If I were a peasant, with wife and kids, and the county I lived in had become unfit for life, or we just weren't happy there anymore, or for whatever other reason, could I find the means to gather all our belongings and travel to a diferent place to start a new life? How hard would it be for us to accomplish that? And would a different place be open to receive other people coming in?

We often hear the 'immigration nation' story in the US, but we don't hear much about the side effects of that massive emigration of labor out of certain countries.

For example- how was Ireland affected by 4 million people leaving? Census records indicate 8.2 million people in 1841, to only 6.6 million in 1851... to 4.7 million in 1891.

Literally half of the country just up and left...

While this might be an extreme example- how were these countries (economically, culturally and socially) affected by so many people leaving?

I once heard from a teacher that one of the main reasons that explorers from Portugal and Spain sailed out into the Atlantic or around Africa to find a passage to India was because the spice trade had been effectively cut off from Western Europe by the Ottomans after they took Constantinople in 1453. Is this actually true? Did the Ottomans impose any extra tariffs or try to limit the flow of goods west? Was this a major factor that encouraged seafaring expeditions, or were other factors more important?

Thanks!

It puts Hiroshima alongside the Nazis and the sinking of the Lusitania, which he also tries to stop. Was the prevailing opinion of the bomb unfavorable by this point? Would this episode have been very controversial? How did public opinion on the bombing shift in the first few decades?

Also, as a side note, the Japanese police officer he talks to says "I think we can handle one B-29;" is their knowledge of the incoming plane at all accurate?

I find it strange that the Nazis who believed in a superior Aryan white race would adopt a symbol that had prominence in Asian cultures.

Asians were not considered white by the Nazis, so why would they associate themselves with a symbol of their culture? Flipping it does not remove it from its roots, after all.

“The starving time” was the winter of 1609-1610, when food shortages, fractured leadership, and a siege by Powhatan Indian warriors killed two of every three colonists at James Fort. I've read rumors of cannibalism being practiced during this time. Is there any truth to this?

I know movies can be very unaccurate but since this is something I saw a lot of times I wondered if there is some truth to it. So as far as I know AA shells that automatically explode near a target weren't a thing until the late stages of the war so I always assumed that the shells would come with a timer...but that would mean that if the maximum height the AA gun can fire at is far above a target that you wouldn't see many of those little shell explosions from the AA anywhere near the plane which would make the AA itself much less effective. So why is it that in almost all media regarding ww2 the AA shells explode near the target regardless of how far it is away from the AA. Is it simply all wrong or is there actually some truth to it or to put it differently, was it possible to adjust the timer on the shells while firing?

It seems to me that when reading on the Achaemenid empire most sources English language books cite are Greek ones. Is this just because western histography tend to focus on Persian contact with the Greeks and/or language barrier? Or is it because Persian sources of the period are simply destroyed/lost over the course of time and the Greek ones survived. Do modern day Iranian historians use different sources?

Hi all,

I have recently watched a documentary about the infamous teutonic order which is somewhat of a myth here in Germany and especially in eastern Europe. They mention the founding of the order and a phase of "equipping the army before battle". This made me think about the economic implications during that time. For example forging a sword and maybe chainmail plus helmet must have been a tremendous time and energy investment for the craftsmen. Not to mention the cost during that time.

Taking that to the army level of lets say 1000 fully equipped knights on horseback I can imagine that it took forever to forge all that gear. How many people were there working in the background? I always thought of blacksmiths in the medieval period as a somewhat rare profession. How would that work with equipping and maintaining an entire army? Did each knight bring his own blacksmith? Did they use mobile forges when the army was on the move?

What if the army was defeated in battle? From my understanding it was common practice to take prisoners for ransom. What about their armor and their weapons? How could you cope with such a loss as a regular knight? To me it almost sounds as if you were automatically bankrupt after losing one battle. Did armies take well-known blacksmiths as prisoners to craft gear for their army? Did the systematically reuse the gear they looted from the battlefield?

Apolodigies if this question has already been answered. I couldn't find anything related to that specific topic.
Cheers,
Stephan

Big Brother, the Thought Police, and totalitarian governments have all entered popular culture as synonymous with dystopian societies. But as novels written during the Cold War when fears of such oppressive governance were at an all-time high, was this a unique phenomena amongst writers?

Did novelists in the 19th or even early 20th century portray another form of government as "dystopian" in their works? Was their idea of a "dystopian" society different to what we commonly picture it as now?

As a corollary question, where might we trace the roots of the dystopian genre in literature to?

I will be up-front that this question is partially inspired by the flareup in hostilities in the Middle East, and the bump in questions on the history of Israel and Palestine. A big historic question about the modern state of Israel and Zionism is whether it counts as settler-colonialism or not (which obviously is a whole other topic from this particular question).

But it did jog my memory a bit about the area, and hence this question is born. I suppose a big part of this as well is what exactly counts as or is meant by "colonialism" (and it's obviously a political topic as well, as "decolonization" is still an important factor in discourse around much of the world). Is it something uniquely European? And/or unique to a particular time period? And do the Crusades meaningfully fit into that model, or are they better understood as part of a different (and arguably much older and much more universal) model of armed groups showing up in a region and establishing rule over it, more like for example the barbarian kingdoms in the former Western Roman Empire?

It is well known that a vast majority of native American people died at the hand of newly imported old world diseases like smallpox.

Why didn't the native Americans have similar diseases that could have affected Europeans as adversely?

I am about 1/2 way through Das Boot, and there have been several scenes depicting U-Boat crews piling into the front of the ship to dive quickly. Was this something that was actually done or something done to heighten the tension in the movie?

Thanks!

Doing cartography and making a map of the Mediterranean lands in 1204 and a source is confusing me.

One source says Sicily (is it the kingdom of Sicily or the Kingdom of Two Sicilies?) is part of the HRE through Personal Union but my other source states that the crown of the HRE was disputed and the young king of Sicily Frederick Hohenstaufen only became HRE Emperor in 1220.

So long story short, was the Kingdom of Sicily independent in the year 1204 or was it part of the HRE?

Was it common or did it ever happen that the shogun, emperor, nobles or merchants of feudal Japan hosted something that could be compared to a medieval European tourney?

Was there ever large scale gatherings were samurai would gather and fight a series of duels or anything similar to this?

The Witan seemed to have the usual suspects: King, Archbishops of York and Canterbury, earls, thanes, etc. I want to know what offices you would expect the regulars in the Witan to hold. I've found evidence of the use of terms such as dux and chancellor in the late Anglo-Saxon period and I'm sure there are others.

I've heard stories of herds of Grizzlies in the Santa Cruz Mountains and I know there were wolves. We still have mountain lions, and I'm sure there used to be more.

Was the California coast a pretty hostile environment full of predators?

Did the Greeks adopt Persian political practices*? Religious and social practices? Language and Literature? Philosophy? Or just consumption of Persian trade goods and fashions?

I know some Greek elites admired figures like Cyrus, but did that admiration actually lead to emulation and imitation? Or were the Persians still too "barbaric" for Greek sensibilities, despite a few respected figures being known among them?

*besides Alexander and his supposed slide towards "Oriental despotism"