Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 March 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 26

Great Depression/World War II differences

what was the difference between the Great Depression and the Second World War? 86.157.244.193 (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

See Great Depression and World War II. MarnetteD|Talk 19:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Briefly: a depression is a period of economic trouble and poverty, a war is a period in which countries fight each other with armies and weapons. Yep, quite some difference. The great depression was a very severe depression, causing poverty in many parts of the world, lasting from 1929 to the beginning of the second world war, which was a very severe war, lasting from 1939 to 1945, because many countries took part, 60 to 100 million people were killed and large parts of the world were left in ruins. Your textbook has more. ;) Jahoe (talk) 22:19, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

One of the most interesting questions about this section is that although WWII technically began in 1939, for the purpose of eras of U.S. history WWII is considered to have begun in 1941. Any other era whose starting date depends on how it's looked at?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:53, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

China might see WWII starting in 1937 with the Second Sino-Japanese War (not an answer you your Q, but another date range of interest for WW2). --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:38, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

And the Chinese government has just this year declared that the "War of Resistance Against Japanese" is now 14 years instead of 8 years - presumably to help legitimise the Communist guerilla war against the government of the time. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Georgia guy, when I was at university, "medieval" history was designated as starting from the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, unless looking at Britain, in which case start dates were really fuzzy and mostly a century or even two later, some even considering 1066 as the 'start'.

I also seem to recall that the end of medieval and start of early modern were cunningly designed so that both excluded the Wars of the Roses - deemed too complicated for undergraduates.

Presumably, historiography regards all of this as nonsense, but hey ho. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:38, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

When I was at school (in England, 1980/90s), we were taught that "medieval" ran from 1066 to the ascension of Henry VII, so it definitely included the Wars of the Roses. (This still seems to be a relatively common understanding, judging by general-level history programs, although I think the more academic notion that the early middle ages (post Roman until 1066) are medieval is becoming more popularly acknowledged). This definition I think does make sense in a British (or more accurately English) context, because both event marked major changes in the way society was ordered. But they are pretty irrelevant to the rest of Europe, and the concept of "medieval" itself isn't particularly meaningful outside of Europe, the former Roman Empire, and anywhere closely involves with those. Iapetus (talk) 13:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Also consider: eras such as the "stone age", "bronze age", "iron age", and prehistory generally are defined by the presence of certain technologies, and began or ended in at different times in different places depending on when that technology was adopted there. For example, the Iron Age began in Britain about 800BC, but Greece and the Middle East and India had been Iron Age since about 1200BC. Similarly, geological eras/periods/etc are defined by geological changes, which may occur earlier in some locations than others. Iapetus (talk) 13:31, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

In a depression people kill themselves. In a war they kill others. I think that is about the biggest difference. Dmcq (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

The television family drama series The Waltons which focused on a Virginia mountain family in the 1930s-1940s, was set during the Great Depression and World War II. 31.49.30.19 (talk) 16:21, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Usage of exonym Indian for Oceanian

Are there any discussion in sources regarding James Cook's (and presumably other Europeans) use of the term Indian to refer to the indigenous people of Oceania and Australia? About how prevalent it was and how long it was used for.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 20:32, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Article is East Indies... -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Nope.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 06:28, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes it is -- in the 18th century, there wasn't necessarily any clear or well-defined distinction between the "East Indies" and the "South Seas", and the habit of calling inhabitants of the East Indies as "Indians" was not yet deprecated... AnonMoos (talk) 14:26, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if it was, but the Wikipedia article you linked itself does not state that claim and does not include anything beyond Papua New Guinea . Maybe it should be added (if that is actually in the sources).--KAVEBEAR (talk) 19:24, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

The article is just OK in quality, and semi-inconsistent in one or two places, but if the matter were to be discussed anywhere on Wikipedia, it should probably be in that article. The linguistic similarities between Oceanic languages were fairly obvious to anyone who was paying attention, so I really don't know why a term used to describe northern coastal New Guineans wouldn't be extended to Melanesians, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 09:52, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

All I can find is that our disambiguation page Indian says that "Indian" was used for Aboriginal Australians until the 19th century. Loraof (talk) 21:29, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary shows the term used thus ("An indigenous inhabitant of Australia, New Zealand, or the Pacific Islands. Now hist. and rare.") from 1769 to 1872. That is, that is the range of dates of their collected examples. The first example is from Captain Cook's diary for Oct 9 1769; he uses "the Indians" to mean the Maori people. They also have Joseph Banks on the same voyage using it in 1770 for indigenous Australians. In 1790, William Bligh used the term in his account of the mutiny near Tahiti; and there is another Australian reference dated 1830. However note, that the last example, dated 1872, explicitly says the term was already deprecated by then: "The ‘aborigines’, as they are now styled... Captain Cook would in his older time have called ‘Indians’." 174.88.10.107 (talk) 02:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 06:28, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 September 29#Use of 'Indian' to refer not only to natives of the Americas, but other indigenes. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:20, 27 March 2017 (UTC)