Does anyone know what the primary sources are for the 1348-49 artisans' revolt in Nuremberg? Werner Schultheiss, who wrote the entry for it in Nürnberg: Geschichte einer europäischen Stadt, mentions chronicles and a letter, but no specifics; elsewhere, the closest I've been able to get is "we don't really know what happened because the sources are biased." Awesome--that's perfect, just what I'd expect. Except, what sources?

Oh this is perfect.

So one of the discussions that came up in Mandarin class at my uni is whether or not the word 餐厅 (cāntīng) is a loanword from English or not. The word looks like canteen written out, and a few ABCs who also speak Cantonese say it sounds more like canteen in Cantonese (caanteng? I think?) but several Chinese words also just use the combination of thing+厅 to create some sort of room with a function so it's also probable that it's just a Chinese invention (Which is what I personally think).

I was hoping someone here might know the etymology of the word.

Why do historians tend to give average life expectancy, skewed by infant mortality for millenia, when one could find the mode, for example? That would seem much more useful, knowing how many years most people lived as opposed to extremely few (i.e. mode of fictional neolithic society shows be that most lived to 47 but life expectancy is 29), and it would help to end any misconceptions of laypeople.

I've never obtained a real answer to this question. Were travelers aboard the Titanic allowed to bring firearms with them? Was it illegal, or was it disallowed by ship regulations? And would America or New York be concerned about immigrants bringing a firearm into the country? Any related information would be fantastic as well.

Is Hennessy popular today with African-Americans because the French gave it to Black soldiers during World War I?

If that is true, is it because those black soldiers started the jazz age of the 1920’s?

What happened after a cavalry soldier killed someone with a lance? would the lance break off? would they drop it for a sword? do they have some sort of tip of the lance removal technique to keep using the lance?

Before "fire" was associated with launching ordinance, what were the common English verbs for shooting arrows?

I'm going through Wickham's Inheritance of Rome (trying to actually finish it this time...), and in one of the chapters he introduces us to an early eight century Northern Italian community, in which people have names like Anstruda, Sigirad and Arochis. What the heck is up with these names? Where are they from?

Fernand Braudel refers to an English ship travelling to leghorn in 1573 as carrying casks of "broken bells", along with three undamaged bells.

The first time I read this I thought this was really weird. But is simply what it sounds like, with the bells being transported to be recycled for the bronze? (since it was in demand for cannon, and presumably also new bells.)

I'm looking for literature covering, in detail, the break-up of Austria-Hungary, specifically from geopolitical PoV, how different national entities formed different states, the processes which lead to the outcomes. Does anyone have any good starts?

Can someone point me to resources that say that history isn't a science?

I found this from an AskHistorians poster /u/talondearg:

History isn’t science and it’s not a science. I find this issue prevalent among people who think that all knowledge is scientific and knowledge that isn’t scientific isn’t knowledge. Philosophically this is untenable, since the scientific method is not itself provable by the scientific method and is a form of presupposition. Methodologically this is untenable since history is not a discipline subject to experimentation. You cannot run repeatable experiments with the data of historical investigation.

but I wanted something a little better sourced.

Do we know what were the wages of English archers on campaign in first half of 1400s? I would like to know about archers specifically but it would be cool to also have information about infantry, and cavalry, if we have such a thing

My hometown is in central California, and I've heard claims that Jesse James had a hideout nearby. It's even on the town's wikipedia page, and every time I check the details get more fanciful. Is that even plausible? I thought he was operating east of the Rockies.

I'm currently reading about the Napoleonic wars and the capturing of eagles/colors/standards. What is the oldest surviving colors/standard that has been captured in war. does the victorious side still have it? Are there very old standards or eagles that we know of?

So I've recently been listening to the British History Podcast by Jamie Jeffers as a starting point to learn more about Anglo Saxon England since I'm writing my undergrad thesis on that area. One thing that's got my attention and I want to research more is Anglo Saxon bookland, and how that contributed to centralization of power and wealth, and what contributions it had to stratification of class/inequality of wealth.

But my question is, could anyone point me towards sources that go more in depth as to what Bookland was, how it worked, etc.? I've actually contacted Jamie from the podcast about this and he's kindly pointed me towards a few sources, but does anyone else here have some leads?

Where should I look for pre-1900 or earlier (preferably much earlier) historical fiction/plays about or featuring Catherine of Aragon?

I'm working on a research paper of shifting cultural perspectives about Catherine of Aragon throughout time and am having a hard time finding works written about her. I'm specifically interested in plays and historical novels because I've found that the changes in portrayals of historical characters in these works can show how perspectives on people have changed.

The problem is it turns out not a lot of people wrote about Catherine in this compacity before 1900, at least from what I can tell. I will be using Shakespeare's Henry VIII in some compacity and have turned up one or two books by William Harrison Ainsworth written in the mid-1800s. There are also some late 1600/early 1700 works in Italian and French that look promising as well.

Where else should I look? Does anyone know of some Walker Scott predecessor or Schiller sort of writer who decided to write about Catherine? Victor Hugo wrote a play on Mary I, did one of his contemporaries do anything on her mother?

Ideally, I would find something written somewhat near to her death or at least the early 1600s (other than Henry VIII) but we can't always get what we want.

My French and Italian are good enough to read works in those languages, especially my French. I don't have Spanish but I do have very good friends who are native Spanish speakers that I might be able to bribe/pay to help me with a work in that language.

This isn't a paper that is going to be published in any compacity, at least in this form. It is for a class about British Women in the Early Modern Era especially in regards to divorce.

Any leads on literature or directions on where to look would be very much appreciated.

