I've been wondering about this.

I’m on Canto XXXII of the Purgatorio where an allegory of the harlot ridden church is pulled off into the woods. Frankly, Dante makes Martin Luther seem papist. How did Dante get away with this in 1300? How was the Devine Comedy not banned? I’m just astonished.

What I could find about the population of Russia doesn't make any sense to me: in 1816 the were an estimate of 73 million Russians, and by 1914 the number goes up to 170 million (or at least this is what Wikipedia says).

I can see a country so vast in size grow like that, but I was under the impression that Russia was occasionally going through bad harvests and famines.

What makes even less sense to me is that the population grew very little since then. So what gives?

I’m looking for an overview of the Cold War as a whole for someone who knows little about it. The Cold War is something I know little about other than the main things everyone has at least heard of. I’m hoping for a good book that will give me an overview so that I can later on read more in depth about the topics I like. Thanks in advance!

For instance, when Europeans first traveled to the Americas and began interacting with native populations, how did either population begin the process of building mutual understanding and learning the other’s language? I’ve never come across a history book that discusses these linguistic processes in any way.

Hi all,

First up, this is not shit posting and is a genuine question.

Years ago when doing my uni degree I recall reading a passing mention to Churchill’s unorthodox ways to stop the Nazi’s invading England.

This included a coven of witches casting a spell on Hitler, Churchill keeping the monkeys in Gibraltar due to some folk story and a magic banner owned by some noble family that if unfurled would save England.

Now, I can find reference to the first two stories but not the third.

So my simple question is, was there a magic banner or have I made it up? If yes, what are it’s origins?

The Royal Navy was more powerful than the American navy at the time the doctrine was declared, so what stopped the British or some other power from simply ignoring it and establishing anyways? Surely the US couldn't defend the entire coast of Latin America from European landings?

I apologize for how broad this is. Recently a friend of mine asked why we don't have "philosophers like we used to?" My gut response was to say that we still have philosophers but most people do not care about them. It got me wondering just how popular philosophers (primarily western and modern) were in their day? Did the average person know about their work or was education and literacy too lacking for most people to understand? I guess I'm primarily thinking of people like Descartes, Kant, J.S. Mill, Nietzsche etc.

Hi /r/AskHistorians,

I’m a college senior about to graduate, and one of my post-grad plans was to create a history podcast about select Third World countries during the Cold War (after I get a salaried job with good work-life balance, move out of my parents’ house, and become a financially independent adult).

I would not cover the more Eurocentric / Americentric history, such as the Berlin Wall, the various Soviet coups, and US / UK domestic politics such as Walter Cronkite, Walter Mondale, Joseph McCarthy, James Callaghan, Clement Attlee, etc. Instead, I’d cover the Cold War histories of some countries such as:

• Cuba
• Nicaragua
• Chile
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Yugoslavia
• Cyprus
• South Africa
• Angola
• Rhodesia / Zimbabwe
• Republic of the Congo / DRC
• Ethiopia
• Somalia
• Iran
• Lebanon
• Egypt
• Turkey
• India
• Cambodia
• The Philippines
• Indonesia

I don’t want to cover every Third World country because I want this project to be manageable and to not be overwhelming (and I may not cover all the countries I’ve listed above).

I was thinking of doing 12-episode series for each country that I covered, to make this project even more manageable (I don’t plan to be as exhaustive as Mike Duncan was when he covered the French, Mexican, and Russian Revolutions, just to keep my sanity and make sure I’m not taking on more than I can handle).

Onto my main concern about research: I think I will still have access to my university’s online databases (JSTOR, etc.) as an alumni (I will probably not return to the actual town though since the region is economically depressed). How do I do research for a podcast like this and make sure everything is factually correct?

How do I account for political bias, especially considering the Cold War is still a politically charged subject in the minds of many people?

How do I account for lack of information, especially considering the knowledge of some subjects, such as the Malaysian Emergency, is still classified?

How much research should I be doing, and what sources should I use? How do I balance between using primary and secondary sources? How do I account for the fact that I do not speak languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, or Serbian?

Above all, how do I establish and maintain credibility? How can I be viewed as a trustworthy and historically accurate source?

I was reading up on the Schism of 1054 when a stray reference to the Crusades took hold of me. I know that the Crusades were mostly initiated and led by the Latins, but the first Crusade was (partly) caused by a plea for help by a Byzantine emperor. Did the Orthodox Church have any part to play in the Crusades led by the Catholic Church? It seems odd that so soon (After only forty years) after the Great Schism that the East would ask for help from the West.

I’ve read that the Byzantines fully thought as themselves as Romans and never referred to themselves as “Byzantines.” Why is it that we distinct the Byzantine Empire from the Roman Empire outside of the popular language being Greek instead of Latin? Weren’t the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire speaking Greek before the Empire even split?

The only other podcast I've come across that touches on what I'm looking for is Relic, but I would love to find some more, since I've already listened to its entirety. I'd also be interested in finding more information about lost treasures and other historical mysteries (again, see Relic).

The method itself is called poena cullei, "punishment of the sack," and it seems that the Romans really did carry it out at times. But where, in Italy, would a Roman have found a monkey? Or a snake? Did these animals inhabit the Italian Peninsula in ancient times?

Thanks in advance for answering this extremely niche question!

Why is it really? They could spend their manpower and resources on east or north instead of dealing with islanders. I am not a historian or anything but looked like a waste for me.

Did the Greeks outside of mainland Greece speak basically the same language as the greeks in the mainland? I know that dialects could differ somewhat(though AFAIK not in any extreme way) between different city states and regions in Greece proper. And also would this differ for different regions, like would some regions or individual colonies be more or less tied to the mainland culturally and linguistically?

Like how the modern-day far-right spews the Great Replacement conspiracy theory?

Europe in the Interwar period was plagued by authoritarian regimes and dictatorships such as Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and many more. My question is: How many (and which) countries remained democratic in Europe at the lowest point of Democracy (before the war) and what was the political status of smaller, more unknown countries during that period f.e The Baltics, Finland, Poland etc.

The Europeans were clearly much more technologically advanced in every aspect than the American nations by the time they met by 1492. I was curious to know how behind were the old Americans societies in time relative to the europeans.

Like, at what point and year in history, did the europeans had civilizations as primitive as those that the indigenous American nations had by the 1500s?

The old American societies had no wheel, no steel, no gunpowder, no real alphabetical or writing systems with the exception of rudimentary tools, their medicine was also lacking although the Europeans were not that far ahead in medicine either.

I'm no expert or even know much of historical eras or historical comparative studies and this is just an estimate but to me it seems as if the Native Americans from North America were like in the year 10,000 BC, very Neolithic and Stone Age like people and the Aztec, Maya and Inca Empires were in the year 7000-5000 BC, like in the next period of the Copper Age as compared to the historical developments of European civilization. I don't think they ever reached the Bronze Age or Iron Age before they were conquered by the Spaniards.

Can anyone with a real knowledge on the subject expand on the idea, please? I find it very interesting but cannot address it on my own.