AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
I'm a career Roman legionnaire who has just finished his 25 year term and been granted a plot of land on the frontier. What happens now if I have no idea how to farm, or how to work that particular soil?	4062
If I step into a major port's market in the eastern Mediterranean of antiquity, what would the diversity of coinage look like? Would coins stamped >100 years ago, or with foreign kings be used? If I tried to pay with centuries-old Indian coins, would they be taken?	731
Why did American Puritans seem to deradicalize so rapidly? In the 1690s they're accusing each other of witchcraft en masse with the entire society revolving around the congregation. A mere 70 years later their descendants are some of the most intellectually radical/liberal in the world. Why?	185
When I hear about "Popular Novels" in, say, the 1870s, are they chiefly an upper-class consumption, or did lack of radio and television mean the most-consumed novels were "working-class" in audience? Who consumed the most 19th century novels, and how did class consumption impact those numbers?	62
What were John Brown's opinions on things other than slavery?	60
Bernard Lewis claims that muslim seamen on British merchant vessels entered the Arctic Circle and starved to death "despite the entreaties of their shipmates" waiting for the sun to set. What do we know of this voyage?	37
Shia narratives of the origin and life of the Twelfth Imam seem overwhelmingly mythic and hard to parse. Is there a "Historical Imam Mahdi" that critical scholars can say things confidently about? What does academic history actually claim to know about the man?	17
Given the Papacy's immense power over western Christendom, why was the holder of the office for most of the medieval period a revolving door of (relatively) minor nobles in local Latium? Why didn't sovereigns see it important to impose a choice, like the Emperor in Constantinople often did?	15
Constantine's Mother Saint Helena identified the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as encompassing both the place of Christ's crucifixion and his burial. Is it a reasonable proposition that a 1st century convict would be buried within a few hundred feet of the place of his execution?	13
Were wolves domesticated only once, with all dogs descended from that single progenitor population, or did the process of domesticating wolves occur independently in different societies?	9

« < > »