Comment by megaloblasto
16 days ago
Do you have a source for that? I don't think the printing press was the cause of religious wars any more than bullets were the cause of WWII
16 days ago
Do you have a source for that? I don't think the printing press was the cause of religious wars any more than bullets were the cause of WWII
Have you heard of the Protestant Reformation and the following 120 years of war? The entire Protestant <> Catholic blow up that consumed Europe was pretty directly attributable to the printing press.
(To be clear, nothing is solely and exclusively caused by any one thing. Causality is a very fuzzy concept. But sans printing press, those wars certainly wouldn’t have happened when/where/how they did, if they ever happened at all).
Do you know Hussites? [1] The Hussite Wars (1419–1434) predate printing press and Luther told: "We are all Hussites without knowing it."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussites
Easy access to the Bible text instead of being only read to, hence high literacy of the faithful, was one of the core tenets of some branches of Protestantism.
This is common enough knowledge that “read, like, any history” is an appropriate response. However, if you’re genuinely curious, here’s a random link:
https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/european-humanism/eur...
I blame canned food and trains for solving the logistics problems that previously prevented massive wars.
An interesting one I read was public schools and their creation of a national identity. Before public schools there weren't really standardized languages forced upon an entire nation, etc. The countryside was more one country/people/language morphing into the next, not clean delineated lines where country/language switched instantly. It was also said borders were much more open/abstract before the resultant shift as well.
Napoleonic wars beg to differ.
While they didn't have trains, the Napoleanic wars did feature the first use of canned food to aid in logistical supply of armies. You could argue that the lack of trains (and can openers) probably meant that they jumped the gun on starting giant wars. We Americans fixed that in the Civil War, to great and deadly effect.
1 reply →