Now I appreciate Amadeus is more fiction than fact, but it did get me thinking about the influence of Freemasons prior to the last century, when they have appeared synonymous to illuminati, reptilian humanoids etc etc.

If close to an entire class of Vienna's population were indeed Freemasons, what particular advantages did membership confer? What has the 'point' of Freemasonry historically been? And have they ever been seen as enough of a threat to a sovereign's legitimacy to necessitate persecution and banishment?

I of course don't expect the entire history of freemasonry, but would be really grateful for examples of freemasonary's influence within your historical specialisations & periods!

Thanks very much and all the best

Coming off watching "12 years a slave" and the feeling of anger in me towards the oppressive and disgusting people who were slave owners is asking if there were notable instances of rebellions by slaves.

The number of slaves was significant and the period long, similar to other places in the world where a group of people was abused and rose. I am trying to understand if this was the case at any point in the South.

Some people do claim that and second I heard there were some riot I mean every nation when establishing a new country do have riots but still I wonder.

Thanks and please add source

If not, how/when did the two countries overcome their differences?

I never understood how someone like Hitler, who was a very smart guy in the way he talks and acts, could believe that every Jew, even the kids, is completely evil. My history teacher in high-school told us that he believes it was all just a plan to get more power, to have a common enemy and Hitler himself was smart enough to understand this jew-theory is just bullshit.

What is the truth about this?

I am not very well read in precontemporary literature, so I can only draw on stuff like the Odyssey, the Illiad and Journey to the West. In those works, I get the feeling people were likely to know that the story as presented was fiction. But the “setting” wasn’t. Journey to the west may read like dragon ball + a monster of the week anime, but the world seems to be roughly what Budist China mythology looked like to the people living there. At least from the view of someone ignorant on the subject. Was this a trend? Was there a breaking point for it? Or has people been cooking knowingly fictional worlds for ages?

EDIT: Just remembered "Utopia". That one would definitely qualify. Anything earlier? Disagreements on Utopia qualifying?

I’ve read that they may have used sharkskin for things that needed polishing but I’ve only ever seen it talking about wood. How was stone done? Was stone even polished up or were they raw? I’m participating in a Vikings era roleplay during ragnars rule(i dont know if it’s based on the show, but rather a historical rp.), and I’m playing a jeweler. I want to know how to do this accurately.

Was reading about this surprising (to me) proposal by Jefferson at the advent of the United States, but I cannot find any information regarding the politics of the Ordinance. As modern legislation may be a "flagpole" or election year vote, I was wondering if similar attitudes impacted this Ordinance, and how the US came so close but failed at an early abolition of slavery.

The intro video gives some details and I skimmed Wikipedia before asking this, but what did he do that made he be picked among other previous Ethiopian rulers and other rulers from anywhere else in the world? Was he progressive compared to contemporaries? Basically, what made him so cool?

I have heard that hinduism features something similar but I'm not certain about that.

I don't know if this a suitable question. However lately I have been looking into family life of the 19th century a bit and noticed that once women were married, they were very quickly having children. Sometimes children would follow 1-2 years after the last child.

However I noticed that at around 35 they all of a sudden stopped having children. For example tsaritsa Alexandra was around 32 when she had her last child Alexei. In peasant families this was also the case that women stopped having children around 35.

Today women can have children when they are older, and hit menopause around 47, so I wonder that back then, when there was no birth controll they would stop having children at a certain age. How?

I mean, anything that would say or point out any act or presence of this character. If not, would we say Jesus didn't really exist?

I understand that some artistic liberties were taken, and that the founding fathers didn’t break out into song, but is the over all story pretty accurate? What are some things that happened in the play that are not 100% true?

I understand William H. Nienhauser has been trying to translate these in full for a long time, Herbert J. Allen has translated some parts of it that I have seen recommended here before, and then Burton Watson has also translated many parts of this text. To begin attempting to get a full understanding of Shiji, though much of it is still untranslated, I imagine I will need to read all of the authors' works collectively but where should I start as someone with little to no understanding of ancient Chinese history?

I have no doubt that the Nazis were extremely racist, but from what I've read, it seems more like a Nordic Supremacy rather than White Supremacy.

IMHO Syria shares a lot similarities with countries like Greece, Egypt, Turkey and Spain, that have successfully managed to become household mass tourist destinations since the 1970s:

- Excellent location: comfortable 4 hours flying distance from most European capitals, as well as the Mid-East and Africa.

- Immensely rich but varied and vastly untapped cultural heritage: ranging from Bronze Age sites to Roman ruins to Ottoman heritage. Many sites were never really properly excavated and the ones that were, only 30% 40% in most cases.

- The country had its own unique Arab culture (including unique Syrian Arab historical sites) which differentiated it most other Mediterranean destinations.

- The culture (from what I know), was similar to Turkey, Spain, and Greece, in others words relatively liberal and open to foreigners and visitors.

- Relative peace: unlike neighbours Israel, Lebanon (and even Cyprus and Turkey) it had in fact maintained peace for a large part of its modern existence

- Mediterranean sea access: enough coastline to develop the country as a beach destination...?

So with a lack of Oil why didn't the Assads do the next most obvious (and laziest) thing and end up exploiting the tourist potential to the max, transforming Syria into a household destination alongside the likes of Turkey, Greece or Cyprus et al?

I know there was some tourism to Syria pre-Civil War but it was mostly a certain narrow demographic [i.e. Westerners seeking art history, international Islamic students studying Quran etc] but absolutely nothing like the millions from all demographics that flood Greece, Turkey, Egypt every year...

So... Were there sanctions in place that prevented such mass commercialization of tourism? Or does the reason lie in something more cultural/ideological unique to Syria? Or were there other reasons that tourists didn't readily take to holidaying in Syria compared to the likes of Turkey and Greece?

Note: I don't know anything about Syria's recent history so asking this question completely blind. Feel free to correct any wrong/false assumptions I may have made above!

Thanks!

Good Morning Historians! I've been a finance guy for about 7 years now and every once in a while, a few of my older coworkers will reference something that took place 30 years ago for which I just sort of nod along and pretend to understand! I am currently reading A History of the United States in 5 Crashes, which discusses the various recessions of 1907, 1929, 1987, 2008 and 2010. However, it does not explain what took place in between all of those years in as much detail, so I don't know much about WW2 and the postwar years, the implications of the oil shock of 1972, the Savings and Loan Crisis, or any number of smaller shocks that took place over the past 150 years. I would like to know what happened, good or bad, so that I can learn from it and recognize when it is happening in the present day.

If anyone would like to talk about any events in the past 150 years and their implications in the stock market, economy, etc., please post here or if you have suggestions for further reading, I would love to hear them!