I’m making a short film for a school project, and I want it to be accurate. Did every soldier wear wigs as part of their uniform? Or was it just officers? Or was it a choice between each solider? Or did no one?

When I read through the history of lawyering on Wikipedia, I am immediately struck by how much lawyers and lawyering seems to be a distinctly western phenomenon. It seems to me that by comparison, advocates-for-hire who worked overwhelmingly for gentry/bourgeoisie (due to pay requirements) seems to be something which stems from ancient Greece, is further codified as a profession in Rome, and then remains around Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire.

Historically, lawyers function as advocates for men of means. In theory, they help the state administer justice. One particular quirk lawyers possess as a profession is the advocacy for rights of individuals. How did states in places such as China or the Middle East fulfill these roles without having (as many) lawyers? Especially arbitration of disputes and the administering of justice? What other functions have lawyers historically fulfilled, that I have neglected to list, that non-Western states have fulfilled by other means?

Thank you.

In his song Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, Warren Zevon tells a tale of a famed Norwegian mercenary, betrayed and killed by a fellow mercenary at the behest of the CIA. Headless, his body roams conflict zones, eventually getting revenge on his killer.

Is the basis for Zevon's song rooted at all in historical accuracy (ie. use of foreign mercenaries in the Nigerian Civil war of 1967 and other conflict zones on the continent). If so how common/widespread was this practice (what percentage of the fighting force did they make up)? Or is it simply a case of extensive creative license? Or is this a case of artistic license first and foremost?

For some context, my family members often browse alternative media where different kind of specialists and intellectuals voice their opinions on current state of the world and it’s future, but I noticed it’s mostly speculation with little evidence and shouldn’t be considered a reality. That’s why I’m looking for popular or not-so-popular ideas and speculations from the past that turned out to be untrue but a lot of people actually believed it. I guess there are more examples in modern history because of television and the internet, but I’m sure that kind of thing also happened in medieval or ancient history.

According to medieval law, Batsars can't inherit.

E.g. did people in 14th century France take note of technological/scientific advances compared to 12th century France? Or did, say, the Song dynasty in China realize they possessed technology and scientific knowledge beyond what the Tang or Han dynasties did?

Did people in the past expect technology and science to continue to advance as we do today?

I'm currently doing research on the Napoleonic wars, and I've heard the claim that the Rothschilds made their fortune by falsely claiming that Napoleon won so that the British would sell their stocks, only for the family to buy all of it and leave England broke, thus forcing them to rely on the national bank now owned by the Rothschilds to make ends meet. Are there any reliable sources on this? Or this is all conspiracy talk?

Hi folks, I'm an Australian high school teacher finishing up our unit on World War Two. For non-Australians, Year 10s are 15-16 years old and one year off their senior school specialisations. Since this is the first year my school has taught this age bracket I'm about to review our program and thought I'd consult actual historians.

What do you wish high school teachers taught about this subject? Are there myths you want to see busted? Perspectives that are helpful (at a high school level)? What should a teenager know about WW2?

Please keep in mind that WW2 only gets about 20 hours of classtime with 25 or so un-scholarly teenagers who need their hands held at every step of the way (getting 8 bullet points of facts out of 3-4 pages of textbook over 2 hours of self-directed study was, shall we say, "A Bridge Too Far"). I'm also Australian, so there's less focus on things like Pearl Harbour or the Blitz, and I am already unusual among my colleagues for the depth with which I covered the European theatres.

For reference, this year I covered:

- The lead up to WW2 (emphasising the Treaty of Versailles, appeasement, and the attractiveness of dictatorship in the troubled '30s).

- Nazi Ideology (lebensraum, racial purity, autarky, social Darwinism, faith in strong leaders)
- The course of the war in Europe (2-3 bullet points each for the Mediterranean, Britain/Atlantic, and Continental European theatres, for each year)
- The Holocaust (emphasising the Einsatzgruppen and ghettos and not just Auschwitz)
- The Australian homefront (propaganda/censorship, internment, war restrictions, women's changing role)
- The war in the Pacific (Kokoda, Midway, the nuclear- and firebombing of Japan)
- Prisoners of War (emphasis on the Death Railway because of the Australian context).
- The post-war global order (VERY briefly, the rest of the history curriculum focuses on civil rights since 1945)
- Rise of fascism in Germany (end of term case study after assignments)

As for perspectives, I've emphasised that, "if you and I were in 1930s Germany we would probably have fallen for Nazi lies too", "Germany's industry could not compete with Russia and the USA", "Hitler was not insane (at least before the drug use late in the war)", "The Wehrmacht Was Not Clean", and "Imperial Japan was A Racist Death Cult With a Strong Religious Fervour Out For It's Own Slice of Imperialist Power".

