askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
How successful were the Muslim conquerors of Spain at converting the Christian population to Islam? Do we know how they went about it? How quickly did their subjects convert to Christianity after the Reconquista?	43
Did the 5th-century western Roman empire have a "collapse of civilizational self-confidence," and so "permitted (Rome) to be sacked?"	43
The Pennsylvania "walking purchase," and Queen Dido's Carthaginian oxhide shinanigans suggest that colonizing powers often sought to honor the letter of their agreements with natives rather than the intended spirit, to their own gain. How common were these creative interpretation tricks?	43
Did humans have fleas most of the time before the modern era? Did battling fleas require constant effort?	43
The World Bank is blamed for saddling third-world nations with debt thanks to its high-interest-rate loans. Is this a fair criticism? And is the bank supposed to be breaking even with its loans, or actually making a profit? What is their meta financial strategy?	43
Richard II revoked London's charter and the city tried to convince him to give it back with a big party. What was Richard's beef with London and how did the feasting and merrymaking work out as a political strategy?	42
"The Bomber Mafia," describes the disastrous failure of precision bombing in the European theater during WWII, and its replacement with widescale bombing/burning of entire cities in Japan. But most German cities were leveled. How did this happen with precision bombing? Or did the British do it all?	42
Byzantine and Renaissance scholars wrote commentaries on Plato and Aristotle. Are those commentaries considered relevant today, or has scholarship moved on enough that these commentaries would seem very dated or totally irrelevant?	42
Musonius Rufus, "The Roman Socrates," was an outspoken critic of the emperors and was exiled twice, but each time he was recalled. Notably, though he was a thorn in their side, no emperor killed Musonius. Were the emperors worried about repeating the bad PR that Socrates's death brought about?	42
Is there any evidence that Native Americans back-migrated across the Bering strait into Siberia?	42

« < > »