Sunday Digest | Interesting & Overlooked Posts | April 20, 2015–April 26, 2015

by AutoModerator

Today:

Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.

Doe22

Here are a few questions and answers that I liked:

There was a lot of interesting discussion of sports history in response to /u/sqectre's question "As an obsessed NBA fan, I can't imagine the league ever coming to an end. But it has to someday. How have other major sports in history come to an end?" I don't see a ton of sports history on here so this was a nice change. The questions and answers also had a somewhat different perspective from many sports-related questions.
I loved the discussion of a "Roman nation" versus "Roman nationalism" that came from /u/DerAmazingDom's question "Is the idea of Roman nationalism based on history, or is it a modern invention?" /u/LegalAction and /u/agentdcf in particular had some interesting responses.
"I often hear that for hundreds of years after the Roman Empire fell, some European peoples still thought they were in it. Is this true? If so, how?" This question brought out a lot of responses on when exactly the Roman Empire collapsed, and what exactly that collapse meant in terms of political structure in former Roman areas. The answers are more complicated (and interesting!) than you might think.

In terms of unanswered questions, I thought that /u/bob08 had a good one: "During the European wars of the 17th/18th century, were the minor European states just seen as "campaigning ground" for the bigger players or was there any backlash against violating their territorial integrity?" I hope someone can provide an answer.

Finally, thank you to those who responded to my question on the design of police badges in the United States.

DuxBelisarius

I answered this question about Australia in the First World War:

[Was Australia ever under serious threat of invasion by the Central Powers?] (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33s2c1/was_australia_ever_under_any_serious_threat_in/)

With ANZAC Day yesterday, and in light of disparaging comments made against the men of Australia and New Zealand who fought in the world wars, it's important to note that in BOTH conflicts there were great issues at stake, and the Antipodes could not easily stay out of it!