/u/bulukelin's posts in /r/askhistorians

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Why is Aleister Crowley so well known?

486 upvotes

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In retellings of how the Dutch handed over Manhattan to the British in exchange for Suriname, you hear it said that the Dutch got swindled. But would Manhattan really have been valuable to the Dutch if it stayed a lone Dutch colony surrounded by English colonies?

355 upvotes

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In Napoleon, Tsar Alexander appears shocked and disgusted when Napoleon proposes a marriage between himself and the Tsar's 15 year old sister, but the historical Alexander married in his teens, as did his mother and grandmother. What were the attitudes of European nobility towards such marriages?

84 upvotes

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In "Homage to Catalonia", George Orwell spends a lot of time taking foreign journalists to task for their lazy, credulous and even fallacious reporting on the Spanish Civil War. Was foreign war correspondence usually this bad?

68 upvotes

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Why did Persian survive as a dominant language in post-Islamic Iran while Aramaic, Coptic, Berber, etc. didn't?

44 upvotes

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What would a day in the life of a pious Muslim look like c. 650?

40 upvotes

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Why did Picasso stay in Paris during the Nazi occupation?

17 upvotes

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[Reading recommendation] Are there any good books on the history of the Israelites, that explains both Bible authorship AND on-the-ground political and social identities?

16 upvotes

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What language would medieval allied armies from different countries have used to communicate?

11 upvotes

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Going into the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, did one side have more leverage than the other? Put another way, did one side "win" the Troubles?

6 upvotes

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Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Why is Aleister Crowley so well known?	486
In retellings of how the Dutch handed over Manhattan to the British in exchange for Suriname, you hear it said that the Dutch got swindled. But would Manhattan really have been valuable to the Dutch if it stayed a lone Dutch colony surrounded by English colonies?	355
In Napoleon, Tsar Alexander appears shocked and disgusted when Napoleon proposes a marriage between himself and the Tsar's 15 year old sister, but the historical Alexander married in his teens, as did his mother and grandmother. What were the attitudes of European nobility towards such marriages?	84
In "Homage to Catalonia", George Orwell spends a lot of time taking foreign journalists to task for their lazy, credulous and even fallacious reporting on the Spanish Civil War. Was foreign war correspondence usually this bad?	68
Why did Persian survive as a dominant language in post-Islamic Iran while Aramaic, Coptic, Berber, etc. didn't?	44
What would a day in the life of a pious Muslim look like c. 650?	40
Why did Picasso stay in Paris during the Nazi occupation?	17
[Reading recommendation] Are there any good books on the history of the Israelites, that explains both Bible authorship AND on-the-ground political and social identities?	16
What language would medieval allied armies from different countries have used to communicate?	11
Going into the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, did one side have more leverage than the other? Put another way, did one side "win" the Troubles?	6