askhistorians

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In the film Black Robe, members of an Algonquin tribe believe a Jesuit priest to be a demon after he demonstrates writing. How accurate is this portrayal, and more generally, how did pre-literate societies react to the discovery of writing post-contact?	1783
Why Were a Disproportionate Amount of Japanese Prime Ministers Christians?	877
How did rural Chinese farmers react to/deal with people sent into the fields to be "re-educated" during the Cultural Revolution?	127
Why are such a high percentage of Taiwanese Aborigines Christian (~70%) compared to Taiwan in general (~4%)?	114
How did Manchu go from being an official language of the Chinese empire to being critically endangered with fewer than a dozen native speakers? To what extent was this due to active suppression of the language?	97
In the 1946 documentary "Let There Be Light" both black and white soldiers with PTSD are treated at the same hospital. Was this the norm for troops during/in the immediate aftermath of WWII or would it be considered unusual?	93
Why were Jesuits vilified as being particularly corrupt, backwards, greedy, cruel, etc. (compared to comparable organizations like the Dominicans) in English-language historiography from the 19th century and before?	86
The Black Death famously inspired Christian religious hysteria, most famously in the form of the Flagellants. Did similar phenomena happen in the Muslim world?	75
"The Jew Among Thorns" was an infamously antisemitic fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Were there any early modern European folk tales that included Jews in a non-antisemitic context/treated them sympathetically?	54
To what extent was the Cultural Revolution an urban middle class movement, or, to put it another way- how much did the CR affect the average rural farmer?	53

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