Gods help us

Explanation: In the US Civil War, the necessity of supplying literal hundreds-of-thousands of soldiers with rations at the same time meant that foodstuffs with a long shelf life - and ideally, a low cost - were preferred. If you were lucky, and in the Union, canned goods might be on the (metaphorical or literal) table. If you were unlucky on either side -and it was far more common to be unlucky - hardtack would be a big part of your diet.

Hardtack, as the name suggests, is a rather hard form of long-lasting bread, baked multiple times for longevity. It takes forever to go bad - and it’s not much more than an organic brick with some calorie content. Soldiers called them ‘worm castles’ both because of how impenetrable they were, and because insects - like worms and weevils - often infested them over the course of their long, long storage. Troops would boil hardtack in coffee, both to soften the brick enough to actually eat, and to dispose of any insectoid critters living inside.

It’s a man’s life in the Grand Army of the Union!

Yeah, the advent of artificial fertilizers has allowed many places, including many in the USA, to revert to monocultures.

While some farming practices have improved and remain improved, like systems for land and water retention, monoculture is only sustainable as long as the supply of artificial fertilizer - at a profitable price - remains steady. And even then, artificial fertilizers have other drawbacks - including environmental damage from overflow (especially algal blooms) and the consumption of mined phosphates - a limited resource.

That would be a variant of letting the land lay fallow - the system followed by the Southern planters of the early-mid 1800s.

But yes, basic crop rotation was not cutting edge - three-field rotation had been practiced for nearly a thousand years in Europe by that point, and four-field rotation (allowing full use of all the land while maintaining or increasing fertility) for around a hundred years.

But what about the slightly reduced short-term profits from not growing all cotton on the land!? Won’t someone think of the slightly reduced short-term profits!? 😭

Academics: “You know, even medieval peasants practiced three-field crop rotations, because a few short generations will show that monocropping is unsustainable.”

Southern Planters: “Later generations can get fucked, I want a profit now”

Luckily we never had to deal with that short-sighted mentality here in the US again, and certainly not in our current situation

Yeah, just really ridiculous standards for agriculture that wouldn’t have passed muster anywhere else. The white settlers really shot themselves (and everyone else in the process) in the face with the idea that they could just reap monocrops forever without taking even basic care (in terms of soil fertility or stability ) of the land they lived and farmed on.

Fun Fact! One of the reasons for Hadrian’s Wall in Britain was to channel migration and allow goods passing the frontier to be taxed. Especially since Roman soldiers doubled as bureaucrats, including collecting import/export duties, in many postings.

If you have a bunch of year-round employees already on your payroll, you might as well get some use out of them in peacetime!

Explanation: During Napoleon’s wars on the continent, he made a ‘Rhine Confederation’ of German states to pay lip service to the idea of German nationalism and unity, under Napoleon as ‘protector’, of course. It was totally independent and sovereign and definitely not just a puppet ally to provide troops and supplies for Napoleon’s continuing conquests.

Explanation: A rare bit of OC from me!

George Washington, whatever his other faults, certainly imagined himself a ‘modern’ and rational man. While that Washington owned and operated a farm (with slaves, as was unfortunately common in Virginia at the time) is common knowledge, less commonly known is the effort he put in to make it a ‘modern’ and rational operation based on the latest practices imported from Britain. No mere fads - these were cutting-edge techniques that had made British agriculture the envy of Europe, dealing with everything from grain processing to the layout of fields to the proper rotation of crops to maintain soil fertility.

The last of these was of particular importance to Washington, who despised and disdained the ‘American’ process of farming at the time, especially that of his fellow planter elites, whose practices of monocropping cotton and tobacco utterly ruined the long-term fertility of their land. Washington, himself something of an obsessive workaholic, regarded the practices of his fellow American farmers as ‘slovenly’ and ignorant outside of New England and Pennsylvania - not entirely incorrectly - leading to a slow but inevitable ruin of the land and the reduction of the once-bountiful yields that characterized American farming. He hoped that, by his example, he could make other farmers see that a modern and rational basis for agriculture was the way forward.

