In Jane Austen's "Emma", the protagonist is a 21-year-old woman in 1815. She becomes engaged and then married to a 37-year-old man. Was this kind of age gap common in the early 19th century? Was it socially required or encouraged? If so, why? When did large age gaps like this start to become less socially acceptable?

I know that they aren’t accurate to the Ingalls family story exactly, but taken as historical fiction do these stories accurately represent the age? Are the little stories realistic and the tools and technology described accurate?

Arguably this is a staple of the idealized samurai we imagine even in the modern age. From Edo period stories such as the 47 ronin, to the tales of Minamoto no Yoshitsune or all the way back to Yamato Takeshi and seemingly endless stories surrounding the Sengoku Period, the question I want to ask is vague and spans a wide period of time and yet seems to be applicable even until very recently, relatively speaking: Why?

It's hard to grasp as someone who very much prefers not to die (and reading these stories, these people certainly didn't seem keen on dying either, well most of them) why someone would kill themselves (or their family) upon a defeat or extremely embarrassing situation. Often you also see stories about those going into battle with the full intent on dying (or indeed being commanded to, in the story of Kusonoki Masashige). What exactly were the main influences of this culture?

If I were to guess from my readings, the buddhist idea of reincarnation played a part. The idea that death was not the complete end. But at the same time, samurai or warriors were (with some exceptions when they "retire") not exactly known for their buddhist qualities, heck even the monks seemed to barely be. Another factor may be that they'd be killed anyways which offers a convincing reason as to why, but I can't help but think that just running away or escaping to the countryside or the mountains wouldn't also be an effective method depending on the situation. However I feel like there has to be more to it than that, would someone please enlighten me?

Perhaps an auxiliary question: How idealized is this view of samurai? Certainly there are many primary sources of these kind of stories, however that simply points to the idea that these acts were idealized even during that time period. In reality (as best we can tell), how often was it that one would really stick by these ideals? Rather than them just being just that, ideals.

Edit: A passage just came up from the story of Kou no Moronao , translated in the book Legends of the Samurai by Sato Hiroaki that I feel is relevant, brackets are my doing:

" Rokurou [a retainer of the Takasada] was pleased how easily he had accomplished his mission [to deliver a child of Ennya Takasada to safety] . . . He said to the other men 'as long as I have any arrows left, I'll defend all of you. Go inside and stab the lady [Takasada's wife] and the child to death, set fire to the house, and disembowel yourselves'. "

After they were killed:

"The remaining twenty-two men were all relieved to see this. They untied their topknots to let their hair loose, bared the upper parts of their bodies and whenever an enemy approached, dashed forward to fight with swords. They knew there was no way they could save their lives. They also knew that to continue killing in the circumstances would merely be adding to their sinfulness . . . They set fire to the entrance of the house, rain into it as the fire grew fierce, and each disembowelinh himself in his own way, burned to death."

As a follow up I recall hearing that after 1968 most of the viet Cong forces were supplemented NVA soldiers. Is this true?

I've been curious about this since I noticed the names of the translators of certain foreign works of fiction. I was kind of wondering how these authors got their works translated into other languages and whether they hired their own translators or not in order to make sure what they wanted to say was still coming through in the new language.

I have a story set in 1929, and in it a character is shot and looses a lot of blood. He was supposed to wake up in the hospital with an IV which were technically invented in 1902 but I want to know if there was a different or more prominent way it was treated back then, as my preliminary research (google) says it wasn't widely used until the 50s

I find these rules to be really strange, especially when compared to other empires like it like the Roman Empire.

What exactly was the reasoning behind these rules? Why step on shit? Why would the owner and his family be the only ones allowed to chase the escapee and everyone else were to be punished?

Similarly, if the slaves were mostly indentured servants meant to pay off debts as ordered by a court of law, would that also wipe the debt as well?

As I understand it, on average longswords were mainly secondary weapons during big battles, where spears and polearms in formation were preferred. My question is, would it be feasible to use the longsword as a main weapon for someone that only participated in skirmishes or small scale engagements? I ask this question because I'm trying to write fiction that is fairly realistic, and this particular character has had a lot of training with a longsword, which he uses as a main weapon of choice. However, he does not participate directly in major battles. Would a choice like this be fairly realistic?

Hi there! First time posting. So I’ve always heard and believed that the state of nazi Germany is what happens when a country goes too far to the right (order, efficiency, rigidity, sterility etc) to the point of devaluing humanity to a dangerous degree. All this along with Germany’s vigorous war economy, it was easy for me to see where the country fell on the spectrum so to speak.

