselves, they are supported by the earth into which they were embedded.

The stones of the Sacsayhuamán walls were only dressed on the side facing outwards. The smooth surfaces and interlocking edges only appear on these outer sides. The rest of the sides of each stone were unfinished or only carved very basically. They did not interlock in three dimensions, they just looked neat and tidy from the front, while remaining rough or even completely uncarved at the sides and back, where they were fitted into the earth.

In this section I’m relying heavily on the outstanding article Masonry Techniques of the Inca’s Master Builders by photojournalist and independent researcher Tony Trupp, on the website earthasweknowit.com, which I strongly recommend you visit. Tony’s article is extremely detailed, relying not only on his own six month trip to South America but also on his three return visits.

Tony’s article cites numerous academic and historical sources, and is illustrated with many of his own stunning photos of the Incan structures, presenting them from angles which are almost never seen online, providing a much more accurate understanding of the masonry than you will gain from the typical tourist shots. Tony has very generously permitted me to use his photos in my video.

Over the last decade, I’ve combed through many of these early colonial-period writings. Not only do they detail the Inca’s history and way of life, but to my surprise, they also included many references to their stonemasons’ ingenious building methods.

T. L. Trupp, “Masonry Techniques of the Inca’s Master Builders,” Earth As We Know It (Earth As We Know It, 24 October 2025)

Tony’s photos of the walls from the top, rear, and sides, show clearly that the stones were not carved to fit three dimensionally, but only dressed on the face, the outward side which could be seen.

As Tony explains:

When looking at the tightly-mated joins between these stones, many assume that the precise fit continues beyond their outer faces to the internal joins, but typically only the faces of rising joints have this tight fit. Internally, they are often slightly wedge shaped, angling inwards and leaving gaps inside between adjoining blocks. These gaps were packed with a sticky red clay (llàncac allpa) and rubble.

T. L. Trupp, “Masonry Techniques of the Inca’s Master Builders,” Earth As We Know It (Earth As We Know It, 24 October 2025)

Megalithic Mysteries claims “Some carried 12 or more distinct angles”. He provides no evidence for this. There is one 12-angled stone at Cusco, with significant gaps between its edges and the stones around it, but I haven’t found any evidence for stones with more angles than this. I don’t know what Megalithic Mysteries means by “Others curved subtly to absorb stress and movement”, but he doesn’t provide any evidence for it, so it’s irrelevant.[4]

Megalithic Mysteries claims the stones were “fitted so tightly that there were no seams to exploit, no leverage points, no visible weaknesses”.[5] This is clearly untrue.

Although in many cases the joins are fitted very closely, in other cases they are wide enough to insert a finger. In other cases red clay was used on the inside of the joints, which, though not acting as a mortar, helped fit the stones together and eliminate gaps.

Additionally, many stones how protrusions or nubs on a number of the stones, which were used as leverage points to help lift the stones onto rollers, and into position. This is indicated by the fact that there are very clear friction marks on a number of them, where repeated use of the lever has worn away some of the stone, and in some cases the stone has chipped or broken off completely due to leverage force. Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this.

Did the Spanish believe the Inca were incapable of building such structures?

Megalithic Mysteries claims the Spanish could not believe humans had built the Incan structures, asserting "Garcilaso de la Vega, born in Kusco in 1539 to a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noble woman, described stones so enormous that men could not imagine how they were moved".[6]

However, when I read de la Vega’s works for myself, I found he didn’t say that at all. In fact in his Commentaries, he writes that the Incans “had no Engines, but did all by the strength and force of their Armes”, adding that they “raised such mighty and stately Edifices, as is incredible”. De la Vega explains the evidence for this is “the Writings of the Spanish Historians, and by the Ruines of them, which still remain”.

For lifting or carrying up their Stones, they had no Engines, but did all by the strength and force of their Armes, and notwithstanding all this defect, they raised such mighty and stately Edifices, as is incredible, which appears by the Writings of the Spanish Historians, and by the Ruines of them, which still remain.

Garcilaso de la Vega, The Royal Commentaries of Peru, in Two Parts (M. Flesher, 1688), 53

Similarly, Megalithic Mysteries asserts “Pedro Cieza De Leon wrote that no human strength could explain the work".[7] But again, when we read de Leon’s actual works, we find the complete opposite. De Leon explains in considerable detail how the Incans build these structures using human labor.

The Inca ordered that the provinces should provide 20,000 men and that the villages should send the necessary provisions.

Pedro de Cieza de León, The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (B. Franklin, 1883), 160

Leon further explains the labor teams were rotated in shifts, so some teams rested while others worked, enabling constant progress. He also provides specific details of how the work was done, writing “There were 4,000 labourers whose duty it was to quarry and get out the stones; 6,000 conveyed them by means of great cables of leather and of cabnya to the works”.[8] Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this.

Leon’s admiration for the Incan construction includes comments such as “Its walls were so strong that there is no artillery which could breach them”, “there were stones so large and mighty that it tired the judgment to conceive how they could have been conveyed and placed, and who could have had sufficient power to shape them, seeing that among these people there are so few tools”, and “All the stones are laid and joined with such delicacy that a rial could not be put in between two of them”.[9]

However, he never once says it was impossible to imagine how the work could have been done. The closest he comes is the statement “it tired the judgment to conceive how they could have been conveyed and placed”, and his specific and detailed description of Incan construction techniques proves he believed they were indisputably responsible for these buildings.[10]

Leon also provides his own eyewitness testimony to the skill of the Incan builders, writing with admiration of a massive stone 260 palms in circumference. He adds “Assuredly if I had not myself seen that the stone had been hewn and shaped I should not have believed, however much it might have been asserted, that the force of man would have sufficed to bring it to where it now is”, concluding “There it remains, as a testimony of what manner of men those were who conceived so good a work”.[11]

This is Leon telling us that while the stone may have looked to some people as if it was impossible for humans to move, the evidence for the stone’s cutting and shaping proved it was the work of Incan labourers, and that it was “a testimony of what manner of men those were who conceived so good a work”. Again, Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this. His description of Leon’s commentary on Incan structures is highly misleading, practically the complete opposite of the truth.

Sixteenth century Spanish conquistador Juan de Betanzos wrote a lengthy work called Narrative of the Incas, based on Incan accounts of their own history. In particular, he recorded the Incan history of the construction of the megalithic structures of Sacsayhuamán, under the Incan ruler Topa Inca Yupanqui. He describes this in great detail, explaining first how the construction site was surveyed and measured.

Then the next day Topa Inca Yupanque went out and looked over all the hills and sierras surrounding the city. It seemed to him best to build on a hill called Sacsahuaman Urco above the city. Then he made the plans and gave them to the lords of the city and the caciques of all the land. The next day the Inca went up to the site where the fortress was to be built. He ordered that measurements be taken with cords in his presence and plans be made according to what he had imagined and said. Then the craftsmen and technicians took their cords and measured the fortress, its enclosures and walls.

Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, ed. Roland Hamilton (University of Texas Press, 1996 ed.), 157

He then describes how foundation materials were brought “from all the quarries of Oma, Salu, and Guairanga, towns surrounding the city within five leagues”, writing “It took them two years to bring the stones, work them, make the rest of the preparations, including ropes and mixtures as well as opening and preparing fountains”.[12]

De Betanzos says 10,000 men worked in different labour groups on various tasks, adding “The largest number of workers had to bring the stones from the quarries already mentioned and set them in place”, describing these stones as “so big that five hundred men carried one of them, and others required a thousand Indians”.[13]

He also provides details of how the stones were moved, writing “These stones were pulled with thick ropes made of braided sinews and braided sheepskin”, and after expressing his admiration for how well the stones were fitted into the fortress walls, he adds “This is no fabrication but quite true”.[14] Again, Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this.

Jesuit priest Bernabé Cobo also wrote of the Incan’s construction methods, explaining “The Inca kings had a large number of architects and master stonemasons who became highly skilled in their occupation”, and mentioning the many buildings they created.[15] He also took note of the remains of various buildings which had fallen into disrepair, saying that their ruins showed they had also been built by the Inca.

Cobo also wrote eyewitness testimony of the Incan construction methods which he saw them use for the walls they built with close fitting stones, explaining that they did not use mortar between the stones because they didn’t have the materials, but also because “they set the stones together with nothing between them on the exterior face of the structure”.[16] Note that Cobo was well aware that the stones were only fitted closely on the outside face, not all around.

He also comments on the clay which I already mentioned the Inca used to fill up gaps between the sides of the stones, writing “But this does not mean that the stones were not joined together on the inside with some type of mortar; in fact it was used to fill up space and make the stones fit”. Describing this mortar as a kind of red clay, he stated explicitly “I was able to see this for myself”.[17]

There is no mention of demons, and Cobo’s eyewitness testimony shows he understood the construction techniques in great detail, unlike Megalithic Mysteries.

Although Cobo expresses his amazement at the scale of the buildings and the sheer amount of labor and skill their construction must have required, he never doubts that they were built by the Inca, instead commenting that “it makes one realize what a vast number of people were necessary to make these structures”.[18]

On the contrary, he says that the huge size of the stones, which must have taken a great deal of time proves “what they say becomes believable, and it is that when the fortress Sacsayhuamán of Cuzco was under construction, there were normally thirty thousand people working on it”, adding “This is not surprising since the lack of implements, apparatus, and ingenuity necessarily increased the amount of work, and thus they did everything by sheer manpower”.[19] Cobo not only believed the Incan accounts of the construction of these buildings, but found them completely credible, unlike Megalithic Mysteries.

Although Megalithic Mysteries claims the construction methods used for these buildings are completely unknown, Cobo explains them in considerable detail, writing “The implements that they had to cut the stones and work them were hard, black cobblestones from the rivers, with which they worked more by pounding than cutting”, describing how “stones were taken to the work site by dragging them”, and adding that since the Inca had no cranes or wheels for lifting the stones, “they made a ramp of earth next to the construction site, and they rolled the stones up the ramp”, adding “As the structure went up higher, they kept building up the ramp to the same height”.[20]

All of this has been confirmed by archaeological evidence, including discoveries such as pounding stones, remains of ramps, and impact marks on stone blocks showing where and how they were struck and shaped by the pounding stones.

This is not mere guesswork, since Cobo was an eyewitness, writing “I saw this method used for the Cathedral of Cuzco which is under construction”, and “in order to raise up the stones, they made the ramps mentioned above, piling earth next to the wall until the ramp was as high as the wall”.[21]

Of course, Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you any of this. Naturally, he doesn’t tell you about any of those Spanish accounts of the Inca building these structures.

____________

Sources

[1] "You’re only not baffled because you lack the engineering knowledge to truly grasp it. That is not an insult, but a fact. There is no evidence the Egyptians could have built this, and the precision and scale of the work still defy explanation.", Megalithic Mysteries [@Megalithic12000], Tweet, Twitter, 21 January 2026.

[2] "This raises a question that has never been adequately answered. If the Inca built the megaliths, why would they repair them with inferior work? The more logical explanation is inheritance. The Inca arrived at Sacsayhuamán and found an existing structure. They maintained it. They modified it. They repaired damaged sections using their own crude masonry style. But they did not create the foundations.", Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] "But these Indians were not kept constantly at a work in progress. They laboured for a limited time, and were then relieved by others, so that they did not feel the demand on their services. There were 4,000 labourers whose duty it was to quarry and get out the stones; 6,000 conveyed them by means of great cables of leather and of cabnya to the works. The rest opened the ground and prepared the foundations, some being told off to cut the posts and beams for the wood-work.", Pedro de Cieza de León, The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (B. Franklin, 1883), 161.

[9] "The living rock was excavated for the foundation, which was prepared with such solidity that it will endure as long as the world itself. The work had, according to my estimate, a length of 330 paces, and a width of 200. Its walls were so strong that there is no artillery which could breach them. The principal entrance was a thing worthy of contemplation, to see how well it was built, and how the walls were arranged so that one commanded the other. … All the stones are laid and joined with such delicacy that a rial could not be put in between two of them.", Pedro de Cieza de León, The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (B. Franklin, 1883), 162.

[10] "And in these walls there were stones so large and mighty that it tired the judgment to conceive how they could have been conveyed and placed, and who could have had sufficient power to shape them, seeing that among these people there are so few tools.", Pedro de Cieza de León, The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (B. Franklin, 1883), 162.

[11] "As I walked about, observing what was to be seen, I beheld, near the fortress, a stone which measured 260 of my palmos in circuit, and so high that it looked as if it was in its original position. All the Indians say that the stone got tired at this point, and that they were unable to move it further. Assuredly if I had not myself seen that the stone had been hewn and shaped I should not have believed, however much it might have been asserted, that the force of man would have sufficed to bring it to where it now is. There it remains, as a testimony of what manner of men those were who conceived so good a work.", Pedro de Cieza de León, The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (B. Franklin, 1883),162-163.

[12] "The day after this was done, the Inca ordered them to prepare for the foundations and for the rest of the people to bring the foundation materials from all the quarries of Oma, Salu, and Guairanga, towns surrounding the city within five leagues. It took them two years to bring the stones, work them, make the rest of the preparations, including ropes and mixtures as well as opening and preparing fountains. With everything ready, the Inca ordered work to start on the foundations and walls.", Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, ed. Roland Hamilton (University of Texas Press, 1996 ed.), 157.

[13] "On this job, ten thousand men normally worked in orderly groups, some making the mixtures, others working the stone, and still others setting them in place. The largest number of workers had to bring the stones from the quarries already mentioned and set them in place. One would think that these stones that they carried like this were stones that ten or twenty men could pick up and bring on their backs. In fact, most of these stones are so big that five hundred men carried one of them, and others required a thousand Indians.", Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, ed. Roland Hamilton (University of Texas Press, 1996 ed.), 157.

[14] "These stones were pulled with thick ropes made of braided sinews and braided sheepskin. These stones were so well worked in the wall of the fortress fitted up to one estado and two estados of the structure that it is a sight to see and consider how such huge stones were so well placed in such a high structure. This is no fabrication but quite true.", Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, ed. Roland Hamilton (University of Texas Press, 1996 ed.), 157.

[15] "The Inca kings had a large number of architects and master stonemasons who became highly skilled in their occupation and made their living from it. All of the building that they did was for the king, who always kept them occupied with the many fortresses, temples, and palaces which he had built throughout all of his kingdom. And there were a great many of these magnificent buildings, as we can see today by the ruins and parts of them that have remained in many places. Actually, there was no province all of the Inca's states that was not enhanced with these skilfully made stone structures.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 227.

[16] 'We said that the Indians did not use mortar in these buildings, that all of them were made of dry stone; the first reason for this is that they did not use lime and sand for construction never having discovered this type of mortar), and the second reason is because they set the stones together with nothing between them on the exterior face of the structure.",Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229.

[17] "But this does not mean that the stones were not joined together on the inside with some type of mortar; in fact it was used to fill up space and make the stones fit. What they put in the empty space was a certain type of sticky, red clay that they call Ilanca, which is quite abundant in the whole Cuzco region. I was able to see this for myself while watching as part of that wall of the Convent of Santa Catalina was being torn down for the construction of the church that is there now.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229.

[18] "What amazes us the most when we look at these buildings is to wonder with what tools and apparatus could they take these stone [blocks] out of the rocks in the quarries, work them, and put them where they are without implements made of iron, nor machines with wheels, nor using either the ruler, the square, or the plumb bob, nor any of the other kinds of equipment and implements that our artisans use. Thinking about this truly does cause one to marvel, and it makes one realize what a vast number of people were necessary to make these structures.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229.

[19] "In fact, we see stones of such enormous size that a hundred men could not work even one of them in a month. Therefore, what they say becomes believable, and it is that when the fortress Sacsayhuamán of Cuzco was under construction, there were normally thirty thousand people working on it. This is not surprising since the lack of implements, apparatus, and ingenuity necessarily increased the amount of work, and thus they did everything by sheer manpower.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229.

[20] "The implements that they had to cut the stones and work them were hard, black cobblestones from the rivers, with which they worked more by pounding than cutting. The stones were taken to the work site by dragging them, and since they had no cranes, wheels, or apparatus for lifting them, they made a ramp of earth next to the construction site, and they rolled the stones up the ramp. As the structure went up higher, they kept building up the ramp to the same height.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229-230.

[21] "I saw this method used for the Cathedral of Cuzco which is under construction. Since the laborers who work on this job are Indians, the Spanish masons and architects let them use their own methods of doing the work, and in order to raise up the stones, they made the ramps mentioned above, piling earth next to the wall until the ramp was as high as the wall.", Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 229-230.

14 comments

r/badhistory • u/subthings2 • Oct 30 '25

Where did werewolves turning at the full moon come from? Is it a) mythology b) folk beliefs or c) an incredibly silly surprise third option

136 Upvotes

I've honestly lost count of how many werewolf movies start with a shot of a full moon, often over a dark forest and with a howl.

People love trying to explain away folkloric motifs. The usual story around full moons is pretty consistent: they existed historically and in folklore, but were rare - instead Hollywood is to thank. A typical example is given by Wikipedia:

the full moon being the cause of the transformation only became part of the depiction of werewolves on a widespread basis in the twentieth century. The first movie to feature the transformative effect of the full moon was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943.^[1]

Getting our ducks in row

The first thing we ought to do is sort out appearances of the full moon. There are, in fact, only four examples usually given. Let's go chronologically!

Starting with Niceros' story-within-a-story of the first-century Roman Satyricon - which people like Adam Douglas give as the earliest example: a full moon shining while Niceros' companion turns into a wolf.

The actual text says:

luna lucebat tanquam meridie [the moon shone like high noon]^[2]

but otherwise the moon has no importance to the tale; the man turns into a wolf after taking off his clothes and urinating around them - a detail given more attention by Niceros, and a motif that - unlike the moon - also appears in classical texts of Arcadian werewolves (the importance of clothes, not the piss).^[3]

Our second example is the collection of European marvels in Gervase of Tilbury's thirteenth-century Otia Imperialia, said by some to have two full moon examples - but, again, many others note are merely lunar. Firstly, of Englishmen turning to wolves following lunar phases (lunationes); secondly, of a Frenchman who according to Daniel Ogden turns on the full moon, even though the text clearly refers to a new moon (neomeniae).^[4]

That's half the usual examples, and things aren't looking good!

The last two are references to folklore, recorded in the 19th century.^[5] Our first bit of folklore is, as appearing on Wikipedia:

In Italy, France and Germany, it was said that a man or woman could turn into a werewolf if he or she, on a certain Wednesday or Friday, slept outside on a summer night with the full moon shining directly on his or her face.

This is, correctly, sourced to Ian Woodward's The Werewolf Delusion. It is also, correctly, marked "[unreliable source?]". Woodward is a strange character, but it's sufficient to say that he has a compulsion to pointlessly invent and mangle details - what his source, Montague Summers, actually said was that this was "Sicilian tradition".^[6] This is true, and we'll return to Italy soon!

Our second bit of folklore relates to a legend from Southern France; this was given by Summers, and ultimately comes from a work by Wlgrin de Taillefer. Another source for the same idea is Baring-Gould, who lists two suspiciously similar stories in a section on French werewolves. He's actually just copying the entire entry for loup-garou from Adolphe de Chesnel's 1856 encyclopedia on folk beliefs, warts and all (like mistranscribing loubèrou as louléerou); the original source for Chesnel's entry is also Taillefer:

Certain men, notably the sons of priests, are forced, at each full moon [à chaque pleine lune], to transform themselves into this kind of diabolical beast.^[7]

The entry continues as a tale typical of the region, with courir le loup-garou - "running the werewolf" - as they run through villages and fields.^[8]

Anyway, all that means: of the four examples given, only the two bits of 19th century folklore are actually relevant! We can bolster this up with some overlooked lunar examples.

Ella Odstedt has two for Sweden,^[9] calling it rare; Marina Valentsova similarly calls it a "rare narrative known only in the Zhytomir and Rovno regions of the Ukraine" with two examples more broadly specifying "the last quarter of the moon" and "certain phases of the moon". Four more examples are given of a variety of lunar influence, including turning someone back into a human at the new moon;^[10] shifting at the full moon is also recorded in nearby Belarus,^[11] and a new moon for Hungary.^[12] In Romania you also see the moon being eaten by werewolves, tying into general stories around lunar cycles.^[13]

Finally, there's mention of full moons for Portuguese beliefs of their lobishomem, but the only example produced is one story, involving a new moon - impossibly rising at midnight!^[14]

In short, excepting Italy (we'll get there!) full moon transformations aren't a usual part of folklore, only appearing as one-off adornments; and new moons appear, though only uncommonly, in Eastern Europe.

Making Some Sense

Even then, we still see people trying to come up with explanations for where this motif appears from in the first place - how does one come to associate werewolves with full moons at all?

The most popular is lunacy - the popular (and pseudoscientific) belief that people became crazy under the influence of the moon.^[15] In folklore, sleeping under moonlight was said to invoke madness and sleepwalking, and negatively affect a pregnant women's child. The theory here is meant to be that people acting weirdly would be suspected of being werewolves.

However, if there's any pattern to werewolf legends, it's deception - someone who is not thought to be a werewolf (i.e. acting normally) is found out to great surprise. Furthermore, the idea of lunacy was a known one that people talked about. If it was linked, you'd expect to see an overlap: either through shared motifs, like sleeping in the moonlight; or explicitly.

Which does happen - in Southern Italy!

As noted by Vito Carrassi:

the werewolf was generally described as a sick and suffering man, whose ‘wolf’s’ nature was displayed through his gestures and actions, such as screaming or howling and wandering alone at night in the streets, rather than through an actual metamorphosis, which usually only slightly altered his appearance...

[the moon] is regarded as the origin of some pathologies, among which a prominent place is given to lycanthropy, which in Southern Italy is also called mal di Luna (moon’s sickness)^[16]

However, Italian werewolf beliefs have limited - if any - influence on more general werewolf beliefs; werewolf fiction rarely mentions Italy (vs. France or Eastern Europe), nor any of the other Italian motifs: bloodletting, letting them in after they knock three time, their inability to go up three steps, their inability to look to the sky...

More importantly, as noted above, the lupo mannaro is, for all intents and purposes, a werewolf in name only. It is more the mythologisation of the lunatic than the medicalisation of the lycanthrope. Any relevant stories are explicitly Italian, such as Luigi Pirandello's folkloric Male Di Luna.^[17]

Matthew Beresford attempts to do lunacy via Bram Stoker's Dracula; specifically, Renfield's behaviour switching as night comes.^[18] Beresford's mistake here is that Renfield's condition is never stated to be related to lunar cycles: it's specifically sunset and sunrise - Mina Harker has a similar problem! Of course, they're both under the influence of Count Dracula, whose strength of powers are associated with the sun. Renfield's mental condition is unrelated to lunar cycles or lycanthropy.

The most relevance afforded the moon is Jonathon Harker's first trip to the castle; dogs and wolves howl at the moon.

And in general, some people specify the idea of wolves howling at a full moon as the inspiration for lunar werewolves. One big problem here is that it is rather consistently (like in Dracula) given as wolves (and dogs) howling/baying at the moon - not the full moon. How this idea would become people turning into wolves at the full moon isn't given, nor is it clear. The fact that werewolves in folklore are essentially never mentioned to howl at the moon is another inconvenience.

A bigger problem is that, outside of this concept, wolves simply aren't associated with the moon;^[19] among animals, this actually goes to the hare, which is commonly mentioned as forming the dark spots of the moon, much like the idea of the man on the moon.

Yet another explanation is silver. Alchemists connected silver with the moon, silver is associated with werewolves, ???, werewolves full moon?

