Not exactly “contractors” (that implies a money economy that did not exist yet).
Rather, what appears to be the case is that a small number of relatively high status professionals were assisted by a rather larger number of “corvee” labourers drawn from the countryside as a whole.
So not “slaves”, but rather “payers of their labour tax”. [I think we can safely dismiss the Zahi Hawass ‘they did it as volunteers out of love for the pharaoh’ explanation. :D]
So, they weren’t slaves, they were just men who had to do back-breaking, unpaid labour under threat of violence by privileged elites ? So glad we nuanced that one up
Blood, gold and time is the way I’ve heard it most succinctly expressed, from the Soviets, Americans and British respectively.
The western Allies were also largely responsible for roflstomping the Luftwaffe, so without the air offensive over Germany (using Britain as the unsinkable aircraft carrier, British time) they’d face comparatively crap Soviet Air Forces. Oh, and with no Lend-Lease (there’s that American cash again) there’s no studebaker trucks to advance the Red Army as far as it would have gone. That’s why I say in the OP one nation claiming the sole credit for Hitler’s defeat is on my list.
I heard he left because he was worried about the influence the catholic church was having on his country, the pope acting as a monarch with property on his land.
There is that other myth. The Marines have great PR. Actually the majority of personnel and the majority of casualties were both from the U.S Army. Even when you leave out the Air Corps.
That’s the thing, I was taught the opposite myth when I was young. Rosa Parks was an innocent sweet old (42!) lady who was minding her own business when she suddenly got thrown into the civil rights movement. There is nothing wrong with the reality. It’s just not what this Yankee was taught.
When I worked at the Little Rock Library, an illustrated kids book drew her as twenty at the most.
I renewed Daisy Bates’ library card there. The truth dawned. I asked her, “Are you Daisy Bates?” She nodded and frowned.
“THE Daisy Bates?” She nodded and stepped back.
“May I shake your hand?”
And she smiled and shook my hand.
McGwire and Sosa did NOT ‘save baseball’. Attendance went down the year after their HR race.
The Red Sox did not ‘fail to win any World Series because they refused to integrate’. The Yanks won plenty of WS without any black players while others had integrated, and the Yanks won plenty after they integrated.
Conversely, the Red Sox did not ‘make the World Series in 1967 because they finally integrated.’ They were plenty integrated in 1966, and they stunk.
Corked bats appear to hurt performance and sliding head first into First Base slows you down. Those are facts.
A .200 hitter today would NOT be a ‘God’ in 1916. First of all, humans arnt particularly genetically superior to people back then. In tiny ways maybe, but not a lot. Also, any health advantage one might have is going to be cancelled out by:
Shitty environment
Barnstorming
Train travel
Muddy spitballs with no backdrop thrown from a higher mound. More beanballs, dirtier play.
They were “slaves” in the same way that American conscripts during WW2 were “slaves”.
Or, indeed, all of us, who have to pay taxes - that is, pay part of the fruits of our labour under threat of violence by privileged elites.
The difference between this and “slave” status is pretty clear: slaves are owned like property; people paying a tax (corvee; conscription, which is a kind of corvee; or in money) are not - they are simply working of a debt to the government that, in theory at least, uses that service or cash for the commonweal.
