AskHistorians

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It’s pretty commonly known that the only reason American citizens have to calculate their own taxes is because companies that help us calculate those taxes have lobbied politicians to keep it that way. But then why and how did the system come to work like that in the first place?	692
In 1634, French explorer Jean Nicolet wore Chinese robes to visit native tribes in Wisconsin, believing he would meet the Emperor of China. But people had already known America wasn’t Asia by the 1500s. Why didn’t the news reach Nicolet?	267
In the novel Crazy Rich Asians, a character claims that in 1913 the Qing royal family offered to sell the Forbidden City’s treasures to JP Morgan for only four million dollars. Did this really happen? Were the Qing really that desperate for funds at the time?	95
We often hear about Taiwan in historical Chinese records, but what do Taiwanese Aboriginals record about themselves?	90
The tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy of Maine and Acadia, after being defeated by European colonizers, did not meet for over a century. Yet in 1993, the Confederacy was revived. What were the forces at work behind this decision, and why did they choose to revive that particular institution?	40
The Weilüe (History of the Wei), a Chinese record of foreign countries, mentions that merchants from Shu, modern Sichuan, reach as far as Pandya in Southern India. Did the Tamils have any record of these merchants? Did they notice the distinction between China and the Sichuan tribes?	24
We know about white historians learning about Chinese/Middle Eastern/Indian history and reconciling it with their own sources for the first time, but what was the response of historians in the rest of the world to Western sources? How did it influence their historical traditions?	13
Christopher Columbus, an Italian peasant, only obtained access to Portuguese navigational maps through his wife, the noblewoman Felipa Moniz. If he already couldn’t get access to those maps, then why was he allowed to marry a noble? Was it just to secure his loyalty?	10
After the Mongols, the next five Iranian empires were all of nomadic or tribal nature, from nomads or tribes within Iran, in contrast to China or Russia which largely pushed out Mongol remnants. Why was Iran so “Turkified”/“Mongolicized” in the wake of the conquests, but other regions were not?	6
We hear a lot about Christian crusades and Muslim jihads. But what about the holy wars of other Abrahamic faiths? How did they perceive religious warfare?	5

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