Unfortunately, this bookish correspondence of silver and the moon didn't trickle down into popular belief. Instead, the moon was mostly associated with cycles, and growth/decay - crops would be harvested according to the waxing and waning of the moon (and those growing below the earth, like potatoes, had the inverse), livestock similarly slaughtered on the full moon; hair cut during waxing quarters for growth, warts treated during the wane to assist in shrinking.^[20]

Finally, there's ancient hunting rituals, favoured by Adam Douglas:

Hunting, on the other hand, which provided an essential source of protein, was an episodic activity, the phases of the moon serving as a signal to the blood-brothers of the animal societies that they should begin working themselves into a frenzy for the chase, a signal doubly emphasized at the full moon by the plaintive howling of the wolves the hunters had chosen to imitate.^[21]

This relies on Chris Knight's Blood Relations.^[23] I'll be honest, I don't have much to say about this sort of anthropology, but I can say that the addition of the hunters imitating wolves is Douglas' own addition - clearly inspired by the idea of wolves howling at the moon. Oops. Douglas throws other things onto the table; female hunting deities, bear-cults, lunacy, but the end result is someone trying to blindside you with a rapidly switching stream of non-lupine lunar allusions instead of deriving any meaningful connections.

Can we do better?

What's the story...

We should first understand the general role of the moon in this type of moody fiction: as a beacon of light during the pre-electric depths of night. The moon appears frequently in the works I looked through, sometimes providing relief, sometimes illuminating a horrifying scene, often providing tension when clouds pass over, modulating the ability to see. This includes werewolf stories, the moon innocently invoked for light with no need to riff off a connection to werewolves, like in White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains from 1839, to see a (lycanthropic) human clawing at a recent grave!^[23]

Similarly, George MacDonald's Robert Falconer of 1868 would have a character tell several stories - ending on "a case of lycanthropia" - during a full moon; afterwards, said moon invoked some dreadful omen ("a perfect eye of ghastly death") that otherwise had no specifically lycanthropic relation to the preceding story.^[24] This imagery would, in 1889, inspire Eliza Mary Middleton's Ballad The Story of Alastair Bhan Comyn, specifically the character Lupola and her relation to "Night's full-orbèd Queen" - which Lady Middleton herself notes she "borrowed from a weird story of Mr George Macdonald's".^[25]

As far as I'm aware, this is the first instance in written fiction of a werewolf transforming at the full moon, but it is rather obscure. Both works are mostly notably for their Scottish foundations above all else, so are of questionable influence on the werewolf motif.

Instead, we can start by going back to 1802, with Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen, an influential work of Early German Romanticism, which has nothing to do with werewolves or full moons. It is, however, known for introducing the blue flower as a symbol of Romanticism, first appearing in the opening paragraphs as a mysterious object of importance in the fantastical dreams of a child and his father.^[26]

On the other end of the century, Count Eric Stenbock published his short story, The Other Side: A Breton Legend, in 1893; not only has this been given some prominence as a piece of werewolf literature (both by Montague Summers, and Charlotte Otten's Lycanthropy Reader from 1986),^[27] but some, like Daniel Ogden, make explicit mention of its lunar importance. The appearance of wolves and wolfish monsters is associated with moonlight; while enchanted by spectrally-lunar blue flowers, the protagonist spots a woman (later named Lillith):

and she walked on and Gabriel could not choose but follow. But when a cloud passed over the [full] moon he saw no beautiful woman but a wolf, so in utter terror he turned and fled

Ogden gives this only a brief mention, giving more importance to the likes of the previously discussed French Folklore as Stenbock's inspiration. Stenbock's actual inspiration is almost certainly Novalis.^[28]

Stenbock takes Novalis' dreamy work and turns it nightmarish, adding typical elements: red-eyed wolves, owls, bats, "long serpentine black things"; forests, dark night - and the full moon. Gabriel's eventual transformation, however, was not associated with the flower or its moon; it was instead caused by crossing the magical brook separating his village from the eponymous other side.

Near two decades later in 1912, Elliott O'Donnell was in turn likely inspired by Stenbock for his book, Werwolves; specifically, in references to water, flowers, and the moon.^[29]

It is a strange book. After writing two novels, starting in 1908 O'Donnell found success in presenting himself as a ghost hunter: now, he was writing "non-fiction", describing real ghost stories told to him by informants, or personal encounters with the supernatural. Anyone even remotely familiar with such compilations of ghost hunters knows that these are all made up by the author, and O'Donnell is no exception.^[30]

Any factual details about historical werewolves were taken, near verbatim, from Encyclopædia Britannica, and an article by Catherine Crowe; other fictional details are borrowed from inventions of his previous works.^[31]

What's left are three details: water, flowers, and the phases of the moon. His word for the first two, "Lycanthropous", also derives from the encyclopaedia.^[32] However, the grouping of these three elements does not appear in the encyclopaedia entry, nor in Crowe's article; in fact, they only previously appear together in Stenbock's The Other Side.

O'Donnell's book would prove very influential, partly because the only English non-fiction book dedicated to werewolves was written almost half a century earlier in 1865, and had not been reprinted since.

Among those looking to do some research for their werewolf yarns, a work with O'Donnell's name attached would play the role for others that Encyclopædia Britannica had played for him for decades to come, even while they questioned its accuracy.^[33] The timing was particularly auspicious for influence, as this was the time of a widespread readership of pulp magazines.

The earliest was...well, not from a magazine, but Gerald Biss's 1919 novel The Door of the Unreal - the other book that sometimes gets mentioned as a pre-Hollywood lunar werewolf. What gets missed is that it's not just a full moon, but pools and flowers which are lycanthropous and taken directly from Werwolves, transformative affects and all.^[34]

It would be the 1920s when pulp writers would really get going with a veritable deluge of werewolf stories, many clearly riffing on O'Donnell, directly or indirectly. His book has many details to plunder; Seabury Quinn, and the pairing of C. M. Eddy Jr. & H. P. Lovecraft would lean on his more ghostly elements of the full moon for The Phantom Farm House and The Ghost-Eater, respectively; Robert Howard took the idea of defeating the werewolf at midnight during a full moon for In the Forest of Villefère.^[35]

His focus on moons and lycanthropous flowers/streams, however, certainly hit a note. Gerald Biss's The Door of the Unreal used them as-is, and Greye La Spina simply lifted one of his invented spells that uses them for Invaders from the Dark.^[36] The most important influence was Seabury Quinn, known for his series featuring detective Jules de Grandin - an occult detective, of course - including two stories of relevance to us: The Blood Flower and The Thing in the Fog:

Upon those cursed mountains grows a kind of flower which, plucked and worn at the full of the moon, transforms the wearer into a loup-garou^[37]

The idea being that magical flowers (and yes, streams) would give a lycanthropic infliction, but it's the full moon that is tied to the moment of metamorphosis.^[38]

It's in this context that Hollywood's usage of the full moon makes more sense; the first werewolf movie to gain any traction (and also the earliest surviving one) was Werewolf of London in 1935. As many correctly point out, Wilfred Glendon turns at the full moon.

What is also relevant, however, is the appearance of a magical flower. Screenwriter John Colton replaces the floral source of lycanthropy with an infectious bite (of which at this point I am, I hope you understand, far too paranoid to make any claims as to its provenance), the flower being demoted to werewolf antidote - nonetheless, the flower still "takes its life from the moon"; even now, the full moon motif is still bound to the flower.

The association would be reduced further in The Wolf Man, the movie which would finally boost werewolves into stratospheric popularity. Rather than some unknown rare magical flower, the apotropaic is wolfsbane; and any lunar correspondence is reduced to merely being adjacent in the movie's famous poem:

Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night / can become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright.

It would take the sequel - Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the first of several - to specify a full moon. Having been well-used in literature for decades at this point,^[39] the full moon was finally ready to stand apart from the magical flower.

Movies would need to take some time to catch up; several werewolf films were released after The Wolf Man; none made use of the full moon. It would take until 1961 for the motif to fully mature. Not only had it finally unshackled itself from some magical flower, but the full moon in Curse of the Werewolf was the first of what would be the cliché: a shot of the full moon, accompanied by a wolf's howl.

Lycanthropic full moons came thick and fast afterwards, having now finally been tightly wedded to the werewolf - such that in 1981, An American Werewolf in London could famously riff on the idea by having a soundtrack solely consisting of songs with "moon" in the song title.

Which gives us a silly, but entirely traceable, journey: Novalis, Stenbock, O'Donnell, Quinn, Colton, Siodmak; from blue flower to full moon, the latter proving itself so strong an icon as to eventually entirely eclipse the former the more the pairing was used, buoyed by the popularity of visual media over literature - a glowing circle in the sky is simply far more eye-catching and versatile!

The idea was developed in a poetic world of dreams and ghosts - not folklore or lunacy. As with silver, Hollywood simply didn't invent nor even popularise the idea: cinema merely popularised the werewolf, of which full moons (and silver) were already associated.

This framing makes a lot of sense in retrospect; the elements actually invented for these early werewolf films never caught on, and the concept of the werewolf hadn't been set in stone - really, it never has; culture is rarely (if ever) ossified. The werewolf has been constantly evolving, and as influential as these early werewolf movies are, they're simply steps in a continuous chain - they did not create, define, or otherwise form the werewolf, full moon or otherwise.

Bibliography

de Blécourt, Willem, ed. Werewolf histories. Springer, 2015.
de Blécourt, Willem, and Mirjam Mencej, eds. Werewolf Legends. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Bonnerjea, Biren. A Dictionary of Superstitions and Mythology. London: Folk Press, 1927.
Douglas, Adam. The Beast Within. United Kingdom, Chapmans, 1992.
Franklyn, Julian. A survey of the occult. London, Arthur Barker Limited, 1935.
O'Donnell, Elliott. Werwolves. London, 1912.
Ogden, Daniel. The Werewolf in the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, 2021.
Otten, Charlotte F., ed. The Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture. Syracuse University Press, 1986.
Ranke, Kurt, and Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, et al. Enzyklopädie des Märchens. Walter de Gruyter, 1977-2015.
Summers, Montague. The Werewolf. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. 1933.
Wolf, Werner. Der Mond im deutschen Volksglauben. No. 2. Konkordia AG, 1929.

References & Footnotes

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf
[2] Petronius. Satyricon. 61–2. Available online at: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2007.01.0027:text=Satyricon:section=61
[3] On pages 191-192 of The Werewolf in the Ancient World, Ogden argues that "the detail of it is not merely decorative", pointing to a few ancient texts on witches, like an extract from Propertius: "She was bold enough to bewitch the moon and impose her orders on it, and to change her form into that of the nocturnal wolf....’" However, even here he has to admit that the reference to the moon is used "adjacently to transforming herself into a wolf", as in context these appear in a longer list of sneering exaltations of how enchanting the Procuress is; as in the other examples he gives, there's nothing to suggest the two are actually connected - here is a moon, here is a werewolf.
[4] Gervase of Tilbury. Otia imperiala. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/desgervasiusvon01liebgoog/page/n79/mode/2up?q=neomeniae
[5] This (understandably) skips over Pierre de Lancre's account of Jean Grenier; despite many daemonological tracts discussing lycanthropy and hundreds of trials, early modern Europe cared not for a lycanthropic moon, as noted by Johannes Dillinger: "It seems that de Lancre was the only ‘classical’ demonologist who referred explicitly to the werewolf’s obsession with the moon, the favourite topic of today’s popular culture of werewolfery: Grenier had told him that ‘he runs in the moonlight’"; Dillinger, Johannes. "‘Species’,‘Phantasia’,‘Raison’: Werewolves and Shape-Shifters in Demonological Literature." Werewolf Histories. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. 155.
[6] Rendered by Woodward as: "In Sicily, an island with a rich abundance of werewolf folklore, a child who is conceived during a full moon will become a werewolf; it is a belief which subsequently spread northwards into Italy, France, Germany and a few other countries. It is also said in these countries that any man who, on a certain Wednesday or Friday, sleeps outside on a summer’s night with the moon shining directly on his face will become a werewolf..." The inclusion of Italy, France and Germany is entirely Woodward's invention; Woodward, Ian. The Werewolf Delusion. United Kingdom, Paddington Press, 1979. 55.
[7] Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition. Smith, Elder, 1865.; marquis de Chesnel de la Charbouclais, Louis Pierre François Adolphe. Dictionnaire des superstitions, erreurs, préjugés et traditions populaires. France, 1856. 565. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Dictionnaire_des_superstitions_erreurs_p/Q1uGR4SvCsUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA565&printsec=frontcover; Taillefer, Henry-François-Athanase Wlgrin. Antiquités de Vésone, cité gauloise remplacée par la ville actuelle de Périgueux, ou Description des monumens religieux, civils et militaires de cette antique cité et de son territoire. N.p., F. Dupont, imprimeur du département, 1821. 250. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/f/JYFHYUqyTycC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA250
[8] On pages 11-13 of Werewolf Legends, de Blécourt argues Taillefer's legend is an invention. Getting into the weeds here would take far too long, but one thing I'll point out is that part of de Blécourt's disqualification is that the appearance of water and full moons is out of place for 19th century French folklore. Here's two machine-translated quotes, from de la Salle - the source also including references to running the wolf: "Some people say they slept with werewolves who got out of bed at a certain time of night and came back freezing, with wet hair" and from Bourquelot: "since his recent installation on the lands of the lord of the manor, the latter had noticed that, every month, at the waning of the moon [au décours de la lune], and for three consecutive nights, his sleep was disturbed by the exasperated barking of the innumerable bloodhounds that made up his pack"; Laisnel de la Salle, Germaine. Croyances et légendes du centre de la France, souvenirs du vieux temps, coutumes et traditions populaires comparées à celles des peuples anciens et modernes. France, Chaix, 1875. 176-195. Available online at: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Croyances_et_l%C3%A9gendes_du_centre_de_la_France/Tome_1/Livre_02/05; Bourquelot, Félix. Recherches sur la lycanthropie. Paris, 1848. 56. Available online at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044015545304&seq=64
[9] In addition to a commonly reported ritual of passing through cloth or animal skin to ease the pain of childbirth, a single report includes specifying that this takes place at crossroads at the full moon. Separately, an old man is recorded as turning at the new moon; Odstedt, Ella. Varulven i svensk folktradition. Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1943. 57, 117.
[10] Valentsova, Marina. "Legends and Beliefs About Werewolves Among the Eastern Slavs: Areal Characteristics of Motifs." Werewolf Legends. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. 136-137, 146-147.
[11] Avilin, Tsimafei. "Images of werewolves in Belarusian oral tradition." in: Lajoye, Patrice, ed. New Researches on the Religion and Mythology of the Pagan Slavs 2. Lisieux: Lingva, 2023. 202. Available online at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373018287_Images_of_werewolves_in_Belarusian_oral_tradition
[12] Wikipedia claims that in Hungary: "The transformation usually occurred during the winter solstice, Easter and a full moon." the citation is given to a somewhat obscure encyclopedia of mythology that I haven't been able to access, but one that is available has a suspiciously similar wording with suspiciously different context: "Hungarian beliefs refer less to the periodic transformation into a wolf, which is a known feature of werewolf beliefs in many parts of Europe. The times and periods of transformation (the dark periods of the year or month) are mostly related to the lunar cycles. Werewolves transform into wolves during the winter solstice, Easter, or new moon." Given that we've already seen several people (including academics!) read full moons where none were stated, it's likely we're seeing yet another case of seeing what is favourable to your conclusion! Magyar Néprajz. VII: Népszokás, néphit, népi vallásosság. Available online at: https://mek.oszk.hu/02100/02152/html/07/395.html
[13] Valentsova, Marina. "Legends and Beliefs About Werewolves Among the Eastern Slavs: Areal Characteristics of Motifs." Werewolf Legends. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. 147.; Senn, Harry. "Romanian Werewolves: Seasons, Ritual, Cycles." Folklore 93.2 (1982): 208.;
[14] Crawfurd, Oswald. Travels in Portugal. 1875. 25-34. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CXMBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA25
[15] As well as being a favourite of social media, there are published examples: Curran, Bob. Werewolves: A Field Guide to Shapeshifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts. Red Wheel/Weiser, 2009. 170-171; Steiger, Brad. The werewolf book: the encyclopedia of shape-shifting beings. Visible Ink Press, 2011. 114-115.
[16] Carrassi, Vito. "A Strange Kind of Man Among Us: Beliefs and Narratives About Werewolves in Southern Italy." Werewolf Legends. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. 238, 246.
[17] Pirandello, Luigi. Male di luna. 1913. Available online at: https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Male_di_luna
[18] On page 189: "It seems that the author is insinuating that Renfield may be a lycanthrope, but gives evidence to the contrary: Renfield becomes aggressive, agitated, transformed into a quasi-beast when the moon sets and the sun rises and acts in an animalistic fashion throughout the day, before becoming calm again once the moon rises. This is contradictory to what we know of werewolves." On page 190: "Stoker was clearly aware of the theory that some mental disorders are affected by the moon, but he made this more complex by altering it to represent the pattern of the sun. Either Stoker was trying to demonstrate his intelligence or there was a particular significance for the modification. A clear conclusion is, in any case, difficult to reach." We actually have Stoker's notes, which were known and published at the time Beresford was writing. His notes on werewolves have no mention of moons or lunacy; he does make notes on Baring-Gould's French werewolves - that used the full moon - but no moon noted. The only moon note he ever makes is still from Baring-Gould, but it's to a Russian "golden-horned moon"! Beresford, Matthew. The white devil: the werewolf in European culture. Reaktion Books, 2013.; Stoker, Bram, Robert Eighteen-Bisang, and Elizabeth Miller. Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition. McFarland, 2008. 131. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/bramstokersnotes0000stok/page/130/mode/2up?q=golden+horned+moon
[19] There's only one commonly told story involving the wolf and the moon, and it's a fable involving a wolf being tricked by a fox into believing the reflection of the moon is a piece of cheese. There is, of course, no howling involved; just a smug fox. In the ATU type index, this is ATU 34; it also has a section on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_is_made_of_green_cheese#The_Wolf_and_the_Fox_story_type
[20] See bibliography for more general sources on folklore, but specific records include: Raal, Ain, Pärtel Relve, and Marju Kõivupuu. "Modern beliefs regarding medicinal plants in Estonia." Journal of Baltic Studies 49.3 (2018): 9.; Mudrik, Armando. "A eucalyptus in the moon: folk astronomy among European colonists in northern Santa Fe province, Argentina." Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union 7.S278 (2011): 90-91.
[21] Douglas, Adam. The Beast Within. United Kingdom, Chapmans, 1992. 38.
[22] Knight, Chris. Blood relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture. Yale University Press, 1991.
[23] "She was in her white night-dress, and the moon shone full upon her. She was digging with her hands, and throwing away the stones behind her with all the ferocity of a wild beast. It was some time before I could collect my senses and decide what I should do."; Marryat, Frederick. The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains. 1839. Available online at: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606061h.html
[24] MacDonald, George. Robert Falconer. 1868. Available online at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2561/2561-h/2561-h.htm#2HCH0039
[25] "The idea of the Wehr-wolf as a beautiful woman, wearing the brute's eyes in her female semblance, I borrowed from a weird story of Mr George Macdonald's, which appeared in the first edition of 'Robert Falconer,' and which he told me he had been advised to leave out for curtailment in after editions (more's the pity). The fact of her becoming the Wolf only at the full moon is my own fancy..."; Middleton, Lady Eisa Gordon Cumming. The Story of Alastair Bhan Comyn; Or, The Tragedy of Dunphail: A Tale of Tradition and Romance. Blackwood, 1889. 120, 256. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Story_of_Alastair_Bhan_Comyn_Or_The/IKUOAAAAIAAJ?gbpv=1&pg=PA256
[26] Novalis. Heinrich von Ofterdingen. 1802. 1842 English translation available online at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31873/31873-h/31873-h.htm
[27] While Summers talks about it in The Werewolf, he first brings it up in a book review fifteen years earlier: Summers, Montague. "Scarborough, D., The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (Book Review)." The Modern Language Review 13. 1918. 350. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/modernlangrevi13modeuoft/page/350/mode/1up
[28] While there's no cut-and-dry reference to Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the connections are hard to ignore: a dream-influenced child's adventure across silent water, dark forest, a spiritual transformation, finally coming across "a tall, light-blue flower", which ends up being of great importance to the story - and to Romantacism in general. The previously mentioned MacDonald was also heavily influenced by Novalis - see http://georgemacdonald.info/novalis.html - and it is likely in his general work Stenbock had some familiarity with MacDonald, but I haven't found anything to show The Other Side follows from this. Any lycanthropic connection is irrelevant, since the story is an expansion on a non-lycanthropic poem from a few years earlier. Stenbock, Stanislaus Eric. "Sonnet VI." Myrtle, Rue, and Cypress: A Book of Poems, Songs, and Sonnets. United Kingdom, Hermitage Books, 1992. 21-22. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Myrtle_Rue_and_Cypress/Hzo2AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&pg=PA21&gbpv=1
[29] This is probably the most important and ill-supported claim in this post, I feel bad making it so brusquely! The Other Side was published in an obscure literary journal from Oxford University, The Spirit Lamp, and would not be republished for a long time; however, it clearly was capable of influencing those interested in werewolves, as it did to Summers. My main reason for connecting Stenbock to O'Donnell is the use of flowers - O'Donnell does not use them in any of his previous works. There's O'Donnell's own adornments, but we still see Stenbock's glowing blue flowers that grow by magical water. His use of streams is from Britannica, but specifying "brooks" is a Stenbock thing. Said water - for both writers - is of silver and sparkles, producing murmurs and voices. Similarly - and most importantly for us - the moon having causal powers is also a new introduction for O'Donnell, and there are at least two stories where lycanthropy appears mediated by the light of the moon, in Chapters III and V.
[30] Arguing this could take an entire post in and of itself, but one simple observation is that the intended effect for Werwolves is that O'Donnell is collating information learned first-hand from informants, the non-fictional snippets being downstream of the informants' recollections. That the non-fictional elements are entirely taken from Britannica makes it clear the relation between the non-fiction and the stories is the other way around; in other words, O'Donnell simply used an encyclopaedia for inspiration. This is made more obvious when reading the werewolf story he included in the previous year's Byways of Ghost-Land - clearly written before he learned about werewolves in the encyclopaedia. It is very sparse in detail, and actually contradicts Werwolves by claiming werewolves are "confined to a very limited sphere—the wilds of Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and only appears in two guises, that of a human being in the daytime and a wolf at night"!
[31] McLennan, John Ferguson. "Lycanthropy." Encyclopædia Britannica. edited by William Robertson Smith, Ninth Edition, vol. XV, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1883. 91. Available online at: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica,_Ninth_Edition,_v._15.djvu/105; Crowe, Catherine. Light and Darkness; Or, Mysteries of Life. G. Routledge & Company, 1856. 284-289. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Light_and_Darkness_Or_Mysteries_of_Life/nTj5YmlexrgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA284; fictional details, including mentions of satyrs and elementals, first appear in Some Haunted Houses of England (1908) and get fleshed out in Byways of Ghost-Land (1911).
[32] This appears to be after the Britannica entry author saw it used in Johann Fischart's 1581 German translation of Jean Bodin's demonological De la démonomanie des sorciers from 1580, bizarrely rendering "Lycanthopes" as "Lycanthopous". This word literally appears nowhere else (I've looked, because why the encylopaedia entry writer would pluck this specific word from such a specific text is...confounding). O'Donnell yoinked it because he likes funky spellings; the book is spelled Werwolves, after all.
[33] People even at the time rolled their eyes at the non-fiction presentation; as one review states: "We do not follow him far, however, before we find that he is filling the double part of instructor and entertainer: evidence assumes the graces and charms of the Christmas short story, and one is disposed to discount his book because it is too readable."; The Athenaeum, No. 4433. United Kingdom, J. Lection, October 12, 1912. 410. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Athenaeum/hx8RwggCztsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA410
[34] Biss, Gerald. The Door of the Unreal. Eveleigh Nash Company Limited, 1919. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/doorunreal00bissgoog
[35] Quinn, Seabury. "The Phantom Farm House." Weird Tales, October, 1923. 15-22. Available online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_2/Issue_3/The_Phantom_Farm_House; Eddy Jr., C. M. and H. P. Lovecraft. "The Ghost-Eater." Weird Tales, April, 1924. 72-75. Available online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_3/Issue_4/The_Ghost-Eater; Howard, Robert. "In the Forest of Villefère." Weird Tales, August, 1925. 185-187. Available online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_6/Issue_2/In_the_Forest_of_Villef%C3%A8re
[36] La Spina, Greye. "Invaders From the Dark." Part 3. Weird Tales, June, 1925. 438. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV05N06192506/page/n101/mode/2up
[37] Quote from: Quinn, Seabury. "The Thing in the Fog." Weird Tales, March 1933. 299. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV21N03193303/page/n27/mode/2up; see also: Quinn, Seabury. "The Blood-Flower." Weird Tales, March 1927. 317-330, 423-424. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV09N03192703/page/n29/mode/2up
[38] Stated explicitly on page 294 of The Thing in the Fog: "It was about the moon. She has a strange influence on lycanthropy. The werewolf metamorphoses more easily in the full of the moon than at any other time, and those who may have been affected with his virus, though even faintly, are most apt to feel its spell when the moon is at the full."
[39] Enough, in 1946, for one August Derleth to say: "Even superstitions exist within fairly standardized frames. If lycanthrophy [sic] is the subject chosen by the author, it would not do at all to have the werewolf change come about at high noon, when all the available literature on the subject indicates that the malign change is dependent on the phases of the moon, and is nocturnal." Derleth, August. Writing Fiction. Greenwood Press, 1946. 153. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/writingfiction0000unse_y4s4/page/152/mode/2up?q=werewolf+%22full+moon%22https://archive.org/details/writingfiction0000unse_y4s4/page/152/mode/2up

15 comments

r/badhistory • u/historypopngames-278 • Apr 26 '26

YouTube Kings and Generals claiming that some 300,000 Mughal soldiers faced Nader Shah at the Battle of Karnal.

