It is common knowledge that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade ( ~1500-1800s) sparked the abolitionist movement we are most familiar with, but I am curious about any anti-slavery sentiment earlier than this and what form it took? I found references to anti slavery sermons by Wulfstan of Worcester (1008-10 to 1095 AD). Was there anti-slavery sentiment earlier than this? What about in other areas of the world?

Do they predate the Protocols? I always found these myths to be weird. Considering the discrimination Jewish people faced, wouldn't they be less likely to have such important jobs?

Was Aizawa's work initially thought of as paranoid ramblings that came to be vindicated in hindsight, or was he working within already-developed currents?

All of these places were once strongholds of Protestantism. What happened?

Firstly, I'll preface this by saying I am a historian, and I have exhausted my own skill set looking into this. I've found absolutely nothing whatsoever and I only ever run into the medium that I heard about it on. Secondly, I'm aware that this could just be a REALLY good piece of fiction.

Nevertheless here I am asking historians

One of the podcasts I listen to deals with different true crime, scary stories, historical events and ufos/cryptids as episode topics. The podcast is satirical but they spend a lot of time actually doing historical, anthropological and sociological research on their topics. It's satire but it's not "fake", despite taking on topics that could be considered "make believe".

Several years ago now they had a British military officer (fan of the show and claimed to be under a pseudonym as to not warrant attention to himself telling military secrets) who told the story of the Battle of the Somme in France 1916.

I'm fully aware that this could just be an insanely compelling piece of fiction. However, he claimed that as a military historian for the U.K. he came upon a letter that was dated the night before the Battle of the Somme by an English soldier. The letter was classified and began like any other letter, detailing what a soldier was allowed to tell his family of their whereabouts and what life in the military was like. He then detailed of witnessing an event at twilight. He said he saw across the field in the trenches of the German line, a monster made from smoke, twisting and turning like a vortex picking up German soldiers and pulling them apart "like a child would pull the limbs off of an insect."

After reading this letter he mentioned that a colleague of his in Berlin had also come across a letter from a battalion at what would be the Battle of the Somme, once translated said something to the effect of "the monster came again tonight..." etc.

Furthermore he discussed how there was a village in the area that had woodcarving dating to the 1600s about the "calamity" that would take the children in the night, and supposedly the woodcarving was that of shape-shifting creature resembling what could on be described as a tornado.

I first heard this story in 2015 or 2016 I cannot remember. But every time I go back to this episode of the podcast (which is toted as a "listener stories" and they're assumed to be true creepy stories) I always look into it. I cannot find anything about a monster at the Somme. I cannot find anything about the smoke monster. I cannot find anything about the 17th century French woodcarving. Has ANYONE ever heard of this before. Or have I just been duped by a really good scary story for the last 5-6 years?

Edit: for those who keep asking and getting their comments deleted. The podcast us called "The Last Podcast on the Left" the episode is 243: "Listener Stories III War Edition". You can easily listen on Spotify for free. Also for those that asked they have done "creepypasta" episodes as well. But this was an episode where they distinctly said "we want your paranormal experiences to share" and strictly was not a "intentionally fictional" episode. Again, my years of listening to this episode just to hear this amazing story has led me here. I appreciate the upvotes, as this is my first experience with a real "askreddit" scenario.

I took a “Women in the Classical World” class and want to follow up on what was covered in my own time.

I’m following up with the professor but want to know what the folks here think.

I'm reading about the Sacco and Vanzetti case, and apparently in the Soviet Union, the case became such a cause celebre that many streets, factories, and other buildings were named for the pair.

I realize the propaganda purpose for promoting them is something along the lines of "barbaric capitalists are executing two innocent anti-capitalist activists, how dare they lecture us about human rights". But the Soviets also ruthlessly suppressed their own country's anarchist movement, and afaik the position of the Comintern was that anarchists were petite-bourgeois and counter-revolutionary.

Did they play down their anarchism? Did they just kinda treat it as immaterial? Did they perhaps bring back a little attitude of "left unity"?

Asking for my mother who is writing a novel inspired by a collection of letters she found, written by her husband’s ancestors around the time of the Civil War. One of the central figures is a woman who was left to take care of the family farm in western North Carolina while her husband and his brothers enlisted with the Confederate Army.

What she’s trying to find out is what, if any, kind of firearm might this woman have had? My understanding is that it was common for Confederate soldiers to supply their own weapons, and at least in the early days of the war, they often went into battle with old flintlocks. Is this correct? There’s plenty on information online about all the cool then-new weapons that were implemented in the Civil War, but what would a poor soldier from rural Appalachia have realistically been armed with?

And again more to the point, does that mean that families would have been left without a way to hunt or defend the homestead? What would be the most believable scenario for this woman left alone to take care of a farm and a bunch of young ‘uns?

Oh, in case it makes a difference, the brothers enlisted as soon as war was declared, but her husband didn’t join until a year later.

