r/AskHistorians

Bhutan's monarchy seems like an interesting outlier; it was a constitutional monarchy from the beginning, it was established in the 20th century, it has explicit provisions for removing a king from office, and includes a requirement of being a protector of all religions despite being an explicitly Buddhist role. So, what led to such an unusual monarchy arising in 1907, and how did the first king get consensus to form the monarchy?

From basic alcohol to mandrake and poppy extracts, it seems that at least for a few thousand years there’s been options - bad options (horrifically bad compared to what we have today) but at least options for general anesthesia during surgery. Why then is the picture we have of surgery before modern anesthetic almost completely shaped by images of having to hold screaming people down while the surgeon worked as fast as possible?

Do we just remember/tell stories about those operations without anesthetic? Was it only for the wealthiest in society?

War of 1812 and the American revolutionary war Canada humiliated the USA when they tried invading. However the USA beat Spain and Mexico with ease. What made Canada so much harder to beat?

In the Victorian era, there was a heavy emphasis on women as wives and mothers. The Victorian ideal was the "Angel of the home" who looked after their husbands and children, and Queen Victoria herself was frequently depicted with Prince Albert and surrounded by their children, and afterwards in mourning for her husband.

Elizabeth I, on the other hand, was "The Virgin Queen". She famously proclaimed that she had "the heart and stomach of a King" and refused to ever marry or have children, only allowing herself close friendships and flirtations with men like the Earl of Leicester or the Earl of Essex.

Did the Victorians, or Queen Victoria herself, look down on Elizabeth I at all for having her male companions but refusing to marry? Or was she seen as an exception to the ideal?

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As a White American, I feel like I've mostly learned about major discoveries in physics or chemistry by American or European Scientists.

For example, learning about the laws of motion from Isaac Newton, or the lightbulb being invented by Thomas Edison (or Nikola Tesla).

To what extent is my local cultural bias playing into my perception of most major discoveries being made by white scientists? Are there any notably blindspots that my education has likely given me?

According to the same passage, the defenders had already started eating the skins of horses and cattle, so I'm surprised children's food was apparently even worse? Or do I misunderstand the text?

If it matters: I'm not reading the original chronicle, but Mary Fischer's translation of the later chronicle by Nicolaus von Jeroschin.

From my general browsing, a few reasons include

•Socially unaccepted marriages
•Adulterers
•Wife-beaters
•and... male victims of domestic violence?
•and also... male victims of adultery?

I can easily see peasants banding together to name and shame the first three, but would a man's neighbors really stage an entire parade to rub salt in his wound after his wife went astray?

I remember reading it or seeing it in a documentary that the Germans were terrified of the US marines at Belleau Wood. That they viewed the Americans as kill crazy and described them as devil dogs.

It feels like the window of time where this myth could make sense is pretty narrow. It's hard to imagine this story having much appeal before or during, say, the Trail of Tears. Maybe I'm mistaken but it feels like policy in this time must have relied on racism and dehumanization of Native Americans being widespread. But waiting a generation past the Trail of Tears (so the myth imagines a princess in an then-intact-now-vanished society, rather than positioning grandma as a victim of forced displacement whose family is currently struggling in an unfamiliar reservation) basically puts you in the 20th century. Anecdotally, I encountered this myth more than once in the 1990s. So that leaves only a handful of decades, and fairly recent ones, for the idea to become appealing, take the specific form of a Cherokee princess, and become widespread in white families. How much do we know about how this idea crystallized and propagated?

I have a question that led me to develop a hypothesis. If we look at ancient civilizations, the act of abandoning children, for reasons related to the child's health or economic factors, was quite common. This does not mean that it happened all the time, but it was a tolerated act. And in some cases, there were even acts of infanticide. My question reflects on the view of the Phoenician god Ba'al, who in the Judeo-Christian tradition is presented as a demon that feeds on children. I also know that the Romans describe the Carthaginians as worshippers of this god to whom they sacrifice children. The problem is that both the Jewish and Roman populations had very precise political motivations to slander the Canaanite deities, so I find it hard to believe that it was the pure and simple truth. My question is: was the cult of Ba'al linked to practices of abandoning infants more than to actual sacrifices? Feel free to correct me if I have made mistakes.