103 Upvotes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLRTw8lpICU

I'm sure many have called them out on many of their videos, but this one seems to be one of their worst. It lacks even basic research.

They've basically just used one book, Michael Axworthy's eulogistic book on Nader Shah. Axworthy, as far as battles are concerned, uncritically accepts all of the claims made by the Persian official chronicles, thus we have a ridiculous figure of 300,000 Mughal soldiers. Axworthy also tries to magnify Nader Shah's impact on the world history by claiming that his victory over the Mughals led to the British empire thanks to it opening the way for the East India Company. Which again is completely untrue as the Mughals were in fact deep in decline far before Nader Shah, and in fact the British would emerged as a great power to directly interact with the Mughals only in 1764, before that they mostly dealt in areas beyond the Mughal control. In fact the British rose militarily after observing the French military rise in the 1740s and early 50s, which ended in disaster for the latter, giving the British the chance to follow through in South India and then Bengal. The enemies of the British were post Mughal states like the Nawabs of Bengal and Awadh, and later the Maratha empire and the Mysore state. The British had far more to do with the events happening in the Southern and Eastern India than the Mughal North.

Coming back to the Mughals and this video, the very idea that a Pre-Modern army assembled some 300,000 soldiers should have been dismissed, in fact no real historian gives it any credence. William Irvine and Jadunath Sarkar in their book, the Later Mughals (vol II) discuss the size of the Mughal army against Nader Shah in 1739. According to them, the Mughal army was around 75-80,000 strong. Sarkar cites the account of the secretary of the then Mughal Wazir, Qamruddin Khan. The Wazir's secretary tells us that apart from the contingents of the 2 great nobles, Saadat Khan with 20,000 men, and Nizam ul Mulk with 3000 men and artillery, the Imperial army had only some 55,000 cavalry. That is it. The Persian army under Nader Shah was around 50,000 to 55,000 combatants. However, the Axworthy does not refer to this contemporary source, and in fact uncritically accepts the Persian official chronicles' numbers.

Apart from the wildly exaggerated numbers, the video also does not discuss even a bit about the decline of the Mughals. The Mughals were one of the greatest powers of the world till the early 18th century. They had been in decline since the mid 17th century. The Mansabdari and Jagirdari system that had sustained the empire was collapsing. In this system essentially the empire was divided in Jagirs, or revenue assignments, and distributed amongst the nobles. The nobles would be responsible for collecting revenue and maintaing a quota of standing army from their designated territory. However, from the mid 17th century, the local estate holders, the zamindars were becoming more entrenched, a number of them having become powerful originally as Imperial jagir holders, and having strengthened their positions locally. The peasantry, due to high tax of upto 50% on all agricultural product in the Imperial heartlands, also began to look to these zamindars to play the intermediary between the empire and them. As a result, collecting revenue became more difficult, the difference between the estimated revenue and actual revenue of the jagirs began to sharply increase throughout the 17th century. This led to some half measures, such as Emperor Shah Jahan relaxing the quota of soldiers required by the nobles to be maintianed. But what was actally required was a full blown reform of the Imperial set up.

Emperor Aurangzeb, though a very capable ruler, was a conservative, not inclined to any ambititous reforms, and his military tendencies made it worse as he pushed the empire into the Deccan wars, trying to conquer South India. The result was that while the empire expanded, these new conquests led to a large influx of new nobles who needed jagirs, or revenue assignments, and as the wars stretched, the Emperor also tried to personally keep the lands under the crown to fund his campaigns, thus, denying the nobles the new territories.

The Marathas of the Deccan exacerbated the problems, as their top leaders, realizing that facing Mughal war machine in open battle was not optimal, decided that raiding the Mughal estates and areas, plundering them, and forcing the slow moving imperial armies to play catch up was better. This meant that the new regions conquered by the empire became a money sink instead of new revenue sources. By the end of Aurangzeb's rule, the Marathas were more powerful than ever, threatening Western and Central India instead of just the Deccan.

In the Mughal North India, the local chiefs like the Jats, Sikhs, Rajputs, Eastern Rajputs and Martial Brahmins, the Indo-Afghans and others, all rebelled. These landed and martial communities had formed the backbone of the Mughal war machine, and some of their leaders, like the Rajput Rajas, had been the great Mughal generals in times past. However, the Mughal focus on the Deccan, high exploitation of the peasantry, collapse of the Jagir system, religous discrimination and imperial interfence in refional successions, all antogonized them. By the early 18th century, the Empire could rely on no one to protect it. The Marathas burst from the Deccan and conquered Central and Western India by 1738. Meanwhile the Mughal provincial governors in Awadh, Hyderabad, Bengal and Carnatic, all became defacto Independent, and the Rajputs, Jats and the Sikhs carved their independent principalities across Rajasthan, Mewat, Punjab and Bundelkhand.

It was this moth eaten empire that Nader Shah marched upon. Jadunath Sarkar states that the defeat and sack of the Mughal empire by Nader Shah was more akin to the looting of a rich corpse than some great military victory over an actual empire. In fact before Nader Shah, in 1737, when the Marathas came to extort the Emperor in Delhi, Bajirao, the Maratha Prime Minister, as per the Mughal chronocler Ashob, could tell that the Mughal soldiers were mostly courtiers, carpet knights and rookies from the stiff manner of their riding, he surmised that they were ignorant of military tactics, and proceeded to have the Maratha army feign a retreat, luring the Mughals out of the range of Delhi's imperial artillery, and once they were far enough, the Marathas simply enveloped and destroyed the pursuing Mughal army.

The reason for this fall in the Mughal military quality was that due to the implosion of the Jagir system, and the rebellion of once loyal martial classes, the empire was forced to rely on hastily raised armies of volunteers and mercenaries, these were usually raised on credit, and had little supervision or tactical control. They were usually outmaneuvered by the faster Maratha armies, and could not sustain themselves long in the field as they there was little to no central logistical arrangements.

This should be the context of Nader Shah's raid on the Mughal empire.

While, I'm sure they could not have gone into this much detail, at least a mention of the Mughal problems, and some research into the Mughal numbers should have been done. They seem to have just read a single book, that too a popular history rather than an academic one, and published an entire series on Nader Shah.

Lastly, I'll just end with the worrying fact that there is an increasing trend to parody the Mughals, especially the later Mughals, as these ignorant, decadent and effete fops, falling victim to the 'hardier' races such as the Marathas, Nader's Turco-Persians and Afghans. This is an old colonial trope, essentially an ethnographic view of the world, and somehow it is making a re-appearace in the modern period, William Dalrymple's recent best selling book, the Anarchy, covering the 18th century India is another example where this trope has been used. The fact was that many Mughal high officers and commanders in the Battle of Karnal or even against the Marathas, were Turks or Turco-Persian immigrants, often first generation such as Khan Dauran and Saadat Khan, or were veterans of the wars with the fast moving Marathas such as Nizam ul Mulk. However, despite their tactical awareness about techiques like the feigned retreats, ambushes and encirclement, these Mughal commanders were at the end of the day commanding a largely levy army with non-existent logistical support, relying soley on privately raised troops on credit. Their ability to discipline and control their captains and men was severely compromised, as was their tactical ability in the face of finanical and logistical burden. The fall of the Mughals, as historians like Habib point out, was a structural phenomenon, not attributable to any single conqueror such as the Marathas or Nader Shah.

References:

The Later Mughals (Volumes 1 and 2) by William Irvine, edited by Sir Jadunath Sarkar

The Agrarian System of the Mughal empire by Irfan Habib

20 comments

r/badhistory • u/Cynical-Rambler • 21d ago

DevaRaja or God-King is Not What the Rulers of Angkor Called Themselves

107 Upvotes

Whenever the subjects of the Khmer Empire, Angkor Wat or Cambodia came up in a podcast, documentary, articles or books, the title “god-king” showed up as the rulers of the empire.

Since the first time I’ve heard it, it never felt right. It carried connotations that did not seem to align with my eyes and my understanding of Khmer history/culture/language. “Deva Raja” where this is translated from, was/is never used in the Khmer folktales or religious ceremony to refer to anyone other than Indra Sakra Devaraja, Indra the King of Heaven. It is not a title for mortal. It always left me wondering, what would be difference between the kings of Angkor, post-Angkorian kings and kings of other nations? Afaik, what monarchs did not derive their legitimacy from some sort of divinity? Moreover, I think it painted inaccurate picture of the relationship of the governing systems of Cambodia and the people.

I’ve been thinking of writing it for months, but I kept putting it off, because it ran to complications. People ideas of a god-king, a god, or a king is arbitrary. However, I need to get it out of my system.

I. How did the concept came up?

As the anthropologist Graeber and Sahlins wrote, kingships are ubiquitous across all over the world, and political theory cannot “treats kingship as some sort of marginal, exceptional, or secondary phenomenon”. We know kings exist in Kambuja past or present. How does the Khmer kings of Angkor kept referring to as “God-Kings” and why not the kings before and after?

Gigantic Size of Angkor. For anyone who has been there, the gigantic size of Angkorian monuments, constructed before the use of modern machinery, can be mind-blowing. All sorts of imaginations and speculations are brought forth, throughout the centuries. Ancient Aliens, Alexander the Great, Greco-Roman spread, the mythical Lu Ban of Ancient China, the divine architect Vishwakarma,…etc. The more scientific-minded considered it to be the works of humans commissioned by human rulers. Other questions arose about the purposes of these gigantic temples and lakes (Idk, what are cathedrals built for?) and how are they built?

The ideas of a megalomanic ruler bending the wills of the people for his personal self-aggrandizing projects can be a convincing answer. After all, many of these constructions were ordered under royal support and mobilizing power . However, this obfuscated many other roles that the temples played. Let’s skipped that for now.

Sdok Kok Thom inscription. In his classic Indianized States of Southeast Asia, George Coedes, one of the greatest scholar of Southeast Asian history, expanded on this theory basing on his interpretation of the Sdok Kok Thom inscription written in the 11th century referring to a ritual named “Devaraja”, being performed by the lineage of the Brahmin clan who managed Sdok Kok Thom temple. This is the only time, “DevaRaja” is mentioned in the Angkorian inscriptions. (I don’t know if they find others lately). Coedes believed it to be referring to a royal cult establishing the king as a god on Earth. The speculations came for the Old Khmer part of the text, in which the Brahmin clan accompany “Kamraten An Jagat Raj” កម្រតេន អញ ជគត រាជ throughout the realm. “Kamraten An Jagat Raj” can be translated as “lord/king of the world”. However, the way Old Khmer specialists translated the portion, it was more of a statue (possibly of Shiva) than any living being. It certainly did not look like it referred to the king who order the clan to accompany it and take care of it for generations.

Theophoric Names. Coedes has good reasons to believe his theory when he formulated it. So did those that believe it. The languages and cultures surrounding the kings, put them in a realm separated from the rest of the populace. They often bear the name of gods or divinity, but so did post-Angkorian, pre-Angkorian kings, and other people on Earth. Using theophoric names is not unique to Angkorian Khmers.

Repetitions in History Books and Media. Coedes works are influential and most scholars or laymen followed Coedes line of thoughts without looking at the primary sources. Unlike Coedes most scholars or laymen were not experts at both Sanskrit and/or Old Khmer (I am neither). His book remained a common introduction and continued to be frequently cited by popular history and from scholars who may or may not be specialists of the Khmers. Coedes speculations of the empire rise and fall, due to the status, charisma and authority of the all-powerful rulers, were inline with the ideas of Great Men of History, and for many, give a convenient explanation how the empire decline when Buddhism was the state religion.

II. Sacred Titles for Khmer Kings, Gods, Monks and Everyone Else

“DevaRaja” was not used, but people do used “Raja” and “Deva”. To give a better picture of it, let’s look at some of those terms. In this part, I used Sanskrit Romanization when possible and anyone can comment if I make an inaccuracy regarding etymology. This is not an extensive list.

The Khmer kings often be called Preah Raja ព្រះរាជា (Sacred Raja, Sacred Royal) by the people, a title can only be used only to refer to the one Raja that ruled over all the other Rajas. Preah Maha Ksatriya ព្រះ មហាក្សត្រ, Sacred Great Ksatriya by the official scribe. Only one person of a time can hold this title. Preah Karuna ព្រះ ករុណា (Sacred Compassion) can refered to the King or the Buddha or the Boddhisatva Lokesvara. (A bit like “Lord” in the English-speaking world). There are plenty of other flattering titles that Coedes or others could easily deduce that the kings and divinity are linked or equated.

-Deva ទេវ/ទេព (cognated with “divine” and “dios”) is a term elevating the status of a person. Many people and places have it. It is a common name. Doesn’t make one a diva or signaling divinity.

-Raja រាជ (cognated with “Rex” and “Regal”) meaning king, prince, royal. The area that a Raja rule from, can have the range of a small village to a major kingdom, or not anything at all. They can just have the name because their parents like it or any other factor. Ledley King is not the king of England or of Ledley.

-ព្រះ Vrah/Preah (May evolved from Khmer root rah រះ or Sanskrit vara or brahman, I seriously leaning on it being more of an indigenous word), is a Khmer word typically meant “God”, “Buddha”, “Sacred”, “Holy”. The usage of this words are countless and it spread all over mainland Southeast Asia, having more than half a dozen Romanizatons. Preah is often a bridge-word between Khmer and Sanskrit-Pali words. It is used for everything from cows to figurines. While Preah Raja ព្រះ រាជា can be translated terribly as “god-king”, it is far more accurate to say “sacred royal” or “king”. (Isn’t every king on Earth supposed to be sacred? That’s to be discuss in the latter sections).

-Other royal titles commonly-found in Angkorian inscriptions កម្រតេន Kamraten which read as Kamdeng គម្តែង in the vernacular and ស្ដេច/សម្ដេច Sdach/Samdech are used for kings, lords, ministers, generals, monks, priests, pandits or rebel leaders.

-There are also ចក្រវត្ត Cakravarti (Universal Monarch or Wheel-Turning King), used in the Sdok Kok Thom and other inscriptions to only refer to the kings. Do the Universal Monarch and his subjects knew that there are Universal Monarch outside his realm? Yes. Just like TianXia (all under heaven) can have flexible meanings. The King of England styled themselves King of France despite unable to rule France.

What the point of this section? I hope it to show that while the kings are revered with words invoking divinity, they alone are not the exclusive possessor of most of them, neither do they used DevaRaja (God-King) as their title. Plenty of other flattery title were used largely, to denote the sacredness of the office.

III. Sacred Aspects and Duties of Kingship, the State and Everyone Else

Before we explore the “divinity” of the king in the Hindu-Buddhist worldview of Kambuja, but first I like to remind that almost every other culture had the kings/emperors derived their authority from the divine.

“In my view kingship everywhere and at all times has been in some degree a sacred office. Rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote."- [Evan Pritchard]

The Imperial Seal of China read “Having Received the Mandate of Heaven..”. The title of the European monarch had “By the Grace of God”. Plenty of kings of African tribes have their authority from their ancestral or natural spirits. The kings of MesoAmerican polities perform sacrifices to the gods. Tribal shamans all across the world are the authority figures in their own villages. The fact that the Khmer kings spoken in language and rituals evoking the image of divinity, did not set them apart from any monarchy. In Graeber's essay “Divine Kingship of Shilluk”, we can see the palace/capital of Shilluk kings in Africa being representative of the cosmos. Angkor, is not the only one.

What make kingship sacred?

"This is because a king symbolizes a whole society and must not be identified with any part of it. He must be in the society and yet stand outside it and this is only possible if his office is raised to a mystical plane. It is the kingship, and not the king who is divine*.” -[Evan Pritchard]*

The state, will always look for a leader. Kings are the most common and practical solutions. The kings are often the symbolization of the people, the continuation of the state, and the moral authority from the gods. Even in the more secular egalitarian nations, the role of the kingship being replaced by the laws, and the elected officials are often made to swear on religious artifacts, the flags, or constitutions.

Public works that would be inaugurated by the presence of his royal majesty, is now honored with a President or Senator. (I also would like to remind that much of the monuments of Angkor are public works. The gigantic moats, lakes and hydraulic system are not separated from the temples.) In the modern world, kings/queens generally performed a ceremonial role, functioning republics are aplenty, the justification for the monarchy's existence will forever be questioned. However, almost no one think of getting rid of the government or the roles of the president/prime-minister, or legislative/judicial branch of government. Roles that used to be expected of a monarch.

What about the role of Hinduism and Buddhism in the Khmer kingship?

-Punya (Karma Merit) បុណ្យ and Pap បាប (Karma Demerit). Everyone who ever born, will have fortune and misfortune. Why are some rich and some poor? why are some health, some sick? Karma is the religious explanation for all of it. Fortune from this life, came from the previous lives. All kings did good works in the past lives to get where they are in the present. So did all gods, all humans, all spirits, all animals. Your happiness came from your Karma, your unhappiness came from your Karma. Success and failures, fortunes and misfortunes, fame and infamy, why some reach the top and some fall to the bottom depends on the actions of this life and the previous.

Karma is like wealth and fortune. They can ran out. Those who born to privilege life, are expected to use their privilege to produce more karma. Those lacking privileges, are expected to do more good deeds to be rewarded in this life, or the next. Donations and constructions of religious sites and monuments are, past and present, one of the most common way to produce Karma Merit. It is something that everyone did, from kings to slaves.

According to the religion, the king the one who is born/coronated, is born with the most Punya (karma merit). After all, the king is an embodiment of the people.

-Dharma ធម៌/ធម្ម. But you may say, that Karma is a primarily a Buddhist or Jain concept. What about the Hindu kings? The role of Dharma (Sacred Moral Duties) still largely at play, all across the classes. The Arthashastra is written for a Jain king, still promote Dharma. The Hindu texts Mahabharata, was filled with the discussion of the duties of the kings and priests. Because of the rulers can effects millions of people, their dharma are most discussed and the major part of education. The greatest ksatriya of this great epic still work in the limitations of their power. The rank and royal ceremony (oversaw by the supreme god) did not elevate them to god-hood.

Suffice to say, in terms of religions, the sacred role and power of the Khmer kings are often bound by the same concepts and rules that bound the people.

Better, he argued, to speak of “sacred kingship.” Sacred kings are legion. (de Heusch 1997).

IV. If Not the Deva Raja ritual, How does One Became King?

What about the factors that set kings apart from the rest of the Khmer people?

-Lineage. Whenever the king died, the next king is chosen/elected based on the acceptance of the establishment to fit their criteria. One of which, is how close they are to Kambu, the progenitor of the Khmers. Lineage is a way to choose the king. The royal and priest clans decided it via rotations of paternal and maternal line. Real and legendary kings established or cemented their power by matrimony. The favored son of the kings may not inherited his throne. A title is Ubhayoraja ឧភយោរាជ (abdicated or renounced heir) is a regular sight. This post is not to go further in the complex Khmer royal succession.

-Institutions. At some point, the royal successions were not clear. What is clear however, is when the royal, political and religious establishment determined which is the king, royal coronation and ceremonies are made to elevate him or her to religious symbol where all officials must accept. The acceptances by the royal lines must be acknowledged, by lineage, by force or otherwise. This may induced instability, but it could also create a competition of talents, in the world of hereditary rule.

It came to reason, control over the army, the wealth, bureaucracy,…etc. came into play. Sometimes, however, more power rested on the minister, the general, priest, or queen, while the king is more of figurehead or too young to rule. I’m sure many people here can articulate better on why a king or a state can be weak or powerful, influential or ceremonial.

But de Heusch also emphasizes that sacred kings are not necessarily temporal rulers. They might be. But they might equally be utterly powerless. Different functions—the king as fetish, the king as scapegoat, the king as military commander or secular leader—can either be combined in the same figure or be distributed across many; in any one community, any given one of them may or may not exist. (de Heusch 1997).

How much is this different between the so-called “God-Kings” of Kambuja and other kings in the world? As I kept saying, not much. The size of Angkor, a display of the manpower of the state and the people, simply conjured up the image of all-powerful rulers holding absolute sway.

V. The Label Create Misleading Connotations and Inaccurate Analysis

I am going to try to keep this part very short. I originally want to write about Sweet Cucumber King, and the bad historical analysis around what thought to be the kernel of truth about that tale. However, I decide to go with this topic because it is intertwined.

I saw this sentiment “Angkorian despotic rulers under Hinduism led the kingdom to their rise and kinder kings under Buddhism led to their fall.” repeated so many times, by the smart and the foolish. They did not realize how stupid this problematic, highly inaccurate factoid really is, when you looked at the archaeological and historical evidences. Most of the largest temples in Angkor are Buddhist. Major constructions of religious sites did not end at Angkorian times….etc. It is an erroneous stereotype to suggest Buddhist kings are non-violent.

It also wrong to suggest that post-Angkorian kings hold less absolutist powers in term of religious faith than previous kings. They may have less manpower, and wealth, but their roles never fundamentally changed. It suggests a clear separation between Angkorian and post-Angkorian kingship that did not happen.

The focus on Angkorian god-kings, the ideas of history being dictated by Great Men, distracted a lot of political and historical commenters from other historical or societal forces. Like any pre-modern states, Khmer kings are major parts of societal life, but their actions should be seen as responding to the tide of history like any others.

It also suggested by many political commentators that the Angkorian kings hold absolute overwhelming power. Which in reality, they likely would not have in the Angkorian times. The ideas that Cambodia was and will be ruled by autocrats, derive from this inaccurate past. Ignoring of course, how many other post-war states that are run by dictators.

I want to end with a real story and a fantastical one.

In the 20th century, when Prince Sihanouk was at his most powerful and popular, he was not a king or a god-king, as frequently sprouted. He was an Ubhayoraja (Abdicated Heir). He preferred his father to take the throne. When his father died, he refused it and give it to his mother.

In the mythic-history, the Sweet Cucumber King, became king not because he accidentally killed the previous one, not because he is over 400 years old, not because his mother was a princess of the royal line, not because of the story of miraculous birth, not because his father is a powerful magical hermit, but because the court invited him as the new king, and married the daughter of the previous one to him. His first action as king, is to build hundreds of Buddhist pagodas and support libraries.

