Cloaks are a staple of fantasy and historical fiction so my layman’s impression is they were fairly popular in the pre-modern period

And it’s easy to see why, they’re fairly simple, by hanging off your shoulders they can be quite heavy without feeling overly heavy, and they look great

As a side note I’ve noticed that cloaks tend to have much deeper hoods as well, even though there’s no reason why they should have better hoods, it seems like modern fashion makes hoods too small but cloaks lean on the deep hood aesthetic of fantasy literature

So, why have cloaks been replaced by coats and jackets that, to me at least, seem less versatile?

Do I need to get permission from the King himself? Local Lords? Do I provide the labor or will they at my expense? Can I charge a toll? Am I even allowed to build infrastructure as a commoner?

I've always had the impression that the Battle of Marathon was the first time the Persians had met Greek style hoplites in battle. But I've been reading about the Ionian Revolt, and though the battles aren't really discussed in detail, I can't help but wonder if the Persians would have gone head-to-head against a Greek-style phalanx at this time. I've been searching around the Internet, but not having much luck. Do we know if the Ionians utilized the phalanx of the Greek mainlanders, and if so, any instances of the Persians having met them head-to-head during the Ionian revolt or any other time in history prior to the Persian Wars?

Hello👋 I just created this Reddit account to ask this question. Usually my brother knows this kind of thing but he didn’t so he suggested I ask here.

Wasn’t Canada also a British colony in the new world? Why did the 13 colonies all team up to rebel but leave out the British colony just to the north of New York? Were they just not invited? Or did they turn down the invitation to stay with England?

Thank you for the help!

As the subject line says: what might a physician in a small town in 1660s England expect to do in a day? What kind of fees might he charge, and what would his expenses be? What kind of training might he have gotten? Where would he live or lodge, what kind of life would he lead? Would it be unusual for him to be unmarried?

I'm working on a story set in 1666 in England (no points for guessing what the action-packed climax will be), and one of the main characters is a physician. For plot purposes, he needs to be living in a small village, somewhere vaguely near Oxford, he's single, and he doesn't come from money (sort of—see below). I've done a fair amount of research into what a physician might be expected to do, as opposed to a surgeon or apothecary, and I know that this character isn't exactly in a career path with a lot of advancement potential—the real money comes from being a personal physician, or at least having a practice in a larger city.

(A situation I saw mentioned in Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost, set during this period, was physicians going to small towns during their college breaks and performing medical services there—basically, a summer job. Is that plausible?)

Connected to this is a question of background. Again, for plot reasons, I'd like his father to have been a Loyalist landowner, but following the Restoration and the Indemnity and Oblivion Act (sarcastically referred to as "indemnity for his foes, oblivion for his friends"), those lands are left in the hands of the Cromwellian who captured them, and as such he and his family have fallen into or closer to poverty. Would this be a plausible backstory for such a person?

Please let me know if these questions are too specific, or not specific enough, or if I should post this elsewhere. I appreciate any help people can give me! Thanks in advance!

I just thought of this the other day. Did propaganda have a different meaning back then?

I just find it oddd that they had these official offices. Its like just by the name itself you would know whatever they say or work on is clear and cut political BS. I thought the whole point of propaganda was to not make it so blatantly clear that its propaganda

I was wondering about this. The amendment only prevents running for presidency not congress or any other type of election. Has there been any presidency who still remained active in politics post presidency?

Sorry if I’m stereotyping.

My education essentially taught me that the serfs weren’t natural left wing allies and were actually very conservative, often being highly traditional followers of the Russian Orthodox Church and strongly supporting the Tsar and even being angry and rioting when serfdom ended.

Then we get Communism and the idea that religion is the opiate of the masses, persecution of all religions and far-left, socialist, revolutionary ideologies. What the heck happened in between? Even with humiliating defeats for the Tsar like the Russo-Japanese War, I can’t understand what changed the minds of such a conservative people and what broke an unbroken tradition of belief in a Russian Orthodox Jesus, Tsardom and Empire?

How did a party of workers and peasants even get popular outside of academic circles?

You’ve got the Tsar and aristocracy who wouldn’t obviously benefit, you’ve got religious minorities like Jews and Muslims who wouldn’t benefit, the Russian Orthodox Church wouldn’t benefit, the bourgeois middle class wouldn’t benefit and the working class outside of the cities seem to be very conservative.

I know that many mothers bravely protested the Tsar but that’s quite different to saying I am now a Marxist, I don’t believe in any religious rights and I want a revolutionary socio economic system run by Lenin and his friends. So where is the revolutionary support base really coming from? I don’t get it!

And for a follow-up, I'd like to ask as well: what would be the most logical, nature based (as opposed to religion based) point in time to pick as a new zero-point, if humanity decided to start a new timeline?

It would have to be recent enough that we know exactly what year it happened (so not the extinction of the dinosaurs), but far enough back in time that most of history would happen "after zero" (so not, say, the eruption of Krakatoa).

What changed that allowed Brazil to grow westward?

The Battle of Santa Cruz was the fourth carrier vs carrier battle in the Pacific War. In that battle, Japanese carrier planes sank one US carrier (USS Hornet, CV-8) and severely damaged another (Enterprise, CV-6) while sustaining little damage to their carriers. As a result, Enterprise’s task force was forced to withdraw. However, Japanese squadrons suffered heavy casualties, forcing Japan to sideline its carriers for over a year in order to re-build its squadrons.

How were the Japanese able to achieve such success while sustaining little damage to their own carriers?

I’m extremely curious how different segments of society experienced Israel. Holocaust survivors, zionists, ultra-Orthodox, socialists, Arabs who remained, etc; do we have any personal accounts that paint a picture of the expectations people had before arriving (or before remaining, in the case of Arabs), and how the reality matched up to it?

I'm looking for a book that covers the precolumbian Andes, specifically those that came before the Incas (Norte Chico, Nazca, etc.) (doesn't have to leave them out entirely just needs not to be the main focus). If I'm being too vague (I don't think so because there isn't exactly a glut of these kinds of books as far as I checked) please let me know and I'll answer any question you give me.

The confrontation between European settlers and Indigenous America, Hämäläinen writes in "Indigenous Continent", “was a four-centuries-long war,” in which “Indians won as often as not.”

He goes on to say...

"Spain had a momentous head start in the colonization of the Western Hemisphere, but North American Indians had brought Spanish expansion to a halt; in the late sixteenth century there were no significant Spanish settlements on the continent — only petty plunder regimes.  North America was still essentially Indigenous.  The contrast to the stunning Spanish successes in Middle and South America was striking: how could relatively small Native groups defy Spanish colonialism in the north when the formidable Aztec, Inca, and May Empires had fallen so easily?  The answer was right in front of the Spanish — the decentralized, kinship-based, and egalitarian political regimes made poor targets for imperial entradas — but they kept missing it because the Indigenous nations were so different from Europe’s hierarchical societies.  They also missed a fundamental fact about Indigenous warfare: fighting on their homelands, the Indians did not need to win battles and wars; they just needed not to lose them."

Are historians mostly on board with this analysis?

Just wondering how we all agreed to having the same 7 days and 12 months across all cultures.

I see a lot of praise for Spengler and his work. Some might say things like "he is a great writer and has value but is not taken seriously". What was he wrong about?