I bought this book ‘a world lit only by fire’ and after the first chapter I was a little suspicious of the books portrayal of the high Middle Ages, and it turns out that the book is wrong about basically everything it says, but it raised this question for me. The book mentions that there was a constant level of violence among the bottom rung of the nobility, the younger sons of nobles would kidnap and ransom others, banditry was common and knights would basically just ride around stealing things and raiding villages with few repercussions during peacetime.

It made me wonder, in a society where power was so decentralized, what actually prevented people from fighting their neighbors all the time? Are there any examples of nobles who were lower on the totem pole fighting over territory or anything like that? If you’re an average nobleman with a manor and a village under his control, why not just ride to the next village over, kill the other noble and set up a family member as the new guy in charge of that area? I guess the people higher up the noble ladder would disapprove, but what if you had some legal justification like the ones used to justify big dynastic conflicts? Or if your neighbor was a troublemaker and you got the ‘Ok’ from the authorities to make a legal attempt at taking over their land? What if two neighbors had a disagreement over a border or property line?

I’m assuming I’m just misunderstanding something super basic but I can’t really think of why this wouldn’t be something that happened.

In fictional portrayals of ancient battles (Gladiator, etc.) the commanders are always personally fighting in the field. Obviously there would be situations in which the commanders are forced to fight alongside the troops, but what was the norm? When say, Roman emperors, would personally lead armies into battle it would seem too risky/costly for them to enter the fray, but perhaps it was more important to demonstrate their ability as warriors to the troops?

Today, I was arguing against an anarcho-socialist friend of mine, who has this "very romantic" view of stateless human tribes as being pervasively peaceful and respectful of individual liberties. He argues that all cruelties and barbarianism are product of a state apparatus with centralized government. My response was that barbaric cultral practices and violation of individual liberties had long existed in human communities and preceded a state, sovereign or any form of central government with a formalistic procedure that inscribe the barbaric cultral practices into letters of law. I used the example of practice of female genital mutilation in African Tribes where women are forced into the cultural practice by the community. He said that it only existed after there was governmental structure and that power structure and systemic violence that oppressed minority and individual rights did not exist in ancient human tribes with no formal law because it lacked the enforcement mechanism. (Note that we both accept that FGM as a recognized form of barbarism.) So the definition of barbarism is not at issue here. I don't know much about history but his argument just sounds crazy af.

Can anyone back up my claims with actual historic evidence? Or am I the crazy one?

1. Did systemic violence and oppression exist in the social norms without formal code of law? What are some of the worst and cruelest example?
2. He specifically said that American Indian tribes are the most peaceful of them all, where patriarchy and oppression of women were unheard of before American government. Is that true?

I have been interested lately in early papal history, and have been hearing/reading a lot about schisms, over what read to me as resolvable nuances in Christology. Were schisms such as Monophysitism, Nestorianism, and Arianism driven by incompatibility of faith, or did they tend to stand proxy for power struggles between political factions?

I remember learning in school a few years ago that the Japanese were really massively punching above their weight during WWII, especially when fighting against the United States. This was because Imperial Japan had an even smaller economy than Fascist Italy at the time, which is notably a country we largely tend to think of as being the weakest link of the Axis powers. So in a world where the Japanese had been highly successful in realizing their wartime ambitions, what were they intending to do afterwards with and in their newly acquired and subjugated imperial possessions? Would they have carried out an Imperial Japanese equivalent to the Nazis’ ‘Generalplan Ost’, and if so, what exactly were their intents and plans?

Is their something similar Napoleon said or is it entirely fictional?

A friend of mine told me that this had happened, but the story is so odd that I find it hard to believe. Is there anything in the historical record like this story? If there is, do historians believe that it actually happened? If it's only a story, who made it up and why?

Ok so I'm high, listening to some Beethoven, and I started to wonder how these classical musicians "fans" would know there was a new song? Was a new symphony something that people made posters and shit for? Were people waiting in line to get front row tickets at his orchestras?

Like "Catch Beethoven's newest single! String quartet no. 15, op. 132!". Or did he just sell the sheet music and you'd have to catch a coverband at your local pub?

Was it something you just came across happenstance? Did these guys "tour" when they dropped new stuff?

Did these guys even have fans back then?

I've really got myself hooked on this question and I don't even know how I'd google it.

Im sorry.

When talking about the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956, are we saying that Egypt was experiencing a crisis because Britain, Israel, and France decided to invade their territory, or was Britain experiencing a crisis because Egypt abruptly decided to take back control of the canal after it had become so strategically and financially important to them? Or was it a crisis for everyone because the Soviet Union threatened nuclear war after the fighting began?

Sorry if my question is really confusing or super obvious. I'm not too good with history but I'm trying my best to write an essay on this whole thing.

Dahmer's victims were young gay men, who would be disregarded by society, but on the other hand he killed 8 people in 1991 alone. It seems like that might have at least caused noticed in the community that 8 people had gone missing. Was there any inkling either by police or the Milwaukee gay community that there was a pattern of young men disappearing?

A friend asked me, offhand in another conversation about a historical fantasy realm, if people stopped drinking when pregnant in pre-modern times. To my knowledge, the answer (at least in my own heavily studied periods surrounding the general Tudor era in England) was no, because so much of hydration REVOLVED around alcohol. But, I did point out that based on what I've read it was generally watered down for the every day consumption and the nobility weren't getting shitty on undiluted wine at breakfast, or at least I didn't think so.

Anyhow! That got us both thinking, and then we both started wondering -- was there a connection made between heavy-drinking mothers and birth defects before "modern" times? Was there a sense that if the mother was drinking a lot there might be problems with the child and a knowledge that one seemed to cause the other?

My wife's great-grandfather lost both legs in a mining accident in Pennsylvania in the 1920s.

Worker's compensation insurance and social security disability benefits didn't exist then. Would the United Mine Workers of America have offered a disability benefit if he was a member? Would the mining company have owed him anything more than his last paycheck? Or was his family just out of luck until he found a job that didn't require using his legs?

I saw a comment on Sunday digest that said medieval Christians had beliefs in the supernatural that would be seen as un-Christian today. What beliefs were these specifically?

Right, so from what little I know about going over the top, it wasn't always a certain death; some survived it...but how?

If they got to the other trenches it would be filled with the enemy and if they retreated they'd get shot as cowards or deserters...so how did those men survive? Where did they go?

Or am I wrong and it was a 100% certain death?

I'm thinking specifically, was it always a role or job of someone to cut hair? Or was that just a general thing people did, cutting their own hair and the hair of their family members. Like would it just have been the role of the mother of the family? In todays world, people wanting a haircut would just go to a business which specialises in hairstyling, would that have been an option say 300 years ago? Also, would it have been specific to your social rank, say people lower in society doing it themselves while people of higher standing having 'hairdressers'. Or would everyone have had access to a hairdresser, or conversely no one?

I live in Finland and half of the year it's dark and cold. I would imagine that people were confined in their homes for most of the winter with their (extended) family, servants, hirdmen and whatnot.

How would people deal with the need for privacy when they wanted to make love, have private conversations and so on? Was it not thought necessary? Did people think differently about hiding their most intimate actions from, say, their children?

Was divorce a realistic option for her at that time, legally or socially? What would have been the consequences for her livelihood, her social status and the well-being of her children?

They had ruled all of the Indian subcontinent for nearly a century despite its diverse demographics so what pushed them to simply carve up what had been one united political entity. Did they do it just to weaken the post-colonial nations or did Indians themselves want it?