askhistorians

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Holy Roman Empire is often made fun of for being essentially a formality with states inside having virtual independence. But France was also very decentralized in 1400s that its own vassal was their rival. How much of a difference was there?	2596
How genuine was Boris Yeltsin's democratic reforms in Russia? Did Putin "betray" his ideals by grabbing more power?	2577
The B-29 Heavy Bomber project was 50% more expensive than the Manhattan Project which created the atom bomb. Why was this so and was this really worth it?	2322
UK came out of WW2 substantially weakened and was eventually forced into a junior relationship with USA due to high cost of the war. How did USSR come to become USA's only rival when they received far more damage than UK?	969
Why is Far Eastern Russia so underpopulated compared to Manchuria which is pretty much the same climate but 6 times higher population density?	732
Crassus is often criticized for crossing through the desert to reach the Tigris and getting slaughtered in the scorching heat at Carrhae. Alexander the Great took a similar path on his expansion and won at Gaugamela, was this ever addressed by ancient and early-modern writers?	272
Georgia and Uzbekistan had the same population in the 1897 Russian Empire census, but today Uzbekistan has 10 times the population today. What caused this?	231
"It is estimated that the port of Antwerp was earning the Spanish crown seven times more revenues than the Spanish colonization of the Americas" How true is this? Did the Belgian port really earn that much?	203
Artillery inflicted 60-75% of combat casualties during WW1. How different were the actual artillery pieces of combatants? Were there any "arms races" in this part of warfare?	199
I'm a Mongolian and my history teachers taught us that our armies in 1921 were marching against the Great Wall in China and the re-integration of Inner Mongolia was only stopped because of Soviet interference. How true is this?	136

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