Puzzling questions about general history

[Scepcop]

To anyone who might be able to shed light on these questions:

I have some puzzling questions about general history. After watching many history documentaries, there are a number of things I don't get. Can you shed some light on them or explain them? I will list them by number.

1. Why did Columbus have to sail over the Atlantic Ocean to try to get to India? Why didn't the Europeans just sail south around Africa to India?

Also, since Europe and Asia are joined by the largest landmass continent in the world, why couldn't they have just gone over land to India? Surely there must have been multiple routes?

They say that Turkey blocked the "Silk Road". What does that mean? How can a whole route be blocked? How can a whole continent be blocked? And why couldn't armies in Europe just remove the block by force?

2. After Columbus discovered the Americas, history says that Spain sent many men to plunder South America during the 1500's. Why didn't they plunder North America too? Why did they leave the whole northern continent untouched for 100 years?

Then history says that the English settled in Jamestown during the early 1600's. Why didn't the English come to the New World at all during the 1500's? Why did they do nothing for a century? That was never explained.

3. Since America was settled during the 1600's, why didn't the American Indians learn how to make rifles from the white settlers? Surely they could just capture some rifles and learn how to make them right? They had almost 300 years to do so. So why didn't they? If they had, that would have brought more balance to the Indian Wars.

4. Why did the white population in America explode like crazy, whereas the American Indian population didn't? Even before Columbus, the American Indians had thousands of years to populate the continent. So why weren't there millions of them?

5. How did Hernando Cortes conquer the Aztec Empire and South America with only 400 men? Guns during that time were short range and took a long time to load. So couldn't thousands of Aztecs have just thrown spears and rocks and killed all of them easily? They could also have ambushed them in the forest at close range combat and taken the advantage.

6. During the 1800's, why didn't the American Indians just flee into Canada so they didn't have to be forced onto reservations? Then they could live freely in Canada, and the US army could not pursue them there right?

7. During the Vietnam War, why couldn't the US military just capture Hanoi and force a surrender? Surely they could capture the Vietcong leader if they really wanted to right? The US is good at finding anything it wants.

In WWII, when Berlin was captured, the war was over. So why wasn't it like that in the Vietnam War too? Did the US purposely not capture Hanoi and the Vietcong leader in order to prolong the war for profit?

If the Vietcong leader could evade capture like that by hiding in the forest, then why didn't Hitler and Mussolini do the same?

8. Why was Japan able to occupy a huge country like China, but Germany could not do that with Russia? Germany's armies were more powerful than Japan's.

9. Why didn't the Nazis enter Moscow to capture Stalin and force a surrender? How else were they planning to win? Aren't you supposed to capture a city or leader to win a war?

10. Why did the Nazi armies fight a seige at Stalingrad for many months? I thought their objective was to capture the oil fields in the Caucus region. So why didn't they just pass by Stalingrad and head toward the Caucus region for the oil then? What's the point of wasting many men and resources for just one city when the objective was oil?

Sorry for so many questions. I look forward to your explanations. Thanks.

[NinjaPuppy]

Wow! That's a lot of questions.

I might be able to give one of many answers to this one:

4. Why did the white population in America explode like crazy, whereas the American Indian population didn't? Even before Columbus, the American Indians had thousands of years to populate the continent. So why weren't there millions of them?
Smallpox and other European diseases killed off massive amounts of the population.

[SydneyPSIder]

[NinjaPuppy]

That is one hell of a great response. I must say that your answer to #9 made me chuckle.

Russian winter, scorched earth policy. Bloody hell. Don't you watch Fat Freddy's videos?

[SydneyPSIder]

Many of the questions can be answered simply by browsing Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_road

Simple geography (and/or 'hostiles' to the north):



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade

The particular routes were historically also shaped by the powerful influence of winds and currents during the age of sail. For example, from the main trading nations of Western Europe it was much easier to sail westwards after first going south of 30 N latitude and reaching the so-called "trade winds"; thus arriving in the Caribbean rather than going straight west to the North American mainland. Returning from North America, it is easiest to follow the Gulf Stream in a northeasterly direction using the westerlies. A similar triangle to this, called the volta do mar was already being used by the Portuguese, before Columbus' voyage, to sail to the Canary Islands and the Azores. Columbus simply expanded the triangle outwards, and his route became the main way for Europeans to reach, and return from, the Americas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

In the context of emerging western imperialism and economic competition between European kingdoms seeking wealth through the establishment of trade routes and colonies, Columbus' speculative proposal, to reach the East Indies by sailing westward, eventually received the support of the Spanish crown, which saw in it a chance to gain the upper hand over rival powers in the contest for the lucrative spice trade with Asia. During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, at a locale he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming them for the Spanish Empire.

