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I hear a lot about battles between armies and sieges during the middle ages. But I've never heard of a naval battle. So I'm wondering if it's just not an area that receives attention, or if naval warfare during this period was just so rare that it's not mentioned.

Thanks to /u/caffarelli for suggesting the topic (like 5 months ago).

The concept of "ideal body" in terms of form and proportion reaches as far back as the Greeks, if not earlier, and has informed representation of the human form in Greek sculpture and other arts.

Additionally, at other times and in other cultures, there has been discussion of "cleaning the warts" of a ruler in royal portraiture to depict a leader as particularly handsome and charismatic. As a corollary to that, there is the case of Shakespeare's description of Richard III, where the disfavored former king's physical deformity mirrors his faults of character.

Elsewhere in Western literature, there are numerous depictions like the Hunchback of Notre Dame or Joe Bonham in Johnny Got His Gun that depict people with bodies outside of contemporary notions of "ideal" or "whole"

With all of that prologue in mind, we can introduce some questions for discussion.

• How do scholars of non-western societies interact with those societies concepts of beauty, human form, and disability.

• How have concepts of Masculinity and Femininity interacted with ideas of the "ideal form" or deviations from that ideal.

• Is disability a form of subalternaeity?

• Have societies made strong distinctions between disabilities that are congenital and those that are the result of injury, particularly battle injury?

• What is essential reading on the topic of bodies and disability?

A special note with this one. Some may object to the use of the term "disability" in this post, preferring other terms like Differently Abled. People may also object to the dichotomy proposed between "ideal body" and those falling outside of that ideal.

It was not my intent to be insensitive or insulting in my use of these terms. If anyone is offended, I apologize. Discussion and criticism on these points is welcome.

This question was inspired by the new series The Last Kingdom. In that series, there is a lot of nationalistic rhetoric used in the sense of Wessex being the last bastion of "England", which I assume is an injection of contemporary revisionism for the sake of encouraging the audience to identify with the protagonist.

I'm trying to understand how a typical commoner or petty noble of that time and place might identify themselves in a larger, abstract group membership. The most obvious to me is by religion, as indigenous pagans may resent christian conversions, while the remnants of Roman occupation and baptized Anglo-Saxons may find common cause to repel the Great Heathen Army.

My question is whether there is much documentation regarding the comparative alienation or assimilation of successive invading cultures, such as the tension betweem Bretons and Gaels, Romans[1] and Bretons, Saxons and Romans, Danes and Saxons, etc. and how these invasions/migrations differed. From my (albeit, uneducated) perspective, there isn't much difference between the invasion by Saxons and by Danes, yet there are many examples in entertainment media suggesting that the Saxons are the One True English fighting the rule of the outsiders (ie. Danes or Normans).

1. For the sake of simplicity I'm using the term Roman to encompass any ethnicities that may have migrated under Roman rule, during their administration of Britannia

We're talking about the Italian Wars in class and I always wondered what would have happened if two of the most powerful nations in the world at the time happened to merge when one of the conquered the other. Would the cultural and political differences have not allowed it? Or would it really have been possible?

And by merging I don't mean a personal union, I mean the nations of Spain and France combining into one Kingdom.

While in high school, teachers always cited that "janitors and doctors were paid the same in the USSR" as a major critique of the system. I always found this hard to believe. While am aware that the USSR changed the manner in which their economic system operated over time, does this critique have any merit at any point?

I am asking because I am a first year teacher and don't want to give an unfair representation of communism. Please help me out.

Just curious what the average experience of an immigrant, & how many slaves they would end up owning. Asking this question, because I have been reading The comparative histories of slavery in Brazil,Cuba, and the United states.Which seems to care a lot about the minority slave and elite populations but very little about the free masses.

Were the fears of the House of Un-American Activities and others justified? Or were some of their examples a bit of a stretch? Inspired by recent movies Trumbo and Hail Caeser, thanks!

I'm currently in the process of making 1,000 hand forged nails (just finished my 200th yesterday) and I'd like to better understand the history, tools, and techniques of early nailers.

I haven't had much luck on any in depth books or other materials and I'm hoping someone can help me out.

I already own Nailmaking by Hugh Bodey but that book is basically just a high level summary of the subject and doesn't have a lot of great reference sources to follow up on.

So AskHistorians, where can I find more information about nails?

A radiologist today mentioned to me that a great deal of our knowledge about radiation tolerance in medicine (say, in judging appropriate doses or an acceptable number of scans) is derived from atomic bombings or disasters like Chernobyl.

This seems reasonable - we all know of Marie Curie and I imagine that health and safety standards were relatively lax during the first decade or so of bomb tests - but is it correct?

And have we learnt anything else from nuclear explosions/meltdowns 'in the wild' (beyond the obvious things like nuclear safety features)? For example, have physicists learnt anything unexpected from the likes of the 'elephant's foot' at Chernobyl? Or is there absolutely no silver lining to such disasters?

I am more interested in Giuseppe,but WWII and till end of Cold War is also interesting.

Looking at its location, it seems like it occupies a fairly important position along the old sea route to India. Yet it was only absorbed into France in 1897. The Portuguese also established bases in Mozambique, which is right across the water. Why was Madagascar ignored by colonial powers for so long?

I know some didn't(the free state of Winston, etc), but what kind of propaganda was used to get the good 'ol boys to fight for a cause that had NOTHING to do with them? Was confederate soldier pay good?

I was only 8 or 9 when that case was going on so not sure of all the details. What were the immediate events that led up to the "low speed" chase? Why didn't he just stay put and cooperate?

By trying to flee like he did, that screams guilty to me.

I'm reading a fictionalized book that takes place around 1000 CE, and the characters go to Tenochtitlan and Qusqu, and the residents decribe massive festivals where thousands, or even tens of thousands of humans are sacrificed to the gods. Would events on such a scale ever have taken place, and, if so, how on earth could you sustain that kind of ongoing loss of human life, or was it a method of population control? Defeating neighbouring tribes? If it took place at all, how common/rare would large scale human sacrifices have been?

The East India Company was once by far the most valueable company and adjusted to inflation might have been the most valueable company of all time. Surely the worth of spices and tea have gone down but not all of its assests can be destroyed by a new market situation. So what happened to the riches of the East India Company?

I'd like my question to cover all the nations involved in WWII, how would basic training have been different for a recruit from say 1939 compared to 1941 or 1945? How much did the length of training change over that period of time? Were there any changes in how to train the new recruits? Did they teach them different tactics as time went on? Anything else you would like to add about how the training changed over time in the various nations would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for your time!

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I'm just curious as to how a nation went from a brutal civil war to considering the rebels part of their own, even establishing Confederate monuments in Arlington itself. I imagine this kind of thing wouldn't fly immediately after the Civil War, so what's the history behind Americans being sympathetic to the Confederacy, rebels against their own nation?

Is there any historical precedent for honoring rebels in this way, or is the USA unique?