With Jamestown in 1605 and the Plymouth colony established by 1620, I can't imagine the relatively new and scattered settlements weren't effected by three civil wars ending in, what could be called, a military dictator controlling the motherland less than years later.

Given the religious motivations behind some settlers and religious seeds in the conflict itself, the politics seems like it would be relevant to early American colonists.

I'm given to understand the Interregnum (1649 to 1660) saw the rise representative government, given the death of Charles I.

But how did the rise of representational government result in more conservative and even prudish society? Shouldn't they have become more liberal (in the modern sense), being free of a monarch?

Of course the Nazi leadership — Hitler, Goring, Himmler, Heydrich, Rosenberg, etc. — was largely responsible for conceiving of the Holocaust and its execution, along with the other crimes against humanity committed by the Third Reich. But how involved were the German generals in these crimes? I believe they did not reach their positions because of a commitment to Nazi ideology, but rather based on merit or plain old nepotism. Although, I suppose this raises the tangential question: To what extent did Hitler reform the general staff upon seizing power, and on what grounds did he do this? In any case, I know Rommel plotted against Hitler, and was forced to kill himself as a result. Other officers in the military tried to assassinate Hitler, too. So how committed to Nazism were Germany's generals? And to what extent did the general staff participate in the planning and execution of the crimes committed by the Third Reich?

Bengal and Assam (the Indian regions which border Burma) have been part of India since the age of the mahajanapadas. But there is an abrupt cultural change when one crosses the border from Bengal or Assam to Burma; from Indic and Hindu/Muslim to Sinitic and Buddhist. Why is that?

I had a political discussion with a friend recently about how land should be used, in which I held the position that land is a shared resource whose usage should be managed by political decision makers, while he took the position that land should be privatised and each private owner can do as they wish.

This made me wonder, what is in fact the history of land ownership in Europe and the Mediterranean? I know that there were different approaches in different parts of the world and different periods, so my interest is focused specifically in Ottoman empire and in European monarchies that turned into republics (we're Israelis, so it seems to be more relevant), around the appearance of the modern nationalist state. How did different countries decided who may or may not own lands and why?

When addressing the aldermen of the City, both the Duke of Hastings Buckingham and Richard III in Shakespeare's Richard III address them collectively as "Citizens". To my knowledge this is the first such usage in the Wars of the Roses plays, and seems at odds with what (very little) I know about early modern England.

Would Shakespeare's usage have been at all common either in his own time, or in the time of Richard III? How would it have been understood by Shakespeare's audience? Are the aldermen uniquely citizens, or could this appellation been used for any English subjects?

Afaik alcohol was mainstream in Europe and elsewhere because water was unsafe to drink before water treatment plants and so low % alcoholic beverages were a mainstay in the culture for hundreds of years.

Was there ever any sort of iconoclast attempts to destroy the ancient Egyptian monuments and temples?

Hi AH team,

When many people analyse Native American culture they do it from the perspective of when the Americans and British came in contact with the natives and the cultural accounts they documented. The other method is to document oral tradition and current Native American practices.

Jamestown was established in 1607 with the majority of Native Americans already wiped out (over 90%) by European influenza. Do scholars take into account that they are analysing a post apocalyptic derivative culture instead of the culture that existed prior to the plagues? I can only imagine how different current American culture would be if 90%+ of the population was wiped out. I read about Lakota chiefs having polygamous marriages, a tradition that the scholar commented was “the exception and the rule,” a confusing turn of phrase.

I don’t want this post to be construed as offensive in any way to Native American culture. The genocidal American policy towards native Americans that persisted throughout our history is abhorrent and constantly swept under the rug. I value the culture Native Americans have been able to preserve through their hardship and persecuted history.

We see lots of accounts from the Greeks. Do we have the Persian side of the story?

The more I read about the era the less I see the Civil War wanting to ending slavery for the benefit of African Americans. It seems like people in the Union also had racist reviews although not actually owning people as slaves, they still seemed to believe themselves superior.