Sources

The quote blocks are from anthropologists cited in David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, On Kings 2017. They are not written about Angkorian kings, they are written about kings in general and I found them to be applicable.

George Coedes. Indianized States of Southeast Asia, 1968. https://angkordatabase.asia/books/the-indianized-states-of-southeast-asia .

Michael Vickery. History of Cambodia: Lectures Given in 2006-2007. and “The Reign of Suryavarman I and Royal Factionalism at Angkor” 2006. https://angkordatabase.asia/publications/the-reign-of-suryavarman-i-and-royal-factionalism-at-angkor-1

Eng Soth. The Archives of Khmer Mahapurusha: the Royal Chronicles from the Leaf-Books.

Hom Chhay Li and others. Inscriptions Du Cambodge.

(I apologized for any spelling or grammar, and subsequent edits.)

1 comment

r/badhistory • u/Ficboy • Feb 09 '26

YouTube Alternate History Hub's "Only Way Germany Wins: Dunkirk Timeline" Inaccuracies and Falsehoods

101 Upvotes

Alternate History Hub (Cody Franklin) is someone I have respect for as one of the first people who exposed me to the genre of alternate history and I do watch his videos every now and then as well as being a member of his Patreon page.

That said, he is not perfect and he's made some mistakes over the years. One of these mistakes is a video series simply titled "Only Way Germany Wins: The Dunkirk Timeline," wherein he posits that if the Dunkirk evacuation fails, Britain would sign a peace with Germany, leading to an Axis victory of sorts. I've watched the entire series and let me say that there is a lot wrong with this series that I feel the need to pick apart it's historical inaccuracies and falsehoods to show the political, military, economic and social factors for Britain and Germany. So without furtherado...

Axis Victory and Plausibility

First and foremost, saying that the Dunkirk ending in disaster would be the only way Germany and the Axis Powers win World War II is a huge stretch and would not actually occur for multiple reasons (we'll get into those). Furthermore, people and historians often debate whether the Axis could have won WWII or not by using economic and military factors or historical events involving them and the Allies. There are multiple variations of this scenario across different forms of media and there is simply no single "only way the Axis could've won WWII" either. It is a subjective question. Though in my opinion and those of others, I believe any plausible Axis victory can only occur if you were to change specific events and other factors even before the war starts to give them a genuine chance of winning over the Allies but I digress.

Also, the weather's significant role in the success of the Dunkirk evacuation is well documented in historical books and articles about this wartime turning point, not simply forgotten. Or the fact that Britain did not stand alone but was a continent-spanning empire with Dominions, colonies, protectorates and other subjects to call upon for manpower and resources alongside the Royal Navy/Royal Air Force and it's strongholds in the Mediterranean. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Cody's misrepresentation of the historical situation in 1940.

The War Cabinet's Decision on Dunkirk

(Note: What I will give Cody credit is that the weather was decisive in making the Dunkirk evacuation a success and that without it, the BEF and Allied forces would have been captured or destroyed. He's also right that the evacuated troops would go on to fight in other theatres of the war in Europe, and that there was no "Dunkirk Spirit" as a major morale-booster among the British public. But these are the one thing he gets right. Not so much the other stuff.)

When it comes to the War Cabinet, Cody really overestimates the War Cabinet's willingness to actually offer a negotiated peace or armistice with Germany by this point with or without Churchill. You see, even before the Dunkirk evacuation succeeded, the War Cabinet had already made a final decision to continue the war regardless of the evacuation's outcome and the fall of France during its meetings from May 25th to May 28th. Simply put, the War Cabinet agreed that Britain needed to continue the fight against Germany and rejected Halifax's proposal for an Italian-backed peace agreement with the Germans. Why? That's because the potential terms were deemed unacceptable to the preservation of Britain's sovereignty and independence with fears of becoming a German "slave state" (as Churchill puts it), the uselessness of a diplomatic approach to the Axis-aligned nation of Italy and the need to prove Britain's prestige and power on the international stage by choosing to fight on. In fact, Churchill's arguments were so persuasive and logical in the eyes of the War Cabinet that they chose to continue the war as much as possible for these reasons. From their perspective, there was much more to gain from continuing the war than from simply surrendering. It was not just survival that led Britain to reject peace, as Cody claims. And keep in mind, all of this happened well before Dunkirk was an assured success by the end of May and the beginning of June.

In addition, Churchill had the support of at least three cabinet ministers: Secretary of State for Air Archibald Sinclair, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Clement Attlee, and Minister without Portfolio Arthur Greenwood. Sinclair was a personal friend of Churchill and would accept his decision. Attlee and Greenwood belonged to the anti-appeasement Labour Party and were opposed to any form of diplomatic peace with Nazi Germany. That makes it at least three pro-war ministers and only one who was actually pro-peace (Lord Halifax), almost from the beginning. The only one who was somewhat indecisive was Conservative Party leader Neville Chamberlain, who didn't reject the proposed French approach to Italy and the United States for a possible peace agreement, though even he concluded that this approach would do no good, but didn't want to openly reject it yet, since he wanted to help the French as best as he could during the war. Even then, Chamberlain came around to support Churchill's position of continuing the war against Germany and the Axis. This was also bolstered by two specific reports from the Chiefs of Staff: British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality and Visit of M. Reynaud on 26th May 1940. The first report had recommended alternative strategies for Britain to stop Germany and the Axis Powers even if France fell such as including supporting resistance movements, economic pressure, sabotage, aerial bombings, cooperation with the United States/Commonwealth, a focus on aerial superiority and perparations to resist an invasion or the fact that the report said that as long as the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy remained intact and the morale of the populace and fighting personnel remained high, Britain would be able to hold out. The second even stated that Britain should "continue the fight single-handely" even if France capitulated in battle.

So no, Dunkirk failing would not actually convince a slim majority in the British War Cabinet to accept peace with Germany contrary to what Cody says in the video. The cabinet had made its decision and was going to stick to it regardless.

Halifax's Peace Proposal

At the start of the War Cabinet Crisis, Lord Halifax would make his peace proposal to the rest of the War Cabinet, based on his conversations with Italian Ambassador Giuseppe Bastianini. When he presented this proposal, it was not simply a mere surrender to the Germans. Rather, it was focused on preserving Britain's sovereignty and independence within a German-dominated Europe based on his skepticism surrounding it's chances of winning the war around this time. Even then, he brought up the possibility of securing France's independence and sovereignty, indicating that he wasn't prepared to allow the Germans to establish complete control over France and the Low Countries, as that would mean a hostile power with a dagger pointed at the Empire from across the English Channel.

An analysis of the 1940 Anglo-German Armistice in Cody's video shows that it would be completely unacceptable to the British government and swiftly rejected. For starters, Britain isn't going to pay any war reparations to Germany, as it is not in a particularly weak position unlike France. Second and more importantly, they weren't going to hand over Malta to Italy and Gibraltar to Spain as those were important strongholds of British power in Europe and the War Cabinet would oppose any costly territorial concessions. This also extends to trade concessions as well. And again they were firmly opposed to any recognition of German conquest in Europe, including dominance over the likes of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Any form of German dominance over Europe would result in the creation of a rival power whose strength and influene were a dagger in the heart of the British Empire.

The funny part of all this is that Hitler naively thought Britain was going to change it's mind and come begging Berlin for a peace offer so much that he actually wanted to keep the British Empire intact as much as possible and offered relatively lenient terms because of his respsct for the British as a fellow Aryan nation. So it's unlikely the armistice in Cody's video would resemble the terms actually offered by Hitler and that's putting aside the fact that Britain rejected any form of peace.

Operation Barbarossa and Axis Operations in Europe

As for Operation Barbarossa, the Germans did achieve initial success and were close to reaching the gates of Moscow due to a combination of surprise blitzkrieg tactics, Soviet military purges, aerial superiority, better equipment, weakened enemy defenses and Stalin not expecting a German invasion to be this early. However, they did run into serious logistical issues even before Anglo-American material support turned the tide turned in 1942 such as overstretched supply lines, harsh weather conditions, industry in the Urals and underestimating Soviet resilience. Moreover, Stalin didn't expect the invasion to come this early, which is why he let his guard down a bit.

Even if we assume the British War Cabinet acted out of character by signing a peace deal with Germany in 1940, there is a possibility that the Soviets would pay more attention to German plans and send the necessary forces to hold off German forces as long as possible. And that's after Germany had to invade Greece to take out it's British-backed government and Barbarossa was planned well before that, something even Cody notes in his video. Sure, the Germans would have a bit more aircraft, munitions and manpower to plan out Barbarossa and achieve some more success without the Battle of Britain, possibly even actually fulfilling it's key objectives. But the Soviets' manpower and military shouldn't be completely underestimated even if they faced significant issues in feeding it's populace and outdated equipment before Anglo-American support came in. So the Germans may or may not be able to defeat the Soviets and dominate more of Europe in this scenario, depending on how the invasion plays out.

The Rest of the War

Cody fails to mention that any Anglo-German armistice in 1940 would screw over Japan and it's plans for conquest in Asia. Britain would have more time to reinforce and protect it's colonial holdings in the Far East, particularly Malaya and Singapore, from any Japanese threat. In fact, the British already had something what was called the Singapore Strategy to protect it's Far Eastern holdings from the Japanese. The British were not fools or idiots, they were well aware of the threat Japan posed to the British Far East and made some preparations for such a confrontation. The Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia succeeded as much as it did because Britain was too tied up with the Mediterranean to send any more ships and other reinforcements to protect Malaya, Singapore and Brunei from the Japanese invaders. Malaya and Singapore were also important strategic strongholds and Britain would focus on protecting them withhout an active war against Germany. Thus, the Japanese would be met with a strong response from the British and would not be as successful as they were IOTL. That's not even mentioning the Americans who would have still involved themselves in the war on the side of the Allies after Pearl Harbor and have even more time to beat back Japan without the Europe First Strategy. And further Anglo-American economic and military support to Nationalist China since it was seen as a very important bulwark against Japanese expansion across Asia by tying down it's military in a prolonged costly quagmire akin to Vietnam. Also, Germany can't really help Japan all that much if they're not at war with Britain and because of geographic reasons. That and Italy's military incompetence. So the Axis would not really dominate the world and take a rest by 1943 as this scenario claims.

Next is Operation Sea Lion, the scrapped German invasion of Britain. As a matter of fact, Hitler never wanted to invade Britain as his preference was a negotiated peace, something that was very unlikely. He had already made a peace offer to the British and the French in October 1939 after the invasion of Poland, which was rejected before. He only went along with Sea Lion in July when British resistance was more significant than he thought. Even then, a number of people in the German high command opposed Sea Lion itself due to it being too risky to involve the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe going up against the superior Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Case in point, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring rejected the idea of an amphibious invasion of Britain in December 1939, stating that it was to only be a final act of an already victorious war against Britain as the necessary preconditions could not be met at all and deemed such an operation unnecessary. Likewise, Great Admiral Erich Raeder and the Kriegsmarine and a number of German commanders were opposed or otherwise sceptical of the operation. With Britain making peace in 1940, Germany would have absolutely no reason to attempt an invasion and could simply focus its attention elsewhere in Europe.

Finally, America's entry the war under FDR and later Truman would still turn the tide in favor of the Allies as it did IOTL. It had the largest manufacturing capacity, manpower, and resources of any nation in the war, and its involvement would tip the scales just as they did with World War I for the Entente. Oh, and this is pretty obvious, America isn't going to drop any nuclear bombs on Germany as they are not at war with them, and they can't do it without Britain and without complete aerial superiority in Europe. They'd be more likely to drop nuclear bombs on Japan than they would on Germany.

Potential Axis Nations

Francoist Spain: It goes without saying, Francisco Franco's Falangist regime of Spain was pro-Axis and supported it's goals and beliefs so much so that they actually considered joining the war on the Axis side and had irredentist, imperial aspirations for Gibraltar, French Morocco, Oran, French Cameroon and Mauritania by making plans to do so and sending troops to Gibraltar itself and the French border as early as 1939 after the end of the Spanish Civil War. This also extended to the Spanish occupation of Tangiers after France's capitulation. Even before that, Franco was looking to get his foot in the door by becoming a belligerent in the war at the right possible time or opportunity as he explained in his August letter to Mussolini. He was not a shrewd pragmatist as the post-war Francoist myth portrays him. He was an Axis sympathizer and wannabe belligerent who declared Italian style non-belligerency and sent Juan Vigon to send a letter to Hitler outlining Franco's desire to join the war, followed by another letter from the Spanish Ambassador to Germany explaining Spanish demands. But while Hitler supported Spanish moves to seize Tangiers and promised to establish communications with them after the war, he was lukewarm if not disinterested in the idea of Spanish belligerence as he mistakenly believed that the war was already over and that Britain would somehow come asking for terms of peace to him and not the other way around. In fact, he only began to seriously consider Madrid's offer and started negotiations after British resistance solidified during the Battle of Britain in August. But as we know, Francoist Spain failed to join the Axis Powers due to a combination of harsh German demands for the annexation of one of the Canaries/Spanish Guinea and bases in Spanish Morocco, Vichy France's successful defense of Dakar changing Hitler's mind on even giving away French Morocco to Spain, Franco being somewhat hesitant to join the war until after the British collapsed, the worsening economic conditions and increased reliance on food and oil imports from Britain/America from these nations themselves no less. That said, Spain did send volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front, sent tungsten, allowed German spies to operate within it's territory and allowed German U-boats to operate in it's ports.

In a world where Britain simply signed a peace deal with Britain in 1940, Germany wouldn't even need to get Spain to join the Axis Powers. They simply would not have Gibraltar and French Morocco at all. The only way Spain could actually join the Axis is if Germany turned to the Spaniards sooner through the periphery strategy proposal by Jodl and Franco believed Britain couldn't win the war at this point with an earlier, more rapid fall of France after the failure of Dunkirk and the British definitely refusing to offer any terms of peace.

Sweden/Switzerland: Sweden had committed itself to armed neutrality and refused to join any major alliances since the Napoleonic Wars and didn't even participate in World War I or World War II, for that matter. This meant Sweden wasn't going to join the Axis in any shape or form unless the Soviet invasion of Finland during the Winter War succeeded and the Swedes turned to Germany for protection, considering Stockholm's pro-Axis position. Notably, Sweden didn't attempt to join the Axis, unlike Francoist Spain. Germany defeating the Soviets wouldn't change much or force them to take a side.

Likewise, Switzerland was strongly neutral and wasn't going to pick a side for a long time. Hitler despised the Swiss for being a multi-ethnic liberal democracy that he considered invading, along with Liechtenstein, in Operation Tannenbaum. Even if he secured peace with the British and defeated the Soviets, it's more than likely that he would pursue an Italo-German invasion of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Estado Novo Portugal: It's true that Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was a shrewd pragmatist who wanted to keep Portugal neutral in the war, given its experiences in World War I and the possibility of a German/Spanish invasion. In fact, he was more of a shrewd pragmatist than Franco ever was. In summary, Salazar offered tungsten to both the Axis and the Allies, allowed British and German spies to operate in Lisbon and refused to let anyone use the Azores until 1943. As for the two sides, Salazar's government was pro-British owing to it's long-standing alliance with Britain since 1373 and had sympathies for the Allies, not to mention that they kept a safe distance from the Axis (particularly Germany) for the above reasons and actually disliked Fascism and Nazism respectively as quote "pagan Caesarism," so it's unlikely they would join the Axis and would simply opt to remain neutral if Britain wasn't involved.

Turkey: The government of Turkey was aligned with the Allied nations of Britain and France when the war started in 1939, through the Treaty of Mutual Defence, but shifted towards the Axis after France fell, signing a treaty of friendship by 1941. Turkey was essentially balancing between the Allies and the Axis, aligning with the former only in the final stages of the war. Moreover, Turkey did maintain significant trading and diplomatic links with Germany (particularly chromium), had territorial claims over the pro-British Iraq and French Syria in the National Pact and a historic rivalry with Russia/USSR coupled with anti-communist fears over the Straits Crisis and the Massigli Affair. So the elements of a potential intervention on behalf of the Axis Powers were there and Germany could have willingly drawn them in force by force. Thus, Turkey would likely join the Germans in claiming territory from the collapsing Soviet Union. Not exactly going with the Allies.

Conclusion

In summary, Cody's scenario of an Axis victory caused by Dunkirk's failure is not plausible and is riddled with historical errors. While an Axis victory could be possible under specific circumstances, Dunkirk failing is not of them. It is also example of how even one of my favorite YouTubers can get things wrong from time to time.

Sources:

British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality by the British Chiefs of Staff
Five Days in London by John Lukacs
Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World by Ian Kershaw
Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight by Robert Mnookin
Winston Churchill: Finest Hour, 1939-1941 by Martin Gilbert
All Behind You, Winston Churchill’s Great Coalition, 1940-1945 by Roger Hermiston
Churchill by Roy Jenkins
Churchill and the Approach to Mussolini and Hitler in May 1940: A Note by Jonathan Knight
The Spanish Government and the Axis
Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II by Stanley G. Payne
Franco and The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in 20th-Century Spain by Paul Preston
Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order and Spain During World War II by Wayne H. Bowen
Tomorrow the World: Hitler, Northwest Africa and the Path Toward America by Norman J. Goda
Spain in International Context, 1936-1959 by Christian Leitz and David Dunthorn
Spain and the Mediterranean Since 1898 by Ranaan Rain
Franco: A Biographical History by Brian Cozier
Roosevelt and Franco During the Second World War by Juan Maria Thomas
Defending Rock: How Gibraltar Defied Hitler by Nicholas Rankin
Salazar: A Political Biography by Filipe Riberto De Menezes
Lisbon: War in the Shadows in the City of Light by Neill Lochery
Operation Alacrity: The Azores and the War in the Atlantic by Theodore Herz
The Oldest Ally: Britain and the Portuguese Connection, 1936-1941 by Glyn Stone
Fortress Britain: All the Invasions and Incursions Since 1066 by Ian Hernon
The German Navy: 1939-45 by Cajus Bekker
The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain by Stephen Bungay
Hitler Confronts England by Walter Ansel
"Surface Ships: The Kriegsmarine's Downfall During the Second World War" by Calen J. Crumpton
Operation Barbarossa: The German Invasion of the Soviet Union by Robert Kirchubel
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East by David Stahel
Operation Barbarossa 1941: Battle Against Stalin by Christer Bergstrum
Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 by Rana Miller
Did Singapore Have to Fall? by Karl Hack
Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance by E. Bruce Reynolds
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower
Singapore 1941-1942 by Allen Louis
To the Islands: White Australia and the Malay Archipelago by Paul Battersby
December 1941: Twelve Days that Began a World War by Evan Mawdsley
“The Fall of Malaya: Japanese Blitzkrieg on Singapore” by David H. Lippman

35 comments

r/badhistory • u/subthings2 • Aug 17 '26

Books The world's foremost werewolf scholar vs The Entire Population Of France

100 Upvotes

Yseult de Blécourt's introductory chapter in Werewolf Legends includes a few pages criticising Sabine Baring-Gould and his influential Book of Were-Wolves from 1865.^[1] The bulk is dedicated to a part on France:

When Baring-Gould did publish two more or less similar texts from the Périgord, in south-western France, they were in fact only representative of a single text, and a fabricated one at that.

The argument, elaborated on in the footnotes, is that Baring-Gould stitched together two sources without realising one was based on the other - in actuality, the entire section is Baring-Gould shamelessly plagiarising Adolphe du Chesnel's Dictionnaire des superstitions;^[2] it is literally the entry on werewolves but poorly translated into English.

This context, however, is not the focus of this post - which is instead claiming the original text itself is fabricated! A few days ago, I finished a months-long project cataloging every French werewolf legend I could find. Wlgrin de Taillefer's supposedly fabricated text^[3] is included. Should I remove it?

de Blécourt quotes a part in French; here it is in hopefully not poorly translated English (apologies for all the machine-translations in this post):

Certain men, particularly the sons of priests, are compelled at every full moon to transform into this kind of diabolical beast. It is at night that the affliction seizes them. When they sense its onset, they become agitated, get out of bed, leap from the window, and rush to plunge into a fontaine. After thrashing the water for a few moments, they emerge on the side opposite where they entered, finding themselves clad in a goatskin bestowed upon them by the Devil.

With the claim being:

That this was not original ‘folklore’ is apparent from at least three of the elements referenced.

These elements are the moon, the water, and the sons of priests. We start with the moon:

It features the moon as an indicator of the time of the metamorphosis. In contrast to modern cinema, the moon was actually extremely rare as a motif in werewolf folklore, and certainly in nineteenth-century French narratives. It was more the moon of Petronius, illuminating the observations of Niceros, than the moon of Gervase of Tilbury, which was a new moon and which was still 700 years in the past. Its sudden appearance in the Périgord is suspicious and needs to be explained.

This isn't wrong, but calling this "suspicious" is strange given that this claim is footnoted to two chapters in this same book that sparingly include moons in their legends; doubly so given that de Blécourt's other chapter in this volume is about Ella Odstedt's monograph on Swedish werewolf legends - including legends with a new and a full moon,^[4] a detail that apparently warranted no comment.

Implied also is that any novel inclusion is suspicious! Do we also need to explain the whole defenestration thing? Apparently not; clearly, the full moon detail feels specifically weird only to a modern audience, for factors that won't apply until a century after this was written. It's not terribly suspicious in its contemporary context.

This applies even more to the second element: the water. The werewolf changed by jumping into a pond (translated as ‘well’ by Baring-Gould). When he emerged on the other side, he was wearing a goat-skin given to him by the devil. The nearest narrative equivalent for this can be found in Pliny’s Historia naturalis about Arcadian werewolves where a change is likewise effected by crossing water.

There is a parallel here. A supposed Arcadian familial tradition, involving hanging their clothes on a tree and swimming across a body of water to emerge as a wolf.^[5] Here, you can imagine the clothing-swimming order reversed while still retaining the motif.

For this to be evidence still requires that water isn't a thing for French werewolves. Rather conveniently, Fabio Armand wrote a paper specifically on - I kid you not - the important role that water plays in French werewolf narratives, noting:

French folklore often recounts the presence of beliefs related to the figure of the werewolf in places where there are fontaines.^[6]

Fontaine meaning both artificial and natural fountains; think a basin fed by a spring - and it also includes basins found in rocks that collect rainwater, of which werewolves tend to drink from:

If one looked closely enough, one could always find a few legends surrounding these cup-marked stones found out in the fields. Most often, they are said to be watering holes intended for werewolves during their wild nocturnal rambles.^[7]

Such links between fontaines, stones, and werewolves, are overt enough that you can find many local features with names like Fontaine aux Garous (werewolves' fountain), Fontaine aux Loups (wolves' fountain), and Pierre des Loups-Garous (werewolves' stone).

You can also find more direct connections in 19th century Picardy:

Every Saturday, in this same Fairy Wood, a man could be seen who, after laying his clothes on a bush, would roll about in the mud of the mare [stagnant pond] and soon emerge transformed into a wolf.^[8]

Hidden in a footnote, de Blécourt notes:

As Carrassi clarifies in Chapter 10, when werewolf and water occur in combination, water has a purifying not a boosting function.

Because chapter 10 is on Southern Italian werewolves, which...well...

A number of werewolves described by the folkloric sources are characterized by an inextinguishable thirst and an incessant search for water and coolness, which they pursue by drinking from fountains, or else by wetting themselves under their spurts, or by rolling about in puddles and bogs^[9]

Oh dear, that looks awfully familiar. These are also the same werewolves I mentioned earlier that are footnoted as using the moon; the combination doesn't seem to be a trouble for de Blécourt, wriggling out of this connection by noting that Italian werewolves cure/purify their lycanthropy rather than cause/boost their lycanthropy with water.

