AskHistorians

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The top of WW1's Officer Corps were often staffed by nobility, with important commands going to prestigious aristocrats. Were the "meritocratic" officers of the French and Americans noticeably different in performance. Did the later transition away from this norm meaningfully effect performance?	193
Human Sacrifice in Bronze Age China is said to be the only instance comparable to Mesoamerica "in terms of the sheer number of people sacrificed, the frequency at which it was done, and the high degree of formalization of their sacrificial rituals." What do we know of this sacrificial culture?	167
I am a mid-level Imperial bureaucrat in 5th Century Hispania, and I've just learned the Visigoths are "taking over" duties for the state. How catastrophic do I think this is? What changes in my day-to-day life and work?	166
Historians say that American Conservativism began with Buckley and associates in the 1940s, but what does this mean? Hasn’t about half of America always been "conservative"? Hasn’t a philosophy of small government, individuality, and capitalism been pretty fundamental to America since its beginning?	113
American race riots occur frequently in the 20th century until about 1922, and then don't show up again until the Detroit Riot of 1943. Why does the US appear to have gone through the Great Depression without any of the large scale racial violence that characterized it before and after?	101
Red Army grunts in the Winter War were subjected to two hours of ideological "instruction" by their Political Commissars a day. What was the typical content of these lectures? How adroit did such infantrymen become at understanding Marx?	89
THE NAME OF THE ROSE presents St. Thomas Aquinas as an authoritative moral authority a mere half century after his death, spoken in the same breath as Aristotle and Augustine even among his order's adversaries. How quick was it before St. Thomas' account of doctrine was deferred to as such?	87
1 Maccabees 12:21 records an ambassador from Sparta to the Hebrews claiming the Spartans were also descended of Abraham. Do we know if this was referencing a specific tradition? Would making up this sort of relation have been outside the pale of eastern Mediterranean politics in antiquity?	63
The 1886 New York Mayoral race saw Theodore Roosevelt and the prominent political economist Henry George both lose to a Tammany Hall backed man named Abram Hewitt, through what Wikipedia claims without citation was "believed to be fraud." Do we have reason to believe this election was illegitimate?	41
Achilles and Patroclus are commonly understood to be homosexual, but this pairing of two fully grown adult male lovers does not fit the norm of pederasty in greek antiquity - did earlier, Homeric Greece have different sexualities, or was this couple a literary outlier?	37

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