Hi there, I'm a long-time lurker, first time poster. Great subreddit, I really enjoy reading it!

So, I've got a question:

for most of history (both western and not), women were discriminated and not considered worthy of holding political power. I assume this was because they were considered intellectually inferior or 'irrational'.

But...how does this fit with the fact that queen regnants existed and were no worse than kings at their 'job' ?

In fact, from what I understand quite a few of these queens were actually better at ruling than the average king, and this not just from our modern point of view - I am pretty sure these queens were fairly popular and respected by their subjects.

In addition to history proper, there's also legendary-mythological queens like Dido, the Queen of Sheba, and so on, and they were generally not portrayed as incompetent (even if we can still see how their portrayal was sexist in some other ways)

How do we explain the inconsistency? They believed that women should not be given power because they could not handle it...but they also accepted that a queen could do a good job ruling.

Was that just hypocrisy? Did they believe that these women were the exception and not the rule? Were sex stereotypes different for noble women, so they believed that a royal woman could rule like a royal man, but that the equivalent was not true for lower-ranked people?

EDIT: I realized I did not phrase my post as a direct question. Sorry about that!

I keep coming across these names, but find it hard to understand what they mean. When was a culture Hallstatt and when was it La Tène and why?

I understand most fleets had a flag system to communicte but I doubt that could be of much use in a huge naval battle where there where dozens of ship on either side.

Also; Was each captain responsible for his own stategy or was there a predetermined plan they had to follow? In other words, how exactly did large naval battles work in the 17th century?

Recently I came across and article that suggested that much of Norse belief was made up by Christians in the 12/1300s e.g Ragnarök along with much of Norse lore. If this is so what did they actually practice/ believe in?

I've known and had many discussions with American WWII vets, including a lot of US Navy men who fought in the Pacific. I've always been curious as to why most of the books that I read or the documentaries I watch always mention the Japanese as being "fanatical" to an almost insane extent. The veterans that I had a chance to speak with from both the Pacific and European theaters could easily be described as fanatical in the way that they viewed their place in the war and in the way they fought. What exactly makes the Japanese stand out here? Seems like you'd have to have been pretty fanatical to go up against some of the odds the allies faced.

I'm thinking about something along the lines of Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon in terms of details. Thanks.

WW2 and Vietnam for very obvious reasons are well known and covered in popular culture. There are decades worth of notable movies, TV series, video games, what have you about these two wars.

Yet with the notable exception of MASH, the Korean War has been almost totally ignored by US/Western popular culture as a subject for Hollywood war movies, video games and TV series.

Why is this so? The Korean War was fairly short; 3 years long, 1 year shorter than US involvement in WW2, yet it was very brutal and had a high casualty rate, in actual fact it had an even higher casualty rate (per capita) than Vietnam for American soldiers.

Here's the stats for US casualties in the two wars:

Vietnam, over the course of 10+ years (1965-1975) Total deaths - 58,209 / Combat deaths - 47,424 / Wounded in Action - 153,303

Korea, over the course of only 3 years (1950-1953) Total deaths - 36,516 / Combat deaths - 33,686 / Wounded in Action - 92,134

That's not even counting the millions of civilian deaths and the thousands of South Korean casualties and that of other UN forces such as the British.

A lot of Americans are completely unaware, for example, that the US military took on the Chinese military in full scale conventional war and it nearly escalated into WW3.

Despite it being classed as a mere "UN police action" at the time, it was for sure a real war... there were many notable aerial/naval battles and ground battles, such as Pusan Perimeter, the amphibious assault at Inchon, the battle of Chosin Reservoir where the 1st Marine Division and other US/UN units fought their way out of an encirclement of 12 Chinese divisions in -25 degree temperatures.

The South Koreans have released a lot of material/movies about this war such as The Front Line and Tae Guk Gi, but as i said it's been largely ignored by Hollywood and Western media.

Wouldn't it be good if, let's say, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg teamed up to make a movie or HBO miniseries on Korea, a'la Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers/The Pacific?
Certainly it must be more interesting than making the Nth WW2 movie, anyway?

First off, in about 14 hours from the posting of this thread, John Coski, authour of The Confederate Battle Flag will be doing an AMA on...well....the Confederate flag! He'll be starting off at 1:00 PM EDT (GMT -5), and with all of the things flying around in the media regarding the Confederate flag, this is definitely one that you should check out! We will be relaxing our 20 year rule for this AMA, so feel free to discuss current events. All other rules, as per always, will still be strictly enforced - so remember civility, let the expert answer the questions, and don't set fire to anyone's hair. You know the drill :)

Next, John Steele Gordon. He specializes in business and financial history, and has had articles published in, among others, Forbes, Forbes ASAP, Worth, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages, the Washington Post's Book World and Outlook (as well as a really fascinating selection of books!). He'll be doing his AMA on US Economic History - needless to say, it's another huge hot button topic. He'll be here on July 14, which, as he noted with amusement, is also both Bastille Day and New Horizons day. So tune in while you're checking out Pluto pictures!

Last, but certainly not least, Ross Coen will drop by on July 17. He wrote on something slightly different from the above two: The Japanese Balloon Bomb Campaign. Incidentally, the title of the campaign is also the title of his book, and Fu-go is another great read on a topic that many people don't know much about.

That's all for the announcement! I'll see you guys in the threads - be sure to bring your questions and/or friends along!

As I understand it, the office of state governor is a holdover from the American colonial period.

Did the powers and responsibilities of a governor in America change substantially in the period from 1776 to 1850?

Similarly, did the powers and responsibilities of a governor in a British colony like the Cape Colony, Sierra Leone, Hong Kong or Bermuda change in that same period?

Was there a divergence in how these institutions interacted with Federal authority or the authorities in London?

Taking a step back, is this question that easy to answer? Is there too much variance between what authority governors of the various states had to make a coherent case? Were the powers of British governors similarly as varied?

Here's the full quote:

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

I've seen this attributed to both Plato and Aristophanes around 400 BC, but I've yet to find a reliable source. Does anyone know where this comes from?

I would like to read a good history of the Dutch East India Trading company. What are the best nonfiction options?

It is my understanding that seers were usually women, and that witchcraft was seen as a thing for women. However beyond that, I know nothing about how the ancient Norse practiced their religion, or if it there was any real dogma associated with it. On the show, however, the priests/seers are men, and there appears to be at least a little dogma associated with their religious practices. What do we know from history?

As I understand it, the word libertarian originated with the French anarchists in the 1700s, and was for hundreds of years used interchangeably or in conjunction with words like anarchist, socialist, and communist. How exactly did such a drastic change in meaning come about over the last few decades? Were there groups hundreds of years ago in Europe that used the word in the same way that it's used in America today, or is it really a new phenomenon?

Been playing Attila Total War, which made me curious about the Late Roman Empire. I know that the West could not pay for a large regular army after North Africa was lost. Is there any evidence that the West still fielded some regular troops during Majorian's reign, or even past that, or was the Western Roman army of the time made up entirely of foederati troops and mercenaries?