I was looking at dazzle camouflage in the Royal Navy and had the following questions before I replicate it on a model ship.

How was it applied? Were the ships painted in drydock, or only to the water line? What were the rules for applying the scheme to superstructure and armaments? Were the tops of gun turrets painted?

Were there any studies done that covered the application of angular lines on larger vessels?

I know it's a lot to ask but I would also be super curious to learn more about how the RN used, and thought of the camo itself.

Hi all - we were watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, and my son came up with quite a few questions that I think were valid, but I could not answer.

Bear in mind that this is set in the early 19th Century in England.

In the book/film, an upper class family has only daughters. A main thrust of the book is that when the father ultimately dies, neither his wife nor his daughters stand to inherit the family estate or fortune. They will be out on the street and forced to live on a guaranteed small allowance. The estate (and fortune?) was to be inherited by a male cousin, whom I presume was the 'heir' due to his being the closest male relative. Therefore the daughters are in a race against time to 'marry well' in order to tie themselves to their future husband's fortune.

Can anyone help me understand how this would have worked? I mean, I presume that laws dictated that women could not inherit land or money, and it seems pretty clear that even when they married, their husbands would not have any claim to their family's fortune. But:

- how would that guaranteed allowance have worked? They clearly stated that after the father's death, the women would have received something every month so they would not be destitute. Did the law dictate how much they would get? Who would have set that up? How would it have been maintained? Would part of the father's estate been used to buy an annuity after his death?

- Did the father in a situation like this have any recourse to avoid his family being in poverty once he died? For example, what would have stopped the father from selling the property to a corporation he sets up? Could he then have had the women benefit that way, outside of personal ownership? Couldn't women own stocks, or could shares at least have been placed in trust to them so that their husbands could get it once they married? Or maybe the corporation could set up an entity that would hold on to the property, pay for its upkeep, and provide the women with an allowance – all without the ‘burden’ of them actually owning anything?

- what about the rich widow? this story, like many set at that time, have a mean old very rich widow as a character. How would SHE have gotten her fortune if women could not inherit? I mean, it’s not like she would have been self-made!

Any other insights to property rights, inheritance, and related monetary policy would be very welcome in helping us understand this.

Oh and by the way, in several places in the book, the mother reports that this noble gets ‘5,000 pounds per year’ and that one 'gets 10,000'. My rule of thumb became multiplying by 100 into today’s dollars, but I know it is almost impossible to do that because the economy and costs of things are so drastically different in our world, but – what was she talking about? Was she just speculating on the income from their holdings, or was this something else?

Thanks!

Greetings, esteemed historians,

I am a student of Territorial studies, which is preoccupied with social sciences, philosophy, history, international relations and, most of all, history. To become a scholar I must complete my own thesis, the subject of which you can see in the title of this thread.

I am not well-versed in Japanese yet, and as such I cannot properly browse and cite Japanese sources for that matter. As for American literature, I have found several books and entries in the governmental archives which I believe will further my understanding of the issue.

The topics and issues I am most concerned are - the diplomatic correspondence between the countries (the thesis itself is limited by the Pearl Harbour attack of the 1941), diaries of crucial diplomats and politicians for that time (thankfully, several of them are present as parts of the national archive, but only for the U.S.A. side), public attitude to the diplomatic excesses and governmental reaction to them (newspaper articles regarding certain events or long-standing development, for example Panay incident, Mukden incident, Nanjing "incident") and official documents, of both countries, concerning the period and available online.

As such, I would like to ask others who frequent this part of the internet, to recommend me decent, almost academic literature (preferably from the Japanese side of things) which could provide me with new knowledge needed to finish the thesis. I am most grateful and thank you in advance.

Best regards,

I've been reading some history about the rapid rise of Islam. Apparently before Islam, the Middle-East and North Africa were occupied majorly by Christians and Jews, Persia by Zoroastrians, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and South-East Asia by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. How was islamisation in these regions so effective? Was it forced-conversions, heavy religious taxation, or something else entirely?

Hello all,

Sorry if this falls outside the realms of the community rules, though I've read them I'm not sure if this counts or not. I'm currently undertaking dissertation research for my French degree, where I am looking into the work of American historian Robert O Paxton, and reaction surrounding his work, with a view to showing whether or not France's opinions have shifted towards the facts of the Vichy period. While I've been able to find plenty of reference to a great inital outcry against his work from mainly French commentators, I've yet to find any actual source material for this outcry. I keep hearing repeated reference to anger following the release of the French translation of his first book on the topic, ' Vichy France : Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944'. What with university resources being limited in these troubling times (what with all the Covid), I'm quite desperately looking for any advice as to where I might be able to find sources on the matter. Any kind of negative opinion would be great, be it from newspapers or public figures.

I thank you all for any help you might be able to give!

I'm working on analyzing how poems have affected various events in history with my middle school students and we found a story about how when the Japanese were gaining their cultural independence from China, they used a poetry library to assert themselves as their own culture.

Can anyone help me fact check this information or, better yet, help me tell the whole story to my students? They are super curious and I'm having trouble finding anything on the topic.

Thank you :)

Were terms such as "Norman conquest" used by the British historiography in order to deny the fact that they were conquered by the French?

After world war one germany turned to facism because of humilation and scrapping of political and geographical power and italy because they were betrayed by the allies and didnt gain the italian regions they were promised. But turkey was another country that was heavily scrapped of its land , resources and political power. Why did it not turn to facism?

It seems that a lot of the most pernicious historical revisionism and inaccuracies date to the 19th Century, and most had, even then, little supporting documents. I'm thinking of American inaccuracies in particular like Columbus, the literal Triangular Trade Routes of slavery, Lost Cause revisionism.

Did the historians and non-historian writers of these works ever face any challenges in their own time, or was the academic rigor simply lacking in the field?

Now I know that "medieval times" is pretty vague, but I'm curious as to how it was dealt with back then. Considering the horrific results on the human psyche during the World Wars and how treating any mental illness for that matter in a humane way is a rather recent procedure, I can't imagine how it must have been hundreds of years ago.

When did the distinct Norman identity die out and where and when was the last instance of Norman identification in Britain? Did the Normans try to stay as a distinct conquest group or where they happy to assimilate with the conquered?

I realize I am thinking in modern military terms, but that is largely due to my lack of knowledge in even knowing how to formulate the question. I'm just curious how long the average knight expected to be gone, and when did they expect to return. Did they come and go as individuals or as Army's. Interested in extreme stories of Knights who made multiple trips back and forth between europe and the middle east...

In high school in Virginia in the 1980’s I was taught that the Cotton Gin was one of the big deal inventions of the world comparable almost to the printing press. This seems silly to me today. Was this a part of Lost Cause propaganda or more likely just a result of cotton being important to the region’s historic economy? If the latter is more likely, is this a case of us receiving the values of the previous slave holding social structure?