There seems to be a pretty broad historical consensus that medieval Jewish life under Turkish rule was generally much better than it was under Catholic rule. I'm curious why more Ashkenazi Jews didn't try moving to Turkish territory after various expulsions from European polities. Was it for simple logistical reasons, (IIRC the Ottomans sent a fleet to pick up the Sephardic Jews when they were expelled from Spain, but made no analogous efforts to encourage Ashkenazi immigration) or were there cultural reasons why Ashkenazi Jews wanted to stay and try and build a life in Europe?

(Once again, just to be clear, I'm talking about the period *prior* to the founding of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century.)

As I understand it, the main role of the U.S. Surgeon General is that of a doctor who acts as a spokesperson for the federal government on public health matters.

What is the historical background as to why this person is a surgeon, and not some other type of doctor- say, one trained in internal medicine or family medicine, who might have a broader perspective on health issues and policy?

Original post edited to fix some typos

I've been taught since a young age that the Middle East functioned more as one country before the British/French divided it up after World War I and that the cause for all modern conflict stems from that. Recently on Reddit, I've seen some people mention there had historically been much conflict between Jews and Muslims in the region. To what extent has there been an excess of conflict between these two groups before WWI and did it actually significantly increase after or is that a more contemporary narrative?

Hopefully this question counts as a valid meta enquiry

I noticed a recent post had a comment count of 59 but when I checked the post there were only 3 comments showing, one from the automod, one deleted one from someone and a one mod post explaining about the deleted post

I can only assume the other "missing" comments are due to shadowbans but that seems like a surprisingly high number expecially seeing as other posts in /r/AskHistorians don't appear to have the same high number of "missing" comments

I'm not complaining or anything, I'm just genuinely curious as to why there would be such a high number of "missing" comments (for one particular post)

My friend keeps saying there slaves while i disagree and believe they were servants whats the facts?

Hey there, I'm searching for a book or audiobook to buy for my younger brother and he really really loves ww2, and if possible, specifically naval battles. He's moving away from home for a year and I thought perhaps you guys would know which books to avoid when trying to purchase books which cover battles factually and accurately, rather than trying to tell a story with heroism and over-embellishments?

I am asking because it seems unusual to start a war over another country banning one of your goods from being sold in their country.

For example, it's not like Japan would start a war with a South American country if they banned imports of Nintendo Switch from Japan.

So it begs the question to me, why would Great Britain start a war over the sale of their opium being banned in China? Was there truly a compelling reason they started the war, such as China banning opium trade was very economically damaging to Great Britain? Or were they just being very imperialist in attitude and did it because they could even though it wasn't that economically damaging? Or did a few lobbyists with outsized influence in the government influence it? Or is it another reason?

I ask because there were protests in the west against nuclear armourment.

However in the U.S.S.R. they did not have freedom of the press and despite them testing weapons and having nuclear power plants I see no reason for them to tell the people they could destroy humanity - it might even be quite destablising. So how would they find out?

Most of what I've found (and unless I'm looking in the wrong places wasn't a lot) just consisted of "only nobles could do it and it was a dangerous sport". I'm also curious as to how the actual hunting itself worked, did they use missile weapons like bows, crossbows or muskets, or did they use spears, javelins, and swords? I would assume some combination of all of the above, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

I find this to be very odd

Incording to my research the original war documents by the allies just called them by the english equivelants (navy airforce and army)

So why did this start and why?

I had always understood that the blockade was reasonably damaging to the economy of the United States. Recently however, I read a book that suggested that the Royal Navy captains on station regarded the whole thing as a bit of farce, and did little to actually enforce the blockade. Was this actually the case?

I'm writing some fiction with chunks of it set in 1930s Britain. At one point, someone gets a head injury that's not life threatening but which would have needed medical attention - stitches and a nose resetting.
How expensive, relatively speaking, would medical care for this have been? A weeks' average wage? Less than that? Basically - would it have been expensive enough that an average family with *just* enough to live on would have tried to fix this themselves, or would they have called a doctor out?

Am also asking because I love our NHS and am genuinely interested about the difference it must have made to people's lives when it was set up.

We often see settlements in medieval or ancient times with its cities and castles, etc with walls to protect it from danger and narrow its passage to the settlement to a few gates. However, what would happen if a city has a big enough population that more space is needed, but the walls surrounding it disallow it? Do they just knock it down? It would be easy maybe if it’s just made of wood but not so for ones made of stones. Or they have other methods? Like settling a new city somewhere else?

The storming of the Capitol on January 6 wasn't the first time rightwingers have attempted to overthrow the government. In 1933, business leaders plotted to remove President Roosevelt from office and install one of their own. How close did it come to succeeding?

Smedley Butler is a fascinating figure that I can't quite figure out. At two time Medal Of Honor winner, he wrote the book "War Is A Racket."

I've seen this repeated here and there. For example on Wikipedia:

By far the leading specie coin circulating in America was the Spanish silver dollar, defined as consisting of 387 grains of pure silver. The dollar was divided into "pieces of eight," or "bits," each consisting of one-eighth of a dollar.

The source is Murray Rothbard, a libertarian whom I do not trust.

The idea of physically splitting a coin, let alone designing a coin to be split, is insane to me for many reasons:

Bits of silver would be lost from the process.

Coins of lower value were minted (Spain minted silver coins with face values of half a real, 1 real, 2 reales, 4 reales and the 8 reale peso; and there were copper coins of lower values).

Clipping or defacing a coin was already illegal, it's the reason coins had patterns added to their edges.

Using a small chunk of a coin defeats the purpose of having a face value.

Even trying to use a chunk of coin would be difficult because people would have to get out their weights and measures to figure out if the eighth you're trying to give them really is 0.38 grams of silver

There's also the fact that the designs clearly don't have any grooves to allow them to be easily split. I also don't see any pictures of portions of coins.

I'm currently training up my Kelpie/Ridgeback puppy to not be an absolute menace. I'm using well established behavioural principles based on science (ie reward good behaviour, redirect or ignore bad behaviour, never use punishment etc). It's hard work but largely successful and it got me wondering.

The thing is that I know from having studied psychology that these ideas have only been formalised recently in historical terms - 'pavlov's dog' (classical conditioning) was formally described around 1900 and Skinner's operant conditioning came in the 1930s.

I know that 'domesticated' dogs have been around for thousands of years, and were trained for work etc, Roman war dogs spring to mind. What techniques did people use to train them in ancient times, or even in medieval times? Were there a bunch of dog trainers sitting back and laughing at these 'groundbreaking' psychologists saying "we've known this stuff for thousands of years"?

Thanks in advance!