My speculation is that with the terrible conditions many had to endure and additionally little or no understanding of mental illness, depression and by extension suicide would have been rampart. I'm just wondering if this close to the truth?

Thanks!

I mean it was right on the doorstep of their main rival Sweden. The worst thing your enemy can do to you is conquering your capital city so it seemed kinda counterproductive.

** Wow! Thank you all so much for engaging my question-- I have been trying to get my Dad into Reddit and he seemed enthusiastic about the AskHistorians community. This morning in discussion we both had this curiosity about American/British relations and so I posted it here thinking we would be lucky to receive a single response. We are both blown away at the attention it's receiving and my Dad is getting a rounded taste of Reddit, the good and the bad!

Again, thank you all and I plan to respond more thoroughly to the comments/discussion when I get home!

Edit: Well, mods seem to disagree.

The USSR was anti-religion, but did it's policies of supressing religion and restricting worship actually lead to a rise in atheism?

I'm reading Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage" and am somewhat mystified by something. As Lewis travels west he encounters tribes with fewer and fewer western weapons (guns). These tribes (like the Shoshones) have been driven from their land by rival clans because those clans have rifles. But as we learned earlier, this tribe or that tribe seems to only possess a small handful of rifles (Lewis's arsenal of a few dozen rifles is described as the most firepower some of these tribes have ever seen). My understanding of rifles from that era is that they are slow to load and inaccurate to fire, leaving the user fairly vulnerable if acting alone or in small numbers. I get what made them effective on the battlefield, but I'm perplexed as to why entire tribes were driven into the mountains by a few rifles in the hands of their enemies.

I was always taught this as a child, but, as I have been exposed to civilizations of the past, it seems that America-- land-owning republic and all-- wasn't actually unique or incredible. From Milan's Ambrosian Republic to Venice's Serene, from Dithmarschen to elected kings, it seems that one class, though large, being able to vote for representatives while everyone else is subjugated to, ahem, "taxation without representation," is nothing special.

Is this just American propaganda, or is there something I'm missing?

Many very old baking recipes require ovens be kept to close to the same specific temperature such as 450^o or 375^o for close to an hour. How was this achieved with wood based fire ovens? How did people know when the fire was the right temperature and how did they keep it that way long enough to bake bread or a cake?

I've asked this once before, but it was never answered.

Feels a bit odd to ask this, but I saw what the theme was this week and it is something I'm curious about. Listened to a lecture this past year that discussed the development of online fan fiction and traced its origins to pulp fiction stories that would play around with erotic knock-offs of sci-fi characters like Kirk and Spock from Star Trek. The lecture also emphasized that this practice was mostly pioneered by women shunned by the larger sci-fi literary world. Is that true? Just want to know a little more information!

Title sums it up, i realized i know next to nothing about the man. What led to the American colony's revolt? Was it really all about the church? Were there any redeeming factors of George that are washed over in American history books? How is his legacy treated in England today?

I have been researching the fascinating Russian Revolution and am baffled on the complexity of the numerous ideological 'isms' at work. It is seeming that socialism as represented in early 20th century Russia and mid 20th century Germany are poor representations of more contemporary conceptualisations of socialism or communism. Is there some way this can be simplified because I feel like I cannot understand the Russian revolution without grasping how Lenin (mis?)interpreted Marx's work.

Somersett's case was in 1772, and the British Empire abolished the slave trade very early on in the 19th century, so I imagine it was in the air to some extent. I wondered whether the fear that the British Empire would abolish slavery, with all of the economic consequences that would have for US land-owners, was a motivating force for the founding fathers.

For example, did the US founding fathers intend for citizens to have freedom of speech and religion and simply neglect to spell those out in the original Constitution? Did they intend for these rights to be added later via laws? Or did they intend for the government to restrict these rights?

Despite being some of the last nations in the Eastern Bloc to collapse, they seemed to be very different from each other. While one was considered the most peaceful one, the other was considered the most violent of the revolutions of the time. I understand that Ceausescu was considered a much more 'violent' leader, but are there any other reasons for this? Why did the Czechoslovakian government go down peacefully while the Romanian president was executed almost as soon as he was caught?

I intend to understand how the lack of metal objects affected the work and daily tasks of civilizations that only used metal in luxury or religious objects.

All these mortars and such got me wondering. Watching TURN (mostly true...spy story?) upon sounding retreat, soldiers walked away, no double time, simply show deliberate movements. Seems the cannon with a skilled crew would dominate a battlefield.

I know a lot of titles were abolished after WWI, but it seems like there were plenty around during the WWII era (e.g. von Rundstedt, von Kleist). Was this a function of people born after the fall of the Kaiserreich being forced to drop it but people who already had it were allowed to keep it? Was there social pressure to drop it, either in the Weimar/Nazi periods or after WWII (i.e. People wanted to distance themselves from association with the old regimes)?

I'm writing my Master's thesis on the changing relationships between Italian mercantile states and Byzantium from the 10th to 12th century, and wondered if anyone here had any good book recommendations of Genoa and Venice. I've read a number of good sources focused on one of the cities, with mention of the other, but I'm yet to find a good work that encompasses both equally.