Paul ([info]happyfunpaul) wrote,
@ 2009-03-23 12:46:00
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Lessons of history?
So, let's see, off the top of my head I've got:

Never start a land war in Asia. (Obviously.)

Never invade Russia in winter. (Special case of #1.)

Never hire the Turks as your mercenaries; eventually, they realize that they're the ones with the weapons, and take over. (Abbasid Empire, Egypt, China with the Uighurs, arguably the Byzantines)

Never sign on to a British expedition to the Arctic or Antarctic.

If you see a berzerker who's painted blue, run away, run away now.

Africa is a continent, not a country. And it's big, really big.

If the Mongols send an ambassador to your court, give him proper protocol. Do not cut off his head and send it back to the Khan in an attempt to intimidate the barbarians.

Don't try to intimidate the Vikings, either.

Do not have "celibacy" as a central tenet that all members of your religion must follow.

Dividing up your kingdom equally among your three sons may be "fair", but your empire won't last long that way. Stick to primogeniture.

Stone beats flesh. Bronze beats stone. Iron beats bronze.

Stirrups. Definitely stirrups.

Also, a writing system? Definitely a good idea. But limit education.

No, they aren't really retreating. It's a trap. (Mongols, Iroquois, etc.)

Make sure to pay the army.

The hungrier your people are, the less likely they are to revolt.

A really good story is a powerful thing.

Don't make a martyr out of your enemy.

What are some other "lessons of history"? (Yes, I'm writing another song and I need your help. Also, I don't have anything from U.S. history yet, so feel free to change that.)

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[info]bikergeek
2009-03-23 05:31 pm UTC (link)
Economics: "It's never 'different this time.'"

SRSLY. Dutch tulip bulbs.

After the Industrial Revolution several episodes of supposed increases in productivity were touted as the reasons why it was going to be "different this time."

1920s: Prohibition was going to lead to a sober, more productive workforce. (ISYN, people really believed this!)

1980s: Adoption of Japanese management techniques by American industry.

1990s: The internet. (Resulted in a net *drop* in productivity if anything, as millions of workers became day traders while working at their day jobs.)

2000s real estate bubble: "Real estate never goes down! Buy now or be forever priced out!"

It's never "different this time". Human nature is what it is. People who lend money generally expect to be paid back, and debt eventually has to be repaid out of present or future earning capacity.

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Addendum
[info]quezz
2009-03-23 05:40 pm UTC (link)
Stone beats flesh. Bronze beats stone. Iron beats bronze.

And steel beats iron...but you have to actually understand you made it.

Others:

When peasants scream for bread...give it to them.
If it didn't work for Qin Shihuang, it won't work for you either.
"Permanent revolution," is never permanent.

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Re: Addendum
[info]nekosensei
2009-03-24 02:06 am UTC (link)
Stone beats flesh, bronze beats stone, iron beats bronze, and steel beats bronze, but a nuke beats all.

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[info]marmota
2009-03-23 05:55 pm UTC (link)
Did I miss something? "The hungrier your people are, the less likely they are to revolt" sounds backwards. I thought the roman rule was "keep 'em fed and entertained"?

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[info]happyfunpaul
2009-03-23 06:00 pm UTC (link)
Got that one from someone in the department. Oddly, they're both true! (Under certain circumstances.)

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[info]bikergeek
2009-03-23 08:20 pm UTC (link)
People who are completely starving usually lack the energy or means to revolt. People who are simply underfed and chronically a little bit hungry are the ones to watch out for.

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[info]bedfull_o_books
2009-03-23 10:24 pm UTC (link)
Yes. Think the difference between the Ukraine in the 20s and French peasants just before their revolution.

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[info]dchenes
2009-03-23 06:04 pm UTC (link)
People like to own stuff. (Communism only works on paper.)

Don't try to invade an island nation by sea, because they probably know more about their local weather than you do. (Mongols vs Japan, Spanish Armada vs England)

Don't try to invade an island nation by sea if your culture only knows about boats via conquest. (Mongols vs Japan)

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[info]crazybone
2009-03-23 06:16 pm UTC (link)
When running for political office, never "dare" the press to do their worst when trying to dig up dirt on you.

