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.
/u/TBTrpt3 answered "How was President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination viewed by former Confederate officials and the general population of the Confederacy?"
/u/Becca-Reyna answered "When would the tales in the Mabinogion likely have taken place?"
/u/dbht14 answered "Why wasn’t there a Dunkirk like evacuation from Bataan?"
Woo! My favorite time of the week. When I can try and share some of the answers I loved so they can get even more attention.
Let's start with the ever fantastic /u/sunagainstgold talking about the eternal crisis befalling masculinity. Reading letters from history, I'm struck by how intimate and affectionate the friendships are between male friends. We find this between Hamilton and Laurens, and between Lincoln and Speed. When did men shift from writing each other love letters, to just getting together for some drinks?
In popular history, Rome and Greece are generally considered to be origins of Western civilisation yet I have seen many historians and academics criticize this idea. What is the academic consensus on this? has some great discussion and answers from /u/Tiako primarily, but also some others.
Between 1914 and 1918, over 2 million Africans were mobilized for the war effort, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, carriers and civilians died in the conflict. How is the Great War remembered or memorialized in sub-Saharan Africa? How does it shape the story of the people of Africa? was a question I'd never really stopped to think about. With a very interesting answer from /u/DCynicalOptimist