Hi there,

Calling out to all of you wonderful, fascinating, historical beasts out there for assistance in writing my first historical dissertation., I am doing this outside of uni, and do not have access to that kind of material (pre application work)

Some quick questions:

How do you yourselves find historical sources? Validate them?

What is the nature of historical research? (and what do you enjoy about it :D )

How do you feel you organise your writing and research best? Any guidance? Im a little intimidated but want to prove my passion

Any insight on: Orthodox interpretations of history, Revisionist interpretations of history , Marxist interpretations of history, Feminist interpretations of history which i need to include in my Assesment Objectives

​

Thank you

I remember learning in school as a kid the history of the Christian religion. They talked a bit about Jesus in it but didn’t go into detail for how authentic the evidence of his existence, and even miracle workings.

I think it would be cool to get this from a purely historical standpoint, someone that has travelled or at least had some scholarly historical studies on this topic.

One of the characteristics of the tax structure in the Ancien Regime was that the nobility and clergy were exempted from paying most taxes, despite the fact that they enjoyed a disproportionate share of the benefits those taxes begat. It's commonly taught that this tax structure was one of the causes of the French Revolution, but one rarely hears about how it came to be and was justified.

Taxation under the Ancien Regime was obviously the exact opposite of the current prevailing method of progressive income taxation. There is an easy moral argument to be made in favor of progressive taxation (it is fair that those with more means should pay more taxes). What I am curious about is how the parliament justified the tax structure in the Ancien Regime. I can imagine the argument made in favor of exempting the clergy (men of God should be left to focus on spiritual matters and free from worldly concerns like taxes), but was there any moral, ethical or logical argument commonly made for exempting the nobility from paying taxes? Or did they not even bother with justifying the policies and just assumed that the lower classes would just do whatever they were told?

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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.

AskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Femme Fatales! Tell me the real life tales behind that most excellent of narrative tropes, the bold, brilliant, and clever woman...with a twist.

Next time: Fakes, Fraud, and Forgery

I have read about hull speed (i.e. a longer ship will be faster than a shorter ship), and also larger ships could set more sail, but how much would weight slow them down? Was it that a smaller ship like a sloop would be more agile than a frigate, but a frigate would be faster? What kind of pursuit craft did the navies of the world use to hunt down pirates and hostile merchants, etc? Were the large ships of the line like the Victory just giant tubs designed to take and dole out punishment (meaning they would have no chance of chasing and capturing an enemy ship in open water?

I've been listening to Mike Duncan's history of Rome and in it he mentions how the Roman army became increasingly Germanised after the reign of Constantine. The reason he states is that the Landowners actively hid fit freemen so that they had men to work their estates which meant that Rome was forced to look to the Germans for men. Aurelian even started to settle Germanic tribes inside the Empire to increase the tax revenue.

He also talks about how disastrous the battle of Adrianopole was and how much difficulty Theodosius run into trying to replenish these loses.

During the second punic war Rome lost something like 25% of its Male population and still won the war. They lost around 80 000 men at Cannae and were able to replenish those losses when they only controlled Italy and not the entirety of the Mediterranean.

How were the Roman's able to replace losses so well in the early period but struggle to replace 20 000 after Adrianopole even with their vast empire? Was it caused by the antonine plague and subsequent wars of the third century? Did people simply have less kids? Or was it something else?

So ever since the Qin Dynasty, China, or at least its main territories managed to stay unified, with the exception of a few periods in between some dynasties. On the other hand, the territory that consists “Rome” never managed to stay together after the fall of the Roman Empire, with even sub-territories such as Spain and Italy being divided. I recognize that there areas were mountainous, but then again, so was South China. Why was this?

I'm curious to know about smuggling in the Middle Ages/medieval times--specifically the 11th to 15th centuries, but I'll take what I can get. I'm mostly interested in Europe and Asia. What are some good English books you can suggest that deal with this topic in depth? Barring that, what are some good websites or articles that touch on this topic? Thank you.

I remember reading somewhere that, in contrast to the Greeks, the Persians did not practice slavery. I cannot remember the source unfortunately. I have recently read the Anabasis, and it struck me that there was a lot of instances od slaves being mentioned. Was it in context of everyone being "slave", meaning just subordinate to the King?

• I know that the empire was not as unified as we would think, but more of a federation with wilder, independent areas, so it would make sense that somewhere there might be real slaves in the claimed but independent territory. I want to know if the mainstream empire practiced it. *The version i read was a Polish translation from 1955, so it might be an archaic use od the word slave in context of serf. But the same word was used in the preambule to refer to Greeks slaves, that is where my confusion arose.

I am wondering because the Wehrmacht surrendered just a few months before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was the employment of atomic bombs expected had the war in Europe dragged on a little longer?

I’m not that interested in the events it showcases, mainly Roman society and culture. HBO’s Rome was really good at showing that stuff, like Caesar’s Triumph for example.

Among many of my friends growing up, the word Siberia was often the talk of our parents and grandparents. Do something bad, "the Russians will throw you in a train to Siberia". Like how the Pioneers were just Boy Scouts with guns, the whole legend of the Siberian expulsions were felt three generations on.

Firstly, why did this even happen in the first place? In most cases as I understand it they didn't need to resort to the level of deportation as in Estonia, but then why do we find Koreans and others supposedly from around Vladivostok originally in Tashkent? Why do we find Tatar populations in Kazakhstan? Was there a systematic delineation between who was taken and who was spared in each Republic?

Why were these people kept for so long? My grandfather's dad didn't come home until 1957, but was taken at the end of the war.

Approximately how many men did it take to run a small packet ship and about how much was the crew paid for each voyage? I'm currently working on a screenplay that takes place on a small packet ship and need this info to decide how many characters are necessary and how much they'll be paid for the journey

Good morning, My question is pretty much summed up in the title, but breaks down into several smaller questions. I was curious as to if there are documented cases of PTSD prior to WW1. What was it known as? Was the person treated, or left to get on with it? Was the person scorned, or was there a general sense of pity for them?

Thank you in advance.

EDIT: My particular interest is after the Napoleonic Wars, but also further back to earliest cases of it.

So this is a topic I've been wondering about.

Given how common fights / assaults are in general there have to have been cases where similarly ranked nobles assaulted one another, or even differently ranked nobles fought. What was the impact of such a brawl? Was there any universal law / justice system that applied - or could high rank nobles freely attack lower ranked peers?

How about when a noble attacked a peasant, did they ever have any kind of protection?

I'm writing a fantasy story in which the main setting is based on the Roman Empire. I've been working on the system of government, but I can't seem to wrap my head on how the Roman Senate works. From what I could gather from research, senators had to serve in the military for a certain time (I think it was ten years), after which they would be eligible for the lowest rank. They would then work their way up, until they could become eligible for the higher ranks. The senate is almost limited to a certain number (it changes depending on the emperor, as Augustus made it 900). Okay, makes sense. However, then I hear that senators serve for life. What? How is there a limit on senators if they serve for life.? Then I hear that there's a senatorial class, which everyone with a certain amount of money is a part of. But wait, what if they have a lot of money but haven't served in the army? I've been researching for months and I can't for the life of me figure out how this works. I'm thinking I must be an idiot and there's something obvious I'm missing. If anyone could help clarify this I'd greatly appreciate it.