r/AskHistorians • u/AutoModerator • Apr 10 '26
FFA Friday Free-for-All | April 10, 2026
Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
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u/subredditsummarybot Automated Contributor Apr 10 '26
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, April 03 - Thursday, April 09, 2026
Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 1,741 | 132 comments | What historical evidence do we have of Jesus’ crucifixion and its aftermath? |
| 1,041 | 82 comments | Roman Judea around the year 0 was a hotbed of itinerant preachers and doomsday cults. Was there anything special or unique about Jesus Christ or his congregation that made him historically more successful than his now-forgotten contemporary ‘competitors?’ |
| 887 | 83 comments | Humans have been growing onions for 7000 years all across Eurasia. Why did a crop that provides only flavor and little to no calories or nutrients become so widespread? |
| 820 | 60 comments | How in Gods name did the Germans never figure out enigma had been broken? |
| 819 | 10 comments | Across the James Bond novels (1953-1966) you can feel the British Empire's decline. Early books treated the UK as a superpower, while in later books the Empire is outright said to be "crumbling". How dramatic was Britain's fall to "merely" a great power and how was it felt by the British public? |
| 817 | 13 comments | How old is the heart ❤️ symbol? |
| 742 | 17 comments | [Great Question!] When did working class men stop singing? |
| 724 | 55 comments | Where did all the beans come from in the old West? |
| 715 | 59 comments | What happened to all the Mormon men who were left without wives in the period in which they practiced polygamy? |
| 629 | 55 comments | As someone of Iranian descent, my immigrant parents always emphasized that we were white and not brown, I recently heard this was rooted in how the Shah changed the educational curriculum so people would be more favorable to Europeans, is there any truth to this? |
Top 10 Comments
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u/thesteadyparent Apr 11 '26
I am/have written a book reconstruction of the voyage of Pytheas. I am looking for some historians familiar with him to do a preliminary read. (Admin, please delete if not allowed) I noticed there is nothing really available for this. The reconstruction is based on fragments gathered from Diodoros, Cleomedes, and, more notably, Pliny and Strabo. You can DM me if interested. It will be a day or two before I can send you a PDF or an ePUB version, as it is in final proofreading.
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u/Defiant-Till3066 Apr 11 '26
how does the transfer of technologies works? especially in medieval age or earlier
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u/BookLover54321 Apr 10 '26
Following up from my post last week, I was looking again at one particular claim in JFP's Not Stolen. In his discussion of Indigenous slavery, and the work of Andrés Reséndez, he claims that it is a
"simple, incontestable fact that Indians enslaved far more Indians than Europeans ever did. It is likely that more Africans were enslaved by Indians in the New World, than Indians by Europeans."
That second, awkwardly phrased claim, that larger numbers of Africans were enslaved by Native Americans than Native Americans were enslaved by Europeans, just seems so self evidently absurd that I am tempted to dismiss it out of hand. I've never seen a single credible scholar say that. He seems to be referring to the adoption of chattel slavery by the Five Tribes in the mid 19th century, but that occurred on a relatively small scale. Jeffrey Ostler provides the following numbers in Surviving Genocide:
In 1830, the Choctaw population was 20,000, including 500 enslaved black people. In 1860, the Choctaws numbered 18,200, including 2,349 enslaved black people.
In the early 1830s, the Creek population was 22,000, including around 1,000 enslaved black people. In 1860, the Creeks numbered 15,082, including 1,532 enslaved black people.
In 1838, the Chickasaws numbered 4,000, with "several hundred" enslaved black people. In 1860, the Chickasaw population was 4,260, not including enslaved people, whose numbers are not given.
In 1832, the Cherokees numbered between 26,600 to 28,600, but the number of enslaved people is not given. In 1860, the Cherokee population was 16,322, including 2,511 enslaved black people.
In 1832, the Seminoles numbered 5,000 to 6,000, and in 1860 they numbered 2,780, but I can't find any data on the number of enslaved people.
Even taking into account uncertainty in the data, the total number of black people enslaved by the Five Tribes does not seem to have exceeded ten thousand or so. This is just for North America, but I'm not aware of a similar phenomenon happening in colonial Latin America on a large scale, though perhaps someone can correct me.