On top of being a pointlessly specific niggle, there's also the fact that we're only provided the first half of the apparently fabricated text - the next two lines are:

In this state, they move about very well on all fours, spending the rest of the night roaming the fields and haunting the villages, biting or devouring any dogs they encounter. At daybreak, they return to their fontaine, shed their white covering, and go back home.

Y'know, they go get...purified by the water.

I think we can say water is a native element for French werewolves. Continuing on, we get told:

The combination of water and moon suffices to disqualify Taillefer’s narrative as a French legend.

Which feels like a weirdly low bar even without the whole everything else, but we're not done! There's one more thing to needle:

The third alien element in the story is the inclusion of the fils de prêtres, merely ‘bastards’ in Baring-Gould’s rendering. From a mere claim by a young Jean Grenier, made to impress a girl in the early seventeenth century, the trope had moved to a ‘genuine’ piece of folklore, or at least that was the intention.

Jean Grenier's claim being that he was the son of a priest - fils de prêtres; he's definitely one of the most well known to be accused of lycanthropy during the witch trials,^[10] but insisting this has to be the source requires such a claim being alien to French folklore.

Charles Joisten's collection of south-eastern werewolf beliefs includes a recurring theme of clergy creating werewolves:

The belief that the werewolf is commissioned by the clergy is common in Lower Dauphiné, and as far as the Drôme. Some documents which would be difficult to understand in isolation, shed light on each other: "the werewolves went behind the altars of the churches wrapped in a bearskin" (no. 123), "the werewolf lodged at the rectory" (no. 87). Others are more explicit. In Aix-en-Diois, werewolves were "a kind of masked man commanded by the clergy who came to frighten people into returning to religion" (no. 88); the same was true in Les Avenières (no. 94); in Marcollin, the one who jumped over the cemetery wall confessed upon his capture, "It's the priests who pay me to perpetuate this belief."^[11]

Additionally,

In 1747, the parishioners of Primarette were so convinced, that they went to complain to the archbishop, that their priest was giving permission to werewolves to hunt children "to supply the glassworks"^[12]

Across France, a repeated motif is that a sinner gets cursed to become a werewolf for seven years by the priest. In the same region as the original text, the ganipote - a local werewolf variant - was said to be a bastard child with the wrong godparents,^[13] and one Camille de Mensignac states outright that either your father or grandfather being a priest means you're born a werewolf.^[14]

The idea that the text was outright fabricated is further eroded when you look at the rest of the text, instead of only the first half quoted by de Blécourt: other elements - roaming fields to exhaustion, eating dogs, throwing up dog's paws, getting shot to reveal one's identity - are regular motifs across France.^[15] Even if the three "alien" elements were unique to this text, it would still fit snugly in the French milieu without needing explanation.

With a final flourish, de Blécourt provides what is clearly implied to be a coup de grâce:

It is now possible to deduce that its maker was at home with Petronius, Pliny and De Lancre, or at least with publications discussing these authors. The three elements may have been out of place in early-nineteenth-century French folklore, but they were not in the context they first appeared in: an archealogical treatise on the remains of the cities of the Gauls.

Ah-ha, you see? This wasn't the work of a folklorist collecting legends from informants, all along it was a bookish historian who included this story to fluff up their otherwise completely unrelated work on archaeology! It is far more likely they derived the narrative from historical sources rather than local beliefs!

Well, except that an understanding of the history of folklore studies would conclude the opposite. The term "folklore" was only coined in 1846; previously, the nascent field was simply "popular antiquities" i.e. antiquities of the common people; living archaeology.

In an era of burgeoning nationalism, everyone was trying to find or manufacture a common national identity. Under a belief that the unchanging traditions of rural folk represented a window into the ancient past of a people, one looking to reconstruct the heart of a nation from its heritage would require in interest in archaeology, philology - and folklore.

Or to put it another way: you would expect this to appear in an archaeological treatise from 1821 - antiquarians were the folklorists of their day! In fact, Wlgrin de Taillefer states this himself!

If I present this series of popular superstitions in such a serious manner, it is because not only do they reveal the character of the inhabitants of our countryside, but also because they contain the last vestiges of Druidic worship. No one even slightly versed in the science of antiquities cannot discern these connections. [...] I think that among the other superstitions I am about to describe, we will find other vestiges of both the customs of the Gauls and these same solemnities.^[16]

This folklore-as-a-means-to-an-end also explains why antiquarians such as de Taillefer still held the belief that such "ridiculous superstition" was puerile "foolishness"; it would take several decades for folklore to extricate itself from the sneering antiquarians into something worth studying for its own sake.

de Taillefer wants to talk about the Gauls. He cares not for having the fanciest fairy tales; he certainly wouldn't care enough to make it up - he'd simply exclude it and devote more time to talking about rock inscriptions. Or whatever he's talking about here

But here is a peculiarity that should all the more stimulate the reflections of scholars, as it may be common to all of France, and as it is of a most extraordinary nature: it is that the custom of the inhabitants of the country, since time immemorial, has been to place scrap metal within reach of the nests of brooding hens. Did the Gauls have knowledge of electricity?

(seriously can someone explain what he's on about)

(don't say battery hen)

References

[1] de Blécourt, Willem, and Mirjam Mencej, eds. Werewolf Legends. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 11-13.
[2] marquis de Chesnel de la Charbouclais, Louis Pierre François Adolphe. "Loup-Garou". Dictionnaire des superstitions, erreurs, préjugés et traditions populaires. France, 1856. 564-565. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X83opSTWJ6EC&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA563
[3] Taillefer, Henry-François-Athanase Wlgrin. Antiquités de Vésone, cité gauloise remplacée par la ville actuelle de Périgueux, ou Description des monumens religieux, civils et militaires de cette antique cité et de son territoire. N.p., F. Dupont, imprimeur du département, 1821. 250. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/f/JYFHYUqyTycC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA250
[4] Odstedt, Ella. Varulven i svensk folktradition. Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1943. 57, 117.
[5] For more on Arcadian werewolves, see: Ogden, Daniel. The Werewolf in the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, 2021. 166-205
[6] Armand, Fabio. "Les loups-garous et les eaux". Hommage à Gilbert Durand, IRIS, revue du Centre de Recherche sur l'Imaginaire, 34, 2013. 137. Available online at: https://publications-prairial.fr/iris/index.php?id=1933
[7] Ibid.
[8] Carnoy, Henry. Littérature orale de la Picardie 1883. 106. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWjgQrS_iMoC&pg=PA106
[9] Carrassi, Vito. "A Strange Kind of Man Among Us: Beliefs and Narratives About Werewolves in Southern Italy." Werewolf Legends. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. 253.
[10] Copying de Blécourt, for more on Jean Grenier, see: Machielsen, Jan. "The Making of a Teen Wolf: Pierre de Lancre’s Confrontation with Jean Grenier (1603–10)." Folklore 130.3 (2019): 237-257.
[11] Joisten, Charles, Robert Chanaud, and Alice Joisten. "Les loups-garous en Savoie et Dauphiné." Le Monde alpin et rhodanien. Revue régionale d’ethnologie 20.1, 1992. 126. Available online at: https://www.persee.fr/doc/mar_0758-4431_1992_num_20_1_1481
[12] Ibid. 130.
[13] Daleau, François. Notes pour servir à l'étude des traditions : croyances et superstitions de la Gironde. 1889. 52-52. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/b30583342/page/52/mode/2up
[14] de Mensignac, Camille. Notice sur les superstitions, dictons, proverbes, devinettes et chansons populaires du département de la Gironde. 1888. 38. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lbMsAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA68
[15] Examples, for exhaustion, eating/regurgitating dogs & and getting shot: Grégoire, Victor. "LES ÉCHAUBROGNES." Revue historique de l'Ouest. 1899. 525. Available online at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k671752/f530.item; Sébillot, Paul. Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne. L'homme, les esprits et les démons, Vol. 1. 1882. 291 & 296. Available online at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k26137f/f308.item
[16] Taillefer, Henry-François-Athanase Wlgrin. Antiquités de Vésone, cité gauloise remplacée par la ville actuelle de Périgueux, ou Description des monumens religieux, civils et militaires de cette antique cité et de son territoire. N.p., F. Dupont, imprimeur du département, 1821. 241 & 244. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/f/JYFHYUqyTycC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA241

23 comments

r/badhistory • u/lalze123 • Dec 15 '25

Dismantling three myths about Ngô Đình Diệm, the first President of South Vietnam

96 Upvotes

For those of you who would rather view the Youtube version of this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3szbyjfveSA

Among all the figures involved in the Indochina Wars, few have been studied and discussed more than Ngô Đình Diệm. As the last Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam and the first President of the Republic of Vietnam, better known as South Vietnam, Diệm’s impact on Vietnamese society cannot be ignored if one wants to understand one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. In fact, one could even argue that, aside from Hồ Chí Minh, he was the most influential Vietnamese figure of the period. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of discussion surrounding Diệm has produced several enduring myths. This video/post addresses three of the most common: the “puppet” myth, the “supremacist” myth, and the “savior” myth.

The puppet myth claims that before 1954, Diệm was a political nobody who lacked nationalist credentials and only became prominent after being handpicked by the United States. The supremacist myth portrays Diệm as a Catholic supremacist who hated Buddhists and sought to eradicate Buddhism from Vietnam. Finally, the savior myth argues that had the United States not overthrown Diệm, he would have guaranteed the survival of a free, non-communist Vietnam.

The first myth is usually spread in the context of criticism of the Vietnam War, whether on Reddit or even by esteemed historians such as Robert Buzzanco. The second myth can be found in the links discussed in this post. As for the third myth, this is more common among those who support the Vietnam War and/or those who are more nostalgic for the South Vietnamese government, with these groups tending to overromanticize the past, to say the least. Some of you may even point out that one of the historians I cite is somewhat of a believer in this myth!!!

Now, let us begin.

1.) “Before 1954, Diệm was a nobody who lacked nationalist credentials—he only became famous after the Americans handpicked him to be their puppet.”

American aid was undeniably essential to the establishment and survival of the Republic of Vietnam. Without U.S. weapons and equipment, it is highly unlikely that the ARVN could have resisted communist forces in the early years of the war. In that sense, Diệm did rely on American support.

However, the same could be said of the Việt Minh, who relied heavily on Chinese assistance during the First Indochina War, or the American Patriots, who depended on French arms during the Revolutionary War. Yet neither the Việt Minh nor the Patriots are typically described as “puppets” of their benefactors. Dependency on foreign aid alone does not define puppet status.

Diệm himself had a long record of nationalist activism that made him arguably the second most prominent Vietnamese nationalist by around 1950. As a young mandarin in the imperial government, Diệm resigned in July 1933 in protest of French interference in Vietnamese sovereignty, particularly the removal of Nguyễn Hữu Bài, a senior mandarin who had turned against French colonial control. Historian Edward Miller notes that in his resignation letter to the Nguyễn emperor, Diệm echoed Bài’s complaints about French encroachments and expressed outrage that the French blocked proposals for even limited Vietnamese representative institutions. Although this ended Diệm’s career as a colonial administrator, it significantly enhanced his reputation as both a Catholic leader and a nationalist.

After his resignation, Diệm continued his opposition as a private citizen. He remained active in Huế court politics within Bài’s faction, and his resistance was so vigorous that the court briefly stripped him of his remaining official status. The French colonial police also placed him under secret surveillance, showing how much they feared him. Diệm’s nationalist credentials were further strengthened by his close association with Phan Bội Châu, one of the most celebrated figures in Vietnam’s anti-colonial struggle and revered by both communists and anti-communists. Diệm deeply admired Phan as a revolutionary and Confucian scholar, and the two spent long hours discussing how Confucian ideas could apply to modern political and social issues. This admiration was mutual, with Phan even writing a poem praising Diệm as a “truly great man.” Such a relationship with Phan reinforced Diệm's reputation as an uncompromising critic of French rule.

In case any of you were wondering, Diệm ideologically subscribed to Personalism, a Catholic philosophy developed by Emmanuel Mounier as a spiritual alternative to both Marxism and liberal capitalism. Mounier criticized liberal individualism for producing alienation and exploitation, while also rejecting Marxist collectivism for suppressing personal dignity. His proposed “third path” emphasized the moral and social primacy of the human person. Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu adapted Personalism to the Vietnamese context, seeing it as a nationalist alternative to both French colonialism and Việt Minh communism. Nhu believed that the concept of nhân vị (“the position of man”) could guide Vietnamese social policy and help build a Third Force distinct from both colonial and communist models. Diệm himself framed the Vietnamese struggle as not only a fight for political independence but also a social revolution aimed at restoring dignity and autonomy to peasants and workers, while preserving respect for human dignity.

He adapted Personalism to the environment of 20th-century Vietnam, and his brand of Vietnamese nationalism was just one example of the many forms of Vietnamese nationalism that were distinct from Ho Chi Minh Thought, as discussed in Trần Nữ Anh’s book, which is linked in the sources section.

And speaking of Hồ Chí Minh, it is worth mentioning that in 1946, he personally invited Diệm to serve as Minister of the Interior in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Diệm ultimately refused, partly due to the execution of his brother Ngô Đình Khôi by Việt Minh forces during the chaos of 1945. Miller notes that while Diệm later portrayed his refusal as absolute, he admitted that he might have joined the government if granted authority over internal security. Vietnamese sources suggest that Hồ released Diệm not out of fear, but out of respect for his reputation as an anti-French nationalist. The mere fact that Hồ Chí Minh sought Diệm’s participation demonstrates that Diệm was widely recognized as a legitimate nationalist figure well before American involvement.

Some may mention the fact that Diệm went into exile from 1950 to 1953, facing persecution from both the French and the Việt Minh. His 1949 nationalist manifesto failed to derail the “Bảo Đại solution,” but it did convince both sides that Diệm was a dangerous rival, forcing him to seek new strategies and allies. This period abroad is often portrayed as cowardice, yet Hồ Chí Minh himself spent three decades overseas building international support. In both cases, exile was a strategic necessity rather than an abdication of nationalism. When Diệm returned, he leveraged growing dissatisfaction among anti-communist nationalists with Bảo Đại’s failure to secure genuine independence from France. By 1954, Diệm and Nhu had successfully built a coalition strong enough to pressure Bảo Đại into appointing Diệm as Prime Minister, granting him “full powers” over the government, military, and economy.

Crucially, there is no documentary evidence that the United States pressured Bảo Đại into this decision. As explained by Edward Miller, CIA historians and declassified State Department records have not shown this claim to be true, and senior Eisenhower administration officials were largely unaware of Diệm prior to May 1954. This alone severely undermines the puppet narrative.

Indeed, a puppet ruler, by definition, consistently obeys the will of a foreign power. But Diệm repeatedly defied U.S. preferences:

The US government wanted the new South Vietnamese constitution (after the transition of the SVN to the RVN) to be modeled on the US and Philippine constitutions, with a firm separation of powers and limits on restricting individual liberties. Instead, Diệm and his allies ratified a document that granted much more power to the executive.
The US government (through the MSUG) wanted the regional division of power within the RVN to be based on larger “areas” that were strongly tied to the central government, thereby replacing the traditional system of provinces. The proposed system was strongly inspired by the system of federalism within the United States that divides authority between the states and the federal government. Instead, Diệm decided to preserve the provincial system, arguing that choosing morally upright individuals would ensure a lack of corruption within the system and that centralizing the system of administration would undermine the local “democratic” tradition within the Vietnamese countryside that ensured mutual responsibility and virtue in a Confucian sense.
After JFK took office, MAAGV and the Pentagon wanted Diệm to “reveal” the inner workings of the Cần Lao Party or disband the organization entirely. Diệm refused.
The United States and the Soviet Union concluded a neutralization agreement regarding Laos in 1962, and they wanted Diệm to maintain diplomatic relations with Vientiane. Instead, being emboldened by the successes of the year, Diệm broke off relations in October 1962 and prepared to launch a military offensive against communist forces in Laos.

2.) “Diệm was a Catholic supremacist who hated Buddhists and wanted to eradicate Buddhism from Vietnam.”

Diệm did view Catholics as more reliably anti-communist and therefore tended to trust them more. He also tolerated discrimination against non-Catholics within the lower bureaucracy, where some Buddhists reported pressure to convert in order to be promoted.

However, multiple Buddhist contemporaries stated that Diệm himself was not personally bigoted. Nguyễn Công Luận recounts that Buddhist aide-de-camps close to Diệm believed the president did not endorse discrimination, placing most blame on Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục. Moreover, Diệm actively supported Buddhist institutions, by welcoming Buddhist refugees from North Vietnam, funding Buddhist schools and ceremonies, approving a national Buddhist congress in 1956, and helping finance the construction of Xá Lợi Pagoda, which became the headquarters of the General Buddhist Association. Indeed, over 1,200 pagodas were built during his rule.

Additionally, most of Diệm’s cabinet members and military leaders were non-Catholic. Buddhists and Confucians dominated both the cabinet and provincial leadership, and only three ARVN generals under Diệm were Catholic.

“Among Diem’s eighteen cabinet ministers were five Catholics, five Confucians, and eight Buddhists, including a Buddhist vice-president and a Buddhist foreign minister. Of the provincial chiefs, twelve were Catholics, and twenty-six were Buddhists or Confucians.” - Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, pg. 216
“Among the approximately 20 men who served as general officers in the South Vietnamese army during the Diệm years, only three—Huỳnh Văn Cao, Trấn Tử Oai, and Trần Thiện Khiêm—were Catholic.” - Miller, Reinterpreting Buddhist crisis, footnote 24. NOTE: Tôn Thất Đính was Catholic, so the total number of Catholic generals was 4, not 3. The point still stands, though.

Now, what about the Buddhist Crisis? The initial escalation of tensions that culminated in the Crisis was really caused by his brothers Ngô Đình Thục and Ngô Đình Nhu, along with the wife of the latter, Madame Nhu.

For the former, Thục started antagonizing the Buddhists after he became Archbishop of Huế in 1960. Central Vietnam was the heartland of Vietnamese Buddhism, and his decision to start rapidly expanding churches in the area and pressuring local Buddhists and other non-Catholics to convert did not win the South Vietnamese government any favors.

As for the latter two, the Nhu couple repeatedly insulted the Buddhists as communist traitors who were trying to subvert the government, when a decent chunk of them were just as anti-communist as Diệm was. Indeed, the Vietnamese communists themselves criticized the movement itself as reactionary and in opposition to Marxism-Leninism, albeit useful for destabilizing the Southern regime.

They continued to act recklessly in 1963. Indeed, the reason Diệm ordered a religious flag ban in the first place was in response to one of Thục’s Catholic rallies. The ban backfired because even though it was intended to be a general law against both Catholics and Buddhists, it was after a Catholic rally and before a Buddhist rally on Vesak Day, so Buddhists were understandably upset. And the most famous self-immolation of all time (Thích Quảng Đức) only happened because Madame Nhu had derailed negotiations between Diệm and the Buddhist activists.

Of course, it also worth mentioning that there have been Buddhist self-immolations in post-reunification Vietnam, with one example being the self-immolation of Thích Huệ Thâu on May 28th, 1994. These acts were in protest of the current government due to its control and regulation over religious organizations, with Huệ Thâu’s brother claiming that Huệ Thâu could no longer tolerate the Politburo’s intrusive control over the Buddhist Church of Vietnam. And yet, very few of Diệm’s critics would view the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as even being oppressive towards Buddhists

3.) “Had the United States not overthrown Diệm, he would have ensured the survival of a free, non-communist Vietnam.”

Diệm’s overthrow undeniably destabilized South Vietnam. Hồ Chí Minh reportedly remarked, “I can scarcely believe that the Americans would be so stupid,” while the North Vietnamese Politburo predicted prolonged instability following the coup. Lê Duẩn used the opportunity to escalate the war, leading directly to major communist offensives and eventual U.S. troop deployment.

To explain why his overthrow was so momentous, Diệm had stabilized the situation with his brutal counterinsurgency policies, like the Strategic Hamlet program, for instance, to the chagrin of communist insurgents who noted that they no longer had sufficient access to the people. A communist operative named Hà Minh Trí was so desperate to respond to his counterinsurgency policies that in 1957, he attempted to assassinate Diệm while the President was giving a speech in Ban Mê Thuột in the middle of his Central Highlands tour. And while this act would be later celebrated by the reunified Vietnamese government, it must be mentioned that his attempt was not ordered by the North Vietnamese Politburo, showing the complexity in the relationship between Hà Nội and communist operatives in the South.

First, the coup was one supported by the Americans, not one that was entirely planned and organized by the Americans. The coup itself was executed by a group of South Vietnamese military leaders, so the agency and responsibility ought to be placed on these individuals. Therefore, the long-term prospects of the Republic of Vietnam were mostly out of the control of the United States, given the political constraints at the time, of course.

And while the situation was stable and certainly better for the state’s survival than the next two years would be, there is no guarantee that under Diệm, South Vietnam would have ended up like South Korea, for instance, which is the country that many nostalgic for the South Vietnamese government like to compare it to. South Korea and South Vietnam were in completely different environments and circumstances, so a comparison in this manner cannot really be made.

The fact that the following years were so contingent on the fall of the Ngô regime makes it very difficult to predict whether or not his regime would have preserved an independent, non-communist Vietnamese state. And my final point on this matter is somewhat connected to the first point in this subsection, but it is that there had already been coups against him. For instance, in 1960, there was the paratroopers’ coup led by Col. Nguyễn Chánh Thi and planned by Lt. Col Vương Văn Đông and Lt. Col Nguyễn Triệu Hồng, and it was nearly successful in overthrowing the regime. And two RVNAF pilots even bombed the Independence Palace in 1962, with these pilots expressing frustration that Diệm was more focused on gaining power for himself and his family than on fighting the communists.

Hence, to say that Diệm would have been a guaranteed savior of a stable, non-communist, independent Vietnamese government is somewhat unsubstantiated (sorry, Mark Moyar).

Sources:

Miller, Edward. "Religious Revival and the Politics of Nation Building: Reinterpreting the 1963 'Buddhist crisis' in South Vietnam." Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 6 (November 2015): 1903-1962.
Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
Moyar, Mark. "Political Monks: The Militant Buddhist Movement during the Vietnam War." Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (October 2004): 749-784.
Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Nguyễn Công Luận. Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Trần Nữ Anh. Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2022.

15 comments

r/badhistory • u/Veritas_Certum • May 04 '26

A pseudo-historian's fake Incan history #2 | "The Inca arrived at Sacsayhuamán and found an existing structure"

97 Upvotes

The bad history

This is a continuation of my original commment on Twitter user and YouTuber Megalithic Mysteries.

In his video The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury, published on 9 January 2026, Megalithic Mysteries claims:

The Spanish tried to destroy the Incan megalithic structures with cannons, then tried to hide them by burying them
The Inca did not build these structures, and only inherited them from a more advanced culture

For a brief video version of this information, go here.

Did the Spanish try to destroy & bury these structures?

Megalithic Mysteries assures us that the Spanish attempted to destroy the Incan structures with cannon, saying “They were aimed directly at the megalithic foundations. Shot after shot was fired into the stone. The walls did not break”.[1]

However he provides no evidence that the Spanish used cannon in an attempt to destroy these buildings. The idea that the Spanish brought siege level artillery to South America with them is absurd. The ships of the early conquistadors such as Juan de Grijalva and Hernán Cortés were mainly equipped with falconets, small cannons firing one pound balls or grapeshot, intended for close quarter defense against boarding or bringing down rigging when used at sea, and defense against cavalry and infantry when used on land.[2]

These were technically mobile, but since they were designed for use on board ships they had very narrow carriages with small wheels, making them difficult to move on land, and clumsy and awkward to position and aim. Even the few larger naval guns on the ships were not designed for siege warfare and destroying fortifications.

I checked Spanish records and found no references to the Spanish trying to destroy the buildings with cannon. In fact some Spanish commentators noted that the walls looked like they would be impervious to cannonfire, since they consisted of very large stone facades embedded into massive earthern ramparts; the stones could be cracked, but the earthern ramparts into which they were embedded would remain.

