Has there ever been any usage of a large curved sword? Similar to a scimitar but in the weight class of a claymore or zwei?

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What is it about Locke's philosophy and how people went about implementing it that enabled the revolutionary liberal states to maintain power when all of the socialist states from the 20th century revolutions have more or less faltered or converted to a capitalist mode of production?

From the point of view of today, European classical music (I prefer to call it orchestral) is spread all over the continent with famous historical composers spanning from Portugal to Finland, but consider for a moment how many of the most prominent of Europe's 18th and 19th Century classical giants were German; Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Bach, Mahler, the Strauss', Handel, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, just to name a few. Whilst you might argue that far more composers have hailed from the rest of Europe since then, they're scattered across the whole continent - for instance in Elgar (Britain), Grieg (Norway), Sibelius (Finland), Chopin (Poland), Dvorak (Bohemia), Debussy (France) and Tchaikovsky & co (Russia). What I'm interested in are what the cultural/social reasons were for orchestral music having such a marked beginning within the states of the Holy Roman Empire in particular, and later Germany itself. Was it a purely geographic development, gradually spreading up from the Renaissance in Italy? Was there a religious incentive to developing orchestral music within Germany during and after the Reformation? Were dynasties like the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Wettins using their wealth to patronize music for political reasons? What do you chaps reckon? I'm really keen to try and figure this out.

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How did The Allies counter the Axis and gain strength to ensure that war would become a long conflict? What did the Axis do or not do to fail to secure a victory when they had the Allies " on the ropes".

I know this is an extremely broad question, but I wanted to gain a more general understanding of world history and I was hoping to compile a booklist of the best general knowledge books from early history to current day.

For example, if I wanted a general knowledge of United States history, I could read "A People's History of the United States" which would give me a very good broad overview from independence to the modern era. Are there similarly good books from each era/society in human history?

I went through the Resources tab on the side and browsed some of the books, but it for many topics/eras there wasn't a whole lot of general knowledge books. I also wasn't sure whether this belonged in r/books or not, but I figured actual historians would know the best books in each category.

I was reading about Chinese history recently, and remembered that Nationalist China received heavy aid from Germany for a while, with some units entirely equipped with equipment of German origin. What I'm wondering is if there's any record of these units interacting with units that had received American or Soviet equipment/training, and if so, what they entailed.

I've began to study imperialism during the 19th century and colonies Britain, France and others established in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. I've noticed that Russia had few colonies. What were the colonies Russia acquired and when?

When I first read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein as a teenager, I had the feeling my eyes had been opened: "Wow! This puts the last 40 years of world history in a completely new perspective! Most important book ever!" Now, looking at it with an older and (hopefully) clearer head, I'm curious how much of the book stands up to serious historical scrutiny.

To recap: Klein's main thesis is that since the 1970s, politicians and business leaders have exploited serious crises – natural, man-made, or deliberately engineered – to push through highly libertarian "Chicago School" economic policies that would never have survived normal democratic scrutiny. She places special emphasis on a misguided belief in radical solutions and "starting from scratch" which, she argues, informs these policies. The book is structured in terms of case studies. Some of these cases fall afoul of the 20-year rule, but the ones we're allowed to discuss here are:

• 1970s: US-backed military coups in Chile, Argentina and various other Latin American countries.
• 1982, 1984: Falklands War and miners' strike in Britain.
• 1985: Hyperinflation in Bolivia shortly after the end of dictatorship.
• 1980s: Debt and price shocks sending many developing countries into economic crisis.
• 1989: Fall of Communism in Poland.
• 1989: Crackdown on protests in China (Tiananmen Square massacre).
• Early 1990s: End of apartheid in South Africa.
• 1991: Collapse of the USSR.

Some claims I'm particularly curious about:

• Klein holds up 1950s and 1960s Chile, Argentina and Uruguay as shining success stories of "developmentalism", claiming that these countries 'began to look more like Europe and North America than the rest of Latin America or other parts of the Third World' during this period. She more or less claims that the military coups and subsequent economic liberalisation halted these countries' progress towards high levels of prosperity. How much of this is true?
• Klein claims that the protests in China in the 1980s were primarily directed against the Party's free-market economic reforms: 'The demonstrators... opposed the government's moves towards unregulated capitalism, a fact largely left out of the coverage of the movement in the Western press.' Is this true, or is she exaggerating this factor?
• Generally, were Chicago School policies really such unmitigated disasters in all the above cases as Klein claims?

I'd appreciate it very much if someone familiar with the book and/or well-versed in the history of one or more of these cases could share their views on Klein's analysis.

I'm thinking specifically of Anne and Mary Boleyn since it was googling the history behind 'The Other Boleyn Girl' that made me wonder, but when I was doing the research I came across a few sources that mentioned that this was relatively common. I know fostering was a thing among the nobility, but why would this happen between two rival countries who regularly go to war?

Did Serbia in the 1990s ever seek to acquire nuclear weapons?

I'm writing a research paper on Viking age Scandivia and I think I'd like to focus on the eastern trade routes and settlements in modern day Russia and Ukraine. However, I'm having a difficult time finding books for research. Mostly what I've found are two to three page sub-sections. Is there just not enough information our there for an entire paper? Any suggestions on books or articles covering the topic?

It seems counter intuitive not to use diplomacy to break apart the alliances the Spanish had, they surely had more in common with the natives then the Spanish did.

How did they get the impression that they were "Macedonians"? And since they do consider themselves Macedonians, why aren't they part of Greece, anyway, alongside the Greek Macedonians?

In contemporary Christianity, or at least my experience of it, several beings are generally considered to be the prime supernatural figure of evil, "Satan", such as the talking snake in the Garden of Eden, the being that argues with God about the moral character of Job, the being that tempts Jesus Christ in the desert, the source of the supernatural evil spirits Christ drives out, and the various monsters in the book of Revelation.

Were all these beings always meant to be the same, or were they later conflated? If so, how?

Thanks to /u/cordis_melum for suggesting this topic.

Periodically, AskHistorians will get a question like "Were the ancient Egyptians Black?" or "Did ancient greeks really have permissive attitudes about homosexuality?"

Often what follows are explanations and discussions about how "blackness" and racial theory are comparatively recent concepts, and ancient Egyptians would not understand these concepts in the way we do. Ditto, how the sexual orientation as a durable identity is a recent concept, and ancient Greeks would not understand the concept of "homosexuality" in the way we understand it.

With those examples in mind:

• Are there cases where applying modern terms to historical societies can be useful/illustrative?

• Or, does applying concepts (like racial theory, or homosexual identity, or modern medical diagnoses) anachronistically lead to presentism, giving the false impression that modern categorization is "normal"?

• Can modern medical diagnoses be applied to the past? And can these diagnoses ever be certain?

I understand that during the war being a prisoner was considered extreamly shameful, but how were prisoners treated after the war? Was there a softening in attitudes or did the shame and stigma continue to exist?

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