French Guy here. How is Jeanne d'Arc story taught in the british schools ?

The reason for me asking this: I've been reading JeeLoo Liu's "An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism". It's an interesting read - one of the things that struck me is how similar the associated concepts and elements of Yang (masculine, heavenly/celestial, lit, active, generative) and Yin (Feminine, earthly/chthonic, shadowy, passive, receptive) are to Proto-Indo-European metaphysical conceptions. Some of it can just be chalked down to patriarchy, but it makes me wonder to what extent, if any, there was Indo-European (e.g. Tocharian?) influence in the Zhou period, as the Yijing took shape.

One thing that people are frequently taught about Italy is that it has historically been protected by the Alps, which served as a natural barrier separating the peninsula from the rest of Europe. On the other hand, Italy has been invaded countless times by foreign invaders, including Hannibal, the Gauls, Napoleon, France, etc. So how did the Italians benefit geographically from the Alps?

Hi everyone,

I hope this is an appropriate question! I am working on a story set in the late 14th c. England/Scotland, and I am wondering if anyone can recommend some resources for researching the different dialects of English spoken at this time. I would like to have some of the dialogue in the story be authentic.

Additionally, if anyone can recommend something like a dictionary of the language spoken at this time, that would be very helpful as well.

Finally, if anyone can recommend a good history of Oxford University during this period, I'd appreciate it.

Slavery in America seemed to be racially based and limited to people of African decent. Were there specific laws or customs the specified exactly who could be enslaved? Did anybody ever get in trouble for trying to enslave a person of the wrong race?

I was reading 1491 by Charles C Mann and came across the chapter on the Inca where the author writes how it was one of the largest empires in the world, achieved great feats of architecture and technology, and seemed to have abundant storehouses. All of this without money.

I want to know more about their economic system. How did they achieve such efficiency? How were goods and services produced? How did they get people to do work like farm surplus food, serve in the army, labor to construct monuments? If all of this was done under the threat of violence, what prevented revolts and unrest from breaking out?

We all know Africa Americans where treated horribly but how where other races like native Americans treated

In the November 1939 edition of the journal High Points in the Work of the High Schools of the City of New York, speech teacher Charles Spiegler challenged a study which critiqued speech classes. One point of the study said that

Pupils are instructed in the shades of inflection and niceties of pronunciation to an extent which may even handicap rather than help the ordinary pupil in his environment. The pupil is trained to say " necess'ry" and "ah-ent," while in almost the same breath he says "ring-gink" and "coily "

What is the meaning and origin of the two slang terms? The context suggests that the author of the study finds them inappropriate (thus the NSFW tag). I am asking because I am looking through the journal for instances where anti-intolerance and democracy education are associated.

Dad has filing cabinets filled with files carefully labeled and stored from the 60’s. He worked on South East Asian history. What do I do with all these pieces of paper? Would the university want them?

Hello everyone,

I am working on research in preparation for my dissertation and I'm putting this question out to everyone to get some feedback, critique, or advice about the value and potential problems of drawing parallels between contemporary and historic events.

My project focuses on a current epidemiological study. I'm looking at how its framework is being applied across disciplines in research, how it is proliferating through policy, lobbying and legislation, and how it is translating into institutional practice in social & health services, and education. I have read a substantial body of literature across several discourses, and I am seeing that many of the same logics, rationales, justifications, and outcomes that are driving this movement parallel those of the early American eugenics movement from approximately 1910-1920-ish. There are of course a number of major differences--the most significant being that while the eugenics movement emphasized heredity alone as being the cause of feeblemindedness, the study I am examining places the cause on factors that are both environmental and genetic.

My question probably doesn't require going into a great deal of depth about my research. I'm asking more generally what are common critiques about drawing parallels between contemporary and historic events? Of course there is frequently the problem of oversimplification, different social complexities, motivations, knowledge-power structures...but what else might I consider as I prepare to share my work and put it up for critique.

Any thoughts on people's misapplications of historical events in contemporary work would be much appreciated.

Hi there, historians of Reddit!

The first time this question occurred to me was back when I visited the Little Bighorn battlefield when I was still in high school (i.e. a long time ago). In the museum, it was mentioned that many of the Lakota warriors were actually better armed than the U.S. cavalry at the time, with the latter still using single-shot carbines while the former had repeaters bought from European/American traders. This fact proved to be a shock to me, since it essentially destroyed my assumption that indigenous forces were always far behind colonial powers in terms of military might/technology.

Anyways, my interest in the subject came back recently after I did a bit of reading on the latter half of the American Civil War, specifically General Sherman's Georgia campaign. I'm aware the majority of infantry were armed with rifled-muskets, but in my research I came across some references to soldiers/companies in the Sherman's forces being armed with Henry Repeating Rifles. There was even a photograph of six or seven soldiers posing with them as well, with a quote from a Confederate soldiers complaining about having fight repeater-armed Union troops or something along those lines.

My knowledge on the American army during the Reconstruction era is hazy at best, but since the U.S infantry largely used five-shot (Springfield?) bolt actions during the Spanish American war, I'm assuming the army never formally adopted repeaters into it's arsenal.

