I'm writing a story and want it to be historically accurate, but most sources talk about what life was like for the Indians. I understand why that is, but it doesn't help with what I want to write about. I'm just asking what every day might have been like for English people.

“Yin and Yang have mistakenly switched, and the sun and moon were eclipsed. The sins of all the people are now on one man. Pardon is proclaimed to all under heaven.” History of Latter Han Dynasty, Volume 1, Chronicles of Emperor Guang Wu, 7th year.

“In the day of Gui Hai, the last day of the month, there was a solar eclipse. [The emperor] avoided the Throne Room, suspended all military activities and did not handle official business for five days.” History of Latter Han Dynasty, Vol. 1, Chronicles of Emperor Guang Wu, 7th year”.

“Eclipse on the day of Gui Hai, Man from Heaven died”. History of Latter Han, Annals, No. 18, Gui Hai.

I would really like to know if these quotes have been taken out of context.

I'm not just trying to start a flame war, I promise. I recently found out that Plessy in the famous Plessy V Ferguson was seven eighths white. That Plessy looked looked Caucasian (I heard he basically looked Caucasian). However because one of his great grandparents was African, he was determined to be African. I also know that the children Thomas Jefferson had with Sally Heming were at least three quarters white. Despite being three quarters white, they were still enslaved and even sold. Does that mean you could look basically white and still be a slave in the Antebellum South? Could they say "Sorry, I know you have blond hair, blue eyes, and skin paler than the moon but one of your great, great grandparents was black so you're a slave."

Say it’s a city charter, what would it say or include? Just a concise summary or dot points will be fantastic.

If you have a link that goes into more detail about the different rights given by different charters, and how a town charter compares to a city charter, so I can read in more detail, that’d be fantastic.

Hello r/AskHistorians,

I recently finished reading David Graeber and David Wengrow's Dawn of Everything. In the book, they make an interesting claim: that the European Enlightenment was, in many ways, started by Native American philosophers criticizing European customs. They bring up the example of Kondiaronk, a Native Chief, who conducted a series of interviews in which he laid out his view on white customs and society. This apparently was widely read in Europe and inspired people like Rousseau. He also brings up several passages written by European missionaries, in which Natives bring up points that seem eerily reminiscent of later Enlightenment thinkers. This is an interesting take on the Enlightenment. How much weight does it hold? Also, could you recommend any further reading on this subject?

I was recently listening to a lecture on the Mexican War, and the lecturer mentioned that, after he'd occupied Puebla in Mexico, General Scott had a problem that most of his troops had finished their six months service and returned home. So he had to wait there for a while for new recruits to show up.

As I was considering this interesting historical detail, I started to wonder: how the hell did those troops get back home? Any way you slice it, they would have to travel across miles of enemy territory. Did they walk to Veracruz, across enemy territory, then catch a steamship to New Orleans? Did they walk north, across Texas, and risk encounters with hostile Comanches? How did they manage to get back safely once no longer enlisted in the US Army?

What were the logistics of this? And do we have any historical record of letters or diaries that tell us some crazy adventures had trying to get back to New York from Puebla, Trojan War style?

I ask because slaves were passed down from one generation to the next.

So if a parent died and their child was way 10, 13, 15- did that child own slaves? How would that work?

Thanks

There is a lot of talk about Western Europe's dependence on Russian gas, coal and oil. I wonder where Western Europe bought these resources during the Cold War. Somebody knows?

There are a lot of extraordinary claims in The Origins of War in Child Abuse, but I guess just enough truth that I know of, to make the rest at least worth thinking about and researching.

I live in Eastern Europe, I have also spent time in several 3rd world countries working with NGOs and I work in a prison now. So I'm familiar with some practices regarding child rearing that are described in the book. Those would be quite disturbing for any person in Western Europe: infanticide as a tradition (yes, even today), binding of baby's limbs, severe beatings as a standard of childcare, sexual molestation from very early age. I'm not talking about some rogue behavior, condemned by the larger society, but of widespread and widely accepted practices in many communities. These experiences have made me kind of wander if things were not much, much worse centuries ago.

For those of you who are familiar with DeMause's work, how much of what he describes as the lives of children of antiquity and the Middle ages is true?

Mоre specifically, he makes the claim that he has researched hundreds of letters and other document regarding people's relations with their young children and has found almost no evidence of any love and care as we would understand those concepts today. Quite the contrary, he says most documents describe what we would characterize as child abuse, but earlier researchers "sweep it under the rug" or justify and excuse it, for ex. "the father beats his son because he loves him", etc. What's your take on this?

So, you rush in, sweep aside the pikes, penetrate the formation and... then what? You stand there, with a weapon incapable of harming your opponent more then a simple bar of steel could, which is not zero but still.

People talk about the cuban missiles as "the day the world almost ended", but few people even remember the missiles in Turkey. I don't want to debate if the US or the USSR had the right to place misiles in Turkey or Cuba respectively, BUT I wanna know why didn't the Soviet Union just say in public "US has missiles in Cuba. When Pres. Kennedy takes them away we will take ours from Cuba"? Why werent the missiles i Turkey as mediatic as the missiles in Cuba?

My great grandfather left me some personal items. In those personal items was a photo album that could be meaningful and precious to his descendants. Story goes he found them during World War II. I would love to know the best way to identify him or his descendants, very likely German, and return it? Any direction at all would be appreciated - moderators if this isn't the best place to make this post please let me know.

this might seem like a dumb question but, how did they tell who was jewish or not? my best guess is public records but other than that was there any other way?