As an American, I hear a fair amount of U.S. history, but very little from outside the U.S. I know our Constitution was intended to be fair, flexible but not too flexible, etc. What countries simply used our Consitution or something very close to it? What changes did they make to it? How did it work, or how is it working? If it didn't work, why not?
1 Answers 2017-04-16
Did NSDAP members call themselves nazis? If yes, when did they stop calling themselves that?
2 Answers 2017-04-16
Feudal systems of land distribution seemed to be quite popular around the world, developing in Europe, China, and Japan to name a few places. Why did African states and societies not organize land this way? Or am I mistaken either in feudalisms "popularity", it's nonexistence in sub Saharan Africa, or both?
2 Answers 2017-04-16
Hello Historians, I was recently wondering how people with Autism were viewed over history and how they were treated. I would assume it was mostly undocumented because it has only recently been diagnosed, but are there any good examples in history? Thanks! Have a Happy Easter (if thats your thing)!
1 Answers 2017-04-16
1 Answers 2017-04-16
I was listening to dan carlins podcast called "Thors Angels" and I believe he states that easter or the celebratiom for jesus's return was celebrated almost daily/weekly until people turned it into a once a year holiday. How accurate is this?
2 Answers 2017-04-16
1 Answers 2017-04-16
Is there any way for us to know? Did they also sleep when it was dark? Did they need the same amount of sleep?
1 Answers 2017-04-16
During Republican times people bought and sold large estates and villas. Often that would have required the transfer of many wagon-loads of physical money to pay for the property. That seems highly impractical. Did the Roman Republic have a private banking system to facilitate such transactions? How much is known about such a system?
1 Answers 2017-04-16
Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
7 Answers 2017-04-16
The wikipedia text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot#Ancient_Near_East
Some scholars argue that the horse chariot was most likely a product of the ancient Near East early in the 2nd millennium BCE.
So what am I looked at here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Standard_of_Ur_-_War.jpg
if not horse-drawn chariots?
1 Answers 2017-04-16
1 Answers 2017-04-16
As human literacy has increased, historians have had an ever increasing supply of primary sources, moving from chronicles and histories to letters and newspapers. At the same time, historians have been able to reach ever farther down the class structure to understand how people from all walks of life think. Now with social media, text messages etc. we will be able to archive the most intimate thoughts and communications of a huge portion of the world's population. So I'm wondering what the implications of this will be for the study of history.
5 Answers 2017-04-16
1 Answers 2017-04-16
How did the ideas of Aristotle come to occupy such an important place within Christian theology and philosophy?
4 Answers 2017-04-16
1 Answers 2017-04-16
This is a question about Post WW2 Japanese hold outs. Specifically, Japanese holdouts in China.
I have seen this quoted many times in sites that cover this topic:
"An estimated 10-20,000 well equipped Japanese troops were trapped in the mountains of Manchuria and did not surrender until late in 1948. They were caught in a no man's land of civil war stuck between the warring Nationalist and Communist forces and were unable to surrender."
I have also seen this presented on many history forums, but the general consensus is that "this could hot have happened".
"Operation Beleaguer", all but forgotten in the annals of US military history, was an effort by US Marines to occupy coastal areas in northeast China to help repatriate Japanese soldiers still in China after the war. After a while, these operations were disrupted by clashes between Chinese Communist forces and the Marines.
If the quoted statement about 10-20,000 well equipped Japanese troops were trapped in the mountains of Manchuria is true, then I guess the Marines did not manage to get them all. This is a fairly sizable force, and who ever maintained command over this pocket must have had to enforce strict field sanitation and food rationing for his encircled command. The fact that the Russian invading forces did not destroy this pocket in 1945 suggests that this pocket was well fortified in a city or in tough mountainous terrain. Also, it is my understanding that it can get brutally cold in Manchuria during the winter, so they had to protect themselves from the elements for atleast three years. How did they find shelter? Did they build bunkers and seek shelter in these fortifications? Perhaps these Japanese holdouts made an arrangement with the local village populations, who were probably sick of war, and offered to protect them from both the Chinese Communist and Nationalist warring factions, in exchange for allowing them shelter and providing them food?
However, I did not find any independent book or newspaper sources that could confirm this claim, until I came across this webpage:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/54088905/
This is a newspaper archive site, that you must pay for, that seems to have an article discussing Japanese holdouts in China, and Japanese efforts to bring them back. You can not see the microfiche image, but there is a crude text translation provided.
"In Manchuria Japanese troops are known to be maintaining themselves there. Chinese intelligence reports have variously estimated the total number up to 90,000. About 225,000 troops of the former Japanese [batison] in Manchuria, according to official American estimates, were never repatriated and remain unaccounted for. Others are said serving with the Chinese Communists. Some are believed operating independently and particularly in two large pockets, in Northwestern Manchuria and in Klrln Province near the Korean border. Okamura is said to be employed in an attempt to effect the "neutralization" of the Japanese forces and prevent them from going over to the Communists.The reported pocket of Japanese troops lie within what is at least nominally regarded as Communist held territory. The Chinese Communists charge that Okamura its being retained by the National government as a..."
So I guess we have a more of a clue: "Northwestern Manchuria" and "Kirin province near the Korean border". The blurb also suggests that the number of Japanese holdouts was much bigger than what the first -and most quoted- source suggests.
I guess it is worth a shot; are there any advanced historians here who know more details of these Japanese holdouts in Manchuria? Were they ever "repatriated" to Japan, did they just fight both Chinese factions to the death, or surrender to one of them?
Probably the most authoritative source of information would come from a Japanese or Chinese military history source. Do any exist? If they do exist, I doubt they are in English...
Thanks for your input.
Brian Ghilliotti
1 Answers 2017-04-16
I wonder why did the Arabic culture, which was not nearly so widespread before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate, become dominant so quickly in the Middle East. Where were the Assyrians, Babylonians, Akkadians, Egyptians. Did those ancient peoples get assimilated in the Roman Empire and Persia already? Why did the Persians put up a bigger resistance than other ethnicities after being conquered by Arabs? How come so many different nations which existed in the Middle East suddenly disappeared ( Hittites, Hattites, Hurrians, Amorites etc. )
1 Answers 2017-04-16
1 Answers 2017-04-16
As the GOP are so fond of reminding everyone, they are the party of Lincoln. They were federalists and abolitionists. where as the democratic party was states rights, pro-slavery and were constitutional literalness. then 60 years later you have FDR and Henry Wallace being the greatest hope the US ever had at being an equal society. and the republicans being Nixon and Regan and the insanity they are now. so what changed and why?
1 Answers 2017-04-16
I'm writing a book set in a fictional world heavily based on ww1. You heard in fiction a lot about how bullets are made of lead. So I was wondering is this the case in ww1? And if they weren't/were made from lead then why?
1 Answers 2017-04-16
