Hi. I’m writing this in the aftermath of Cohen and Flynn’s news and sentencing regarding the Trump stuff. While I don’t want to get political about that, I am interested in what was going on during the fall of Nixon.

Were citizens that voted for Nixon still largely supported? How covered was the investigation? Did prominent people fall and did it change the public persona? When Nixon finally went down, what was the mood and feelings about his presidency?

Sorry if this is vague but in school we were just taught watergate happened and then he resigned, but I want to know what kind of debates and morale were occurring during this period. Thanks!

Hello, historians. I would like to understand how Christianity spread throughout the World. Is there a book about this you could recommend? I bet every region has its own story and that it is a millennia-long process but there has got to be a great book about this out there but I haven't found it...

Hey all, so i’m just finishing up Godfrey Hutchinson’s excellent Sparta: Unfit for Empire, which chronicles Sparta’s attempts to maintain its ill-fated hegemony in between Aigospotami and the destruction of the Athenian Fleet and their own loss at Leuktra.

What I was hoping for is a good read on the Third Sacred War — I find Phokis’ plundering of the Delphic treasures and creating a vast mercenary army out of nowhere to be fascinating, but I only ever see it covered as a backdrop to the rise of Philip of Macedon.

Does anyone have any good recommendations on this specific subject? I didn’t see any on the booklist.

How did a German shipwright in Riga and an English shipwright in London both know how to build roughly the same Cog design?

I think I once read that he earned less than miners but I'm not sure whether it was a reliable source

And if the true reason was Socrates' past friendly relations with the Thirty Tyrants, Alcibiades, etc., Plato still seemed to have had similar beliefs and moved in the same circles, so why was he left alone? Was he just excused on the grounds of his relative youth and obscurity at the time?

In Adrian Gilbert's Challenge of Battle: the real story of the British army in 1914, he makes several references to how the Kaiser's army was smaller than it technically could have been...

'Set against a population of 65M, the Kaiser's army was surprisingly small (782k), especially when compared with it's main rival, France (39M), whose army was >700k'. (paraphrased Chapter four, page 55)

...and states that this was for a variety of reasons including...

'funding restrictions (partly due to the naval expansion program), a fear that expanding the officer corps would dilute its aristocratic character and a general belief in quality over quantity of training etc' (paraphrased Chapter four, page 55)

How aristocratic was the Kaiser's army at the start of WW1? Elsewhere Gilbert implies that aristocrats were more likely to found in the upper ranks but more generally do we know roughly what percentage of the Kaiser's officers were from an aristocratic/landed gentry etc background? 25%? 50%?

Thanks for reading.

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

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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: History that passes the Bechdel test! Tell your stories about a time women (or people of nonbinary gender) in history interacted with each other—loved, fought, cooperated, led and followed—and men were not the purpose or a major player.

No historical story exists in a vacuum and there can be men or men deities mentioned. But they cannot be the focus of your story or the women’s actions.

Next time: It’s holidays. Bring your historical meme game.

If anyone can point me to a book on 17-18th (1650-1750) century Caribbean history, you would be forever in my debt.

I have been doing a lot of reading on piracy during this era, but seem to be at a total loss when trying to learn about colonial rule during this time. If anyone can answer, or point me towards reading that would answer the following questions it would be greatly appreciated.

1. Did England, France, and Spain all have the same economic drivers in the West Indies (sugar trade) or did they each have unique economies for their Caribbean colonies?

2. It seems the main powerbrokers in the region were the French and English. The Dutch didn't have enough of a naval presence to fight in the area, and mostly focused on smaller colonies in the lower antilles. Is this a correct assumption? Was there a singular most powerful nation in the Caribbean?

3. Following the previous question, did the Spanish try to exert the same military and naval presence in the Caribbean as the French and English, or were Cuba and Puerto Rico merely staging grounds for their mining operations in Central America and Florida?

4. Was there "free trade" between the colonies, or did English, French, and Spanish colonies have no contact with each other (besides military contact)

5. How did the internal policies differ between the European nations in regards to their Caribbean holdings?

Did alot of Levantine stay pagan, or was the region overwhelmingly Christian? What about Jews and Zoroastrian?

To organize a party, there's always a need of money in order to make it work so...

Where did the money come from?

(2nd try)

I read that the Etruscans had access to a lot of iron while central Italy was not so rich in iron. So where did the Romans got their iron to fight successfully against the Etruscans?

I was told in my European history class that the idea of a "European" is a relatively modern concept, and that for centuries before, people in Europe post roman empire were more likely to consider themselves part of "Christendom" rather than part of Europe. This made me wonder, would someone from let's say Western or Central Europe consider the Byzantines and other Orthodox groups part of Christendom, or as something separate?

As far as I know, most people in America didn't really know who the Beatles were before they were on that show, so why did so many people know to tune in to see them? Was the fact that they were going to be on there like really hyped up or something or did Ed Sullivan's show normally get that many viewers and the Beatles just happened to be on an episode and that's how so many people learned about them?

Tenochtitlan at the time was one of greatest civilizations on earth. An Aztec city built on a lake with heigh pyramids along with a network of roads and bridges. Wikipedia says that Cortés and his men were astonished by the sight of it when they found it and thought they were dreaming. I could also imagine that no other european had ever seen such an organized society in the new world. But why not only conquer but also destroy the entire capital city and build your own city over it? I understand it was a different time and the conquistadors declared everywhere for Spain, because they could, but why erase something of that magnitude?