AskHistorians

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Some political analysts today argue that the current regime in China has popular support despite its lack of “democratic” institutions because China is historically a more “collectivist” society. Were there similar arguments made about the Eastern Bloc and the USSR before the 1989 revolutions?	3
What are the origins of papal infallibility? And how did the rest of Catholicism react to it’s establishment?	3
China had been conquered and occupied in its entirety twice by outside peoples of the steppe, the Mongols and Qing. So why would the concessions, opium, and treaty ports forced upon them by Europeans and Japanese become known as the Century of Humiliation?	3
While reading the Unwomanly Face Of War by Svetlana Alexievich many of her interview subjects mention themselves or people they know getting grey hair early due to the stress and horror of the Nazi Invasion. Was this a large scale phenomenon or an example of a urban legend gone big?	3
Did any truthful, genuinely good, articles or stories come out of the Yellow Journalism period of the late 19th century? Or was it all trash?	3
In Leon Litwack’s book Trouble In Mind, a history of the black experience in the Jim Crow South, he mentions the unusual case of two black men pardoned by the governor of Georgia for lynching a white man. How rare was something like this? What was the public reaction at the time? NSFW	3
Pretend I’m a time traveling lawyer about to appear before the Supreme Court in 1800, 1900, and 2000. In what ways does my oral argument change or not change with each century?	3
Were people suspicious of the Smallpox vaccine when it was first rolled out?	3
What did political parties look like in Colonial America? What issues did they care about?	3
What’s with the rampant homophobia in South Korea?	3

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