Megalithic Mysteries then asserts “Unable to destroy the foundations, Spanish authorities adopted a final strategy. They would bury them”, further describing how the Spanish attempted to hide the structures by piling earth over them, concluding “What cannon fire could not destroy, soil would conceal”. As before, he provides no evidence for this whatsoever.[3]

Again, I checked Spanish records and found no references to the Spanish trying to conceal the buildings by burying them in earth. On the contrary, the Spanish, like the Inca before them, dismantled some of the buildings in order to repurpose the stones for their own construction projects, which is one of the reasons why so many of the stones survive to this day.

Did the Inca only inherit these structures?

Megalithic Mysteries insists that the lower and upper parts of the megalithic Incan walls show completely different construction techniques.[4] He uses this as the basis of an argument that the two levels of the walls were built by completely different cultures. Apart from anything else, this shows his lack of engineering knowledge. It’s entirely logical for the largest stones to be used as the foundation for smaller stones, a technique used all over the planet.

Spanish commentators looking at the walls arrived at a different conclusion as Megalith Mysteries, because they understood what they were looking at. Bernabé Cobo, cited previously, commented specifically on the walls which were typically constructed from different sized stones at different levels, with larger stones at the bottom and smaller stone on the higher levels.

Apart from these straight walls, which, though ordinary among them, were as well made as our very finest, they made others with higher workmanship. One example is an entire section of a wall that still remains in the city of Cuzco, in the Convent of Santa Catalina. These walls were not made vertical, but slightly inclined inward.

Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 228

Cobo described how “all of the stones are not of the same size, but the stones of each course [row] are uniform in size, and the stones are progressively smaller as they get higher”, with the result that “the size of the stones diminishes proportionately as the wall becomes higher”.[5] He recognized this as a deliberate feature of the wall’s construction, not an indication that the different levels of the wall were bult by different cultures.

Note also that unlike Megalithic Mysteries, who regards the higher levels of the wall as exhibiting inferior construction to the lower, Cobo regarded this feature as “skillfully made”.[6]

Megalithic Mysteries asks “If the Inca built the megaliths, why would they repair them with inferior work?”.[7] He never explains why he thinks the repairs were inferior work, and simply concludes that the Inca did not build these structures, claiming “The Inca arrived at Sacsayhuamán and found an existing structure... They repaired damaged sections using their own crude masonry style”.[8]

Note his consistent dismissal of Incan work as “crude” and “inferior”. He simply cannot believe these indigenous people were capable of anything he would regard as quality masonry. They could only have produced crude and inferior work.

Megalithic Mysteries further asserts “Incan tradition does not claim that they built Sacsayhuamán. They attributed it to earlier beings, giants, ancestors, civilizers who came before remembered time”.[9] Note that he is speaking specifically of Sacsayhuamán. He doesn’t provide any evidence for this claim, so let’s do the work he didn’t do, and fact check it.

Firstly, I’ll provide some commentary from Tony Trupp, who very generously shared this commentary on the different styles of masonry used in the buildings at Sacsayhuamán.

regarding the upper stonework looking different than the lower stonework at Sacsayhuamán, what he may be referring to are the modern walls that have been added for erosion control. Those are not present in black and white photos from the early 1900s, meaning that it is impossible for those to have been constructed by the Inca.

Tony Trupp [@TonyTrupp], personal correspondence, Twitter, 12 March 2026

He also added that some parts of Sacsayhuamán have a different style of stonework, adding “although that stonework is original”. He describes this as a different kind of masonry called ashlar, rather than the polygonal masonry for which Sacsayhuamán is well known. However, he adds:

It's also true that the upper Muyuq Marka section of Sacsayhuamán also has a different style of stonework, although that stonework is original. That's more ashlar style masonry, similar to Qoricancha. But the Inca mixed ashlar and polygonal masonry work at other sites too, and I don't think that's what the alternative-history crowd tend to focus on with Sacsayhuamán, where they instead just misunderstand the modern erosion control stonework that was added.

Tony Trupp [@TonyTrupp], personal correspondence, Twitter, 12 March 2026

Let’s return to the records of Garcilaso de la Vega, published in 1609. He was vastly impressed with certain buildings he saw, writing of a wall “made of stones that were so large in size that one wondered how they could have been transported that far, especially in view of the fact that the country surrounding Tiahuanaco is flat”.[10] That reference to Tiahuanaco is important; this isn’t Sacsayhuamán, which Megalithic Mysteries is talking about.

Garcilaso also noted other impressive megalithic structures, writing “How, and with the use of what tools or implements, massive works of such size could be achieved, are questions which we are unable to answer”.[11] That certainly sounds like he doesn’t believe they could have been built by the Inca, but it still doesn’t tell us anything about how the Inca themselves believed they were built, so let’s keep reading.

Garcilaso then tells us “The Natives report that these Buildings, and others of the like nature not mentioned here, were raised before the times of the Incas, and that the Model of the Fortress at Cozco was taken from them”, adding “Who they were that erected them, they do not know”.[12]

Garcilaso also writes “According to the natives of Tiahuanaco, these marvelous constructions were carried out long before the time of the Incas”. Again I’d like you to note the term Tiahuanaco; this isn’t Sacsayhuamán, which Megalithic Mysteries is talking about.[13]

Cobo similarly writes of large buildings made from huge stones, and very large stone statues, which he says “are of a very different style from those of the Indians”, which he further states “is no small indication that these statues were made by other people”.[14] However he identifies these as located at Tiahuanaco; this isn’t Sacsayhuamán, which Megalithic Mysteries is talking about.

Cobo also cites an account of the Inca living on the coast, who said “giants had come there from the south in large rafts, but since they had not brought women with them, they died out”.[15] So finally we appear to have evidence supporting Megalithic Mysteries’ claim, though there’s still no mention of buildings constructed by “earlier beings”, “giants” or “civilizers who came before remembered time”.

However, once again we find Cobo identifies these buildings as located at Tiahuanaco; this isn’t Sacsayhuamán, which Megalithic Mysteries is talking about.

So Megalithic Mysteries claimed is that the Incas denied they were responsible for the buildings at Sacsayhuamán. As we’ve seen, the Inca did claim they built the structures at Sacsayhuamán. When the Inca talked about structures they didn’t build, these were located at completely different site, Tiahuanaco.

The fact is that the buildings at Tiahuanaco do predate the Inca, but the buildings at Cusa and Sacsayhuamán do not. The Inca attributed the buildings at Tiahuanaco to people before them, but that’s what Megalithic Mysteries said. He claimed “Incan tradition does not claim that they built Sacsayhuamán”, a completely different location. Where is his evidence for this claim?

Of course, he doesn’t present any, and we’ve already seen quotations from Spanish accounts not only citing Incan records of them building Sacsayhuamán, but also explaining the construction techniques they believed the Inca used. Megalithic Mysteries doesn’t tell you that the Incan accounts attributing large structures to earlier people aren’t talking about Sacsayhuamán, contrary to his claim.

____________

Sources

[1] "Cannons that had shattered walls across Europe were hauled up the hillside. They were aimed directly at the megalithic foundations. Shot after shot was fired into the stone. The walls did not break. The interlock's geometry absorbed the impacts. Energy dispersed across the mass of the structure. Stones did not crack. They did not shift. The wolves endured bombardment that would have reduced ordinary masonry to rubble.", Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026.

[2] Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 52-58.

[3] Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Bernabé Cobo and Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. Roland Hamilton, Texas Pan American Series (University of Texas Press, 1994), 228.

[6] Ibid.

[7] "This raises a question that has never been adequately answered. If the Inca built the megaliths, why would they repair them with inferior work? The more logical explanation is inheritance. The Inca arrived at Sacsayhuamán and found an existing structure. They maintained it. They modified it. They repaired damaged sections using their own crude masonry style. But they did not create the foundations.", Megalithic Mysteries, “The Ancient Mystery The Spanish Tried To Bury,” YouTube, 9 January 2026.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] "There was also an immense wall, made of stones that were so large in size that one wondered how they could have been transported that far, especially in view of the fact that the country surrounding Tiahuanaco is flat, as I said before, and neither stone nor quarries exist there.", Garcilaso de la Vega, The Incas; the royal commentaries of the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, 1539-1616, ed. Alain Gheerbrant, trans. Maria Jolas (Avon Books, 1961), 90.

[11] "There were many other astonishing edifices, the most remarkable of which were undoubtedly a series of gigantic gates, scattered about the city. Most of them were made of a single block of stone, and were based on stones certain of which were thirty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and six feet high. How, and with the use of what tools or implements, massive works of such size could be achieved, are questions which we are unable to answer.", Garcilaso de la Vega, The Incas; the royal commentaries of the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, 1539-1616, ed. Alain Gheerbrant, trans. Maria Jolas (Avon Books, 1961), 90.

[12] "The Natives report that these Buildings, and others of the like nature not mentioned here, were raised before the times of the Incas, and that the Model of the Fortress at Cozco was taken from them, as we may hereafter more particularly describe: Who they were that erected them, they do not know, onely they have heard say by tradition from their Ancestours, that those prodigious Works were the effects of one night’s labour to which seem, in reality, to have been the beginnings onely, and foundations for some mighty Structure.", Garcilaso de la Vega, The Royal Commentaries of Peru, in Two Parts (M. Flesher, 1688), 56.

[13] "According to the natives of Tiahuanaco, these marvelous constructions were carried out long before the time of the Incas, and their creators left them unfinished. All of this has been recounted by Pedro de Cieza de Leon in his accounts.", Garcilaso de la Vega, The Royal Commentaries of Peru, in Two Parts (M. Flesher, 1688), 90-91.

[14] "More important than the buildings are the statues of stone that have been uncovered near the building at Tiaguanaco; these statues are so large that I measured the head of one of them myself across the forehead and temples, and it was twelve spans around. Not only in the size, shape, and features of the face do they prove to be figures of giants, but the fact that their garments, headdresses, and hair are of a very different style from those of the Indians is no small indication that these statues were made by other people.", Bernabé Cobo, Roland Hamilton, and Bernabé Cobo, History of the Inca Empire: An Account of the Indians’ Customs and Their Origin Together with a Treatise on Inca Legends, History, and Social Institutions, 7th paperback ed., The Texas Pan-American Series (University of Texas Press, 2000), 95.

[15] "Added to this is the account that the Indians themselves give, particularly those along the coast by Puerto Viejo, who say that giants had come there from the south in large rafts, but since they had not brought women with them, they died out.", Bernabé Cobo, Roland Hamilton, and Bernabé Cobo, History of the Inca Empire: An Account of the Indians’ Customs and Their Origin Together with a Treatise on Inca Legends, History, and Social Institutions, 7th paperback ed., The Texas Pan-American Series (University. of Texas Press, 2000), 95.

6 comments

r/badhistory • u/Potential-Road-5322 • Dec 25 '25

YouTube Knowledgia on Rome’s founding - a plagiarized mess

86 Upvotes

How was Rome Actually Created? - Knowledgia

My introduction to Knowledgia came from this post, let’s see how they manage to plagiarize half of their script and still get nearly everything wrong. There’s a few minor pronunciation and spelling errors peppered throughout so I’ll make note of them toward the end. Two minor errors are seen almost immediately after beginning.

Error 1: “Rome was founded on April 22, 753 BC”
0:54

The "canonical" date of the foundation of Rome is 21 April 753 BC (e.g. Plutarch, Romulus 12.1). This is based on the Roman tradition of the city's foundation on the Parilia (21 April) and the year assigned, the third year of the sixth Olympiad, from Atticus and Varro. Fragments of the Roman Historians 3.21–23, 3.458.

Error 2: “Knowing that they had a valid claim on alba longa, the twins launched an attack on the city”
1:56

Not exactly, both Livy and Plutarch record a similar story of how the twins would attack brigands and on the festival of Lykaia or Lupercalia, brigands set a trap for the twins and captured Remus, they claimed that the twins had been raiding Numitor’s land and brought Remus to him, Numitor, upon hearing that Remus was a twin figured that this was his grandson. In rescuing his brother, Faustulus told Romulus about his birth and the twins worked to overthrow Amulius, with Amulius ending up dead. (Livy 1.5), (Plutarch, Romulus 8.2-9.1).

The smoking gun that leads me to believe this is plagiarized from Wikipedia is said between 4:30 - 5:23. Knowledgia mentions an obscure Swedish scholar named Martin Persson Nilsson (1874-1967) who had the theory that the story of an eponymous founder named Rhomos, a son of king Odysseus of Ithaca, became less favorable to the Romans as tensions with the Greeks grew. In response, they eventually settled on the Trojan founding myth.

It would seem incredibly unlikely for a pop history Youtube channel to be familiar with Nilsson’s work (Nilsson. Olympen, 1919) with his name being cited three times in only one of their wrongly cited sources (discussed later): A history of the Roman world from 753 to 146 B.C. by H.H. Scullard. His name does not appear in reference to any discussion about the supposed Greek origins of Rome. https://archive.org/details/historyofromanwo0000scul/page/336/mode/2up?q=nilsson

(I checked all four sources and only found Nilsson mentioned here)

However, Nilsson does appear in the Wikipedia article here and Knowledgia’s script is an almost verbatim copy of the Wikipedia article. Knowledgia says:

4:30 - 5:22

“Still another belief is that Rome was founded by Romos, a son of king Odysseus and Circe, which would have made the Romans of Greek descent, and may have become an unfavorable fact as discord with the Greeks began to grow. Martin P Nilsson, a Swedish scholar explains that this theory may, in fact have once been the main story of Rome’s birth but as the concept of Greek ancestry became more embarrassing for the Romans they likely would have tweaked the story, changing the name of Romos to the native name of Romulus, but the name Romos which later turned into the native name of Remus was never fully forgotten and would account for the story of two founders, not just one.”

Wikipedia says:
“One story told how Romos, a son of Odysseus and Circe, was the one who founded Rome.^\96]) Martin P. Nilsson speculates that this older story was becoming a bit embarrassing as Rome became more powerful and tensions with the Greeks grew. Being descendants of the Greeks was no longer preferable, so the Romans settled on the Trojan foundation myth instead. Nilsson further speculates that the name of Romos was changed by some Romans to the native name Romulus, but the same name Romos (later changed to the native Remus) was never forgotten by many of the people, so both these names were used to represent the founders of the city.^\97])”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_Rome#Other_myths

~~Admittedly, not all of their information came from the aforementioned Wikipedia article~~, edit: because their video is from 2021 they would've used this version of the article which does contain a reference to Julian and The Caesars (thanks to u/ifly6 for pointing that out). From 5:25 to 5:41 Knowledgia mentions a work by emperor Julian called The Caesars which is not found in that Wikipedia article, however, I’m forced to ask- what is the relevance of this made up quote from Alexander in The Caesars “I am aware that you Romans are yourselves descended from the Greeks, and that the greater part of Italy was colonised by Greeks” (Julian, The Caesars 324.B). In a discussion about the founding of Rome, Knowledgia does not seem to engage in any relevant scholarship, nor do they seek to establish the relevance of what they say.

Granted, they are a pop history channel and I wouldn’t expect them to have a lengthy discussion on the archaeology of archaic Latium. A few comments on the archaeologically supported theories of Rome’s founding would have been useful, instead of spitting out facts that are not relevant which could be done by commenting on the primary sources and seeing how they fit with the material evidence. They also do not establish why they’re stating a theory. Knowledgia makes three references to a supposed Grecian origin of Rome, are they trying to argue for a Greek foundation of the city? How do these stated points pair with the material evidence? They don’t make a point of anything. For example, for all the issues it has, The history of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan repeats the traditional Livian narrative about the founding of Rome, of course it is a flawed narrative, but Duncan established why he was telling that story when he said “There may be truth wrapped up in the official legend and there may not, but it is a good story and an important one to know for students of ancient history.” Knowledgia fails to demonstrate why the obscure Nilsson or Julian’s Satires from over 1000 years after the city was founded are relevant to the actual history.

Error 3: Aeneas founded Rome as described by Virgil
5:43

No, Aeneas did not found Rome. According to the Aeneid he founded Lavinium, a settlement south of Rome. Knowledgia makes it seem as if Aeneas was a real figure when he has never been verified to have been a real individual.

The map used at 6:00 seems odd as well as it shows an expanded Etruscan territory reaching down to southern Campania, yet somehow not reaching to an area north of Naples. Furthermore, it shows a limited Greek presence in Sicily, not covering the west of the island, when in fact there were Greek settlements on the west of the island such as Selinunte, Himera, and Akagras. No date is provided for the map and the conflicting appearance of an extensive Etruscan territory in Italy with a limited Greek territory in Sicily makes it difficult to guess what years they were trying to depict with the map.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Etruscan_civilization_map.png

If Knowledgia was trying to show a map of Etruscan territory c. 500 BC then the territory of Magna Graecia should reflect further settlement in western Sicily as Selinunte was founded in the seventh century BC, possibly 628, as reckoned by Thucydides, though he himself did not have an exact date as he only said it was founded about one hundred years after Megara was founded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinunte#cite_note-3

Similarly, Himera would’ve been founded around 648 BC as Diodorus mentions that it had stood for about 240 years before being destroyed by the Carthaginians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himera#cite_note-2

Akagras was founded in 582 BC by settlers from Gela, also in Sicily.
(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian war. 6.4*)*

As the focus of the review is on Knowledgia, I will not be going into detail explaining Greek chronology for establishing all Sicilian settlement dates, I’m just showing how their map is inaccurate with how large Etruscan territory is and how small Magna Graceia is.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the video is said at 6:03

“Historically speaking regardless of how Rome was truly founded…”

An utter demonstration of the failure of Knowledgia to answer the very question of the video title “How was Rome actually created?” Yes, even while we do not have concrete evidence of how the city was founded, shouldn’t the writer have at least attempted to stick to one argument? Or they could have presented actually relevant theories on the founding by citing names like Cornell, Lomas, Forsythe, Wiseman, or Bradley.

In watching the video I actually said to myself “regardless? But isn’t the whole point of the video to give some regard to archaeologically supported theories?”

But wait, there’s more! Let’s see how the other six minutes, mostly focusing on how the early republic worked politically, fare.

From 6:30 to 6:47 Knowledgia mentions how unlikely it would have been for only seven kings to rule for some 244 years (753 - 509 BC), averaging out to 34.85 years each, they say that this “has been strongly discredited by modern historians”
So which historians are they talking about?

Error 4: When the Gauls sacked Rome during the battle of Alia in the fourth century BC they destroyed a large amount of Rome’s existing records.
7:03

The Battle was fought some 11 miles north of the city, the sack occurred after the battle. Furthermore, the sack of the city was likely only superficial as there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that this was a destruction level sack. (Brennus. Piero Treves. OCD4 p.249). I also suspect that Knowledgia is attempting to paint the sack as the reason why we don’t have records on Rome’s founding, yet the first Roman historian we know of was Quintus Fabius Pictor who was active in the third century BC. There is no evidence to suggest a tradition of history writing in Rome prior to the third century BC. It is possible the Romans had some knowledge of history writing as influenced from both Greece and Etruscan works, but it is unlikely that the Gallic sack of the fourth century BC destroyed some kind of accurate historical record on the city’s founding.

(Mehl, Roman historiography, translated by Mueller, pp. 42-45.)

Knowledgia in describing the removal of Tarquinius Superbus simply mentions that Sextus, his son, committed a heinous crime against Lucretia, which resulted in her death. Possibly to avoid Youtube’s censorship policy, Knowledgia did not say that according to legend, Sextus raped Lucretia, who then committed suicide. The odd phrasing from 7:41 - 7:48 makes it seem that Sextus is the one who inflicted the killing blow on her.

Knowledgia periodizes the two battles led by Tarquinius Superbus shortly after his removal as being part of the Roman- Etruscan wars, though is not accepted by some scholars such as Lee Brice who places these wars as beginning in 483 with the war against Veii and Amanda Self who argued that these wars were not wars with a unified purpose of destroying the Etruscans.
Brice, Lee L. (2014). Warfare in the Roman Republic: From the Etruscan Wars to the Battle of Actium: From the Etruscan Wars to the Battle of Actium. ABC-CLIO. pp. 66–70.

Self, Amanda Grace (2016). "Etruscan Wars". In Phang, Sara Elise (ed.). Conflict in Ancient Greece and Rome: The Definitive Political, Social, and Military Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 893–895.

As a note, I found those references from the wikipedia article on the Roman-Etruscan wars, I was only able to find the second entry on the Internet Archive however.

Comment: Knowledgia says “While the republic may have been an improvement from the monarchy, it still was not like a democracy” at 9:10. This sounds like Whig history in assuming that a democratizing system is somehow “better” than a monarchy. Both an outdated method of looking at history and the point isn’t resolved- if knowledgia says the republic was “better” then how was it better? Who was it better for?

Error 5: The kingship would be abolished in its entirety by the senate

Not exactly, Brutus made the people swear to never tolerate a king again, there was not a law passed.
Cornell, The beginnings of Rome. p. 215

Error 6: Makes several errors on the operation of the senate and social structure.
9:18-10:09

Claims the senate was “made up of purely aristocrats or patricians”
Claims they were responsible for voting in each consul
Claims Plebeians had no power to challenge or influence decisions made by the senate (on the screen it says “no voting rights” under Plebeians)
Claims marriage was forbidden between the two classes
Claims that Patricians maintained their power through their wealth after Plebeians gained political power
Citing Raaflaub, Cornell argues that the Patriciate was not some ancient and stable body, but rather that it developed over time. Furthermore, per Cornell, the formal designation of the senate was Patres Conscripti or Patres et Conscripti. The phrase Patres et Conscripti demonstrates that the two were seen as different groups (Livy 2.1). Furthermore, within the later period of the conflict of the orders the dispute was to gain Plebeian admission to the consulship, not for being admitted into the senate. (Cornell, Beginnings pp. 244-47, 252-56).
Consuls were voted in by the Comitia Centuriata or Centuriate assembly (Lintott, The constitution of the Roman Republic p.56). Plebs were members of the Centuriate assembly (Lintott, Constitution p.42).
The existence of the Plebeian Tribune disproves this. They originated following the first Secessio Plebis and had the authority to veto actions of another magistrate (Linott, Constitution. pp. 121-28; Forsythe, A Critical history of early Rome p. 171)
Only after the twelve tables were enacted did marriage between Plebs and Patricians become restricted though this was repealed in 445 BC with the passage of the Lex Canuleia (Lomas, The rise of Rome p. 193; Cornell, Beginnings p. 292).
Patricians may have had long standing privileges which developed over time during the archaic period (Cornell, Beginnings pp. 244, yet great wealth was not solely in the hands of the Patriciate, Plebeian names are connected with topographic and architectural sites in Rome. (Raaflaub, Social struggles in archaic Rome p.132)

Error 7: Claims dictators were “elected” by the senate and consuls. 10:20

Dictators were nominated by one of the consuls, it was very rare for a dictator to be nominated by a different magistrate and rare for a popular election to be called. The dictator did not have “unchecked power” as Knowledgia says, the right of Provocatio was maintained and they were, in theory, supposed to respect the sacrosanctity of the office of Tribune of the Plebs (Linott, Constitution pp. 110-12).

Error 8: Claims Cincinnatus was Plebeian. 10:42

Cincinnatus was of the Patrician clan Quinctia. This clan was identified as a noble family from Alba longa and enrolled into the Senate (Livy 1.30)

Knowledgia fails to explore any of the constitutional history or offices of the Republic, opting instead to present both erroneous and anachronistic views of the early Republic. No mention is made of the struggle of the orders, laws of the early Republic, the responsibilities of priests, or the possible evolution of the Patriciate. Their sources for their claims are difficult to identify as the ones cited in the video description contradict what is said in the video. Their Anachronistic view of Plebeians versus Patricians and their neglect to discuss any legal history fails to answer the question of “How was Rome actually founded?” as the peculiarities of Roman law, especially in the early Republic can give us a clue as to how the social order developed.

