I've been curious about this, especially since digging in Wikipedia hasn't been working. It doesn't matter if they're necessarily Libyan but Tripolitanian, Cyreanican, etc.

I'm also specifically looking for democratic or semi-democratic people. I know Idris I wanted a monarchy and eventually got it, but I haven't seen any democratic people yet.

I'm mostly interested in Christianity in this case. Many black Americans are Christian which still surprises me since I always assumed that it was a popular fact that Africans (not all but a lot) had the Bible forced upon them so I'm curious as to why many black people still believe in Christianity. I figured that maybe I'm way off base and there actually is a history of it.

I know a little bit about what was going on in the area during East Roman and early Ottoman times, and a bit about WWI and after, but don't really know much about what was happening in Eastern Europe during 19th century, but am curious about the strong nationalist movements that emerged, and about why the Balkans were always seen as such a powder keg. Maybe the wars isn't the best place to start. What do ya think?

One reads a lot about land reform in South Africa, where black people are a numerical majority but white people hold a majority of arable land.

Did this majority-minority distribution originally arise through imperialist conquest, through illegal violence, through government expropriation, through market forces, or in some other way?

(I've read about the 1913 Natives Land Act, but as far as I can tell it didn't actually redistribute the land, but only "locked in" a racial distribution that had already existed. I'm interested in how that racial distribution emerged in the first place. Reading a little about the origins of apartheid and disenfranchisement has likewise illuminated black people's exclusion from political power but not their exclusion from land ownership.)

(I know that this topic can be a lodestar for American racists -- thanks in advance to the moderators for helping remove any unhelpful and racist responses.)

It seems interesting to me that we frequently predict what the future thousand+ years will be like through story, yet I do not recall any examples of this pre-1800's. Are there any, and if so how accurate were they?

I know, I know, the government can focus on more than one thing at once, but I'm sure the reasons impelling him and Congress to do this right then, during the height of the Civil War, had to be more than mere whimsy.

I watched a video about the Cold War and there was a war between Ethiopia and Somalia. The two Superpowers (Sovietunion and the USA) helped the countries in this war and switched the countries they were helping as theyre regime changed. So the Sovietunion helped Ethiopia, my question is now: Was Ethiopia communist? (Correct me if there are some mistakes in my comment)

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

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this thread is for you ALL!

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: Healing and Healers! What were some of the main medical complaints of your era, and how did people get better? Who were the "health professionals"...or amateurs? Tell us about battlefield medicine, bubonic plague, improvements in chemotherapy over the 20th century, anything about healing and/or healers!

Next time: Buildings!

I have seen many people argue that the Austro - Hungarian Empire would be able to easily deal with its internal issues should it not have been dismantled after ww1 by foreign powers and that its perception as a fragile, unstable and near collapse country was nothing but historical revisionism from the countries that broke free, trying to justify their existence. Is there any truth to that?

How does the historiography of Native and Indigenous historians differ from historians of European societies that privilege the written word?

Buffalo Bill's is probably the most famous example of the traveling Wild West show. I'm interested in both the image of the Wild West these shows tried to create, and then the acceptance of that image both at home in the States and abroad.

Were there prominent themes/stories/reenactments that proved more popular? How did traveling shows incorporate Native Americans into the storylines? Did these shows influence public perception of the West, and the colonization thereof? Did they influence the early motion picture industry? Do we still inherit popular myths of the Old West from these shows?

Thanks in advance!

If the first letter isn't legible, it looks like an antisigma.

I'm watching Versailles, which is obviously a tv drama and not something I would hold to a high standard of historical accuracy, but (spoilers?) King Louis XIV has just ordered the Duke of Cassel to marry Sophie de Clermont, and it's making me wonder if he can actually force such an issue (neither of the involved parties like the idea). The king isn't closely related to either of these people (so he wouldn't have rights as their head of household, as he does over Philip, who was also ordered to (re)marry this episode) and in u/Lilac1399's FAQ response regarding women's role in marriage negotiations she mentions that a legal age of consent was established in the 12th century, and that marriage was only considered legal if it was between consenting parties - but also that people could be pressured to consent to an undesired marriage.

So my question is threefold: 1) Did Louis XIV have the power to command his nobles to marry, 2) did other kings of the early Modern Period have this power, and 3) if so, how commonly would it have been used?

So I looked up some ww2 veterans on Wikipedia, just to know how many there are (spoilers, not too many) and I found out there are very very little amount of soviet veterans even less than the German veterans. Can someone tell me why it is? Is it because stalin's ruthless policies or there are just not to many of them?

The supremely popular French Revolution took down the French absolute monarchy in favor of a flood of republicanism, threatening traditionally monarchial forces in Europe (helping lead to the French Revolutionary Wars and eventually the Napoleonic Wars). From this it appears absolute monarchy was diametrically opposed to the goals of the French Revolution, which, in the end, was republican (small r) in character.

However, Napoleon's seizure of power in the aftermath of the revolution--a seizure of power that seems to generally have had popular support of the French people--led to him being crowned as Emperor of the French. His French Empire was exactly what the revolution had deposed: an absolute monarchy.

However, numerous ideals of the French Revolution persisted, and these ideals were spread during the Napoleonic Wars. The spread of French Revolutionary ideals and concepts is described as the greatest codification of laws since the fall of Rome. How did the French people reconcile the ideals they'd developed during the French Revolution--and aggressively spread them to other European countries--while popularly accepting a form of government that stood in direct contradiction to the Revolution's republicanism?

Alright i know this sounds stupid but duriNg ww1 couldn't the troops just keep digging forward till they reached the enemy trench.

I recently accepted a job in New Mexico teaching history at a small school but I was ask to teach New Mexican history in addition to u.s. history Which is my specialty. I am from Texas and I'm not familiar with the subject I was wondering if someone can recommend me some books for familiarizing myself with the topic?

There were an unprecedented number of Treaty Ports operated in China by the European Powers in particular. Why were they so vociferous? Why did this system of trading and colonisation seem to lend itself so well to China and not to other countries that were occupied/colonised by European Powers? Would also welcome any general information pertaining to the operation of Treaty Ports in China.

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