The top ten worst decisions in history
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Slaves sure had it hard in any time of history, but the same can’t be said about eunuchs. At least in Rome by the fourth century CE some people willingly decided to turn into eunuchs for a chance to get a place in palace bureaucracy and, by extension, a better life. The same happened in many other Eastern civilizations.
Are you talking about the 2001 movie starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale? Or the original Japanese attack in WW2?
Napoleon Bonaparte simply not knowing when to restrain himself. France could have become a superpower under him, and indeed it became such for a few years, but Nappy wasted his potential in ventures that didn't pay off.
From a balance of power perspective, regarding Germany, we could point to Ludwig von Benedek's stubborn prudence in the midst of the Battle of Koniggratz in 1866. Same with the Marshall of France, Achille Bazaine, four years later.
But overall, i'd say the Showa period (1926-1945) of the Japanese Empire was the one single period of time where a nation just beat the record of most consecutive self-defeating mistakes.
From a balance of power perspective, regarding Germany, we could point to Ludwig von Benedek's stubborn prudence in the midst of the Battle of Koniggratz in 1866. Same with the Marshall of France, Achille Bazaine, four years later.
But overall, i'd say the Showa period (1926-1945) of the Japanese Empire was the one single period of time where a nation just beat the record of most consecutive self-defeating mistakes.
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Decision of Konrad of Mazovia to bring Teutonic Order to Poland is often regarded as one of the worst mistakes in Poland's history, especially considering the fact, that it happened just after Andrew II of Hungary expelled Teutonic Knights from Transylvania, where they tried to carve up state for themselves. Teutonic Knights soon proved to be problematic also in Poland. They falsified Konrad's document, (in originall one Konrad has given them Chełmno Land only as fief), making Chełmno nucleus of their independent state. And soon (in 1234) German volunteers on their way to Prussia, where they were meant to spread Christianity, looted Christian Mazovia and burned cathedral in Płock.
Thus Konrad of Mazovia is blamed for rise of Teutonic Order's State and later Kingdom of Prussia (and also for partitions of Poland, and even for ww2
).
Thus Konrad of Mazovia is blamed for rise of Teutonic Order's State and later Kingdom of Prussia (and also for partitions of Poland, and even for ww2
).Your right that we could keep going over point after point, but I did notice a different bias in our thinking and conclusions. You, I think, tend to assume things will revert to things being simular while I do not.
For example, I could see an Aztec empire that won round one, establishing trade relations with the Spanish, lasting into say, the 1560s, but before they die or after they die, since they now have horses and gunpowder, those techs spreading, 120 years early (in the case of horses, who were captured in the Pueblo revolt) or never in the case of gunpowder. Or perhaps the power in Mexico fragments and the Spanish have to go in city state by city state like they did with the Maya, which took until 1697.
Even without any of that, just imagine the Spanish being more cautious with the Inca.
Simularly, "If it hadn’t started in 1775, it would have started in 1776," shows a similar inevitablity. A "near war" at Lexington and Concord could cause an olive branch petition to be sent without violence and be better received. Perhaps the Patriots do something stupid and alienate popular opinion. I could go on, but the point is, I see the American Revolution happening generally as it did as much less inevitable than you do.
Certainly a bigger mass murderer than Vlad Tepes. Not sure about Ivan but I suspect yes. By his own claim he enslaved a third of Gauls and killed a third. Population I heard quoted for Gaul circa 58 BC on these boards recently was between 6-10 million by a guy doing a Gaul TL and seemed to know what he's talking about. So we're talking between 2-3.3 million. Even if you assume he's high counting, like he often did, you still have casualty rates over 1 million. So, even on low count mode, he's in the same category as Pol Pot.
He basically took a culture with an intelligensia, organization and long term planning and turned it into a desert of villas where nothing really important came out for the next 500 years. I suspect your instinct is to say "it would have happened that way anyway" but think about it not happening that way. Imagine an atl where the Persians conquered the Greeks in 479 BC and the history read, "for the next 500 years nothing important happened there" because a third were killed and a third enslaved.
