r/AskHistorians

I always hear claims about how France was prepared to have another trench war and was taken by surprise by German lightning warfare tactics, but does this actually reflect French thinking at the time? And if so, why not extend the main fortifications of the Maginot line with its border with Belgium when it was entirely sure it would enter another war with Germany? (As I understand, the French actually offered to subsidize fortifying the Ardennes region during the 1930's but this was declined by Belgium).

I mean even just seeing from the German perspective leading up to both wars, it makes total sense that if for whatever reason they decided to adopt another trench war campaign with France, that they would go through Belgium. The Schlieffen Plan was a totally sound idea for Imperial German High Command, and if you ignored the way WW1 went, it would make sense if implemented again. The Franco-German border was heavily fortified (significantly more than in WW1). Northern France through Belgium was flatter, operationally open and would allow for further operations (hell its apart of why there was little to no allied troops in the Netherlands, they prioritized Belgium). And I imagine France expected any major German offensive to come through Belgium anyway (and ironically it did with Fall gelb).

I saw a previous question asking why it was 1776 and not 1783 (when the treaty of Paris was signed) and that answer made sense in that context. But the United States in its current form didn’t exist until the constitution was signed in 1788 and George Washington didn’t take office till 1789. It makes more sense in my head that 1788/1789 would be the start (thus the semiquincentennial would be 2038)

How much of a chance did the average gold miners have in traveling to California to strike it rich? Was I looking to keep a better than average quality of life if it went well? Or is it like hoping to be a successful youtuber or twitch streamer where very few succeed but many try or were the odds more equitable?

What happened to all the horses when animal power became obsolete from the beginning to middle of the 20th century?

The shift from animal to motorised power in the early 20th century was, by the standard of human history, pretty quick. I've heard that around 1900 New York City had around 200 000 horses and by 1950 it had a few hundred.

What happened to all the horses, not just in New York but all over? Were they sterelised, moved, euthanised? Did the cost of buying a horse crash to extremely low levels?

I'm especially curious about what this history might suggest about other shifts away from animal agriculture- like beef - if and when the climate crisis forces a dramatic reduction in the number of cattle.

Thanks!!!

Are there any books from the AH booklist that have an audiobook version?

Everyone in Ireland will be familiar with the pejorative phrase 'taking the soup', referring to folk memory of soup kitchens during the famine offering aid if and only if those that needed it would convert from Catholicism to Protestantism.

How common place was this practice in reality? A few follow up questions; to what extent did this play a role in the anglicisation of the country (if any), and are a lot of Irish and Northern Irish Protestants today descended from 'soupers'?

In America, it's generally thought that having a big penis is a point of pride, and having a small one is shameful. It's also a pretty common fun fact that in Ancient Greece, it was rather the opposite, having a small penis was civilized and a large one barbaric. Is this fact accurate, and was Greece a deviation from the norm? How ubiquitous was the preference for larger penises, if at all?

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I can't find anything about it when I search here or elsewhere. Until the mid-20th century and the advent of antibiotics, it was not uncommon that a simple cut could cause runaway infections. Did that mean people who self-harmed with cuttng were aware of Russian Roulette-style stakes, and was that part of its compulsion? What was the medical interface with the compulsion in a time of infective prevention-or-bust?

I am learning about Chinese history and I found out that basically since the Han Dynasty, Sichuan has been part of China. When you look on a map, it looks very different from the rest of the country – it’s in this inland basin, it’s got a non-navigable river passage separating it from everywhere else, and it’s got its own agricultural base surrounded by high mountains.

Based on the geography, I would’ve expected the whole basin to be the site of numerous other states and culture cultures rather than just being integrated into the larger Chinese culture. I would’ve thought it to be more similar to some of what you see in Tibet or central Asia or Southeast Asia - places in the sphere, but geographically separated enough that they are not part of the Chinese core.

How is it that Szechuan has stayed so Chinese for so long despite being relatively separate from everywhere else in the sinosphere core?

https://medium.com/@austinadachi/sihang-warehouse-how-chinas-famous-battle-was-faked-4473c7f1d6ee

^ This question came to my head after reading this post. In the past, I've also visited the talk page of the Wikipedia article for the Hundred Regiments Offensive and the same concern about the lack of Japanese sources regarding certain policies or events can also be seen (especially regarding the "Three Alls Policy"). One-sided sourcing is not very uncommon but I wonder how prevalent they might be in this specific area.

P/S: By general knowledge, I mean general knowledge in Europe and in the US, of course.

