The Manchester Guardian, Monday, 3 September 1945, "War's End":

Less than a century ago Dutch merchants, the only group of the despised Westerners allowed inside Japan, were forced in return for the privilege of trade to stage an annual act of buffoonery before the Shogun's court in Tokio as for the Japanese people of Western inferiority.

What was this "act of buffoonery"?

I’m not sure if this is the proper subreddit to post to but I’m trying to find some information on my grandfathers experience in World War 2. I know he flew 62 missions in a B-26 Marauder in the European theater but besides that there isn’t many information on individual crews. It was the 441st bomb squadron in the 320th Bombardment Group.

Does anyone happen to know where I could find information on individual crews or a place where I could find the planes he flew in or even just more information on this bombardment group? I have an immense respect for what he did and I want to better understand his role in the war.

Historically how was the continent of Africa seen? Did other civilisations recognise “Africans” as an independent polity? Was North Africa seen as its own distinct subcontinent? Was Africa associated with “Blackness”?

Has SubSaharan Africa ever prospered? For most of its history it never seemed to advance beyond tribal kingdoms and never generated a literate society other than perhaps Abyssinia. I ask this question out of my own ignorance so please, don’t be offended.

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I often hear about city-states be they Greek or medieval Italian. How did these states supply themselves with food? Did they control agricultural land beyond them and use taxes to obtain food? Or did they trade and buy it? How did they negotiate with farmers?

(I hope this is the right place to ask this)

I was watching the British TV show 'Victoria' and in one scene Ernest August, King of Hanover and uncle of Queen Victoria is announced as "HRH...". Shouldn't it be HM? Or was the Hanoverian king somehow inferior to the British queen? Or are foreign royals always styled as HRH?

Edit: please excuse the profanity of my question.

Are there any accounts or stories from the native side from the Spanish conquistadors like Hernam cortes, the Pizzaro brothers , Francisco Orellana. I'm currently reading the book river of darkness and I've a couple others on Hernan Cortes I was just wondering if it was any stories from the other side I know the Spanish just about killed everybody but as advanced as some of these civilizations were they had to have some record of encounters with Spanish.

Just one of those internet rumors I heard, but Sir Francis Walsingham was her spymaster, so there might be some records still classified. Are there? Apparently they involve Spain?

Did people freak out at things they were able to read? How much did it affect what the church was doing at the time?

Recent First Ladies have taken up specific causes (cyberbullying for Melania Trump, childhood obesity for Michelle Obama, education for Laura Bush, etc.). How far back in time can we trace this practice?

Also, have First Ladies always been influential politically, or has the position been shaped by women like Edith Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt? Was there ever a pushback in response to particularly powerful/influential First Ladies?

I remember learning in High School that early on Delaware was a Swedish colony. Recently that has flouted back in my mind so I decided to Google what happened to the Swedes. All I could find was that the Dutch took over and incorporated Delaware into New Netherlands, but I couldn't find out anything about what happened to the Swedish settlers themselves. Does anyone know?

So as far as I'm aware, the body was representative and elected by universal male suffrage, however it had no decision making power over officials, the imperial cabinet or national policy. As such I'd like to know, what did the imperial parliament actually do?

I mean this in the sense of exposing facts, not something like the famous "yellow journalism" that goaded the US into the Spanish-American war

In other words, how long did it take after American colonial settlements were formed for independent and definable accents (for example Carolina accent, Boston accent, etc.) to get to a point that we would recognize them as such today?

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It was apparently so important that all the contemporary French books all mention the character's position on it. What was it and why was it so prominent in French culture?