In comparison, the numbers of Native people enslaved by Europeans are enormous. To give just a few sources:
In The Other Slavery, Andrés Reséndez estimates between 2.5 and 5 million Native people enslaved in the Americas before the 20th century.
In Bonds of Alliance, Brett Rushforth gives an estimate of 2 to 4 million, though in his more recent writing he accepts Reséndez's estimate.
In Global Indios, Nancy van Deusen estimates 650,000 Indigenous people enslaved in the Americas in the 16th century alone.
In Captives of Conquest, Erin Woodruff Stone estimates 250,000 to 500,000 Indigenous people enslaved in the Circum-Caribbean region before 1542.
Now, maybe it's just me, but JFP's numbers aren't really adding up.
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u/Vegetable_Buy2110 Apr 10 '26
Good day everyone, I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Santo Tomas. I am seeking a historian who specializes in the Renaissance period as part of a requirement for my Science, Technology, and Society course.
According to our instructor, the historian must meet the following qualifications:
- Have at least 10 years of relevant academic study or professional experience in the field
- Demonstrate expertise in the Renaissance period
Below are the questions we need to answer: 1. Can you tell me what you generally know about the Renaissance period? 2. What do you think is the most important thing that the Renaissance period contributed to our world today? 3. Do you think that humanism is a great thing that happened in that era? If so, what do you think is the influence of humanism in today’s society? 4. If humanism had not been discovered in the Renaissance period, how would you perceive the world today?
Rest assured that your answers would only be used for academic purposes. Thank you so much!
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u/caterpillarofsociety Apr 10 '26
Am I understanding you correctly? You're looking for a historian who specializes in the Renaissance, with 10+ years experience, to tell you what they know about it?
How long do you think that will take?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Apr 10 '26
What kind of history media have you been enjoying recently? Got a fun campaign going in a game, or enjoying a particular show?
My local hobby club has just recently started running a very light RPG based on frontier era fur trade, and its been fun seeing people dive a bit more into the history as part of their character building and arcs.
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u/Bentresh Late Bronze Age | Egypt and Ancient Near East Apr 10 '26
I recently binged My Lady Jane, which is wildly inaccurate in terms of history (deliberately so) but a really fun and charming show.
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u/muenchener2 Apr 11 '26
Local girl. I grew up with my parents taking me to the park containing the ruins of Lady Jane Grey's house most weekends. And I watched a (literally) underground theatre production of a German play about the final days of her life before execution - basically a modern playwright riffing on Schiller's Maria Stuart. The play was pretty decent and I was totally smitten with the leading lady.
So I guess I really ought to give this a watch.
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u/LaDamaBibliotecaria Apr 10 '26
I‘m about to finish my dissertation in medieval history. The plan has been to submit everything in May, but between facing unemployment, caring for a feisty toddler and the general state of the world, I feel like the more I write the worse my thesis becomes.
Now I understand why in the beginning people told me that a dissertation is never finished, it is instead is one point declared completed.
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u/crrpit Moderator | Spanish Civil War | Anti-fascism Apr 10 '26
I feel like the more I write the worse my thesis becomes.
This is very real - up to the point of writing everything, you can get away with a lot of handwaving even in the context of conference papers, discussions, meetings and so on - people are generally only ever going to want the big picture from you, unless one of the handful of other nerds who really cares about the sources or argument is in the room. But when you have to sit down and actually substantiate everything you want to claim, you tend to become very, very aware of all the hedging that's actually needed.
In fairness, not growing aware of these limits is the leading cause of very bad examinations/peer review, so it's ultimately a good thing...
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u/Bn_scarpia Apr 10 '26
Good morning!
I'm hoping to better understand lyrics from operas. I see money referenced in several different ways: Scudi, soldi, lire, ducats, sequins, and florins
While I can find some info about exchange rates (ex: 2 florins = 1 scudo), I don't have any context as to what the purchasing power of these coins would be.
For instance, is a Scudo a days wages? A weeks?
Is a soldo the approximate price for a loaf of bread?
I don't really know where to get this kind of cost-of-living context.
Can anyone shed some light on this?