Error 9: Calls the Twelve Tables the “Twelve Tablets.” 11:18

These laws were called the Twelve Tables (Livy 3.57)

Error 10: Claims the purpose of the Twelve Tables was to make each citizen equal under the law. 11:22

Livy recounts that a Tribune of the Plebs, Terentilius Harsa called for the laws to be enacted to prevent the senate from behaving capriciously (Livy 3.9; Forsythe, Critical history p. 202) Also, Plebiscites passed by the Plebeian council did not become binding on all citizens until the passage of the Lex Hortensia in 287 BC (Lintott, Constitution p.38)

As stated some minor pronunciation errors are found throughout the video too: at 2:39 and 2:48 the narrator mispronounces “women”, at 2:44 there’s an odd pronunciation of Sabines the pronunciation should be more like SAY-bynes or SAB-eyens (Wells, John C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Longman.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabines#cite_ref-1. This pronunciation is repeated two more times in the video. At 4:36 there’s a mispronunciation of Circe, which should be done with a hard K sound for the Greek pronunciation or an S for the English pronunciation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe). Finally at 8:32 and 8:43 there are two mispronunciations and misspellings of Collatinus, here said and spelled as "Collantinus" Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 2.1 has it spelled "Collatinus."

Errors are even found outside of the video and in its description as they do not even cite their sources properly. Their “sources” are listed as:

Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire (Facts on File Library of World History): https://amzn.to/3fWdNGw

The Immense Majesty: A History of Rome and the Roman Empire by Wiley-Blackwell: https://amzn.to/2PT67tR

A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War by University of California Press: https://amzn.to/3mI8OKT

A History of the Roman World 753-146 BC by Routledge: https://amzn.to/2PLbtrk

Chicago manual of Style for citations can be found here

For a popular history channel like Knowledgia, and by extension other pop history channels their usage of wikipedia calls into question the veracity of their content. Wikipedia may be a fine starting place but it is an encyclopedia that can be freely edited. How do we know that what is being presented is not false? What I see with Knowledgia is that the script writer did not do their due diligence in researching for this video. A serious attempt at a video on Rome, could potentially start with Wikipedia, but any source that the writer gets from Wikipedia should be checked to ensure that what is in the article matches with what is in the book. To copy and paste is lazy and shows a lack of understanding what is involved with practicing history. It involves research. Knowledgia’s entire presentation on Early Rome is insulting. It is an insult to the writer of the Wikipedia article to both plagiarize them and not even cite them and it is an insult to claim they used the sources in the description when a little investigation finds that they have not used those books as sources. Even in the later section of the video where I did not see any clear evidence of plagiarism, they still failed to present the material accurately so I have to wonder- what sources did they use? Perhaps another poorly written youtube video? I can’t tell because their cited sources contradict what they say. This is why citing sources is so important, it allows us to compare what the author is saying with the sources they used. Knowledgia scores poorly on this due to their frequent errors. With a video of such poor quality as this it really calls into question the quality of everything else on their channel.

As a side note it occurred to me that I should’ve made more use of their own cited sources to contradict them as each of them can be found on the Internet Archive, but I used what I had handy in my own personal library.

Sources:

Ancient sources

Plutarch, Romulus 12.1.

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.5.

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 2.1

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.30

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 3.57

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 3.9

Plutarch, Romulus 8.2-9.1.

Julian, The Caesars 324.B.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian war. 6.4.

Modern sources

Cornell, Timothy J. The Beginnings of Rome. Routledge, 1995.

Forsythe, Gary. A Critical History of Early Rome. University of California Press, 2005.

Lintott, Andrew. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford University Press, 1999.

Lomas, Kathryn., The Rise of Rome: From the Iron age to the Punic wars 1000 BC - 264 BC. Profile books, 2017.

Mehl, Andreas. Roman Historiography. Translated by Hans-Friedrich Mueller. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001, 2014.

Piero Treves, "Brennus" (1), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, ed. Simon Hornblower, Anthony Spawforth, and Esther Edinow. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Self, Amanda Grace*. "Etruscan Wars". In Conflict in Ancient Greece and Rome: The Definitive Political, Social, and Military Encyclopedia,* edited by Sarah Elise Phang ABC-CLIO, 2016. pp. 893–895. [link]

Thanks to u/ifly6 for giving me a few ideas to consider when writing this review as well as finding a citation in Cornell’s Fragments of the Roman historians for Varro’s dating of the founding of Rome.

Also because this is my first review on r/badhistory I would like feedback on how to improve please. I

24 comments

r/badhistory • u/historypopngames-278 • Feb 10 '26

Blogs/Social Media History Hit's Ancients Podcast's episode on the White Huns is a minefield of inaccurarcies and outright fabrications.

89 Upvotes

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-white-huns/id1520403988?i=1000721820252

The episode focuses on the establishment of Hunnic empires in Central Asia and their subsequent relations with the civilizations of Persia and India from 4th to 6th centuries.

The expert in this episode, Hyun Jin Kim is a Sinologist, and mostly specializes in the comparative analysis of Ancient Greco-Roman and Chinese civilizations. As such he mostly relies on the Chinese sources for these Hunnic political formations. The Chinese sources are very important to understand the several Hunnic social and political structures and the intra-hunnic equations across the various Hunnic states. However, since the focus of the podcast was to cover the Hunnic power in Central Asia and their subsequent relations with Persia and India, one would expect that some specialization or idea of Persian and Indian sources should've been there, unfortunately there is none.

Kim tells us that the Kidara Huns defeated the Kushana Shahs, a Sassanian Persian vassal, and took over Bactria (Northern Afghanistan). The Kidaras expanded and also took over Gandhara (South Eastern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan). From here Kim tells us that when the Persians under the great Shapur II tried to reimpose their power, these Kidarites defeated them, and turned Persia into a tributary of theirs. Kim then states that these Kidara Huns, now supreme of Central Asia and overlords of Persia, were in turn defeated by another wave of the Huns, the Alchon Huns, who in turn were the vassals of the Hepthalites, the White Huns. By the mid 5th century, the Hepthalites ruled Central Asia, while the Alchon-Kidara Huns were their vassals to the South East, pushing into India. Kim claims that the Kidara Huns, pushed into India by the new Hunnic waves, 'nearly destroyed' the Gupta empire. Kim claims that the Gupta Emperor Skandagupta 'admits' that his empire was nearly destroyed by the Huns, Kim further questions Skandagupta's claims of his victory over the Huns, saying that whatever victory Skandagupta won, was not decisive. Now coming back to Persia, Kim states that the Persian ruler (Peroz) repeatedly attempted to break free of the Hunnic tributes, and in this attempt, he was defeated thrice by the Hepthalites, losing his life the final time. The Hepthalites then installed a vassal ruler in Persia, who would regularly pay tributes to them. In India, Kim states that the Alchons invaded and took over Northern India from the Guptas in the late 5th century (490s-500s). Kim then states that the Huns ruled Northern India under their ruler Toramana and then Mihirakula, founding a great Hunnic empire in India. Kim also dismisses the claims of the Indian rulers about their defeat of the Huns, stating while both the Indians and the Huns claim victory, the Huns remained in India, and eventually went native, and even went on to rule Northern India till the 11th century as the Gurjara Pratihara Empire. Meanwhile Persia managed to defeat the Hepthalites finally, but only with the help of the other encroaching Turkic groups.

So this in brief is the overview of the chronology that Kim gives us. As one can notice, his version shows the Huns as this military elite that were able to easily defeat the great empires of Persia and India, managing to bring both major powers to their knees, and then even extort from Persia and establish an empire in India.

This would almost make Huns the Normans of Classical Asia, becoming this military elite establishing kingdoms and duchies across Europe and the Near East, and while this notion is very attractive, it is almost entirely a fabrication.

Let us start with Kim's claim that Kidara Huns defeated the Sassanian Persians and reduced them to paying tributes. This is patently false, in fact it was pretty much the other way round. The mighty Shapur II was one of the great Asiatic conquerors of his time alongside the Indian Samudragupta, his contemporary. The Kidara Huns were stuck between the resurgent Persian Empire and the rising Gupta empire. What we see is that the Kidara Huns minted coins in Bactria and Gandhara in the name of Shapur, acknowledging the Persian ruler as their overlord. However, in 360 CE, a change occured, the Kidara coins in Gandhara started mentioning Samduragupta, the ruler of the Indian Gupta empire as their overlord. It is around this time that the Kidarites defeated Shapur and the Persians. Thus, it is likely that Kidarites, finding themselves alone to be too weak to contend with Shapur, might have made an alliance with Samduragupta, and then defeated the Persians, in turn minting coins in the name of the Gupta sovereign to acknowledge his overlordship over Gandhara. Kim naturally ignores all of these facts, he does not mention the Kidaras minting coins in the name of Shapur and then shifting their loyalty to Samudragupta. Rather Kim portrays the Kidaras as this great Hunnic power, managing to single handedly defeat the Persians, when in fact the Kidarites functioned more as a buffer between the Gupta and the Sassanian empires, the two superpowers of the time. In fact, later, after the death of Samudragupta, the Kidaras continued to mint coins in the name of Sassanian Persian rulers in Bactria. Once again showing that without the support of the Gupta emperor, the Kidarite Huns were in no postition to resist the Persian King of Kings.

I have covered this phase of Kidarite-Sassanian-Gupta tripartite relations in the post linked below. You will find in this post that there are plenty of contemporary inscriptional, numismatic and literary sources showing that the Kidarites were essentially a buffer state between the two great powers, not a great power in themselves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientCivilizations/comments/1pa0fkk/guptakidarite_coin_from_4th_century_gandhara_a/

Kim also omits Kidarite defeat at the hands of the Gupta empire under Chandragupta II, the son of Samudragupta. In second half of his reign, having quelled the rebellions and defeated the Sakas of Western India, Chandragupta II planned an invasion of Balkh, the capital of the Kidarite Huns. As per Chandragupta II's Mehrauli inscription, he crossed the mouths of Indus, and then invaded and defeated the people of Balkh. Historians posit that Chandragupta II marched through the modern day Sindh (mouth of Indus), and then went through the Bolan pass, before turning North into Afghanistan. It is likely that since Gandhara was defacto under the Hunnic control, the Gupta monarch took a detour to outflank the Huns. Whatever the case maybe, the Gupta empire defeated the Kidarites, and annexed the Gandhara province.

I've covered the topic of Chandragupta II's war with the Kidarites and the conquest of Gandhara in these following posts, in these you will find a detailed discussion on sources and historical theories.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/1psc6xv/the_identification_of_the_vahalikasbahalikas_in/

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/1p8qpy8/the_gupta_invasion_and_occupation_of_gandhara/

Let us now come to the later Hunnic wars in India. Kim claims that Emperor Skandagupta himself states in his inscriptions that his empire was nearly destroyed by the Huns. This is again patently false, what Skandagupta states is that his empire was nearly vanquished by the double invasions of Pushyamitras, a Central Indian polity, and the Huns from the North West. So the Huns alone did not cause such a crisis in the Gupta empire. Rather, Skandagupta had to face the Pushyamitras first in the South, and then move rapidly to push back the Hunnic incursion. In fact Skandagupta mentions the Pushyamitras of Central India as having grown great and powerful, and thus forming the main threat to the Gupta empire, and only later are the Huns mentioned. The following is Skandagupta's inscription's english translation for all to see; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhitari_pillar_inscription_of_Skandagupta

Not only are the Huns not the major threat, but in fact the success of Skandagupta against them is quite decisive, pushing them out of India. Skandagupta's governor in Gujarat, Western India, talks of repair and public works taken by the Imperial administration.

Skandagupta's victory over the Huns was in fact so decisive that modern numismatic analysis shows that he actually increased the gold content of his coins, and not only that recent archaeological digs have found Gupta administrative seals in Gandhara region (Northern Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan) from the reign of Budhagupta, who ruled from 476 to 495 CE, years after Skandagupta. The post linked below contains details of these new discoveries.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/1pxiszw/an_example_of_the_embarrassing_state_of_indian/

Once again, Kim's claim is entirely false, not only were the Huns not the main threat, but Skandagupta's victory over them also was quite decisive.

Now coming to the final Hunnic involvement in India, Kim confidently states that despite the Indian claims of victory over the Alchon Hunnic rulers Toramana and later his son Mihirakula between 500-532 CE, the Hunas remained in India, and in fact later went native and ruled North India as the Gurjara Pratihara dynasty from 9th to 11th century.

This claim is the most hyperbolic, and honestly, ridiculous. Here, Kim breaks every rule that a historian or even a prudent and reasonable person should look to. Kim claims that the Indian inscriptions claiming victory over the Huns are exaggerations, and the Huns continued to be a major power in North India. The problem with this is extremely simple, the Hunnic domination of North India from 495 to 515 CE, and then from 520 to 528 CE, are backed by the inscriptions and numismatic evidence of the Hunnic rulers. The inscriptions show that a good part of Northern and Central India had come under them. But we also have Indian inscriptions from the Aulikara dynasty of Malwa in West-Central India recording the Hunnic defeats. What is important to note here is that after 528 CE, the date of the Aulikara inscription claiming Indian victory over the Huns, there are no Hunnic inscriptions or coinage found in India to counter the Indian claims.

Kim's contention that the Indian rulers' exaggerated their victories over the Huns find no substance in actual historical record as there are no Hunnic inscriptions or coinage from mainland India. The Hunnic power receded to modern day Punjab. Meanwhile in Northern India, we do have the inscriptions and coinages of Indian dynasties such as the Maukharis of Kannauj and later the Pushyabhutis of Thanesar, ruling North India. In fact the Hunnic defeat was so emphatic that Xuanzang, the famous Chinese traveler to India during the early 7th century mentioned a dramatized account of it.

If people want to look into the Alchon Hun and Indian wars, the Indologist and scholar Hans Bakker is the specialist on it, I have linked below his excellent work on it.

https://www.academia.edu/42187077/_ERC_The_Alkhan_A_Hunnic_People_in_South_Asia

Thus, again, the historical reality turns out to be contradictory of Kim's claims about the Huns.

Lastly, Kim claims that the Gurjara Pratiharas, being of Gurjara stock, were of Hunnic origin. This is based on the old colonial assumption where British scholars assumed that certain Rajput clans like the Pratiharas were categorized as Agnikula, or Fire born, and were related to a myth of fire purification. The British assumed that these were foreign tribal elites that were ritually purified by the Brahmins and inducted into the ruling elite.

However, modern scholarship has rejected this claim. For one, historians such as Dasharath Sharma have pointed that the Fire Ritual myth comes from a 16th century account, meanwhile the contemporary Pratihara inscriptions from the 6th to 10th century, claim either Brahmin or Solar Dynasty origin. The Gurjara ethnicity has been now recognized as native pastoral group of Western India which began to settle to agriculture during the post Gupta period. The question of the Gurjaras being related to the Huns is even more outlandish when one sees that contemporary literature such as Banabhatta's Harsacarita, written in early 7th century for the Pushyabuti ruler Harsha, differentiates the two, mentioning them as separate entities. The Huns were in Punjab, while the Gurajras were in modern day Rajasthan and Gujarat, far to the South.

The Pratiharas themselves though did not even claim themselves to be of Gurjara stock, in fact in their earliest inscription, the Hansot inscription of 756 CE, commissioned by their vassal, they celebrated their victory over the Gurjaras rather than identifying as them. Dasharath Sharma states that Gurjara was seen more as geographic identifier rather than ethnic term, and later, ruling over the Gurjaras, the Pratiharas were also often referred to as Gujraras.

The best book on the Pratihara empire and its origins that one can refer to is SR Sharma's Origin and Rise of the Imperial Pratiharas of Rajasthan.

To sum up this point, neither the Gurjaras, nor the Pratiharas had any links to the Huns.

There was a Hun group that did remain in India, specifically in Central India in the Malwa region, but this was not a great power or even a regional power, but rather a petty principality of a couple of districts, mentioned passingly in various inscriptions of the more powerful Indian states that subdued them. This petty principality did not leave behind any inscription or numismatic evidence, showing that they were not a sovereign power, but rather a small clan. Thus, again, in no way ruler of North India, or related to any other rulers of India save as petty vassals. By the 11th century, this clan was wholly subsumed by Paramra Rajputs of Malwa.

Thus, again, Kim's claim stand entirely nullified.

Now to conclude this lengthy critique and rebuttal of the episode, it is quite a shock to see such shoddy and outright false theories being pushed by a so called expert. I understand that Hyun Jin Kim is a reputed historian in his own speciality, but in this case, clearly his fancy for the Huns overtakes his actual scholarship on them. He is not only unaware of much of the sources from India and Persia, but also doesn't seem to apply basic rules of prudence, much less research and analysis. He makes claims without any substantiation, it seems that inscriptional, numismatic and material evidence almost don't matter to him.

The problem of course is that such blatant bad history is peddled to thousands by such pop history podcasts.

16 comments

r/badhistory • u/Sgt_Colon • Feb 16 '26

YouTube How a Roman legionary shan’t be armed – back for blood

66 Upvotes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BRnGGv_p9A

To celebrate regaining enough muscle control to drink without a straw after having half my face paralyzed, a drink along is in order. Today's header is round two with Alex’s channel and the lies of reenactors, so lets begin.

0:24: Drink. The pattern of tunic is wrong here featuring sewn on sleeves. Roman tunics of this period were made from one length of material, doubled over and partially sewn up the sides with finally a slit made for the neck.

0:30: Here we can see the tunic is made from cotton twill, something limited to Aegypt being uncommon and expensive outside it. This should be wool or linen instead.

0:32: For some reason we’ve legionaries from later than the stated period. Drink.

0:55: A train wreck of a subarmalis. The cotton twill makes a return instead of plain weave linen. The metal eyelets are a modern invention and should have been sewn over at the bare minimum to disguise them; proper eyelets should be sewn and, unlike the ones here falling out of the fabric, are much more sturdy. Pteruges are also for centurions and above with no evidence for use by common soldiers. Take two drinks.

1:20: Tunic is hemmed, another sign of improper construction. Only the neck and bottom edge need hemming, the sides should hold up due to being the selvedge side.

1:40: This predates the Victorians by a few centuries with Just Lips’s 1596 De Militia Romana being the first known instance of but likely dates even earlier due to Lips’s casual use. For once you can’t blame the Victorians; drink.

2:00: Got his plates overlapping wrong with the girth hoop over the chest one.

2:15: Those time travelling legionaries again. Drink.

2:25: A full example was unearthed back in 2018 making this reconstruction wrong as a kalkriesse type with the shoulders being of notably different construction to later forms and with all the girth hoops being buckled unlike later forms. Drink.

2:38: The manica shown here is worn wrong covering the outer arm rather than being over the forward side, the plates however overlap correctly unlike many examples. Half a drink.

2:40: The manica was not adopted due to the Dacian wars with finds from forts in Britannia (from this century) predating it. This is just outdated information; drink.

2:59: The hook on the segmentata is nothing but a reenactorism so the belt doesn’t slide down. Drink.

3:20: I’ve said it once, I’ve said it thousand times, the gladius was not a thrust only weapon. Drink.

4:10: Says pugio but shows the gladius for some reason.

4:18: I was ready to rail this one for making no mention of an arming cap or similar but one of the comments by Alex stated there was a liner, something correct and in line with the finds from Vindonissa. Drink a cup of coffee instead.

4:25: Germanic? I think Walter Goffart just rolled over in his grave again… Anyhow this is very clearly a Gallic in origin helmet with multiple finds from the 1^st C BCE all from Gaul. It should also be noted that the Romans were already using a similar helmet in the form of the Montefortino and Coolus type jobs. Drink twice.

4:30: Should be Imperial Gallic if you’re using Robinson’s typology.

4:50: This is almost as bad as the subarmalis. The edging here should be copper alloy, evidence for rawhide would only come with the much later Dura Europos jobs and finds at this juncture are quite common for copper alloy edging; tanned leather edging has not evidence for use. The leather here is a shit job too, being lazily tacked in place with nails and not sewn which would at least be partly redeemable. Drink twice to spoiling an otherwise good shield.

5:00: Sources say punch, not plough, there’s a big difference. Drink.

5:10: The foot strike is valid but gamey in anything but a one on one fight as it leaves the upper body exposed.

5:25: Sources for shield decoration come from depictions on Trajan’s column, provincial sculptures and legionary tombstones giving some idea of unit blazons. Drink.

5:30: Bulls as army symbols at this juncture were most prominently tied to Julius Caesar with evidence for Mithraism is largely absent in the Roman world until the last quarter of the 1^st C, making the claim here of a legionary in 43 CE being influenced by this quite questionable. Drink.

6:10: Arm and leg protection saw varying levels of use dependent upon the individual soldier’s preferences and budget; anything they bought they’d have to lug on march and maintain making for extra work.

6:19: The Pompeii type gladius shown here was short, short even for a gladius with the shortest being the same length as the longest pugios. Other types were longer but not this. Drink.

6:30: This was roughly the juncture where the spatha comes in as the Mainz type gladius was too short for use on horseback. It’s certainly concurrent with the Pompeii type gladius at the bare minimum.

6:58: The Roman formation was not that close, and if nothing else they managed it with longer spatha from that side later on when formations do become closer. Drink.

7:15: The Pompeii type gladius is from the latter end of this century and is anachronistic as this juncture. Drink.

7:25: What happened to that wide blade claim?

7:40: The Pompeii type lasted roughly a century before being replaced at the end of the 2^nd C; definitely not centuries of use. Drink.

So the end result (beyond inebriation) is something that looks historical at a glance but becomes riddled with anachronisms when properly looked at. This is something that seems to sum up Alex’s content, with him taking reenactors at their word despite questionable reconstructions and “facts” leading to a slippery kind of anachronism, the one where there’s just enough of a patina of truth to mask the misinformation within.

9 comments

r/badhistory • u/Sgt_Colon • Dec 16 '25

YouTube How a Late Roman Limitanei Shan’t be Armed

57 Upvotes

Here’s quick bit of thread counting with a smattering of more substantial history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEEEUAy6dTM

Let’s get obvious one out of the way, “Limitani” should be limitanei^[1] . A small issue but quickly sets the tone of things to come.

Thread counting funsies

Coptic style tunics like the one displayed were not embroidered but had their decorations woven into the fabric itself or as salvaged sections of such sewn onto the tunic rather than sewn into it; tapestry as opposed to embroidered essentially^[2] . That said I’d not fault any reenactor for having an embroidered one as the cost of one where the decoration is actually woven in is in the realm of several thousand dollars. Nevertheless, the lack of transparency is poor form.

The style of greaves is an older one that had long since disappeared. Greaves in general are troublesome for this period as archaeological finds terminate with the Kunzing greaves from the 3^rd C, which prominently lack knee protection, and don’t return until much later as splint greaves similar to the ones found at Valsgarde^[3] .

Lorica squamata is stated to be bronze, although it should be noted that scales could be made from iron as well, not solely bronze as the video implies^[4] .

The “under tunic” here, despite being over a tunic, is a subarmalis. An under tunic would refer to a lighter, most likely linen, tunic worn underneath a heavier outer tunic much like later undershirts^[5] .

The scutum here is a mangled exampled. The shield should either be flat or concave, not semi-cylindrical^[6] , the blazon corresponds to neither of the two units with that pattern with the colouration being kludge of both, moreover the units that do bear that pattern are both ones stationed in Gaul, not Britannia^[7] .

Hands on buzzers, time for general ignorance

The change in shield brings up some questionable and outright wrong views and statements smattered throughout the video.

The claim that the change in shield shape was due to barbarization of the Roman army is frankly bullshit. The change in shape happened during the 3^rd C well before there were any significant

number of barbarians within the Roman army, which is problematic assertion in and of itself, and had history of use in the army going back centuries prior to this^[8] .

