As the title says. Looking for actually comprehensive studies that aren't based on S.L.A. Marshall's interviews due to the criticism his study has received.

Just to make it clear, by "fire rate", I'm talking about how often soldiers do or do not fire at the enemy with the intention to hit them.

Thanks for any help.

I understand that most duels were fought with the intention that preferably nobody should die, but clearly this commonly did not happen, as Alexander Hamilton found out. A lot of notable figures fought duels and killed people, such as Daniel O'Connell, but it didn't seem to have catastrophic effects on their personal or professional lives. What could I expect if were to kill someone in a duel? Would I be perceived as a murderer, at least by the victims family? Would I come under immense scrutiny over how well I conducted the duel, or my reasons for doing so? Would my character and behavior outside of the duel play into people's sense of whether or not I was a scoundrel because of it? Would it be something that would be held against me in the public sphere at all?

Just finished listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, The Blueprint for Armageddon, and can’t believe the sheer waste of lives most of it was. Seriously, trying to storm a fortified machine gun position like it’s a medieval castle is insanity. So, my question is, had one side (let’s say Germany because they lost the war) implemented somewhat modern small unit tactics throughout the conflict, how would that have changed the course of the war?

I understand that radio comms play a huge role in today’s unit maneuvers and it was in its infancy at the time, as were aircraft and other vehicles. But could a modern approach to tactics really have made much of a difference in the end?

It seems in 1206, Genghis khan had around 120.000 soldiers. Later on he included more foreign peoples in his army, uyghurs, manchus, defected chinese commanders coming with their units, peasants used as meat shields...

50 years later hulegu arrives in persia with an army numbering around 180.000, supposedly gathered by taking one in every ten soldiers of the mongol empire. Since mongol population wouldnt be able to rise so quickly, I'm guessing most of these troops were of non-mongol and sedentary origin. Or maybe mostly mongols with auxiliaries like chinese engineers? How much of the mongol army was actually mongol?

The recent Black Lives Matter protests across the United States have focused strongly on the specific history of Black people in America. Does Australian history parallel that of the United States here?

I'm currently writing a book which involves a fight between the protoganist and a fictional gladiator popular to the crowd in Rome.

Now, the protoganist clearly wins, and the loser goes to Publius Rutilius Rufus, because there isn't an emperor in that time. And the crowd votes 50/50, because he didn't fight well, but was still immensely popular and didn't lose any spar with another gladiator before.

So, what would happen in a historically accurate context? Would he be executed with a thumbs down anyway? Or would he just live to fight another day?

Sorry if this is not appropriate for this sub, please direct me to the right place to post this.

Besides the fact that characters don't keep coming back from life, reading history for fun feels for me a bit like getting into comic books since any story you're reading has a bunch of events preceding it, but those issues were out of stock at the book store. Many of them are literally decades old. You also have a bunch of characters that are important to the story but not always explained because there is an assumed knowledge from previous issues. It all gets a bit hard to keep track of and its why I struggled to really get into comics.

I'm having a similar issue with history. Now I'm your regular pop history nerd. Sabaton, Total War, Paradox games, Dan Carlin, you name it. Recently, I've been trying to make a concerted effort to read some "real" history books, however, I can never find a point to start with any topic I'm interested in. I want to read about Napoleon(ic wars), but I need background knowledge about the French Revolution to properly understand Napoleonic, but I need background knowledge about the Seven Years War and the political hegemony of Europe before the 1790 to understand the French Revolution and on and on and aaaaaaah. What do?

Also history books in general are (understandably) pretty rad about name dropping and I find myself easily getting lost when some dude Bob Hobnob VI was mentioned 12 pages ago in passing but becomes important now but he is not explained now so I'm thinking "who tf is Bob Hobnob VI?"

I often hear and see mention that the Germany army was seperate from the SS and didn't know about the atrocities committed by Nazis in WW2 but it is nearly always called out as a load of crap. However, neither side seems to ever provide evidence outside of conjecture. Is there anything concrete on this? Is there anyone here with some background on the subject?

With everything going on in the US right now and the discussions about the police and its origins I was wondering how policing in ancient Rome would have looked like. Was there anything comparable to a modern "police" within the cities? I'm particularly interested in petty crimes. Where would you go if your house was robbed or you got mugged in the streets at night?

My partner wants to know how women who wore corsets back in the day, who developed conical ribcages fit a baby in there since pregnancy moves the organs upwards, the exact opposite of corset training.. especially the more extreme examples.

Were some taken home by colonialists, toured in a show or held on display as captives? Or did some manage to get there by choice or even some form of business, learning the language for example. And if any were there, would they remain there until they died or were they eventually sent back to America?

I assume there was a large threat of old-world diseases, so how eould this impact it too?

Recently I was posed with a question that has quite troubled me. Someone asked “colonization is always looked at as the root cause of why the rest of the world didn’t develop (the British took over resources etc). But people have inhibited in their lands for ages why was the west able to take over so much of the world. Why was there no strong enough fight back?

One thing that was thrown around during this conversation was named of famous scientists and philosophers Galileo, Newton and etc.

I’m not a supremacist of any sorts. I just know I’m missing key elements of history and geopolitics, but if someone could enlighten me towards the right resource that would be great. Thanks!

How did Hitler justify that the Austrian people were their German brethren?

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Hi everyone,

I saw a recent documentary on the identification of the archeological site of Hisarlik to the city of Troy. The documentary (which involved professional archeologists) was pretty positive on the conclusion that Hisarlik was indeed the site of the homeric Troy. I'm wondering if they are not going a bit too far in their conclusions.

Yes a city which roughly correspond to the description of Homer has been found in the - rather large - area where it was supposed to be. But the Iliad has been written four centuries after the time the war is supposed to have happened. Is it not a bit far fetched to assume that Homer's description is accurate? In this perspective the site corresponding, or not corresponding, to the homeric description is not such a good criterion for the identification of Hisarlik. I'm also wondering, is there anything to show that the Iliad refers to a real place when it's talking about Troy? Can we know if Troy is indeed based on a single real historical city or could it not be just a fictional cities inspired by various places?

I'm especially looking for answers coming from bronze age archeologist and/or Iliad scholars.

Thank you in advance for your answer !

I repeatedly see Morison referenced in books about the Pacific naval campaigns, and I'm wondering if there is a consensus around the value of his books. I realize they came out shortly after the war and therefore don't have the benefit of time. But I'm wondering if they are worthwhile to read? Mostly I'm concerned with; are they accurate descriptions of events, and are they readable? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

I've been doing research on the subject just cus, and I've only really found stuff on the use of brothels and prostitutes, but there is little reference of how serious personal pre marital sex was. At varying levels how common was it for two bored teenagers to steal away from work in the field for an hour for a bit of fun behind the abandoned mill? And same at higher levels too, would you find this happening between the betrothed or in love sons and daughters of nobles? As well as sex with the same gender, as there are always rumors about this for kings and queens but we never go into these things between teenagers? I'm just looking for general answers.