Unfortunately, his fellow American farmers had an ace up their sleeve - westward expansion. While westward expansion had always been an interest of American colonists, the combination of increased population density and declining soil fertility made the westward push ever-more-important to American farmers. Once the land back east is ruined, why not ruin ‘virgin’ land out west to recover your profitability? This, unfortunately, was a sentiment which was itself strengthened by the revitalization of slavery and the profitability of cotton monocropping around ~1800 AD by the invention of the cotton gin.

While Washington himself was very far from an ally of Native Americans, and generally a supporter of westward expansion, the difference in intensity and interest is telling - Washington sought an integration of Native Americans into the new polity of the USA, albeit from a paternalistic and assimilationist position, and even decades later Washington was remembered fondly by some Native American polities for his (relatively, and for a white man - both important qualifiers) fair dealings with them as president. Later westward expansion, however, was predicated explicitly on pushing the Native Americans out - it was the land which was desired for seizure by private individuals for profit, not some abstract notion of enlarging and strengthening the polity.

Very tellingly, after Washington’s death, his estate fell into disrepair by the 1830s because of the disinterest of later Virginians in his imported innovations. It was noted in the early-mid 1800s that, rather than crop rotation, Southern planters practiced a form of wasteful ‘land rotation’ wherein half the fields were left fallow - something which was cutting edge in the 4th fucking century BCE, maybe, but not so much at the dawn of the industrial revolution.

The primitive state of American agriculture in the South and West would continue even after the death of chattel slavery after the 1860s, with the US Civil War - one of the early experiments in Southern crop rotation was in the 18 fucking 90s. In the same period, George Washington Carver (a Black man - unrelated to the white Washington), advocated crop rotation with the peanut to restore soil fertility. Such ‘modern’ practices still were not wholly rooted in the South or the West by the 1930s - at which point the prolonged and ruinous standard of US agriculture resulted in the total agricultural and environmental collapse of the Dust Bowl.

… should have just fucking listened to Washington, guys. Either one.

Turns out what’s bad is not “current elite” but “shitty power structures”

DECIMATED

19th century Europe: “THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE GRAMMAR IMPROVES”

1st century Rome: “Learn Latin; or don’t, it’s not our fucking problem.”

Smiling rn

I really appreciate all the context you give for your posts! Thank you

Anytime! I’m always happy to share the trivia knocking around in my head!

Fun Fact! Romans actually put very little emphasis on teaching the dirty provincials Latin. They simply gave and posted all their laws and proclamations in Latin, and if the provincials didn’t understand it, too fucking bad, ignorance is no excuse for not breaking the law.

This, obviously, put those who DID know Latin at a distinct advantage, not only for avoiding trouble themselves, but also for getting their fellows out of trouble by knowing what the law ACTUALLY was. It created a kind of lower provincial elite (or middle-class, if one prefers) with a self-interest in learning Latin (and, ideally, literacy). This relatively soft hand, as opposed to 19th century nations beating children for speaking ‘dirty’ languages, actually was very effective at establishing Latin in conquered territories. Language was one of the more deeply rooted aspects of the Empire in the West for this reason.

Explanation: In the Super Mario games, made by Japanese company Nintendo, one of the main enemies are turtles, and the usual boss, Bowser, is himself a giant spiked turtle who spits fire.

… in the 16th century AD, Japan’s invasion of Korea (the Imjin War) was foiled in part by a series of naval disasters inflicted by Korean ‘Turtle Ships’ which were spiked, armored warships armed with heavy cannons.

(Bowser is not actually based on the Turtle Ship, but the similarity is funny)

Precious!

Bias!? Me!?

I’m as unbiased as a Roman historian writing about the barbaric savages to the far north (they wear pants, which is proof that they’re basically animals instead of people)

“Idk, we lost a fleet, I guess it must have been a sea monster or something.”

[atom splits]