Now recently I’ve been doing more research particularly on the time leading up to the Holocaust. I did not know that the nazi party’s official name was the National Socialist German worker’s party. Now maybe that was just the name but the more I am learning about it the more I am hearing the nazis referred to as socialists and a leftist group with leftist ideas and ideologies.

If someone could explain what is meant by this or elaborate on the ways the nazi party was a leftist party that would be great!

This is not meant to be a divisive question. I am just trying to better understand left/right philosophies and see if my interpretations of them are accurate.

Note: I should also say that my very brief and general idea of leftism would be: open, progressive, egalitarian. All of the qualities I use to describe both left and right are not inherently good or bad, but can result in negative outcomes if they are not balanced. Thanks!

The general gist I hear about WW1 was that it was a complete culture shock to all the countries fighting in it regarding how it was going to be fought, as though armies and soldiers were still expecting to march in lines on pitch battlefields. This lack of experience in the new era of modern war therefore leading to massive casualty numbers.

In complete hindsight, are there any wars or battles before WW1 with enough hints and signs where one could deduce that battles were about to significantly change and traditional standards of battle were becoming more archaic if not outright suicidal?

Like someone trying to warn generals before the war that these new machine guns were actually extremely deadly and we should start building counters (tanks?) sooner rather than later?

So I know there’s quite a bit of black people who don’t support Black Lives Matter, but that got me thinking. Were there any black people in the 1950s & 60s that didn’t support Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights activists?

I get that people would see rome collapsing and try and steer away from democracy because of it. But I expected WAY more kingdoms and empires to adopt democracy like the early Roman Empire did. Why didn’t any?

Like, if you killed someone and then fucked off to the next town, wouldn't it be a hugely difficult thing to prove if nobody saw you do it? They didn't have the kind of forensic techniques back then that we do now, so it's not like they could go up to the killer and tell him they'd found his fingerprints and hair samples all over the crime scene like they can today.

As a rule of thumb, when a nomadic people conquers a settled society, they almost always adopt the culture of the people they conquered. There are endless examples of this throughout history. Why is it with the Turkish conquest of Anatolia the opposite occurred?

I read the story of Anne Lister recently. She lived... quite a life, let’s say. Apart from her lesbianism (not the point of my question), she was involved in coal mining. She was sort of well educated. She was a landowner and thus “the lead of her family” for the lack of better word, even when her father and aunt were both alive. She travelled far and beyond across Europe and even to the Caucasus, a quite unusual travel destination for westerners even today.

Even a small percentage, there must have been some other single women in England with significant inheritance during her time as well. But from what people say, Anne Lister’s life was very very unusual hence I suppose it wasn’t easy for others to duplicate her story...?

All the historical documentation - and images - surrounding the time of Haydn - Mozart - Beethoven suggest that when their works were premiered, it was upper or upper middle class people who attended the concerts.

So what was everyone else listening to? What was the popular music amongst the peasants and working class of this period and how would they hear it?

i always thought there must have been some real virus there.

As naturalized American I tried to learn a little about American revolution, and to compliment it, I watched Turn. I wanted to ask, do you know, in numbers, how bad was the taxation that sparked American revolution? How bad was the taxation after, by our very own states and our Congress? What angered the colonist most? they can had relatively comfortable life under protection of the strongest Empire of those days, in British Empire, yet they chose to fight it, and (incredibly) won. What sparked the revolution? What made it success? What convinced public to go along?

How can bunch of civilians, farmers, colonists, defeat a professional army/navy of the British Empire? How was it even possible? It is as if some ragtag Alabama civilians defeated US Army...How was it possible for US to defeat UK? It still looks totally unrealistic.

What gave them the edge? Personal bravery? Willingness to risk life and property by colonial leaders? Firearms? Novelty of having firearms among any able bodied men that was equalizing advantage of professional soldiers? Propaganda? Lack of censorship by British? nonexistence of UK controlled currency?

Was it foolishness/naiveté of UK to obey it's own rules and play fair? I am asking myself over and over, how well would Indian Gandhi fare in hypothetical rebellion not against rules respecting Brits but against Stalin and USSR...

I’m interested in basically anything related to the warlord era, but I’m especially interested in how warlords governed their territories, the involvement of various foreign powers in China in this era (Japan, the USSR, etc.), and the Ma Clique.