Though Columbus was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas (having been preceded by the Norse expedition led by Leif Ericson in the 11th century[7]), Columbus' voyages led to the first lasting European contact with the Americas, inaugurating a period of European exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for several centuries. They had, therefore, an enormous impact in the historical development of the modern Western world. Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of spreading the Christian religion.[3]

Never admitting that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies he had set out for, Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands he visited indios (Spanish for "Indians").[8][9][10] Columbus' strained relationship with the Spanish crown and its appointed colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and dismissal as governor of the settlements on the island of Hispaniola in 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the benefits which Columbus and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown.

On colonialism and the benefits of guns and steel:

From the 12 October 1492 entry in his journal, in which he wrote of them, "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language."[49]

Columbus remarked that their lack of modern weaponry and metal-forged swords or pikes was a tactical vulnerability, writing, "I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased."[50]

...

The scholar Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to America in the years following Columbus' first voyage, was the first to speculate that the land was not part of Asia but in fact constituted some wholly new continent previously unknown to Eurasians. His travel journals, published 1502–4, convinced German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to reach the same conclusion, and in 1507—a year after Columbus' death—Waldseemüller published a world map calling the new continent America from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus". According to Paul Lunde, "The preoccupation of European courts with the rise of the Ottoman Turks in the East partly explains their relative lack of interest in Columbus' discoveries in the West."[100]

etc, etc.

[Scepcop]

Thanks for your answers everyone. I have a few more questions to add.

11. In WWII, instead of landing at Normandy on D-Day, why didn't the Allies just land troops in the Middle East or Russia and head to Europe over land? Or just land in Spain instead? Spain was unoccupied right? Then there wouldn't have been the risk of facing enemy forces meeting them at the landing point.

Also, why didn't the Allies bomb the beachhead of Normandy by plane before their troops landed there, to get enemy troops out of the way?

12. How did Genghis Khan conquer China and Russia? Mongolia is a small country and sparsely populated. How could it occupy all of Asia like that? No way.

Also, documentaries about Genghis Khan make it sound like his army marched through China and plummeted every town and village without resistance. Why didn't an army of millions of Chinese soldiers come out to face Khan on the battlefield? When Alexander the Great marched into Persia, he faced large armies that outnumbered his own. They marched out to fight him. Why did no armies march out to face Genghis Khan in a grand climactic battle? That's weird.

Instead, documentaries just say that Genghis Khan's army ran through China and took everything they wanted with no resistance, like Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal knocking everyone down with no resistance. Then it says that they reached the walls of Beijing and surrounded it, starving the Chinese inside the city and then looting it when the troops inside fell from starvation.

Why did no million man army come out to fight Genghis Khan in an epic battle, like the kind that Alexander the Great face? Strange.

One more question I forgot to ask.

13. The ancient Romans and armies of medieval Europe wore metal armor over their bodies to protect the wearer from swords and spears. Why didn't the European and American armies during the 18th Century wear any armor? Why didn't Napoleon's army, the British army, or the American continental army wear any armor? Wouldn't the armor have protected them from musket balls?

It's strange to think that medieval soldiers and Roman soldiers were better protected than 18th century troops. Odd huh?

[Arouet]

Really interesting podcast series on Genghis Khan:

Wrath of the Khans: Hardcore History: starting with show 43: http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive

[Scepcop]

Here's another question:

14. During the top secret Manhattan Project, how did the US secretly detonate an atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico? Wouldn't an atomic bomb going off in a mushroom cloud within the US have gotten the attention of residents in New Mexico, the media and local government as well? How could that have been done secretly? I've never understood that.

[SydneyPSIder]

[melissacollins]

Good question and answers

[Mr Q]

Skepcop - There are several modern books that came out in the last decade or two that "re-wrote" a lot of the main "glorified" events using diaries and other manuscripts from the people who lived during those times.

The main surprise one gets from reading these witnessed accounts is that most were not as glorified as our schoolbooks depict. Back then, people liked to glorify even the not-so-elite people making history. These myths continued into the modern age and so in our school books with very tainted information based on word of mouth accounts of the times. Though a lot of what we were taught in school is far from actual accounts from people who lived back then, the mis-information has just been brought to light. Will our present school history books be updated? Time will tell.