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.
I took a look at the question of what impact the sack of Guangzhou (Canton) in 879, in which 120,000 Persians and Arabs supposedly died, had on the transoceanic trade between the Abbasid caliphate and Tang China. An absolutely fascinating topic, but by the time I had finished my (ridiculously detailed) response it was three days later... so this one counts as “overlooked”...
u/Colest made their AH debut with a two part answer to What do we know about the Roman genocide conducted by the Kingdom of Pontus; known as the Asiatic Vespers? This act of tyranny led to the deaths of roughly 100,000 Roman settlers in the province of Asia, but there is seemingly little information about it anywhere.. I hope to read more posts from them in the future.
A few things for this week:
I was late to it but finally finished a longer answer now to In the wake of the defeat of the Aztecs, where did the strongest resistance to Spanish occupation come from?
Enjoyed u/hillsonghoods's great answers and the following discussions on Punk's development
Plus this nice reply by u/lordtiandao on European perceptions of China/the Chinese
I really enjoyed How many of you would say that you are also equally as knowledgeable about the significant women from your particular specialty or concentration?, and there were some good answers from a couple of people. Such as /u/sunagainstgold, /u/cdesmoulins, and /u/hillsonghoods.
/u/commiespaceinvader gave a characteristically great answer to this question about the provenance of the Iwangorod photograph (showing a Waffen-SS soldier shooting a civilian woman and child).
Also I wanted to highlight a thread from two weeks ago that I didn't see until now: I liked both /u/uncovered-history and /u/Pdbowen's answers to Why didn't freed slaves reject Christianity?
I rarely see them mentioned in the Sunday thread, but we had some amazing AMA's recently. My favorite of which was this weeks Get Cultured II, Acculturation and its Discontents! - Massive Cultural History Panel AMA hosted by /u/AnnalsPornographie, who's username has more then once led to some awkward email exchanges when I try to share their answers.
/u/Klesk_vs_Xaero provided a very good late followup reply on regional migratory patterns within Italy. The original thread is a few weeks old, so it probably went under most peoples' radar. It's well worth revisiting now.
I asked earlier in the week about the Forest Brothers
/u/mydearestangelica answered "What prompted the Puritans to give their children such ridiculous names as If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned?"
/u/crrpit answered "How Common Were Communists In The Republicans During The Spanish Civil War?"
/u/tsalrightwithme on "How did Roman Catholic monarchs used to justify going to war against the Pope?"