In his book on the Army of Flanders, Geoffrey Parker explains that about half of the Army was at any one time dispersed across dozens of garrisons throughout the Low Countries, and that they fought an almost guerrilla conflict with neighboring garrisons, and that these skirmishes demanded greater experience than large scale battlefield action.

Do we have any sources on what these raids and skirmishes would have looked like in terms of tactics? i.e. how to form up for an attack, setting up ambushes, etc?

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My dentist was telling me how screwed up people's teeth were from eating stone ground flour back in the day due to the stone particles wearing down their teeth, and it got me thinking of whether or not there was a way to grind grains without getting teeth destroying particles in it. I'd be interested in hearing all the methods/materials, and the older the better :)

It's said a lot that the historical record of Jesus is unreliable (accounts written long after he lived, contradictory accounts, etc.). Well, it's not like we have cell phone records and search histories of other figures from the same time period. Are records of, say, kings or pharaohs or Socrates considered more reliable, or is it just that Jesus is a more scrutinized figure? I mean, I never hear people say that Socrates didn't really exist.

Also, when did this start?

It seems to me that Catholic cultures (Quebec, Poland) truly celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve, i.e., the 24th, whereas Protestants celebrate it more on the 25th.

I teach American literature to high schoolers and I'm not exactly a scrub when it comes to my knowledge of history and religions, I wasn't exactly a history major or theology major either. When teaching about the Puritan literature, it's important to help the kids understand that their beliefs weren't exactly like what they probably hear in church and these beliefs influenced their writing extensively.

I know that the Puritans believed in predestination and the elect and I thought I had a good understanding of the concept having grown up in a church that has similar beliefs in that regard, but while teaching "Sinners in the Hands of and Angry God" I started wondering if they had a different take on it. That sermon is advocating for the congregation to repent and is aimed at the "unconverted", but for someone who believed the saved were chosen by God before the beginning of the world, that seems to be weird to me. Was this talking about missing out on grace in life and not eternal salvation, or am I missing some subtlety?

Whenever I watch a medieval movie with a war, the castle always have men defending every wall.

However, in Total war, I struggle to cover a significant amount of the wall.

I've been reading Captain Corelli's Mandolin recently and was intrigued by the historical context of it (Italian troops fighting against Germans) and was interested in finding out more. So my question is, how many major cases were there of Axis soldiers in WW2 fighting each other, and what the circumstances of them? Would be very interested to discover if there was any major anti-Nazi violence within the Wermacht in particular.

It doesn't really fit with the image of Julius Caesar to be referred to as "hairy", or did the Roman cognomens have a different function than what we would commonly refer to as a nickname?

Historically, have there been any candidate who began their campaign in 1st place and remained at 1st place all throughout the campaign, and then going on to win their party's nomination?

Also, what is the track record of winners of the Iowa Caucuses and/or the New Hampshire Primaries going on to win the nomination?

What I'm driving at here is, "What is the historic likelihood that Trump will simply fade?"

When is it legitimate to levy the charge of presentism? Over recent days the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has gotten much media attention in the UK. They are currently concerned with questioning the literal elevation of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at oxford university, these are their aims:

"RMFO is not just a campaign about a statue. We are engaging with the issue of race in Oxford from multiple angles – from the curriculum to improving BME representation and welfare amongst staff and students. We are not here to obliterate the statue in its entirety. We are highlighting that by (quite literally) elevating it on one of our buildings, we are effacing the histories of the many people who suffered tremendously under Rhodes and his legacy. Indeed, we are not a destructive movement. We are, at our core, constructive; we are looking to create better, more appropriate ways of engaging with our history."

Now, politics and history is naturally a messy affair. I have seen some folks decrying such a campaign as "presentist." Rhodes is a "product of his time" we "shouldn't rub out the past." Is the charge of presentism a mere pretense for rational argument, being used to delegitimise concerns and criticisms of Britain's colonial past by British public intellectuals and segments of the media more widely? Does this not assume there were no critics of Rhodes or Empire more broadly during the 19th and 20th century who would equally have been "products of their time?"

I've lately become interested in the wars of the 1600s-1700s and one thing I've been wondering is how did the European monarchs of time frame their expansionist behaviors, to their people and to themselves? I'm sure this answer may vary across time and country, but what were the most popular explanations? Was it for their own personal gain, in which case how did the people respond to being sent off to war? Was there some form of proto-nationalism where they hoped the country as a whole would gain from these wars? Did the ruler expect this to happen?

I know in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson lectures Holmes on the side effects of the morphine he's taking, and Holmes even concedes that it's a bad idea. Was this a popular view? If not, when did it start to become accepted that they were bad?

"Is Netflix Killing TV"? Says the front page today. We remember the same statement about home taping. In fact, paid musicians complained about the Edison Cylinder, who complained about radio, who complained about 78s and 45s, and so on.

Napster took the complaints to another level!

Does anyone have a book title or article to suggest or a comment on this long and seemingly repeating phenomenon?Thank you!

What was the institutional relationship like between white and black Africans in South Africa pre-apartheid, and what caused the transition from whatever that was to what we saw in the late 20th c?

Non-native English speaker here. I don't know where else to post this so I am posting it here. Feel free to delete the thread and direct me to a suitable subreddit if it is inappropriate. This is not a homework question or anything like that. I am simply curious. History is not my study area, so maybe that's why I can't seem to find information on this particular topic even after searching the internet for weeks.

From what I understand it seems that, verbal abuse/insults was considered worthy of criminal punishments in certain societies. Verbal abuse/insults lead to duelling in some cases and verbal abuse against the aristocracy or the monarch often lead to criminal punishments. I don't know how much this is true, although this trope seems highly common in movies.

Nonetheless, I am looking for a brief, yet comprehensive article on the internet, which discusses historical attitudes towards verbal abuse/insults and their punishments. I have searched the internet on this for a while, however I still can't find such an article. It might be because I am using the wrong keywords or something. Can anyone link me to such a free article?

PS: I am particularly interested about the criminality of verbal abuse towards people other than monarchs and religious figures.

How strong were the Jews up to the First Roman-Jewish war? (strength in terms of anything that can be used to describe them)

Would an analogy of Nazi Germany vs Russia be fair? (in terms of two world powers in their day?)

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