/r/askhistorians
I'm a young woman with a newborn baby living in a medieval village in the English countryside. I've just received word that my husband has been killed fighting for our local lord in a far off war. What honorable options do I have to make a living and feed my family now that he is dead?
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Why has Western culture come up with museums and the study of ethnography, while other cultures have simply lived alongside ancient artefacts and buildings for thousands of years?
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In America, ethnic restaurants (Italian, Chinese, Jewish, etc) started to appear when those immigrants arrived en masse in the early 20th century. What were the most popular types of restaurants before the 20th century?
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We all know of Mansa Musa, possibly the richest man to ever exist. To Westerners, he seems to have been the greatest of Mali rulers, as visible in games like Civilization. Yet native sources seem to pay him little attention. Who would native Malians have considered their greatest ruler?
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In 9 AD, Wang Mang abolished slavery in China. Considering that slavery was universally normalized in the ancient world, what led Wang Mang to abolish slavery?
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Let's say I'm in Berlin, Germany - how far back in time do I have to travel before the beer being produced here is no longer recognizable to a modern person as beer? Or has it always been roughly the same but with minor variations over the centuries?
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Manichaeism is the only major world religion I could think of to be completely destroyed across multiple national boundaries as the result of severe persecution. What about Manichaeism was so terrifying to every single polity in late antiquity that caused such persecution?
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When I look at maps of Napoleon’s conquests, it seems he mostly set up a system of puppet states to run Europe for him..... except for modern day Croatia, which he ran directly. Why?
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