What were kidney beans called before the study of anatomy was far enough to determine the shape of a human kidney?

u/Valkine mentions [here] (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/75p9tl/comment/do9ltw1) some rates of pay for various soldiers in the English army during the campaign leading up to Agincourt. What kind of buying power would those sums represent? Or, to compare, what would be a typical amount of pay for a day of unskilled labor?

i would like to understand more about the anarchist movement in the late 19th early 20th century. I have not been able to find many books that are not textbooks. Are there any books i could read to understand this movement and why they performed terrorist acts?

Why didn't Europe have their own spices?

I don't understand. Are there no European plants that can be made into spices? Did they not try because Asian spices were so good, they just wanted those?

Presumably, European plants had seeds and fruits and roots. Were they just bland or inedible?

What is a good/the best resource to find out about any new/latest archeological/historical discoveries?

Is there a page or anything that historians like to keep tabs on?

I read a quote somewhere that said something like 'we have no choice but to believe ancient history, because without it, what are we left with?' referring to the constructed, narrative nature of the written sources we have, and the awareness that they not exact or complete representations of the events, but they are what we have to work with.

Can anyone identify the quote, or point me to a similar one?

Many thanks!

Did Japanese naval aviators and the IJN central command have short form "slang" terms for United States Naval Aircraft, in a similar manner that the USN had for them? (i.e. Val, Jake, Zeke etc)

If so, what were they?

Any good books about Socialism in America, especially at the beginning of the 20th century, that anyone could recommend? Preferably one that also provides a bigger picture on the politics of that time.

Have white separatists ever attempted anything similar to the northwest front? If so what was the outcome of those communities?

I’d also be interested in any info about any black separatist groups who have tried something like that.

Do you know any good books on right wing opposition to the Nazis and right wing politics in general before and under Nazi Germany?

There's this (I believe) Middle English poem about an old knight who relishes in not fighting anymore, and takes pleasure in simple pursuits, sitting around and mentions eating salmon. It's a long shot, but does this come to anyone's mind?

Does anybody have any recommendations for a book covering democratization in Taiwan?

The Netflix show Narcos has had me thinking about the Colombian drug wars and the like, and the interconnected nature of Colombia's various factional issues. But I'm scared to post a thread because I'm not sure I know enough to formulate a good one.

To what extent were the Colombian government's conflicts with the Medellín and Cali cartels, and for that matter, FARC, regional conflicts in a mountainous region with a spotty record for powerful central governments?

Does anyone know where I can find the diary of Peter Hagendorf in English? I can't find an English translation of it anywhere online or in print. Amazon only has a German edition.

Suggestions for books covering the topic of witch trials?

Did a bend sinister on a coat of arms really denote bastardy? If not, were there any common signifiers of illegitimacy used in heraldry, or is this just a Hollywood invention?

Did the subjects of the Roman Empire not from Rome (e.g Egyptians, or Gauls) ever think of themselves as Romans? I'm aware of the concept of citizenship, and how it was a legal status, but I just want to know if imperial subjects thought themselves to be Romans.

How many people were sent to the gulags under article 85 (political crimes/prisoners) in the USSR under Stalin?

I've heard mixed opinions on the reliability of author Barbara Tuchman's books from different flaired users on this subreddit. Is there some kind of general consensus on how accurate her work is?

Her work is very readable and things seem to be well explained, so it would be a shame if it turns out she was mostly just a "pop historian".

I have read the expression “dark years” (maybe slightly differently formulated since this was translated) to refer to the Native Americans between the Dawes Act of 1887 and 1934. I understand why but I was wondering where the expression itself originated from - it has quotation marks in the book I am reading but no source.

I'm interested in some histories of Western education (fitting, given this week's theme!). Books preferred, anything from antiquity to contemporary.

where do i go about finding little bits of history (specifically ww2) things like obscure facts. Also good places for sources where i can learn about battles and tactics

Thanks

How are black people who lived during the Victorian Era treated?

We've been running this feature for a little bit now, so I would like to use this opportunity to garner a little feedback and thoughts on how to perhaps tweak it.

One thing I have noticed is that, well, a lot of questions asked here are very much conceptual ones, that is to say, they aren't the type which are easy to answer in a sentence or two, so not really what this thread is aimed at. I'm wondering what leads to this. Is it that people don't necessarily see the depth of the question they are asking so are putting it here unintentionally, or is it just that they want the really quick summation without any depth as would be required in a standalone question? Up to now, the mod team has occasionally removed questions which are obviously out of place, but we've used a pretty light touch.

I feel that especially if people are doing the latter, it is kind of a misplaced hope since I would venture that someone looking through this thread to answer isn't looking for those kinds of questions, which even to distill to a small paragraph can take some time. They seem the ones least often answered in here. I know that when I browse through here, I'm looking for the kind of question which I know can be answered in five minutes, max. Basically where I know the outline, or at least know exactly what book has the answer, and simply getting the source will take up most of my time.

Good questions for this thread are ones which ask for word origin (OED often has that, but not everyone can access the OED!), specific numbers of things, specific dates of things, specific names of things. All the kind of stuff which is pretty easy to find in a reference book if you know what you are looking for, so perfect to match up those who do and don't know here. But questions which ask why or how just aren't going to fit that mold well.

So anyways, I'm rambling, but the short of it is, I have two basic questions I'm interested in feedback on:

A) As above, what is the main reason people decide that their question should be in this thread, and not on its own?

B) Should the mods be a little more proactive in curation of questions that are posed here, and redirect more of them to repost as new threads when deemed appropriate?