Gary Hart anyone?

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[info]lhn
2009-03-23 10:17 pm UTC (link)
And more recently, Rod Blagojevich. ("[I]f anybody wants to tape my conversations, feel free to do it. I'd appreciate anyone who wants to tape me openly and notoriously.")

Of course, it might even work if there weren't any dirt to dig up. It's just hard to find a pool of candidates of statistically significant size to test that hypothesis on. ;-)

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[info]megmuck
2009-03-23 06:55 pm UTC (link)
Hmm - U.S. history lessons...

Get out of the colony *before* they revolt. (U.S. revolution, Vietnam...)

Give enough people enough money, and the program is permanent. (New Deal)


I'm trying to summarize the whole political division between poor whites and poor blacks in the south, but it's naptime and it's just not coming to me.

m.



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[info]awfief
2009-03-23 07:49 pm UTC (link)
Holidays don't mean that war is called off.

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[info]outlander
2009-03-24 01:27 am UTC (link)
except sometimes, they do. Christmas Truce, 1914.

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[info]dimers
2009-03-23 08:14 pm UTC (link)
You can't get everyone to get along, but that doesn't mean it ain't worth trying.

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[info]xiphias
2009-03-23 09:48 pm UTC (link)
Have the new government system ready BEFORE you overthrow the old one.

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[info]luckymarty
2009-03-23 09:59 pm UTC (link)
Good luck with that.

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[info]lhn
2009-03-23 10:12 pm UTC (link)
The American Revolution was probably the closest as anything not involving the restoration of a previous regime to having that set up, and the need for a constitutional convention in 1787 demonstrated that it wasn't as close as they'd thought.

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[info]xiphias
2009-03-23 10:59 pm UTC (link)
The fact that they were able to call the 1787 constitutional convention without bloodshed counts as a "success" by my standard, though.

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[info]xiphias
2009-03-23 10:57 pm UTC (link)
I can think of a couple times where it was done: the United States and India.

South Africa, too, pretty much. And possibly Athens under Solon.

But, yeah, it's a LOT easier to think of cases where people DIDN'T bother to think beyond the "kill the bastards in charge" part. And found themselves as the new bastards in charge, but with even less clue than the last ones.

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[info]luckymarty
2009-03-23 10:06 pm UTC (link)
"Stick to primogeniture" doesn't actually make any sense -- not that it's not a better rule but equal division is actually the more natural way.

You left out "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." A somewhat more contemporary version is, Arbitrary powers aren't always going to be used the way you intended.

Once you start paying barbarians to go away, they'll keep coming back.

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[info]twoeleven
2009-03-23 10:34 pm UTC (link)
The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

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[info]lemmozine
2009-03-23 11:31 pm UTC (link)
Someone famous said that. The other one is "Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up."

Personally, I like "Those who don't remember the future are condemned to repeat it."

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[info]lhn
2009-03-24 01:27 am UTC (link)
"History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other."

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[info]thnidu
2009-03-24 12:30 am UTC (link)
Don't expect the people you're invading to play the game by your rules. It's not a game to them. (Redcoats marching in formation vs. snipers in the bush. 200 years later, GIs marching down the trail vs. Viet Cong in the jungle.)

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[info]lhn
2009-03-24 01:25 am UTC (link)
Though in both those cases, it was the regular forces, along with the help of a foreign ally of comparable strength to the enemy, that actually won the war, with the irregulars playing a comparatively minor (but disproportionately memorable) role.

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[info]scholargipsy
2009-03-24 02:13 pm UTC (link)
As a fellow history teacher, I would add this: Magnanimity toward a defeated foe wins a much better peace than the desire for vengeance and reparation, unless your plan for vengeance is so complete that it involves utter annihilation (as of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War). World Wars I and II are obviously the main object lessons here, but there are others.

Lessee, what else? Communism has already been mentioned, but to elaborate, I think history teaches us that real communism -- as envisioned by Marx and Engels -- is incompatible with human psychobiology. I believe we're capable of democratic market socialism (i.e., we can see the connection between broader social welfare and our own enlightened self-interest), but history doesn't bear any more radical experiments in communist rule out -- unless you like repression, famine, and dictatorial government.

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