Yes, to some extent your right. There would have been. But imagine a world where somehow Carthage won the Punic Wars and established a trade empire deep into Europe. Imagine if the classical "role model" for Europe were merchant princes along the lines of the Italian States, the Dutch Republic, or even the Vikings as a hybrid, all looking back to the "Glory that was Carthage".
If rulers are using that as a model of "who they want to be like" you get something different than you do with the Romans being the role model otl. The Romans were the "Role Model" for way too many kings and rulers and autocrats. So you can't blame the Romans directly, but you can say they modeled bad behavior. Julius Caesar was in many ways the exemplar of that bad behavior, so to some extent yes, he deserves blame.
Decision of Konrad of Mazovia to bring Teutonic Order to Poland is often regarded as one of the worst mistakes in Poland's history, especially considering the fact, that it happened just after Andrew II of Hungary expelled Teutonic Knights from Transylvania, where they tried to carve up state for themselves. Teutonic Knights soon proved to be problematic also in Poland. They falsified Konrad's document, (in originall one Konrad has given them Chełmno Land only as fief), making Chełmno nucleus of their independent state. And soon (in 1234) German volunteers on their way to Prussia, where they were meant to spread Christianity, looted Christian Mazovia and burned cathedral in Płock.
Thus Konrad of Mazovia is blamed for rise of Teutonic Order's State and later Kingdom of Prussia (and also for partitions of Poland, and even for ww2
Wow, that sounds like an epically bad decision. Why did he do it?
Konrad was mindless brute. He ordered to brutally execute voivode Krystyn, who was commander of northern border's defense, thus Mazovia became more exposed to Prussian raids. He also tried to get throne in Cracow after his older brother Leszek the White was murderd in 1227, thus he was more involved in the South than in the North (but due to his cruelty, no one wanted him in Cracow, so his attempts ultimately failed. He was really bad, bad guy, and not very bright one also. I have once made thread about scenario, when he is different man, not the OTL monster:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/different-konrad-of-mazovia.446846/
Skallagrim
Banned
I think the flaw in this example is the assumption that a victorious Carthage could or would have established a trade empire deep into Europe. The Carthaginians didn't have the set-up for that kind of conquest, and even moving into Iberia was basically just the Barcids pushing for that very aggressively. The thing is... Rome didn't model "bad behaviour" as such, but behaviour that -- while we may prefer something else, and I certainly do -- just made sense for them. The Hellenistic monarchs were no different, and I'd like to argue that if Rome had been killed off, there's a good chance that the wars of the Hellenic states would've ended with one of them defeating the various rivals, and becoming an imperial hegemon. Very possibly one that thereafter expands West to defeat Carthage. (Because Carthage would not be able to defeat that empire, either; they don't have the strategic depth of Persia, and they would be meeting this ATL Greek Empire when it's already far more consolidated that Rome was during the Punic Wars.)
I would see the end result as culturally different from Rome, obviously, leading to a very different future... but "The Empire" will still be there, as a central idea. That meme isn't just going away, and Rome didn't invent it. They were just the one who got to fill that role for their part of the world, in OTL. If not them, then someone else. But that someone else isn't likely to be Carthage.
Perhaps you’re right on the American Revolution, but personally I think that by 1775 the odds were definitely against peace.
You’re right, when it concerns less advanced cultures against more advanced ones, I do tend to think things will just go as they did in OTL. Regarding the Aztecs, I think it was too late for them. Even if they had gotten guns and cannons, and a bit more time to cope with the invasions, could they really outmatch an objectively more technologically advanced society? In the short run they had, I don’t think so. Of coure they were advanced in several fields, but warfare wasn’t one of them.
It’s not really fair to Caesar to say he created a “desert”. Gaul is actually the province in the West that best integrated with the Roman Empire, and Gauls were attached to him personally, some of them at least. Natives would revolt, from time to time, but I don’t think they lived especially worse than they did before the Romans. The Elite would behave like their conquerors, while the common folk could live as they wished, with their own traditions and everything, except for Druidic cult. I know, the famous Tacitus quote “they make a desert and they call it peace”, but honestly, had things been this bad, Roman rule would have collapsed sooner on its own.