So, why exactly didn't they? I mean, in Europe the Prussian Dreyse/Needle rifle and the French Chassepote revolutionized infantry tactics on the continent, and both of those rifles had a far slower rate of fire (not to mention ammo capacity) than any of their repeating contemporaries. Was it the price of the guns that prevented the army from purchasing them in large quantities, or was it something else?

Thanks to anyone who responds, and thanks for being awesome!

​

- 4th year History major

Just a bit of personal curiosity here, and as an amateur I apologize if my vocabulary isn't accurate enough. So here's a bit of preface as to where my mind was going with this:

I was thinking of all the political unions between Monarchies of Europe during the Middle ages and Renaissance as nobility often used Marriages of State as a way to seal alliances. Was there any sort of equivalent to a Marriage of State within the Muslim world, and if so how was it different than those in Europe? What then were the roles of daughters in such a system?

I hope this clarifies my question somewhat, Thanks!

Hello,

I am a 3rd year grad student who is taking her first exam in fall. I am feeling overwhelmed with the amount of information I need to obtain from the 45 books and articles I have to read. I am just looking for any helpful tips from other historians or students on best practices for organizing massive amounts of information so when I take my exam I'm not flipping back through 45 sources trying to find something. Thanks friends!

In Oliver Stone's "The Untold History of the United States", he claims that there is actual evidence that the atomic bombs were not the reason the Japanese surrendered.

This is obviously a theory we've all heard, but he does not go on to claim it was the Soviet invasion either. His claim is that the Japanese offered to surrender if their emperor wasn't deposed. The US denied this, bombed them, and then offered them a surrender at that exact deal they had originally wanted, meaning the emperor wasn't deposed in the end.

I had personally never heard anything like this before anywhere. If true, it seems like a piece of information that would settle this long debate once and for all. If what he said was true to a "T", we would have had no reason to drop the bombs at all.

So is this factually accurate? Or is there even evidence that suggests anything like this is true?

The more I read about European history in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the more common it feels like it is to read something along the lines of, "...and by that point, the Spanish/French/Habsburg crown was in hundreds of thousands of florins worth of debt to prominent bankers, which they had no realistic hope of repaying any time soon."

How did bankers cope with this kind of behavior? In modern society we have all these apparent safeguards to protect the stability of our complex banking systems. But these bankers seem to have been stiffed by their customers on a regular basis. Were banks just constantly folding a lot of the time? Why would anyone get into so risky a business in the first place?

I’m curious about the truth in HBO’s “Boardwalk” and it’s depiction of prohibition era distilleries and its distribution. We’re there large scale productions of bootleg liquor? Was a lot of bootleg liquor adulterated? Was it adulterated with anything harmful? How did it taste? Bad?

Coke and soda weren’t invented until the 1800’s. Prior to that, did people mix their hard alcohol with anything? Or was everything just drank straight?

Did the Allied forces, especially US and UK, rape and pillage during their campaigns like the germans and the soviets did? I've read many accounts of these acts being committed by German, Japanese and Soviet troops, but no mention of the same by the other Allied ones.

Such descriptions always seem to suggest, if only in omission, that the Western troops were civilised and didn't engage in such barbaric acts. But, is this the truth? I somehow find it hard to believe that they would (I'm an indian, so no home bias) since there is a perception of them being the good guys (the actual good guys, unlike the 'godless' soviets, who only were allied for expediency), but its also unrealistic to expect a couple of countries to be the paragons of virtue, while others were the paragons of vice.

Obligatory thank you all for your effort and great replies that I enjoy daily before I start.

Although I am Spanish national, I feel that public education is greatly lacking / biased when it comes to our Civil War. For this reason and after the pass of time I have become increasingly interested in it. After my wife (non Spanish) read Anthony Beevors "The Battle For Spain", and after reading really good critics of it in a recent post in /r/badhistory, I took it up.

In the introduction theres brief mention of the '36 elections quite clarifying that there were "fair" elections, but as I understood recent studies have come to the conclusion that they were indeed fraudulent (Stanley Payne, for one).

Where the elections of 1936 fraudulent?

Bonus question: In Beevors introduction there is no mention as far as I remember of José Calvo Sotelo assassination and how it was carried out- in my understanding a major, key factor in the background for the Civil War. To what extent am I wrong/right?

I stopped reading the book until I get some more clarity on these, but, regardless, I will definately read it through!!

Thanks for your time.

I recently got into a debate about the purpose and function of public schooling. One side saw public schooling as having been created as a form of charity to educate persons who could not afford private tudors or private schooling, while the other side saw public schooling as an institution meant to ensure that the nation's labor force is literate and educated. (I am not giving away my own view so as to not taint the question).

I started to do some digging and learned that U.S. compulsory education laws started in Massachusetts (towns of 50 persons had to hire a teacher, towns of 100 persons had to start a school), and that compulsory education laws spread to all states by the early 1900s or so.

Do we have any sources that reveal the legislative purpose behind the creation of US public school systems and/or compulsory education laws? If so, what do they say?