AskHistorians

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What proportion of medieval European Jews were actually bankers and moneylenders? To what extent did they dominate the financial sectors before the Christian prohibition of interest was abolished?	2
According to the Wikipedia page on Manichaeism, secretive Manichean communities persist to this day in Fujian in China. Is there any ethnographic work on these communities available in English or French?	1
Given that medieval people were seemingly aware of the fact that their knowledge and abilities were far inferior to the Romans, was there a widespread sense of historical pessimism about the future because of this, i. e. was there an idea that the future would continue to become worse and worse?	1
What is the history of the popular perception of Columbus? How did he turn from a hero to a villain in popular culture?	1
What was the difference between the Spanish mit'a and the Incan mit'a? And how did both of these systems compare to the corvée labour systems in the rest of the world?	1
The most famous artists of the Late Medieval and Renaissance era were thoroughly respectable and devout Christians. Then how did artists become associated with an unconventional lifestyle, frequently featuring copious amounts of drugs and socially unacceptable sexual liaisons?	1
Why do European cities have so few high-rises and skyscrapers?	1
Hellenistic Judaism is the term used for the heavily-Hellenised form of Judaism that came into existence after the Greek conquest of the area. Why did the monotheistic Jews accept the polytheistic Greek culture so easily? Why did they later have such difficulty accepting Roman culture, in contrast?	1
Are there any good sources for the study of the British Yemeni community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?	0
W. E. B. DuBois seems to have led an extraordinarily privileged life (PhD in Germany, etc.) How unique was his experience? Was it possible for wealthy blacks to lead a comfortable life in the pre-civil rights period?	0

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