Carthage would have actually been worse as role model, its merchant empire was based on the massive slavery and maltreatment of their “allies”. It was a precarious structure, that’s why it lacked the same cohesion as the Roman Republic. Kings in Europe chose as their model the strongest regal structure inherited from the past, which was, for all its faults, the Roman Empire, but they actually started as the Gauls and the Germans, with chieftains ruling alongside a chaste of warriors with their own retinue. We can’t blame them for wanting stability through stronger central rule. But in any case, if you wanna blame someone for that, you should blame Augustus, if anything. Caesar never really had the chance to impose his own political model, whatever that might have been.
I generally don’t judge people from antiquity with the same ethical standards as I would contemporary people. Caesar did kill a lot of people, but Vercingetorix would have similarly exterminated all of the Romans in Italy had he had the chance. Those were cruel and harsh times, it was kill or be killed, Caesar just lived as any other man would have in his time. Vlad surely killed less people, but he was vicious, feral, and sadistic, all beyond political pragmatism. As for Ivan, he’s probably murdered more people than Caesar in his long reign, and he was genuinely deranged. Caesar might have killed a lot of people, but as a human being he was way more decent than those two.
Part of why the Planters in the South pushes so hard for the mudsill theory, saying there had to be someone at the bottom. So long as they made sure Blacks were greatest the worst, they could leave their poor Whites in an awful state, with the belief that perhaps one day they too could own slaves. It was part of what the North hated about the whole issue of slavery, as the best soil would be taken and destroyed to make profits for wealthy slave owners, who could then control a state's political representatives and such. In the wonderful thread Male arising, there is a wonderful bit where, after the Freedman run state government redistributed the land from plantations, a poor white said that the *****ers did more for him and his group more in four years than the planters did in eighty.
Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks joining the Provisional Government without demanding immediate elections for a Constituant Assembly and a defensive doctrine on all fronts.
Erzberger and Oberndorff signing the Armistice of Compiegne for the civil government, instead of insisting that the military leadership, which IOTL had kept them down throughout the war, screwed up, and would later invent the myth of having been stabbed in the back, go and sign it themselves.
Erzberger and Oberndorff signing the Armistice of Compiegne for the civil government, instead of insisting that the military leadership, which IOTL had kept them down throughout the war, screwed up, and would later invent the myth of having been stabbed in the back, go and sign it themselves.
Which shows you how much life sucked back then. IIRC the death rate for castration was 80%+
Cutting your Johnson off in the hope of career advancement has got to be the worst decision in human history!
It often wasn't a choice. I imagine no one asked the many boys in Europe who were turned into castrato. Then again, less career advancement for them so much as them being used as entertainers by whoever had control over them.
At least under Constantius II, they both decided to cut it off and enjoyed high ranking positions in government. It kind of depends from the time period and the location involved.
One thing people seem to forget or be unaware of, slavery was everyone and it always sucked. It was about as bad in African, Asian and Native American cultures as it was in European ones. There seems to be some PC myth out there that it wasn't as bad in x culture than in the European one.
This is false and people make excuses for non-European slavery they won't (and shouldn't) accept in European ones. I heard from more than one board that "Islamic slavery wasn't as bad as European ones and they treated their slaves like servants". This is the same excuse Southerners used in the 19th century. If you read 19th century slavery apologist literature from the South that refrain is constant. No, they were treated like slaves , like everywhere else.
Slaves were treated differently by profession not area. A house slave was almost always treated better than a field slave, but that was true whether in Arabia or the South. Part of it is that it is easier to treat someone harshly who is just one of scores than one you actually get to know, and part of it is that house slaves have an easier time of killing you than a field slave. If you push your cook too far she might put rat poison in your stew.
The amount of skill needed to do the job also helped determine how well you were treated. A slave who was a blacksmith or a scribe was generally better treated than a field hand or miner. It is easier to replace a field hand than a blacksmith. A blacksmith takes years of training while you can just hand a field hand some farm tools.