Watched on streaming a gun related documentary "American Guns: a History of US Firearms". Season 1 ep 10, there was a brief mention that certain engineering features of the Springfield 1903 rifle were very similar to the Mauser designed Gerwehr 98. These rifles of course served opposite interests in that conflict. I am interested in knowing more about how the US was actively at war with a country to whom they were paying international patent royalties? The show, while interesting, did not expand on the "little twist" in the narrative.

I've been binge-watching a lot of documentaries and films around 9/11 and I'm really curious - What is so special in Afghanistan that everyone seems to want to occupy it? The Soviet Union fought them in 1979 and then of course the US post 9/11. What exactly are the motivations for so much activity?

Someone please explain to me what exactly is the point of it all? Thanks heaps!

I understand that Native Americans were enslaved in certain cases, most notably by Christopher Columbus in Puerto Rico. However why is it that the primary enslaved population in the Americas were African? From both an economic and convenience perspective it seems odd that people from Europe would travel to Africa to then travel to America and produce crops to then... send back to Europe? Or at least send the profits back. Why not just enslave other Europeans? Or simply bring African slaves to Europe, rather than risk the financial and human loss of transporting them to a tertiary location even farther away? Even simpler, why not just conquer Africa and grow the crops there? Certainly that was already happening, so why take all these extra steps? There are some obvious factors I'm missing here, any explanation that can shed some more light on the economics of colonialism would be appreciated.

Looking at a map of time zones, it seems almost impossibly coincidental that the line on the other side of the world from the Prime Meridian almost perfectly crosses the Bering Strait, separating Russia and Alaska neatly between yesterday and tomorrow, not to mention the convenience of it being in the mostly uninhabited Pacific Ocean. Were these factors considered or even noticed when the Prime Meridian was decided to pass through London?

u/TonyGaze recommended I start a new thread with a followup question from r/AskHistorians/comments/pni4b3/did_karl_marx_arm_himself_if_so_with_what/

Reposting my question for convenience:

Could you elaborate a bit on Mensur?

I had heard of it more as something that was so removed from either combat or sport that it was basically a form of hazing in the Catholic student societies (which sounded basically like fraternities) of Bavaria and Austria. The "pledge" would stand there and as part of the initiation the existing member would cut their cheek. Then they would put a piece of horse hair into the wound which was ripped out as it was healing to accentuate the scar.

Is the above all nonsense or does it reflect some aspect of what went on in these groups?

Britains policy on its navy was always to have a navy stronger than the second and third strongest navies combined. However during the beginning of ww2 they had focused heavily on battleships and destroyers, not knowing that aircraft carriers would be the capital ships of 20th century warfare. The Japanese had a smaller navy but they focused on having light and heavy aircraft carriers.

It wasn’t until the sinking of the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in Dec 10th 1941 that the world really woke up to the potential of aircraft carriers. That battle saw Japan sink two unescorted British battleships while only losing 18 men. Churchill would later say that the sinking of those battleships was the greatest shock he had during the entire war.

So was the Japanese Navy actually superior to the British during the beginning of the war and was the British Navy obsolete since they didn’t focus on aircraft carriers?

I'm currently reading Modern Architecture since 1900 by William J.R. Curtis. I have been struck by just how much the architects seem to be concerned about the philosophical implications of what they were making. Were prior eras care as much about that or is that a modern development?

So I know this became a more pressing issue in these cities as population density increased, and that there have been events like the 'Great Stink' in London that acted as a trigger, but what I'm curious is how the political discussion was at that time. Who was against it? What were their arguments? Were the consequences of open sewers for public health common knowledge or initially more of a fringe opinion?

So the American Civil War didn’t have mercenary participants, but wouldn’t the deserters who fought against either the north or south technically be mercenaries of sorts? They weren’t technically Union soldiers right? Granted the movie Free State of Jones isn’t the best source of information (or so I’ve heard, and based off reviews) but the movie showed them as somewhat independent of the Union army, and other sources I’ve found seem to put them in their own place.

Sometimes when the moon landing comes up, people will tear it down by saying that either it would've have been impossible to have been done without Nazi scientists or that Americans couldn't have gone there on their own without significant ex Nazi assistance. I know that there were several ex Nazi scientists who worked at NASA, but my question is how big of a Nazi presence was there at NASA?