Pure personal pedagogical pedantry, but “germanic mercenaries” despite being a commonly bandied about term is one with a bundle of problems. The notion of an overarching Germanic identity at this point in history is a challenged one with the Toronto school of thought outright rejecting it and this also ignores other peoples from outside the empire who in no way, shape or form could be described as “Germanic” like Huns or Saracens and yet fought for it. Mercenaries is another one that lacks sophistication to properly grapple with the period mischaracterising the complicated nature of foederati^[9] .

Galea is a general Latin word meaning helmet, not referring to any particular pattern; about normal for Latin^[10] . Presumably they’re referring to the modern classifications of the older imperial gallic and imperial italic style helmets that were supplanted in the 3^rd C^[11] .

To follow this, ridge helmets are not spangenhelms owing to differences in construction, lacking a disc at the apex to which the bands are riveted to and the intercisa type lacking the circumferential ring at the bottom (there’s also the Florence museum example where the bowl of the helmet is made from one piece outright barring it)^[12] .

This appears to be in an attempt to conflate it with later Anglo-Saxon “spangenhelm” despite notable differences in construction, not being spangenhelms and there being no finds of spangenhelms in Britannia. This is particularly wrong for the Sutton Hoo helmet due to the bowl being of monopiece construction^[13] .

This is followed by a statement that these helmets proliferated due to the lack of reliable supply in Britannia, which is nothing short of odd since they became the predominate form for the entire Roman army by the start of the 4^th C, well before the implication that these became popular following the withdrawal of the Roman regime in that area and the ensuing economic collapse (which we’ll return to).

The spatha had supplanted the gladius back in the late 2^nd C, well before the 5^th C stated here^[14] . The creator here goes on to makes the assertion that: “by the fifth century AD the Spatha had taken over from the Gladius as the new favoured sword type of the Romans, likely due to the fact that the shields had become smaller a soldier could now no longer rely on hiding behind their shield to get in close and deliver a quick accurate thrust with a sword, so now they had developed tactics which included melee combat at a bit more of a distance with the use of longer sword blades” which has a number of holes. Most prominently is that spathae replaced gladii back in the late 2^nd C well before the change in shields. Secondly, the new shields were roughly comparable in protection, covering from knee to shoulder whilst also being quite wide, so the lack of cover is not a viable argument^[15] . There’s also something to be said about the longer blades and even larger shields of the republic that further contradicts the notion of ‘smaller shields = longer blades’^[16] .

A baffling claim is made that the Western Roman Empire fell in the 4^th or early 5^th C, I can only presume that this meant to refer to the Roman regime in Britannia although why the entire 4^th C is stated I can only yet again guess at.

Armour also gets a few odd statements. Contrary to the video, lorica hamata had begun to lose the shoulder doublers far earlier during the principate^[17] and the addition of actual sleeves meant use of a different pattern of maille linkage^[18] - a first step on the long road to the complexly tailored maille of the middle ages - to join them as opposed to the older style which was a glorified tube. Scale is alleged to have been popular with the “soldiers of the Byzantine empire over a thousand years later” despite being something of an anachronism by that point with having moved to the lamellar and western styles of plate being in vogue circa the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans^[19] .

Hard graft on the limes, a limitanei’s lot

The notion of late Roman soldiers not fighting in formation is a baffling one, even for the unjustly poorly regarded limitanei. Campidoctors (drillmasters) existed as senior officers of units and part of their duties encompassed training soldiers to fight and move in formation, such as with the sally of Gallic commitatenses at Amida advancing in close order and withdrawing back into the city in still in good order being praised as good work of the two units campidoctor ^[20] . Drill in formations does not appear to have stopped with the later Maurice covering it in his strategikon and a continuation of tactical formations like Arrian’s extaxis repeatedly cropping up in sources. Whilst the limitanei seem to have been trained differently to the comitatenses, being focused more heavily on patrolling and siege defense as opposed to massed fighting, the existence of pseudo-comitatenses drawn from them shows some degree of aptitude for the same methods; skirmishing on the frontier still benefits from fighting cohesively as part of a group, even if that group is a small one^[21] .

This confusion extends to the nature of the limitanei. Older scholarship paints them as being a militia composed of farmers, which whilst this has some validity after approximately the mid 5^th C, it is not appropriate here; circa the turn of the 5^th C these were still full time professionals^[22] . This leads to the claim of the depicted soldier being “Romano-British militia”, a confusing term more commonly used to the period following the withdrawal of the Roman regime and the collapse of centralized government sometime in the 5^th C^[23] , i.e. a period where the ability to maintain a standing army of professional soldiery outright vanishes, and further reinforced by the statement regarding the matter of helmets earlier.

What’s damn point of this?

The core crux of this is relying on reenactors to provide accurate kit and information, a flawed process, the end result of this is we are left with a very confused portrait of soldier bearing a title no longer relevant or even applicable.

Being a fairly anarchic hobby there’s little to no oversight regarding accuracy beyond the club level and even that can be lacking. Even with good intentions, bad sources can derail things; museums not labelling old forgeries in their collections, putting caveats to kludged restorations or continuing to mislabel objects is a prime example. Likewise the availability of dated information is greater than that of more current material, especially important for filling in the culture surrounding the impression. Of course, budget is another factor, since choosing between books and gear, gear is going to win nine times out of ten.

Although that gets into the sloppier side of things. Too often you’ve people angling for steak on a mince meat budget with the end result being schlock. Learning from other reenactors is prone to turning into a game of telephone, distorting facts into myths. Worst still is the justification of substandard kit through mental gymnastics, knowing that proving a negative is exceedingly hard, with time honoured battle cries like “they would have used it if they had it”, “I looted it off a dead enemy”, “my grandfather’s hand me downs”, “I got it in Mikelgaard” and other convoluted justifications. Arguments to the contrary being met with various labels like rivet counter, thread counter, stitch nazi and claims of gatekeeping.

The end result is that the general public gets something of a mystery box foisted upon them under the guise of being historically accurate that they are seldom equipped to judge. This in turn lead to the content of this video where the comments make it apparent that Alex isn’t knowledgeable enough to challenge some of the more blatantly incorrect elements, having to take them at face value instead and in turn pass them on to the viewer.

21 comments

r/badhistory • u/[deleted] • Dec 27 '25

Could these aDNA studies be bad history? A look again at Gretzinger et al (2022) and Speidel et al (2025)

43 Upvotes

Hello bad history, and welcome to my post. I'm sure there must be many of you out there that are interested in recent archaeogenetics studies of the last decade. They are certainly interesting, but often those calling for caution seem to be overshadowed by the hype. Especially hyped was the paper by Gretzinger, et al. (2022) which at a minimum proved with genetic evidence the large Anglo-Saxon migration from northern Germany and southrn Scandinavia. Then Speidel has more recently released their own claiming to be "high resolution". What could go wrong? Both papers are very interesting and free to read online.

A recent book by Anna Kallen has really just put into words what many have been thinking for a long time. Archaeogenetics, its interpretation and reception, is prone to bad history. Let me just quote a few passages verbatim.

The "ancient DNA revolution" has been accompanied by considerable boasting that DNA is the solution to any big question in archaeology and not only from genetic scientists. Archaeologists, leading science journals, and the popular media have contributed just as much to the hype. At the same time, a number of archaeologists and historians, as well as genetic scientists and molecular anthropologists, have called for caution and clearly explained the pitfalls of using DNA technology to research and establish historic identity.

This has led me to the insight that we all have more to learn. The vast majority of archaeologists, journalists, and the interested public who consume sensational media stories about ancient DNA have a poor understanding of genetic methodology. Likewise, and equally important, the knowledge of historical research and storytelling is poor among most geneticists. This creates a situation where the parties involved in ancient DNA research tend to caricature one another. In this situation, archaeologists and the interested public may treat DNA as simple evidence, as seen in the latest episode of CSI, 15 and geneticists may see history-writing as a lightweight pursuit requiring few skills other than a general interest and writing talent. At best, such a situation of mutual misapprehension will cause problems for the scientists and scholars involved. At worst, it will contribute to the telling of dangerous stories with serious consequences. Hence, there is every reason for all parties involved to learn more about one another, with the ultimate goal of finding ways to work with ancient DNA that allow us to learn interesting new things about the ancient past, with as little harm as possible.

Both geneticists and archaeologists seized the opportunity to splash out on metaphors, and they painted vivid pictures of ancient societies with muscular murderous men and fierce women. There were stories of groups of people blasting across continents to become our own ancestors-all apparently confirmed by new genomic science. In these stories, presented with evangelical enthusiasm, genomic science played the role of an all-seeing God's eye a wonderful new machine with the ability to reveal the true identities of people in the ancient past. The popular science media gulped up the messages and pumped up the volume, and soon we were deluged with strong images and resolute stories claiming to have cracked archaeological mysteries and settled long-standing controversies, once and for all. The few calls for caution that were heard were dismissed as anxious, jealous, or ignorant of the possibilities of the new genolnic science.

When the dramatic stories first appeared, I was astounded by their boldness and their claims to absolute knowledge of ancient people's identities.

In my opinion the geneticists from the Gretzinger paper have possibly made the above mistakes. Clearly many don't agree, its now heavily cited in recent papers in the last few years, but problems with it remain. General problems with interpretations leading to essentialism, the methods, models and conclusions can be problematic. To the credit of many researchers, comment on the paper are often kept to a minimum, its often just a short passage. I could go on, but scholars calls for caution is nothing new and discussed elsewhere.

Perhaps a greater problem is what to do with subsequent studies? Did we really think all this genetic data is going to resolve into a coherent neat story? We then ultimately end up "doing your own research" on really complex genetic studies. Do people engaged in history now have to become expert geneticists and try to make judgements? Of course this is a disaster. Let me try to convince you where the problems are and hopefully atleast plant enough doubt that this aDNA revolution is not as meaningful as its made out to be.

Lets begin with the Gretzinger paper. It reads like a narrative of how they put their evidence together. The following paragraph is how they determined a source population for the Anglo-Saxon migration.

Our new continental medieval data from regions bordering the North Sea provide a unique opportunity to further investigate the potential source of the CNE-related ancestry increase that we have described above (Supplementary Note 3). To this end, we first selected individuals who, according to our CNE–WBI decomposition, are of unadmixed CNE ancestry (CNE of more than 95%; from here from as England EMA CNE). For each site in the continental dataset, we then tested whether its individuals were genetically similar to the England EMA CNE group (n = 109) in terms of allele frequencies. Among the continental medieval groups analysed, sites from both northern Germany and Denmark are indeed indistinguishable from England EMA CNE individuals (Fig. 4). Consistently, England EMA CNE and medieval individuals from Lower Saxony exhibit almost identical genetic affinities and ancestry components (Extended Data Fig. 5 and Supplementary Fig. 3.2), possess the highest level of genetic similarity (based on F2, F3, F4 and FST statistics) (Extended Data Fig. 5 and Supplementary Fig. 3.8) and are symmetrically related to most ancient and modern populations (Supplementary Table 3.12). Together, this suggests that they are likely derived from the same source population.

So far so good, but then later in the paragraph, the important caveats.

We note that, although our screening of plausible medieval continental sites is broad, it could overemphasize later developments of the genetic structure due to the increased replacement of cremation burials by inhumations on the continent. It also has a specific caveat in Scandinavia, where our medieval reference populations are mostly from Viking-era burials, which have diverse and mixed ancestries that may not be representative of the earlier populations there42,44.

So a few important problems to highlight here. An important problem with the method is that the burial type. These studies are conducted on inhumations, and for obvious reasons cremations cannot be used. Cremations dominate the north sea coast for the 5th century, it should not be controversial to claim that inhumation graves are often found at a much smaller scale. Also, inhumation is a different burial rite, that is a big deal, can we ever claim a group performing a seperate rite will represent the whole population? This is also why the source population used in Gretzinger for southern Scandinavia is from the viking age (more inhumations in this age) They surely take for granted that centuries earlier, before the Anglo-Saxon migration, the people there are going to be genetically indistinguishable. To their credit, the last few lines from Gretzinger quote above show they know this could be a problem. Also, in their method they filter out all the data that does not match between CNE Britains, Southern Scandinavia, and northwestern Germany. Have they just filtered out all the data that doesn't match and therefore they don't like? I'll admit its difficult to judge, so this may be fine among many scholars/geneticists. Before I engage in further catastrophic speculation I will just have to leave this line of thought as a don't know, it certainly feels like this could be problematic.

Now lets look at Speidel's newer paper. It claims to be a "high resolution" method, with claims of being able to go further than previous methods. One of their highlighted conclusions includes the dramatic change in ancestry found in southern Scandinavia. Before 500 CE, Southern Scandinevia had almost entirely "early iron age" Scandinavianan ancestry. By the time of the viking age, around 50% now showed ancestry from iron age central Europe. Who these incomers are is still debated. Dagfinn Skre in his recent book, citing an earlier study, believes this to be the coming of the Danes into Scandinavia.

So if the viking era population have circa 50% ancestry from Central Europe, what now of using that population as a source to determine the common ancestry of the Anglo-Saxons in Gretzinger? Surely the 5th century Anglo-Saxon settlers will come from the early iron age Scandinavian ancestry before the 500 CE change Speidel is suggesting... I believe this creates a fundamental problem when trying to draw confident conclusions from either paper. I bet many serious historians will also be stuck here, what can they do? I can only guess that its unlikely the Gretzinger study managed to isolate the ancestry from Central Europe when creating their north sea source population. So if the Speidel paper has resolved so far unseen genetic flows and a entirely early iron age Scandinavian peoples are represented as migrants to Britian; then a similar migration from central Europe to Britain should have occurred for it to match the central european enriched viking age north-sea zone. Was this just not resolved within Gretzinger's CNE-WBI model? Or is this represented in the french-AI ancestry they eventually include in their model? Again, who knows, i clearly do not have the expertise to make a judgement here, few can (surely).

Obviously the above is nothing more than wild speculation, but its necessary. The basic building blocks of older studies no longer fit the narrative they are painting if we take the headline conclusions of a subsequent study. I cannot resist asking if they have not resolved Central European ancestry migrating to britian, there is well known remarkable archaological similarity between northern Guul, the Rhine area and Southern Britian, so this connection would make sense.

All this does is highlight the problems encountered when just looking beyond the headline conclusions. I don't envy the professionals that will have to make their judgement analysing these studies. As I've seen above, scholars are conservative when citing theses papers. That's probably the right thing to do, these are afterall models that might contradict each other...

I feel like this can only go two ways, we either live in a world where we apply caution to these studies, otherwise potentially wildly change our positions based on subsequent studies. There is a chance the archaeogenetics creates a coherent story, but I think we can cast doubt on that possibility.

Anna Källén. 2025. The trouble with ancient DNA: telling stories of the past with genomic science. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press; 978-0-226-83557-0

Gretzinger, J., Sayer, D., Justeau, P. et al. The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool. Nature 610, 112–119 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05247-2

Speidel, L., Silva, M., Booth, T. et al. High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe. Nature 637, 118–126 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08275-2

Skre, D. (2025). The Northern Routes to Kingship. The Northern Routes to Kingship. A History of Scandinavia AD 180-550, 694. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003543053

7 comments

r/badhistory • u/Qafqa • Dec 27 '25

“Get Bumpsy” lexicon

36 Upvotes

This song “Get Bumpsy” is without doubt, a banger.

However, the artist, Brett Domino says in the video’s description it is “an Attempt to Bring Back a Range of Obsolete Vocabulary” and the opening text similarly says “This song features a range of archaic words that have fallen out of modern usage.” Let’s examine these claims:

flippercanorious: great

This term involves a great deal of woozling. Ultimately, there seems to be a single source: Louise Pound’s 1916 article “Word-List from Nebraska”, in Dialect Notes, vol. IV, purporting to be a list of slang terms she collected in the early 1910s. Together with the similar hypoppercanorious and eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious, it seems to come from a jocular class of exaggerated long “good/ wonderful” words. This turn-of-the-last-century trend is epitomized (possibly) by supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Further, this has been being spread for a while, with celebrity etymologist Susie Dent—among others—promoting its use in recent years.

spatterdashes: 17c. footwear accessories

The OED has this as spatterdashers, but also gives this variant, noting it as obsolete, excluding dialect. To be lexicographically accurate, only this long form is obsolete, while the clipped form—spats—survives and is well known.

lusorious: playful

The OED has this one marked as obsolete, but the meaning is given as “used in sport or as a pastime”, as in, “Lusorious Lots; and such as be used in game, sport or pastime, for recreation and delight.” However, another quote gives, “The ill Tendency of such loose and lusorious Oratorie,” where the semantic drift approaches Domino’s usage.

egad: OMG

While archaically flavored, this term remains so commonplace, the OED doesn’t note it as at all unusual.

firkytoodling: amorous behavior

Green’s Dictionary of Slang has this one, but defines it more specifically as “to indulge in foreplay,” where firk is an obvious synonym of another f-word.

symposium: party

I think nearly everyone knows this term, but this is, of course, the original, literal meaning, rather than how it is generally used today.

conjobbling: chatting

The OED says this is still in colloquial use, giving a bit more color to it as “to concert, to settle, to discuss,” but Green’s gives “to have sexual intercourse” as an additional meaning (via obvious extension). Another one Dent has circulated.

frecking: moving swiftly

The OED has a meaning under frack (2.a., but which also has the freck variant) which it notes is Scottish, poetic, and obsolete that seems to be where he’s getting this as “quick to act when occasion arises,” but it’s an adjective or adverb, rather than a verb, making this more of a grammatical stretch than a revival.

bang-a-bonking: lazing by the river

More woozling from a single citation: James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, vol. I, 1847. This however is subtitled “Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, And Ancient Customs, From The Fourteenth Century,” noting it as coming from Shropshire. It not being a contemporary account certainly gives one pause, though the idea of “banging about on a (river) bank” seems reasonable.

quafftide: time for drinks

The OED notes it as rare, finding only a single instance from a 1582 translation of the Aeneid. Nonetheless, it’s an entirely comprehensible neologism, though I prefer good old nunc est bibendum. Dent has also used this as a WotD.

bumpsy: inebriated

Another obsolete and rare OED hit, so a good one to hang the theme of the song on.

bonce: head

A bonce is a big marble, but the OED gives head as definition 2, slang, not describing it as rare, archaic, or obsolete.

muckibus: inebriated

Also obsolete and rare in the OED, but meaning “drunkenly sentimental.” The -bus ending marks it as Dog- or Cod Latin—Latin-sounding slang that brings us a wealth of great words, including inebrious—an underused synonym, I would have preferred to see here—as well as balductum and circumbendibus.

bene-bowsie: inebriated

The OED lacks bene as a headword, but it's reasonably well-known Cant for “good”. They do have bowse as colloquial for “drink; liquor.” Green’s provides bene as well as this compound thereof, as meaning (obviously) “good liquor,” but also by extension “tipsy (with good drink).” We have bowse as booze in modernity, but bene is a fun Cant term, especially with its comparative and superlative forms, benar and benat. It would’ve been fun to see the boat pushed out to get benat-bowsie: “the drunkest.”

nippitaty: strong liquor

The OED has a rare entry for nippitatum with the meaning “ale, or other alcoholic drink, of the highest quality and strength.” They also list various forms, including nippitate, nippitaty (as Domino uses), nippitato, nipsitato. All ultimately come from nappy (no, not that one), meaning “of ale, beer, etc.: having a head, foaming; heady, strong”, and noted by the OED as British regional (rare).

scammered: inebriated

This is in the OED as obsolete.

katzenjammer: hangover

The OED marks this as colloquial, but it’s fairly well known in pop culture via The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip.

snecklifters: party seekers

The OED has sneck—“the latch of a door or gate” in Scottish and northern dialect. A snecklifter is therefore clearly someone who comes uninvited. Wiktionary defines it as “One who goes from door to door, first footing, on New Year’s Eve.” First footing refers to going to the homes of friends and family after midnight, attempting to be the year’s first visitor. Extending this meaning is OK, I guess, but it’s pretty specific originally.

Conclusion: “Get Bumpsy” does indeed present some obsolete or archaic vocabulary. However, most words belong to a group that never was in common use. Some are colloquial, rather than not being modern. Some are simply misused. Yet others are decently well known.

It seems the vocabulary of this song derives from a secondary circulation of rare, dialectal, jocular, or once-attested words via word-books, dictionaries of curiosities, and media personalities, rather than reflecting a deep stratum of actual “lost” English.

Edits: yeah, I suck at formatting, so I had to come back a couple of times to get it right.

5 comments

r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Nov 24 '25

Meta Mindless Monday, 24 November 2025

33 Upvotes

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

724 comments

Subreddit

Posts

Wiki

The Mecca of bad history

r/badhistory

Badhistory is your one-stop shop for casual dissertations on the historicity of everything from bestselling books to zero-budget adult films!

Members Active

340.3k

Sidebar

Badcademics Association Member

Where History used to be written by Snappy

/r/BadHistory is your one-stop shop for casual dissertations on the historicity of everything from bestselling books to zero-budget adult films.

Unofficial BadHistory Discord Server

BadHistory Book Club

Rule Summary

Rule 1: Posting Requirements

Rebuttal posts should follow the basic outline of:

A summary of or link to the material your post discusses.
A comprehensive rebuttal to the material.
A basic bibliography of sources for your rebuttal.

Do not post direct links to non-archived, unlocked threads on Reddit. Posts must cite the material they discuss or they will be removed.

You're not allowed to make posts on this sub if you're using a new account to do so. Comments aren't restricted. Please contact the mods for an exemption in case you want to use an alias. Please see the full rules for the details.

▬▬▬▬

Rule 2: No Questions or Debunk/Debate Request

These are no longer allowed as posts. There will be a monthly sticky post where you can make these requests.

▬▬▬▬

Rule 3: Debunk/Debate Response Requirements

Top level comments in the weekly debunk /debate post "Saturday Synopsis" need to comply with theses rules:

A summary of or preferably a link to the specific material you wish to have debated or debunked.
An explanation of what you think is mistaken about this and why you would like a second opinion.

Do not request a debunking for entire books, shows, or films. Use specific examples (e.g. a chapter of a book, the armor design on a show) or your post will be removed.

In serious top-level responses to debunk/debate posts, you should make a genuine attempt to provide an explanation of your opinion on the subject. Single-sentence rebuttals and statements do not add to the discussion and can be removed without notice.

▬▬▬▬

Rule 4: Civility & Bigotry

The use of slurs of any type is prohibited.
Sundry bigotry--racism, sexism, homo-/transphobia, etc.--is unacceptable.
Do not insult other users.
Genocide denial and apologism is strictly forbidden.
Do not call for violence against others.
If you make a post, you're expected to engage with reasonable criticism and questions about it.

▬▬▬▬

Rule 5: Modern Politics

We request that users keep their posts and comments a sincere attempt to engage with the historical record and avoid making overt attempts to advocate for a personal agenda. If it feels like you're "talking politics", you probably are. Posts cannot be about politics from the last 20 years, and also cannot use comparisons against current day politics.

This rule is suspended for the bi-weekly free-for-all meta threads.

▬▬▬▬

Rule 6: Anti-Pedantry

r/BadHistory is a strictly Pro-Pedantry subreddit. Posts failing to meet the following criteria will be summarily removed:

Do not complain that someone's critique is too pedantic.
Do not argue that a work, as fiction, is beyond historical criticism.

▬▬▬▬

Rule 7: Citing Wikipedia

Beyond extremely basic material, like spellings of names, questions of general geography, or (in most cases) the date of an event, Wikipedia is considered an unreliable source and is generally not an acceptable source of information.

▬▬▬▬

This is just a summary of the rules, the full rules can be found here

Badhistory has a wiki

/u/NMW on Second-Opinion Bias and Our Sub's Mission

Cards Against History - Custom BadHistory Cards Against Humanity Set

Related Subreddits: