Protestantism, Marxism(and accompanying communism), and Nazism all seemed to have sprung out of Germany which seems unnaturally unlikely for a relatively small country. I guess it's arguable that Marxism was seriously developed in Russia/China and Nazism really owes it's roots in Italy, but I'm wondering if there's any material reason that so many cornerstones of ideology seem to have originated out of this one relatively small slice of the world.
Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Theseus’ mother, etc. Surely it had to come from somewhere, but was it common practice?
In countless TV shows and movies, there are depictions of criminals using pay phones to communicate. There’s even a movie from 2002 titled Phone Booth. I am aware that many criminals throughout history used pay phones for anonymous communication. Some even reported their own crimes to taunt the police. I can’t remember the last time that I saw a functioning pay phone. Did the gradual removal of pay phones cause a significant change in how people committed crimes?
Note: this is a question from the Imperial Chinese exams. I thought it was a good question that I didn't have the answer to, so asking the experts.
"the sort of horses agrarian societies use are too big to subsist entirely on grazing and typically split their food requirements roughly half[grazing]-and-half[grain]"
The article uses pop culture (*Game of Thrones*) to explain some principles of pre-modern logistics.
One of the big limitations is that wagons need to be pulled by horses, which need to be fed.
But pastoral societies did have horses that didn't need agricultral grain. Also, we're talking about draft animals here, not mounts.
So why wouldn't an agricultural society maintain horses that don't need grain?
It is often overlooked how Northern Mexico in the 1800s came to harbor displaced indigenous groups from the Eastern Woodlands of the US, such as the Kickapoo who came from the Great Lakes, Seminoles and Black Seminoles who came from Florida westward (though Black Seminoles/Mascogos stayed and the main Seminoles left).
As part of this frontier migration, I encountered a quite interesting demographic anomaly; there were Cherokee settlements that ended up in Northern Mexico via fleeing southwestward, which the famous inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, Sequoyah visited. They were located in what is now Coahuila, Mexico. I could find very little research on the actual people, their population history and status within Mexico.
What is known of these settlements and what was their ultimate fate? What legacy, if any do they have today?
It seems that growing a moustache was a very stylish thing to do in the mid to late 19th century, was there anybody famous who grew/had a moustache that made people go “I should do that”?
We see OE, middle English, and modern English, but in Italy their language was called Latin, and now it's called Italian. Is there some time of rapid change that historians generally agree upon that separates Latin from Italian? Why isn't italian looked at as "modern latin" like English is looked at as modern English?
My book, which was the result of a major German research grant, can be ordered here. If you use the code AU060, you get 60% off the price!
The Golden Age of the Piano was a time during which thousands of Americans made grand tours to German-speaking Europe to study piano. According to their descriptions, anti-Americanism – in essence the notion that America and its inhabitants were somehow culturally, intellectually, or even biologically inert – played a significant role in this transatlantic cultural exchange. Focussing on Berlin, Weimar and Vienna, this book explores both the roles that anti-Americanism played in this transatlantic exchange and how it influenced the careers of these migrant pianists. It shows that anti-American sentiments were not a uniquely European phenomenon, but actually played a significant role in the cultural life of America at the time, and were accordingly a motivating factor for American musicians to travel to Europe in order to be seen as legitimate. Anti-Americanism also affected the later careers of these migrants after their return, when they had to appeal to the American market in order to capitalise on their European experiences. I have furthermore researched the people and institutions involved in this exchange, how the different major piano teaching studios worked, and which American students passed through them.
AMA!
EDIT: I am currently taking a break, and answer the final questions tomorrow, on Thursday 8 October. Feel free to continue adding questions!
I'm writing a paper for a history class on rural gay men in America during the latter half of the 20th century. It's not super ironed out yet, as the topic will change based on the primary sources I can find -- but so far I can't find any! I've got plenty of secondary sources but even looking through their footnotes has yielded no results. Does anyone know where I could find open-source primary sources relating to this topic?
The Oregon Trail has been part of the zeitgeist of westward expansion, being given a degree of importance in both history and pop culture. Taking also in consideration that Oregon is a fairly productive state in terms of agriculture, why didn't Oregon produce many large population centers like we observe in California?
It seems a consistent pattern that African pagans communities were mostly christian after colonization but no muslim communities converted. Why were the Europeans not interested in converting muslims?
Not sure how to frame this question but I’ve been sort of obsessed with early-mid 20th century Japanese political history as of late. One thing Ive noticed is just how little prominence Japanese leftist groups have at the turn of the millenia. To my knowledge, Japan has a free and fair democracy, but it’s also been called a one party dictatorship ship due to the LDP’s dominance throughout the Post-War period up until today.
A lot of folks seem to dismiss the question due to stereotypes of the Asian/Japanese people (Submissive, Xenophobic, too busy to care, collective society, insert your favorite here), but Japan did seem to have been developing leftist movement in the post-war, especially during the Anpo protest period. So have they seem to have fallen into irrelevancy in the proceeding decades? I’m certain US meddling and the rise of Communist China played a part but the one party dominance of the LDP is something I dont really see in other Western-styled Asian democracies. I’d also suspect a rise of popularity in more socialist/leftist beliefs after the three decades of stagnation within the Japanese economy
I have heard that they would have paraded him around Moscow, but I had always assumed that he would have been executed at the Nuremberg trials.
I have been thinking lately on melee combat for fantasy writing purposes, and it struck me that pikes have seemed to dissapear and reappear several times in history. First was in the greeks, who realized that their phalanxes would do better with longer spears until they arrived to the Macedonian phalanx, which was defeated by the more versatile roman heavy infantry. Then pikes make a dissapearance from history until the late medieval/renaissance/early modern period, where they replace the swiss style halberd-block (barring some special occasions, like the battle of Flooden when english billhooks cut scottish pikes) and had their biggest proponents as the spanish tercio, until they were eventually phased out for bayonet infantry.
My question is then, why was it that the pikes didnt come back _sooner_ in ancient/medieval warfare, having demonstrated their previous effectiveness against shield walls, the most prevalent medieval formations, and cavalry, arguably the biggest danger of medieval combat. And then, when it WAS reintroduced, why didnt more flexible infantry formations defeat it like before?
I've seen a lot of shakespeare plays recently, and almost all of the ones I've seen mention "madness" or "going mad". Was a fear of post-traumatic adult-onset psychosis reasonable in the late 1500's?
You have Polynesians (and more broadly austronesians) settlement going from Rapa Nui to Madagascar , very far away from each others . They settled in Hawaii, New Caledonia , Fijii, Tonga, Tahiti , ect …
So why didn’t the Maori tried to settle in Australia ? It’s basically 1500 km from New Zealand , Closer than Rapa nui is from the nearest land (Tahiti) .
I know the aboriginals were already there , I don’t know if that the reason they didn’t try .