Hello, I am writing a historical novel set in Victorian era London. I wanted to ask by the title: Would ladies' maids be allowed to sit in the same carriage as their masters when there is a need to travel?

if not what was happening in china during these time? may they have records of anything happening in the Middle East?

Did the Compromise of 1850 likely delay or quicken the US Civil War? In the long term, was it a good thing by abating tensions, or was it bad because it caused more division between the states or for any other reason?

This question occured to me as I was playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. The setting of that game includes various fictional tribal cultures and each culture has a unique facepaint and bodypaint style. Aloy, the main character, even has the option of wearing different face paints, something that was exoanded upon in the sequel Horizon: Forbidden West.

This got me thinking:

Facepainting and bodypainting seem to be almost synonomous with "tribal." No matter where you look in the world, it seems that everywhere exists or has existed an indigenous tribal culture that uses at least some form of facepaint or bodypaint, even if it's just used in a select few ceremonies.

The Picts. Various tribes in Siberia. Various tribes in North America. The Aztecs. The Maori.

Those are just a few examples of indigenous tribal cultures using tattoes, from vastly different corners of the world.

So how come this is such a common occurence among tribal cultures? How come this is such a global phenomena? And why did most other cultures stop tattooing?

Im getting a Bachelors in Education and want to know if I should get a Masters in Education because it would be really easy to become a principal and make more money. But my real passion is in talking about our past, history. I like doing research on our past. I'm aware of the language requirements for any History PhD but I have been studying Latin to start preparing. I'm just wondering if I need to get a Masters in History or I would be fine with an Education major to get into a PhD program. Or even if I should change my BA to history rightnow.

Every article and TV documentary will refer to Istanbul as the capital of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires. "Byzantine Empire" would have been news to the people living in it. I've read that even the Greeks started calling themselves Romanoi. I fully understand why we tend to make the distinction but since the empire itself never made it, why do we and when did we start this doing this?

Historically, what would kings/leaders write to their military commanders during wars in order to direct them to go to war, levy armies, etc.? Does anyone know where I can find any primary source documents where someone was giving out orders to their knights?

What I mean by popular image is the horned helmets, the Arnold Schwarzenegger muscles, always shirtless, etc.

South America was divided on the highest level into the Spanish and the Portuguese colonies. Spanish colonies were also divided into viceroyalties. Shortly after the independence, the old viceroyalties, bigger countries like the Argentine Confederation or Gran Columbia splintered into their (for the most part) today's counterparts. But why? Why did Gran Columbia splinter into Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador? Why not only into Venezuela and Columbia or Venezuela, Columbia, Educator and a fourth country? Why and how did these new national identites came into existence?

I know the historicity of the Trojan War is widely debated, and the common view seems to be that if Troy indeed fell to an invading force from mainland Greece, it was most likely on a much smaller scale and in shorter time than attested in the Illiad, and Homer probably merged tales about multiple different military operations into one big event. However, I am wondering how much of this story could have been possible.

My question is: With what we know about the civilizations of the Aegean Sea during the time in question, the logistics of warfare, and the political landscape, would it be possible for such an event to happen; that is for a ruler from mainland Greece (or multiple) to gather allies and/or vassals, invade Anatolia, and lay siege to a city for ten years, with that city also drawing on multiple allies from far away regions to aid in its defense? Where are the limitations to this idea?

I apologise if this has already been answered somewhere else. I’ve gone through past answers and the Mod’s Reading Recommendations but have been unable to find anything on the subject.

Reading your answers on this sub has introduced me to what a high quality historical text is supposed to look like, so while I’m by no means a scholar or an expert on the subject I was hoping to find a book that is really in depth, as I’m already familiar with the period and subject.

Preferably in english but can also be in italian. I’m mostly familiar with studies in the latter, so I was hoping to find a different perspective.

Thank you all in advance

I'm looking to do some reading to strenghten my overall understanding of fascism, and almost every source that speaks of fascism after 1945 refers to it as 'neo-fascism'. Is it because it seems ideollogically different, but build on the same foundations as interbellum and pro-world war fascism?
Thanks in advance!

I’m reading the book Who ate the First Oyster right now (highly recommend). Each chapter goes into historical & scientific detail of an important “first” in history. The last chapter is on the first person to set foot in Hawaii, but it talks about Polynesian exploration in general really.

It absolutely blew my mind.

The author just offhandedly mentioned how sweet potatoes from Chile have been found in New Zealand, indicating there were trade routes covering thousands of miles traversed in essentially Catamarans. A quick google search afterwards revealed there’s a lot of DNA & Linguistic evidence backing up that this ain’t just speculation at this point — the word for root vegetable is earilly similar between Chileans and distant Pacific Islanders, for example. From a Nat Geo article:

And the Polynesian name for the root vegetable—"kuumala"—resembles its names in the Andean Quechua language: "kumara" and "cumal."

How the hell is nobody talking about this?? It’s bad enough that we still talk about Columbus as much as we do, and only fairly recently does it feel like American classrooms have added Lief Erikson as an asterisk next his name. What’s been keeping the Polynesians out of the narrative?

For context, in case anyone is curious, “The landlord shouted to them to leave him alone, for he had already told them that he was mad, and as a madman he would not be accountable even if he killed them all” (p. 31). And similar sentences are written throughout the novel.

I just find it remarkable that (if this is indeed true) in the early 1600s, the Spanish legal system not only recognizes mentally not alright people but also find that even in serious cases such as murder, that they may not be culpable in their actions. Or is this a case of Cervantes employing some sort of satire/joke/exaggeration that just flew over my head and this isn't actually the case?

My knowledge is very poor of that time period. The best I know is 'Fall of Civilizations: Roman Britain' on youtube, something like that would be great or anything would do.

I read Harold Tanner's China: A History, and in volume 1 on page 129 it's written:

Jade was believed to preserve the body, and so members of of the imperial clan and some favorites were buried with jade items, jade plugs for their bodily orifices, and even entire suits made of jade. Some Han bodies have been found in such suits, so well preserved that their flesh bounced back when pressed.

This claim piqued my interest, so I tried looking up examples, but only a couple articles I managed to find mentioned the state of the body (only in the case of Liu Sheng and Dou Wan), and they said that the bodies were only crumbled skeletons. Thus I am left wondering why Tanner would write that, assuming that jade coverings were not a good preservative, as those articles suggest.