From what I can garner from light googling, the estimated citizen population of Sparta at the beginning of the 5th century BC was 20,000-35,000 (I have no idea if this is accurate, but they're the only figures I could find). Unless only males are counted as "citizens" then we must immediately half the number since only men would be fighting, leaving 10,000-17,500. If the lower figure is right, then the entire male citizen population of Sparta was at Plataea, and even if we take the largest estimate, it was still considerably more than half. And that is without considering the fact the presumably not all Spartiates were of fighting age or fit for combat (in which case the number Spartans at Plataea was greater than the lower estimates for the entire eligible population). There would also be factors like attrition to take into account.

The absurdly huge figures Herodotus provides for the Persian forces in the Greco-Persian wars have long since been proven a logistical impossibility, used in order to give the reader the impression that hopelessly outnumbered Greeks prevailed against an insurmountable colossus. That in mind, why would he overestimate the size of the Greek force? Based on his careful arithmetic and oddly precise final total for the inconceivably enormous Persian force, it doesn't seem on brand to just pull a nice big round number out of thin air for the Greeks, not to mention that exaggerating their numbers would run counter to the narrative he's trying to push.

Did ancient Greek city-states genuinely raise every single male citizen for war, keeping nothing in reserve? Surely this would come with all sorts of practical issues. Who would be running things at home or keeping order while all the male citizenry was gone? What, for example, would stop the underclass of Helots who comprised the bulk of the actual population from revolting while all their masters (and the entire military of the polity that enslaved them) was temporarily out of the picture?

Where can I go to find the history of Abortion Laws in America?

I’m specifically looking for the time period between the first law Connecticut passed in 1821 and the states after that, until 1910 when it was a felony in all the current states.

I’d ideally like to find the date each state’s law was proposed, the text of law, and possibly what some of the debate was surrounding each law’s passage.

I’m thinking through what I know of western history, and it doesn’t seem like westerners were ever racist in the way we characterize racism today.

The Bible guided western thought for two thousand years and makes it very clear that all human beings are related by blood. So I can’t imagine how any of the early European colonizers’ came to the conclusion that primitive people were “lesser humans” the Bible forgot to mention existed.

Long before the colonization of the Americas, western Christendom had intimate contact with black and brown people its entire history. The Middle East and Africa were largely Christian right into the Middle Ages.

But then there is this point where European whites start propagating the idea that human beings are not equal, that some races are lesser humans who can be subjugated on the basis of race alone.

How did that happen?

Hi guys, I'm trying to imagine what typically happens when a merchant ship arrives at a medieval port wanting to sell its cargo (after which it presumably buys new cargo and returns from whence it came). Obviously there's a lot of variation possible, but I'm keen to understand the most typical scenarios, and had the following questions:

The ship might be owned by a company or individual? Or either?

The ship would likely run the same route many times? (I imagine merchant ships didn't just work like travelling pedlars, stopping here and there trying to hawk their goods).

Would it need to get permission to dock? (In advance? From a harbour master? How would they communicate?).

Once docked, can it just go ahead and unload its cargo? Or this cargo would need to be checked (by some kind of port authority?) and paid tax on first?

What paperwork would be involved?

Would the cargo likely have a buyer already, who took the goods direct to a warehouse? Or might a merchant ship have to find a buyer.

I guess the ship would dock for one night at least (paying a docking fee), allowing the sailors to run riot on land for a night... but the ship owner would want to get back on the sea as soon as possible (to avoid paying the docking fee again).

Would they have to pay tax on goods they are shipping out of the harbour?

Would there likely be a third party / port authority who handled all loading / unloading? (Or the ships crew would take care of that?)

If I had to specify a time period, I'm keen to know more about I'd say Naples in the early Renaissance (so end of medieval era), but concrete info about how any port functioned during any time period from Roman onwards would interest me.

Many thanks to anyone who takes the time to answer or share links.

As someone from the West, I see a tendency to simplify India's culture and history as a monolith, rather eerily similar to how the West lumps the diversity found in Russia under "Russia" in the history sections of libraries. Isn't it better to view Indian history as a "continental history", like "European history", even then that term's inadequate, although better than having to define it's history on the basis of modern nation-state historiography.

On the other hand, Youtube channels like Kings and Generals are bringing to light the length and diversity of Indian history, as well as many other forgotten regions largely unmentioned today (Russia, Ethiopia, Mainland Southeast Asia) which I very much appreciate.

In World War 2 Germany, were some prisoners of war sent to conventional prisons or were any and all criminals at the time put into Concentration camps?

I understand this could be thought of as extremely broad since there are many types of “history books” but I am essentially just asking, how do you(historians) best absorb information while reading. Do you take notes and highlight, or do you just go straight through and try to absorb info as if reading a novel? How often do you re-read passages? Do you ever focus on certain parts of the text and ignore others? How does your strategy vary depending on the density/difficulty of the text. This question is also meant to ignore situations where one is researching and simply using texts as a reference. I mean more along the lines of reading when studying for a class or simply for the sake of better understanding a time period.

Apologies of this isn’t the proper place for this post. I’ve always been fascinated by the Viking’s and after watching The Northman my interest was reignited. Can anyone suggest books that comprehensively cover the history of the Vikings, their origins, and general information? Thank you all.