Any and all info y’all could give me regarding this question would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Right now I am trying to track down the accuracy of a quote attributed to Amin Al-Husseini in 1948. It gets brought up in books, opinion pieces, etc. when people discuss Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, but I'm struggling to verify it's accuracy. It made me wonder how Historians would accomplish this and how you might recommend the average person does this? I would appreciate your insight!

(I chose not to include the quote in the main question because it's pretty inflammatory, and I don't want to post it without knowing it's accuracy. If anyone does know a lot about this subject and could help me figure out it's accuracy, I would be happy to respond to a comment about what the quote was. Thank you!)

Nowadays he is put by himself, but did Plutarch originally have him paired? Do we know at all if he did or not?

This is a question of personal significance to me, as I'm a current history undergraduate preparing to write an honors thesis (and maybe pursue a PhD in the future). I am only fluent in English, but my proposed thesis topic involves U.S.-Japanese relations, and particularly the effects interacting with America had on Japanese politics and economics. Am I shooting myself in the foot here if I go with this topic but can't read any Japanese? It seems like I might struggle to find Japanese sources that have been translated into English--at the very least, the breadth of sources will be drastically reduced by the fact that I don't know Japanese. If I'm dead-set on my topic, should I consider learning Japanese before beginning to research and write? (I'm still a year away from this project, so I'm only doing preliminary thinking now)

I recently heard that the Black death skirted around Poland in the 14th century and it was not nearly as impacted as the rest of Europe. My question is this. Is it possible the communities there had encountered this virus before and still had some immunity? Or did it amount to the lack or trade form the Mediterranean region?

Up front disclaimer: simply due to keeping the title a decent length I couldn’t specify that I’m fully aware that in most battles, the large majority or soldiers would be unhurt, and that usually a battle is won after a relatively small portion of the force is killed or wounded. I’m not suggesting that standing in a line is an instant death sentence, only that it seems like your fate is entirely in the hands of pure luck.

All that said, I’m wondering this because I recently heard in a video saying that linear warfare would arguably be the worst era to be a soldier in, because unlike previous periods, skill made no impact on your survival.

They explained that in earlier periods, while sure bad luck might have you get hit in the face by an unseen arrow, that at least skill with your weapon might increase your odds in a melee.

Likewise, in later periods knowing when to use cover, when to return fire, when to bound etc. might not save you from an unlucky mortar, but it might help keep you from getting shot, or help keep that mortar team from pinpointing your location.

But if I’m just some random line infantryman standing in my spot on the firing line, shoulder to shoulder with the guy next to me and no where to move to, it seems like there’s nothing I could do to up my chances than to run away, or somehow personally outshoot the enemy company across from me by such a margin that they can’t shoot back, but that seems impossible.

Hello historians!

I just watched the film Glory (1989) for the first time a couple days ago. While I enjoyed the film a lot I couldn't help but notice the strategy used in combat or what seemed to me as a lack of strategy at all.

We see troops with their muskets and bayonets lined up in a row walking up to the enemy line which is in the same formation. No one tries to find cover or use protective gear of some kind. They just walk up to each other and start shooting and it seems like the side with more soldiers (or who can reload faster) wins. Also we see a fight scene in a small forest where troops are lined up again as described above. They all load their weapons but don't start shooting immediately but rather wait for their commanding officers command to aim and shoot. Then all soldiers reload and wait for another command to aim and shoot although the enemy line is what looks like 30 meters in front of them.

My question is how accurate this depiction is to real fight strategy from the american civil war era and why soldiers would wait for a command to shoot and then shoot all at once.

This might be me completely misreading history, but by the time of George III, the British Monarch had already largely been relegated to the symbolic role we think of today. So why did the American Founding Fathers direct all of their anger and grievance towards him, when it was parliament that was making all of the decisions on taxes and government actions in the American colonies?

Hi.

I'm continuing to delve into both actual holocaust studies material and the psuedohistorical field of holocaust denial.

Denialism has obviously changed over the last few decades. Those pseudohistorians wanting to maintain a veneer of academic respectability have probably had to change tactics since the Irving v Penguin trials, document discoveries and archeological evidence.

I'm wondering if there the "metastudy" of denialism/minimisation is a thing?
I'm partly wondering this because denial appears to be constantly changing.
Are there historians who track these changes? And possibly publish their observations?

I've come across some really good youtube videos exploring the history of denialism.
I've also discovered the excellent Holocaust Controversies blog. This most closely matches what I'm looking for. It's got a huge amount of information on the people and organisations who have been pushing denialism. And their book, targeting specific denialists is a really good book about holocaust historiography generally (I found it because I was specifically looking for holocaust historiography).

So I'm wondering: Other than the Holocaust Controversies authors, is there anyone else out there that publishes on this?

Thanks.

Recently I'm read some old SF novels, and I notice there is many SF stories about Mars expedition. Most of them are, about Martian and almost every novels are describe Mars as similar environment to Earth. So I was curious about 'Mars as similar environment to Earth' is commonly believed thing in early 20th century.
Sorry for bad grammer, I'm not english native but I can't find good answer from my country's internet so I try reddit.