I have heard Copts were actually a majority of the Egyptian population until something like the 1300s, and I know part of the idea of the crusades was to build ties with eastern Christians. I also know a few of the crusades were actually in Egypt so that the Copts could not have possibly avoided commenting on them.

So how did Copts react to the crusades? Thank you :)

As the story goes, the Dutch thought Suriname would be worth more; and we chuckle to ourselves, knowing how obviously wrong that turned out to be. The implied value of New York in this retelling turns out to be its location: it has natural harbors and was smack dab in the middle of all the European coastal colonies, so it's great for trade, and in fact goes on to become the financial capital of the planet.

But how much of this value is also due to scale? That is, the fact that once it was incorporated into the British Empire, it benefits from access to friendly neighbors and collective infrastructure. Would New Amsterdam ever have had anything close to the same amount of value if it remained a small Dutch island surrounded by the English? Or would the Dutch Empire have found itself in a Portugal situation, sinking money into supporting unsustainable and unprofitable colonies that eventually succumb to bankruptcy, rebellion, or conquest?

Edit: just realized that this post is framed as kind of an alternate history question, which is really unanswerable, and also in the long run almost every European colony achieved independence one way or another. So to put it a different way: at the time of the transfer, did leaders of either the British or the Dutch openly acknowledge that in the long run, Manhattan could be valuable for the British, but not for the Dutch?

And as a bonus question, why is is so popular in some strains of pan-Africanism and among some Black American movements?

Title. There is pretty much nothing else to say.

In a recent interview with Tyler Cowan, Marc Andreessen quotes about ancient Romans working from home:

Andreessen: The first thing is, number one, you’re working at your home. A lot of people did not plan their home or did not plan apartment buildings or whatever — it never got built with the assumption that you’re working out of them. And so one is just, all of a sudden, it’s this live-work thing, which again, is back to the future because that’s how the Roman aristocrats lived, and they ran the world, so apparently you can do that. The Romans actually had a whole system on this that we could talk about. They thought this through quite carefully, what it meant to work out of their houses. It’s a place that you work.

Does anyone have any references to this type of work/claim regarding this system in ancient Rome that I can look into? Thanks so much in advance!

Note: Not really looking for cottage industry workers, as those were private entrepreneurs - more looking into the collaboration with coworkers aspect (which would have been required of Roman Aristocrats running the world).

I was reading Augustine today, and struck by the vignette of thanking God for feeding him through ‘filling the breasts’ his mother with milk. Viewing this as a miracle got me thinking, what did mothers do when they struggled to latch onto their baby, or couldn’t produce enough milk? Was there some sort of commonly used food? Did they ask other women, or use wet nurses? And if they could not afford to do so or were geographically isolated, what happened? Also, did mothers breastfeed for shorter periods in times past?

Just a shower thought, but now i'm curious. I know what i'm essentially asking for here is thousand year old polling data lol but hey who knows.

Republican movements were very strong in France, Italy, Germany and the rest of continental Europe and most nations on the continent are Republics. However the UK never saw republican movements arise, why is this?

Hello ladies and gentlemen I'm currently conducting a minor historical investigation into a little know Reformation-era poet from France by the name of Eustorg de Beaulieu, also written as Hector de Beaulieu. Considering the scarce amount of literature on him in French, the amount in English is especially minute.

Still, could some of you provide a series of biographical dictionaries (online and print) regarding French poets, France in the early modern age, the Reformation, etc.? It would be greatly appreciated.

Help me out!

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

• a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer
• new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community
• Looking for feedback on how well you answer
• polishing up a flair application
• one of our amazing flairs

this thread is for you ALL!

Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!

We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Cults! According to the Qianlong Emperor, the Three Kingdoms general Guan Yu, the Manchu founder Nurgaci, and the Tibetan mythic hero Gesar were all aspects of a single common war god, and so their differing cultic practices were simply different dimensions of the same core concept. This week, let's talk about cults!

I am going to Rome soon, however everywhere I look the exact location and details of hes death is tweaked slightly, sometimes its right at the foot of a tree, sometimes near a specific brick, and other times its said to be still buried under the city. The same goes for how it happened, same story, just little tweaks.
What is the officially agree'd upon account of where and how it went down? is there an exact spot that is known? how can we be sure that the account is accurate and not embellished for the reader?

for example: minamoto no yoshitsune, taira no kiyomori, and fujiwara no hidehira

cmiiw, this happen after ashikaga shogunate ruling.

I tried to look for posts regarding the use of smokescreen in this subreddit, but so far i've only found 1 post explaining how smokescreens were made by ships. How common was the use of smokescreens by warships in WWII ? I can name 2 well known examples of the use of smokescreens in WWII by warships : captain Leach laying smokescreen to cover the Prince of Wales and the Glowworm's attempt to escape from the Hipper by laying smokescreen, but is laying smokescreens a common thing to do ? How are smokescreens utilised?

This was a very specific pet peeve for me a a kid.

When I watched cartoons, I always saw the characters pouring cereals to their bowls directly from the cardboard box, without any protective plastic bag within. Is this an animation shortcut, to avoid drawing an additional container within the cardboard box, or was there ever a time where breakfast cereals were directly contained in their cardboard boxes?

Why was the battle strategy used in World War 1 and World War 2 so different, even though there was only slightly more than 20 years in-between the conflicts? What spurred the dramatic change from mostly stationary trench warfare to hyper mobile blitzkriegs?

I was wondering if the Japanese occupation was as terrible or oppressive as the occupation in China? I haven't found much outside of the start of the Viet Minh.

Which techniques were kept and which were innovated on? What new discoveries were made? Were certain weapons/armors of antiquity equal in strength/durability to their medieval counterparts?

Below are the main Ancient Roman historians I am aware of, I was hoping you could help me decide which order to read them in, and if I'm missing any. Also a name of the works of each I should read would be great. I've already read Livy's History of Rome and Tacitus' Annals, but I plan on reading both again

Livy Polybius Tacitus Cassius Dio Suetonius Plutarch