So After William conquer England, he kept his Norman lands, was he still a vassal of the French King as the Duke of Normandy or was Normandy now a part of England? Did he have to pay tribute to the French King in any way?

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Some people recommended him to me, but I want to know if he is a trustworthy source before buying any of his books. Thanks in advance.

In high school, we learned that the Italian city-states (Florence, Genoa, Venice, etc.) were relatively small, but they became wealthy through trade and commerce. We also learned about taxes that were levied on land during the Middle Ages, but I don't remember learning about any other types of taxes.

Were merchants and craftsmen in the Italian city-states subject to taxes on their income or goods? Or were they only taxed on the land they owned?

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In the latest issue of Kmt's article on the 18th Dynasty, in the entry on Maatkare Hatshepsut/Menkheperre Thutmose III, Dennis Forbes writes that:

"It is now thought that he [Amenhotep II] may have been the influence persuading his father Menkheperre, to "remake history" by eliminating all record of his twenty-two-year coregency with Maatkare, even the very existence of Hatshepsut herself."

Is this a new consensus? A popular theory? What's the backing for this idea?

I’d like to know a bit about the history and beliefs of Mazdakism. How popular was it in the late Sassanian empire? How (and when) did it disappear? Mazdak is often described as a socialist or proto-socialist, is this accurate?

Hi all! First-time lurker post!

Hope this question hasn't been asked before, I couldn't seem to find any answers on Reddit or Google. So what I want to know is how much interference did religion have on the government of Imperial China (Pre 1800's, any century before that I'll take). For example, in Europe cardinals had great power to sway the monarch in their favor in the name of Christianity, did Buddhism, Taoism, etc. have similar power in the Chinese court? Was "church" and state more removed in Imperial China than it was in Europe? If I was a Buddhist monk in say the 17th century could I have a position at court and wield some form of power?

Thanks so much for your time, I'm genuinely curious about the differences between Asia and Europe pre-modern era.

I've been surprised to find that I can't get much detail on this topic by Googling. I of course know who was in the first and second Continental Congresses and what they did, but what I'm wondering is how did they get there in the first place? How were they chosen? Who chose them? This happened at a time when they were essentially forming an "illegitimate" government right under the noses of the British government. How do you do that, logistically speaking? We know prominent people like Thomas Jefferson were elected to the Congress, but how did they get to the stage where they could get elected? Who was their constituency? Were there colony-wide elections to choose who each state would send to the Congress? Did the average person get to vote in these elections? If so, how would they have known who they were voting for, because I'm sure there weren't campaigns that allowed voters to know "hey, this Madison guy seems like a good choice"?

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I ask because, when learning American history, it's glossed over to the point where it's like these guys just materialized out of the ether and everyone was like "of course these guys are our Congress and we go along with what they say, no doubt." But that seems crazy to me. I'm trying to imaging a group of guys getting together today and claiming to be our government. Nobody would view them as legitimate. How did they get from some people meeting and discussing the issues with the crown to being viewed as the governing body of the colonists?

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I’ve been watching every documentary I can get my hands on these days regarding WW2. I understand the atrocities of this war are truly impossible to wrap your head around as to “why” or “how”. That being said, as much as I don’t agree with it, I can see how you could manipulate a young, uneducated, angry boy into murdering his neighbor. However I don’t understand how you could get man, after man, after man to lay down to be knowingly shot in the back. If you know you’re going to die there isn’t logically anything left to lose. Why lie down? Why not make them shoot you while you’re attacking them? In some of the documentaries I’ve been watching something like 30 men would kill thousands by digging a hole and machine gunning them in layers. After the first could of hundreds of people are killed why would the others not do everything they could to attack the men with guns? They are going to shoot you anyways- why comply to your death? I just can’t wrap my head around it. I heard that people wouldn’t escape the camps even though it was fairly simple to do so, because if you did they’d go find your wife/children/extended family that was still living in the city and they’d bring them to the camps to execute them in front of you. But it seems to me in these mass shooting extermination’s they were there with you already. I’m sorry if the answer to this question is obvious. I’m just having a really difficult time understanding any of this.

Of course, this is not true for everyone, but out of highschool more and more people I know have talked about how Edison was an evil man that stole and sold ideas from the more innovative man, Nikola Tesla. How accurate are these claims?

Reposting a question that didn't get answered. Reformatted a bit for clarity.

From my understanding early universities in the middle ages had PhD degrees, but did these include the same scholarship requirements as today? When did the system of publishing papers, reviewer #2, conferences and other pains I endure as a PhD student start?

I know that he won the primary but wasn't chosen to be the candidate, twice. Why is that? Why twice? Could he have won against Eisenhower and would he have an noticeable impact on the USA and the world if he was elected?

I know very little about the history of Africa, but recently I learnt about Mansa Musa and the wealth of the Ghana Empire. Obviously this was centuries before the Atlantic slave trade, but I'm curious as to why these civilisations didn't advance as rapidly as Europe or Asian civilisations, especially considering the wealth of the land.

One of the arguments against immigration says that “people from central American countries should just stay and fix their country instead of coming to ours.”

I’ve seen people online make the case that “the reason these countries are in shambles is because of US intervention.”

I’m aware that the US went to these countries in the name of foreign policy, but how far-reaching were the consequences of these interventions? Are these country’s current struggles really a result of the aforementioned interventions?

I'm not referring to the urban legends about her sex life, obviously those aren't true. Still, Catherine the Great had many lovers over the course of her life that would be unconventional and even considered unambiguously sinful by the Russian Orthodox Church, being enough to damn a person's soul.

She also defied gender stereotypes in general, even having a tattoo. From what I've read about her, she was a devout Orthodox Christian, demanding an Orthodox priest when she almost died of sickness, converting to it against her parent's wishes, and overall holding a deep respect for it over her life.

How did she reconcile her faith with her lifestyle choices? Bonus question, how did the Russian Orthodox Church view it?