I’ve been reading some historical fiction set in the 1300’s in Europe, and the characters routinely spar with sharp swords. The reasoning given is when they’re on the march they only have their one set of equipment, and they also mention that training swords are just as expensive as a real sword so they couldn’t afford it.

It’s also spouted as “not real training” and “blunt swords are for babies” in many fantasy/sword swinging fiction books, but i know as a practitioner of HEMA that training with blunt swords wasn’t looked down upon (most illustrated manuals show people training with federschwerts).

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if training with sharp swords was a routine practice at all? Or a common occurrence? I understand that it can be done with relative safety by two skilled swordsmen, but it just seems insanely dangerous and scary.

Thanks!

or at the very least lean harder on Franco to join the axis. with the Spanish coast, and probably the ability to take out Gibraltar, surely control of the Med would be a given, and therefore by extension of Suez.

I️ am trying to expand my personal library and my knowledge of Pacific Island and Native Hawaiian history. In light of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage month I️ would like to find books that focus on these topics but I️ am finding it hard to find any literature that talks about Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians outside of geographical and archaeological context. I️ want to learn about these cultures from a human standpoint and not focus on them as something to be scientifically studied. The recommendations can also focus on cultural beliefs, stories, and mythology as I️ know these stories have a great significance in how their history has been shared throughout time.

I have been listening to an interview of Laurent Nespoulos on a French radio broadcast, about the Jomon era in Japan.

I have understood that Jomon is particular in that it is a sedentary, specialised society, with villages, long term supply storage, and all the things commonly associated with the Neolithic cultures, but Jomon is different since it is not agriculture.

He then goes on to explain how the forest around the villages have been deeply modified by men, with almost only chestnuts around villages, and it is easily edible.

This is where I struggle to understand the distinction with other Neolithic cultures: what makes silviculture so different from agriculture ?

How different are chestnuts from wheat (besides the obvious size difference !), that we call Jomon hunter-gatherers, but Mesopotamian farmers?

I was reading an account of the assasination attempts against Emperor Alexander II of Russia, and one of them occurred in 1879 when the Emperor was walking, seemingly unaccompanied, to the Square of the Guards Staff when a radical attacked him with a revolver. The radical fired 5 times and the Emperor was forced to run in a zig zag fashion to evade the bullets. No guard seemed to have been on hand to intercede.

A similar attempt against the Empress Sisi of Austria was successful. She was walking with a single friend in Switzerland and was attacked and murdered by a madman in 1898.

Did monarchs just walk around the streets unaccompanied? Was this always true or did it emerge in the 19th century?

So I have heard a theory that one of the reasons Europe became a great power and dominated the world in such a short period of time is that Europe was constantly fighting with itself and others for more and more limited resources in smaller and smaller areas. This gave them a a kind of Martial based history and culture across the continent. However war, violence, and fighting is not uniquely European. The warlords of China, the many civil wars in India, the warrior cultures of Meso America, the raiding and pillaging of the Khans and the Mongolian empire all show that violence and war are VERY human traits. So why did the European brand of such human traits turn out so much advanced technology at a faster rate compared to the progress of other cultures? Is it just coincidence or am I missing something here? This also might just be an uninformed take so please correct me if that is the case.

The ancient Greeks thought work was a symptom of mankind's decline from the Golden Age, where the earth provided everything we needed with no effort. Judeo-Christian religion says work is God's punishnent for original sin. Shakespeare has Cleopatra talk of herself as "no more than e'en a woman that does the meanest chares." How did we get from those ideas, and societies where the nobility were idle, to modern concepts such as careers, job satisfaction, and work as a symbol of virtute and social status?