Hi, I absolutely adore History and am looking for a career path. I am applying for university and am wondering what career to go down. Preferably, no postgraduate qualifications would be great, but I would not rule them out? What paths do most historians go down? In 20 years I would like to see myself doing research, writing and travelling. Making a difference to history. What should I try and pursue? Thanks in advance :)

Did I still get to vote for my local officials, (or run for election as one of those officials. Did I participate in government, at all?

What legal rights did I have that non-citizens lacked?

What obligations did I I have to the state?

Was being a citizen worth it? Was it something that people aspired to?

Was there even a concept of vampire in Western Europe at this time? Or was it a mostly an Eastern European thing (or even a well-known concept anywhere in Europe)?

I'm also sure that Dracula popularized a specific image of a vampire, so if the concept predates Dracula, how would a pre-Dracula vampire have been described?

I’m aware we were meant to bomb Kokura but couldn’t because of clouds or something. But why was Nagasaki the secondary target? And why was Kokura targeted originally?

Hi, I'm writing a small paper on the Rhodesian Bush War but I'm having a tough time finding good sources. I've been told one of the best is Ian Smith's book "The Great Betrayal", but because of his position in the conflict I'm wondering whether the information that comes out of his book is trustworthy.

My main goal is finding stuff revolving around the ideologies and origins of ZANU and it's children and sister organizations.

Is Ian Smith's account trustworthy? And what are some other sources I could look into?

I get why he wanted to, the great German country he was trying to make. But with Czechoslovakia he was only allowed to take the Sudetenland and not the rest as the allies said they were gonna invade if he did that (I’m pretty sure) and what did he do? Invade the rest of Czechoslovakia but the allies never invaded. Then In 39 he marched up to Poland and Britain said they would invade if he did that. He invaded and Britain declared war. If you say that the allies were unprepared for Czechoslovakia, they underprepared for Poland I’m pretty sure. So why did he?

In 27 BCE the Roman Republic ended and the Roman Empire began. Was there ever a chance that a Roman empreror could've abdicated and proclaimed a second Roman republic or a chance of an emperor being overthrown for a Republican Government? If that happened, could it have saved the Roman Empire from the instability and the constant power struggels? Could the whole Empire (not just the Eastern half like in our timeline) have lasted longer if it had been a Republic?

I'm trying to find examples of welfare programs in history, preferably public programs run by governments as opposed to private charity amongst individuals and small groups.

All of the searches I've tried have given me results of how the latest welfare programs got started, with the earliest year being mentioned usually being the 1930s.

I'm more interested in how the US and other countries handled the poor long before these programs and what the first programs run by their governments were.

Amy sites or tips on terminology for my own searches would be appreciated

I am far from an expert on how these religions came to be in the first place, but it seems counter-intuitive to me, that a culture, whose military (for example) exclusively (at least to my knowledge, feel free to correct me) consisted of men, would come to worship a woman as goddess of war. Is there a working theory or research on this topic?

I know that the Japanese tried to punch the United States hard and fast to be over with the war before it really started and that Yamamoto's plan was not followed as he intended (not destroying the fuel depots in Pearl Harbor and not attacking Midway on the way back) or else it would probably have been much more effective.

But would an invasion and occupation of Hawaii not have been the best choice? Instead of destroying the main US base in the Pacific, you take it and use it for yourself. There would have been no harbour for the US Navy for thousands and thousands of miles in the ocean, crippling the fleet much more than simply destroying a number of ships (some of which were recovered later anyway).

I read about the Sack of Constantinople a while ago and I never quite understood why the Crusaders did that. I knew the Byzantines were Orthodox and the Crusaders were Catholic, but I thought Orthodox-Catholic relationships were still largely amicable? So what was up with this sudden attack on the Byzantines?

I keep seeing stuff on social media referring to the French as experts in protesting. I have seen the videos and they are so organized and prepared. I obviously know a little about the French Revolution, but what is the history concerning protesting in France? Is there a lot of government oppression or do they just generally want to exercise their rights to protest?

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Edit: Just wanted to thank everyone who responded. I am blown away by the amount of knowledge people can articulate on this topic. I sincerely thank all of the people who have dedicated their lives to not only learning history, but passing it on to future generations.

As above. The use of tear gas was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol in 1925 because it is a chemical weapon. What are the differences between the gas that was used in war back then and the gas that is being used on civilians today? How dangerous was/is it? Was it only banned as a technicality because chemical warfare was banned, or was it considered particularly dangerous?

Apologies if this is the wrong sub to post this; if it is, could someone point me in the right direction?

I just wanted to ask about the historiography of the French Revolution, specifically the fall of the constitutional monarchy. I've read a bunch of books over the last few weeks and there is one that stands out to me; John Hardman's book "The life of Louis XVI".

In this book, from what I can tell he doesn't seem to blame Louis that much at all. Compared to other historian's books I've read this seems to be an unpopular take, as many others note that the actions of Louis were key in the fall of the constitutional monarchy.

My question to anyone who has read this book/knows of it is: Why has Hardman come to this conclusion, when a large proportion of French Revolution historians haven't? Is it because of what he read, where he grew up, his beliefs, the evidence he looked at etc? I'm really interested as to why he has this take, so if anyone historians out there have read this book and know about him could fill me in I would be sincerely grateful. Thanks in advance.

North Korea attempts to remove any form of non-Koreaness from its culture in many regards. They use different words when compared to South Korea (i.e. the word for cell phone) so why didn't this continue into their daily dress attire? I understand that their duty and work uniforms are in a certain style for practicality but why do they use western style dress uniforms? Also, why do the average citizens not wear more traditional Korean clothing on a day to day basis? Even Kim Jung Un wears a western style suit every day which is also weird when you think about it. Was there an impetus after world War two that lead to this change in their culture?

Usually, when a language becomes dominant, it is due to the widespread conquest and longstanding governance of a particular language group. But according to Wikipedia:

"The Arameans never formed a unified state but had small independent kingdoms across parts of the Near East, (present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian territories, the northwestern Arabian peninsula and south-central Turkey). Their political influence was confined to a number of states such as Aram Damascus, Hamath, Palmyra, Aleppo and the partly Aramean Syro-Hittite states, which were entirely absorbed into the Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC) by the 9th century BC."

Why then did the Assyrians - who were a dominant ethnic group who had two, longstanding, vast empires, not make their own language the language of the empire?

Wikipedia explains as follows:

"By contrast, Imperial Aramaic came to be the lingua franca of the entire Near East and Asia Minor after King Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (ruled 745–727 BC) made it one of two official languages of the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire (the other being Akkadian) in the mid-8th century BC, in recognition of the mostly-Aramean speaking population in areas Assyria had conquered west of the Euphrates and the large numbers of Arameans in Mesopotamia."

But this is like the British Empire making Hindi the official language of the empire since it conquered India alongside Latin because it's the historic literary language of Britain. I don't get it. What am I missing here?

I'm currently working on a paper making a link between Japanese Denialism and 'The Bushido Code'. Is there any resources anyone can suggest or relevant historians? Thanks.