So, I'm quite surprised that many wikipedia articles on WW2 military subjects (mostly, battles of the eastern front), quote works of Paul Carell in the bibliography section. Paul Carell, whose real name is Paul Karl Schmidt, is a former SS and notoriously a post-war Wehrmacht apologist. What place can its works take in a rigorous historiographic work? I guess they can be used as a primary source to get an insight from a german SS point of view of the events. But I'm really disturbed to see the works listed in these bibliography sections without any disclaimer, as if they could be treated as an authoritative source on the matter.

As historians, what is your point of view on the matter?

I'm a history student, and in my modern history course, it's mentioned that slavery existed in the Iberian Peninsula. It states that the master or owner had all rights except to kill or mutilate the slave. I can't remember exactly how long this lasted, but I think the Church condemned the practice. I've seen it mentioned in books before, but always in a rather cursory way; it's never really explored in depth.

Who were the slaves? Were they African slaves? Or were they Iberians who had been condemned? I know that some convicts were sent to the mercury mines, for example. Were they domestic servants, or did they perform these kinds of dangerous tasks? Were they generally well-treated despite their status, or were they frequently mistreated? So, to put it simply, what was it like?

It feels like the window of time where this myth could make sense is pretty narrow. It's hard to imagine this story having much appeal before or during, say, the Trail of Tears. Maybe I'm mistaken but it feels like policy in this time must have relied on racism and dehumanization of Native Americans being widespread. But waiting a generation past the Trail of Tears (so the myth imagines a princess in an then-intact-now-vanished society, rather than positioning grandma as a victim of forced displacement whose family is currently struggling in an unfamiliar reservation) basically puts you in the 20th century. Anecdotally, I encountered this myth more than once in the 1990s. So that leaves only a handful of decades, and fairly recent ones, for the idea to become appealing, take the specific form of a Cherokee princess, and become widespread in white families. How much do we know about how this idea crystallized and propagated?

Considering it wasn't even a war, it was just a slow death for the Carthaginians since Rome had infinite resources and soldiers.

Why didn't the Carthaginians storm out of the siege and tried defeating the Romans outside the castle? Sure, its risky, but it cant be worse than 100% guarantee defeat anyway, since staying inside without supplies coming in was just a matter of time for them to perish.

I imagine the desperation of some commanders and politicians inside Carthage foreseening the big picture trying to convince others that risking an attack was the best option and having the majority disagreeing with them.

Ancient Canaan (roughly modern Israel and Lebanon) and the Levant (Canaan plus modern Jordan and Syria) was an incredibly diverse region. From roughly 1000BCE to 500BCE, Canaan was a patchwork of petty kingdoms in nearly constant conflict. Judah and Israel were just two kingdoms in a politically and religiously diverse area. Large empires such as Egypt, Hittite, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia had to carefully navigate shifting alliances with these minor powers.

By about 300BCE, when Hellenistic kingdoms were fully established, only Judah (the kingdom) and Judaism (the religion) are left. There's no mention of kingdoms like Ammon, Moab or Damascus, nor of Canaanite gods like El, Baal, or Ashura. Why did Judah and Judaism alone survive this period?

Some specific questions:

• Am I completely wrong? Did kingdoms like Moab or Gaza still exist when Ptolemy and Seluecus established their empires?
• Did the Dictate of Cyrus establish Judean dominance over the region? That is, did Cyrus not just permit the Jews to return, but also helped them take over the entire region?
• Why did the monotheistic Israelite religion survive into the Common Era, while Canaanite practices survived in Carthage, Iberia, and other places far from their birthplaces?
• Did Canaanite practices syncretize with Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish practices? Such that they didn't disappear but rather were absorbed into other belief systems?

The Omaha Horse & Mule Commission Co. I believe the owner's (M J Bud Smith) father Thomas W. Smith was writing an autobiography on the backs of these pages.

He talks about being a warden for the Nebraska State Prison, being appointed Chairman of the Council of Defense, livestock trading prices, all sorts of stuff.

Me and my son had a great deal of fun reading through all of these last night, but i couldnt find much I formation on this Thomas guy online. Can anyone shed some light on what we might have here?

Also included some Lockheed Vega documents & blueprints, a really cool lease agreement from 1943, & some telegrams. Where can we take these to have someone check them out and tell us more?

Pictures

They seemed like a thing in my parents’ era of graduations (70s), and my grandfather was very proud of his “brass rat” (MIT ring), but by the time I was graduating high school and college in the late 00s/early 10s no one I knew cared about them at all.

Why did they become a thing, and then why did they lose popularity?

See title but for the sake of elaboration, how did separate civilizations from different parts of the world all share the same technology despite having no contact with one another?