Slightly controversial but I would like to know. Is it an ancient idea (going back to the Romans) or is it more recent? I know that anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism has existed for a long time, but where did the notion that this very small and politically minor religious community are actually controlling and have dictated the course of European history for millenia, and today has extended onto the world?

I would also like to ask the influence that Nietzsche and Wagner had on it?

I’ve always heard that slavery was on its way out during the civil war and would have ended anyways. My main critique, is why would it have? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to transition slaves from a plantation to factory work as the south industrialized? I’m just asking this here if there are any articles or thoughts on why I would be wrong and thought this subreddit would be the best place to ask.

I always hear that people in Medieval age were smaller than we are today. So is it true ?

The quote comes from a book of fiction — The Legend of Bagger Vance. Just curious if the premise is true.

Today, it would be very expensive to eat all your meals out, particularly if you're bringing your whole family. Was this actually common?

To start off with, I should make clear that I'm not American, and will lack a lot of the educational background in US history Reddit will invariably assume I have: please be patient in that regard!

A question that has struck my mind recently is, how did religion work in the "Old West"? A lot of people were scattered across sometimes very long distances, and many of them would have been recent immigrants from many places across the world, especially Europe. Did frontier towns or settlements generally tend to the religious needs of the settlers, or was it accepted that the churches simply weren't out that far yet? Coming from NI I know first hand that Europe is the source of quite a lot of both denominations and conflicts within Christianity: how much friction was there between different religious groups? What religious denominations were the most common? What about religious minorities like Jews, or Chinese immigrants? How did religious demographics change over time, as settlements grew and populations of settlers increased? Lastly, did the creeping arrival of "civilisation" from the East make a difference in the religious lives of people in the west?

I appreciate that these are a lot of questions about a likely incredibly broad topic, so any insight you can provide is appreciated.

We know that other cities in Italy such as Naples, Rome, Milan, Venice and Genoa were more or at least just as rich and populous as Florence. Yet, Florence bred a disproportional amount of artists (Giotto, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Da Vinci) and men of letters (Petrarca, Dante, Machiavelli) who are today seen as the main names of the Italian Renaissance as a whole.

Why did the Florentine Renaissance gain so much prominence? How was it different from the other Italian cities?

I've recently been looking into medieval dances and they're all so slow and boring, usually with very specific and rigid movements. Even when they hop around, it's usually in place as if they're stepping on hot coals. Why is that? Was it a religious / social thing? Or is this just because these are courtly dances and the plebeians would've probably danced more vigorously?

It seems strange to me that someone who was once a king's wife, and who no doubt has a healthy income from dower estates, would choose to retire to a convent and live a life of poverty. Why was this so common? Is there something I'm misunderstanding about life in a medieval nunnery?

I’ve been reading online about how the King or Queen would receive gifts from nobles, gentleman, servants, etc., all piled up in a gift-giving room on January 6 and would then make gifts back of greater or equal value, depending upon the social class of the giver. Can anyone provide further details? The few articles or books I’ve been able to find are either behind a paywall or more statistical analysis than anything.

The “Gift Roll” of 1534 is somewhat available (via Googling) but makes reference to things being more or less the same compared to 1532, which is unhelpful.

So what would a monarch be hoping to receive as gifts? Would they care at all about individual presents, or just the aggregate price? Would they specifically keep anything for their regular use, or would it just disappear into their daily routine (e.g., gloves, plates)? From the courtiers’ perspective, was there a risk that the monarch would accept the gift but give less money back? Was this a serious financial problem for nobles?

Under what circumstances might a monarch like Henry VIII reject a Christmas gift? Would the would-be giver be relieved (at recouping expenses) or concerned (that their head might roll)?

It may be my modern person bias speaking, but I feel like the layman concept of "risk" is so inherent to... well, everyday functioning and any kind of strategic decision making. I know how probability theory was discovered, but I was wondering what people before that, as well as people in different parts of the world, used to express useful concepts such as "two in five ships that we send to location X are maraudered by pirates on the way, while it happens to four out of five by using alternative route Y"? Or, for example, were gambling houses "rigged" like modern ones are and how?

For anyone familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), you may be aware that they claim Joseph Smith found some scriptures in the form of ancient metal plates with words engraved on them. As the story goes, these plates were deposited by a Native American hundreds of years before European settlers arrived. And that Native American was actually a descendant of people who migrated to the American continent from Jerusalem around 600 BCE carrying similarly engraved metal plates kept by the Jewish people of that time.

Again, this is all according to the LDS church, and if any of it were true, I'd suspect we'd find historical/archeological data to back up these claims. To that end, is there any evidence that ancient Hebrews used metal plates to keep records? Specifically, are there any ancient Hebrew scriptures engraved on metal plates from around 600 BCE?

Thanks for humoring my odd question.

It’s my understanding that women of the upper classes could read and write, sometimes Greek as well as Latin. Yet, almost nothing written by a woman of ancient Rome has survived. We seem to only know of them only through male writers.

Hi, I know Columbus thought it’s India that he landed. But this must be the initial thought since it’s nothing like India. And if I am not wrong it’s America Vespucci who first said that it’s a new continent and he was the one named these lands as “new world”. But what did the rest of the world called these non-Indian new lands until they realise it’s a new continental? Thanks.

Alright, so I've been interested in the Congo free state for a while now. There is definitely still a lot of discussion to be had about the topic.

However, I don't understand why so many people believe the Congo free state had a death toll of 20 million when a lot of historians aren't even sure if the Congo even had a population of 12 million at the start of the colonization.

Most numbers differ, some say between 1 and 4 million, others 10 million, 15 million maximum.

But who has ever estemated the free state to have had a death toll of 20 million and why do so many people believe it?

My understanding of the us civil war is that the northern economy didn't depend on slavery anymore, and thus it was possible to abolish slavery, whilst the south still depended on slavery and thus couldn't afford to get rid of it.

What was it that made is possible for the north to do away with slavery but not the south,

was i the nature of the products produced in the north, or advancements in machinery(i know that the south didn't have the economy to produce advanced weapons and ammo, maybe this is related)

So how did the southern economy react to the sudden loss of labor?

Was there a sudden push for implementing machines to lighten the work of farmers?

If black people were suddenly freed in large numbers, where did they go?, did they keep working for their former owner for almost no money or look for a different means of living?(i understand that there is a large amount of variation here due to individual people making individual choices, but i mean in general)

And if this isn't to speculative, would it have been possible to avoid the war altogether by first implementing changes in the way things were produced in the south and then abolishing slavery?

In the Corpus Juris Civilis, there's a famous case cited about a slave who goes to the barber for a shave and a haircut. The barber is located next to an athletic field where a ball game of some sort is going on. While the barber has his razor to the slave's throat, one of the ballgame players throws or hits the ball too hard, causing it to strike the barber's hand holding the razor. This in turn causes the barber to accidentally slice the slave's throat which results in his death. The case and culpability is opined upon by several Roman jurists.

My question is, do we know more of the specifics of this incident and this poor, unfortunate slave? Do we know a date and location of the event? And finally, what was the ultimate legal outcome in this case?

Across different times, and places, cookbooks were written with various recipes from the time and region. These are a fantastic look into the life people at the time.

Who were they written for? The masses were largely illiterate, and likely lacked surplus money to spend it on cookbooks. The elite that were literate and wealthy would have had cooks to prepare their food. So who was it written for? Did the elites sometimes take up cooking as a hobby? Or were their cooks, at least their head chefs, literate?