I was just thinking how someone must have grown up in a slave holding family and changed their views, and had to make a dramatic lifestyle change to support these new views. If there aren’t any cases of people freeing all their slaves because of their values, why not?

EDIT: this is not meant to diminish the impact of slavery or the responsibility of those participating in it. A few people freeing their slaves does not fix the harm done, nor does it mitigate the atrocities of slavery.

I checked and the invention or at least the widespread implementation of lock systems didn’t occur until well after this conflict. How, then, were these bodies of water useful to the British?

If you wanted to travel by boat from one lake to another did you do that without the proper infrastructure? Like pick up your boat/canoe/whatever and just go home?

It is said that many ancient civilizations did not have a mathematical representation of "zero". But surely anyone at that time would have understood the concept of "nothingness" (I had 5 fruits and I ate them all, so now I have none). Why was this so difficult to come up with some kind of notation to represent this? It seems like this of all the quantity and counting systems, the idea of "zero" would be the most intuitive and easy to grasp.

I suppose this is a general question about the process historians use in deciding what order to study collections of ancient texts, especially when there are only a limited number of people able to translate them and too large a collection to get through in a reasonable time. With that in mind I don't want to necessarily limit the question to cuneiform but that's what I was thinking about when it came to mind.

For cuneiform tablets though, do they just look through them randomly until they see something interesting to them, like perusing through headlines almost? Or is there more of a system than that? I'm sure the location they were in found plays an important role in that but even within collections found at a single site there must be some sort of process. I assume most tablets have been digitized by this point, are people able to run keyword searches in those databases to find what they're looking for faster, even if nobody has actually read that text yet, or is that not feasible? Is it likely that there is important or groundbreaking information on a tablet buried somewhere in the collection that just hasn't been read yet?

I've heard for years that the US agreed to not expand NATO eastward after the Soviet Union broke apart from former government/military folks, such as Lawrence Wilkerson. Today, I heard on NYT's The Daily, the US claims they never made such an agreement. So what really happened?

In the film they are trying to retrieve intel and decide to put down their guns and melee fight so both trenches wouldn't open fire on them. Did this happen? How often? Were there any other unwritten agreed upon rules of engagement when in no man's land?

Within the latter half of the main question I refer to outside of combat how likely was it for opposite sides to meet in general?

Curious to know how it could have flourished as it did throughout India, spread across Southeast and Eastern Asia where it laid down enduring roots, but in India it culturally went extinct.

I recall that Buddhists in India were persecuted, with some prominent leaders having been killed. So I suppose a second question is why were Buddhists seen as such a threat to those in power?

I'm curious about how the Dutch operated during World War II in the Dutch East Indies. How did it work given that the Netherlands was occupied by Germany, an ally of Japan.

Now when it comes to this topic, I understand that during the years of German occupation there was a Dutch government in exile so my question is geared towards understanding how did that function? were orders given to the colonial authorities by this government in exile? or did the Dutch East Indies effetely functioned as a autonomous "extension" of the Netherlands? meaning, they took no direction from this exiled government but still represented the Netherlands?

Another possibility that I can't find a clear answer on is during this period was the Dutch East Indies effetely just considered to be the Netherlands?

I'm really curious to understand how it worked, any input would be a highly appreciated.

While I'm interested in the subject broadly, I'm particularly thinking of eastern culture and linguistic groups like Tungusic language communities and the various paleo-Siberian peoples. Did the USSR care about protecting their cultural heritage? Most of these people are monolingual Russian speakers today. Did their linguistic Russification occur during the Soviet era or after?

Thanks!

I've recently learned that the average length of service for medieval warriors was much shorter than I assumed. About a month instead of years and years as I thought. Just got me curious about former fighters away from their homes in general. If I was an ex-warrior who was many miles from home, what are the prospects of me making a life in the same area I fought in? What might my occupation be? What would the communities' attitudes toward me be, and what would our interactions be like? Would I ever want to settle there as the fighting was still going on, could I? Are there any expectations of me as an ex-warrior, either from the community I left or the one I'm trying to join? And what about my background might significantly affect whether and how I settle? (Lastly, I realize the average length of service may not be representative of distant campaigns. If that drastically changes the answer, I'm interested in that too)

I've made my post specifically about medieval European ex-warriors in the Crusades to fit sub rules, but I'm very interested in how this would work throughout history. Love this sub and thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Common knowledge tells us that the red army during WW2 was an unstoppable tidal wave of tanks and hard bitten Siberian infantry from 1942 onwards, and the Germans were fools for even starting to fight them. At the same time, as I've read into the subject, I've seen increasing historiographies suggest that the 6 million soviet soldiers on the Eastern front were close to the last manpower the Soviet Union had, and that the Soviets were almost as spent as the Germans.

Which is true?

Those same historiographies also suggest that the 4 million men of the US and French armies (less so the British after 6 years of fighting) were fairly fresh, and their countries had resources to spare after the war, suggesting that had it come down to East vs West in the late 40s, the Russians would not have had a long term advantage in troop numbers.

I know a bit about polynesian cultures, and I had someone ask me that because she was interested in historical woman throughout the world.

I didn't know so I tried searching it up but I can't find anything. They say she become queen after her brothers death but never explain why.

My question is how and why was a woman at the time made ruling royalty. Did Hawai'i have no stigma against female rulers? I know her brother died but did he not have no sons or even daughters to assume the throne?

The resistance to the Nazi (and their allies) occupations during WWII is well-known: the Maquis, the partisans, and so on. Even if many of these are highly complex in organization, co-operation and goals, and some of these verge into local "civil wars" type conflicts, fighting each other as well as (instead of?) the Axis (or Soviets?)

My question is were there similar - or distinctly different - in the Pacific and Asian theaters? I assume there were Chinese partisans, and maybe such in the Philippines but they somehow don't have the same profile as the anti-Nazi ones. So, what was the shape(s) of resistance? Were there any that resisted the Allies? Or the Japanese AND the Allies? How were they the same or different than in Europe? Than each other? Why aren't they as well known as the "famous" ones?

For the sake of this question, I'm defining resistance as being non-national-military (so not like units that were cut off and so operated behind-the-lines), and more civilian-into-arms oriented.

It used to be an election dependent on bribes. But eventually Austria just kept winning it forever and it seemingly was just hereditary. When did this happen? Why?

Is it theoretically possible for a New World ship reaching the Old?

The line between the two being refusing modern society and therefore refusing participation in global wars or not

I know Churchill took a ship to Newfoundland, but he also went to Washington, Yalta, Moscow, Cairo, Casablanca, Tehran, and doubtless many other places. How dangerous were these journeys? Where they all by boat or by sea? Or both? Where there any provisions put in place should a u-boat sink a ship carrying a leader, and surely spies would have been working overtime to work out when and where they'd be travelling.

I've read that much of the character of King Arthur comes from William the Conqueror, and Sir Yvain comes from the Welsh character Owain mab Urien. So were there other Arthurian characters inspired by other people? Like, did Edward of Woodstock inspire a character of his own? Or were they mostly invented?