Questions tagged [europe]
It is the second smallest continent, forming the Western extension of Eurasia.
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Reference books to read for persecution of Jews in 16th century Europe to 20th century Europe?
I am from South Asia but I am interested in the history of other countries as well. There is a lot of media coverage since many years on Israel- Palestine issue and a lot of anti-Semitism and hatred ...
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What is the first (black,red,yellow) flag on this poster?
In the poster below (dated around 1960), I can identify all flags except the very first one. It is a tricolor flag with vertical stripes, being black, red and yellow/gold from left to right. ...
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How did people keep salt in Eastern Europe's rural communities in the 1940s?
In a collection of testimonies (Alexievitch's Last Witnesses, I believe), I have read about balls of salt in accounts of life in rural communities in the forties in Eastern Europe, but trying to ...
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In the 18th century Letters of Recommendation were used as a means of introduction. Was there anything equivalent used in 17th century Europe?
Benjamin Franklin wrote many such letters for people wanting to travel to the US when he served as ambassador in Paris .
I have not found any reference to such letters in the 17th century. When a ...
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Was there an economic reason for Protestants' iconoclasm?
Europe underwent major economic upheavals during the creation of Protestantism (cf. E. Michael Jones, Barren Metal or Goy Guide to World History). Is this one reason why Protestants upheld iconoclasm? ...
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Why might Benjamin Franklin have considered Germans (except Saxons), Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes "swarthy"?
Franklin (1751):
the number of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in ...
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Why was William Tyndale executed but nothing happened to Miles Coverdale? [closed]
Why was William Tyndale executed but Miles Coverdale was not?
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What is a quarter in 19th-century England converted to contemporary pints?
Note: I do have an analogous post up on the mathematics stack exchange here
Copy-Pasted from there: "I've been going through and writing up solutions for Euler's Elements of Algebra Practice ...
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How long did the 19th century Europe Grand Tour take?
I’m writing a story set it 1815 and I want it to be as close as possible to history.
I know the countries that were visited and the routes they took, but I will love to know how much time it took ...
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How did Vauban develop his parallel siege technique first used during the 1673 siege of Maastricht?
During the second to last siege before Maastricht Vauban directed the 1672 siege of Orsoy, where he used what had been the long standing zigzag of the trenches to approach the city (lower right of the ...
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What would military spies in 17th century Europe be looking for inside a city, before a siege?
In the article Een officier en een gentleman: Willem Norwood en het beleg van Maastricht, (An Officer and a Gentleman: William Norwood and the siege of Maastricht), on page 7 it mentions concern about ...
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What determined which defensive structures were built and where they were located for 17th European century cities?
Using this 1675 map of Maaseik, Belgium, for example, there are hornworks, bastions, and ravelins at specific locations around the outer wall of the city. What determines why certain structures are ...
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What were the areas of European countries in 1936 and 1949?
Are there sources (e.g. gazetteers or encyclopedia) that list the precise areas of the different European countries in ~1936 (before Germany's Anschluß with Austria), and again in ~1949 (after the ...
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Ranking Eastern Europe Communist regimes by severity of repression [closed]
I was wondering that the severity of repression, censorship, economic stagnation must have varied greatly across the Eastern bloc countries between 1945-1990. It may even have varied over the years in ...
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What would "close confinement" look like for a Saxon count being punished by Henry V of Germany in the early 1100s?
While reading the Cambridge Medieval history collection I keep coming across 'confinement' or 'imprisonment' being used to punish or coerce nobles, kings, and even popes.
I'm wondering what the ...
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What is this large bronze medallion?
Searched many sites but nothing matches this particular lion.
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Did the Crisis of the late Middle Ages cause a notable expansion of wilderness in Europe?
There was a lot of wild forest in the early Middle Ages, around 75% in the 9th century according to Wikipedia, much of which was cleared during the population boom in the High Middle Ages. I also read ...
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How was ethnicity's role in the voting enfranchisement envisioned after the English Civil War?
I am reading Democracy in Europe: A History by Luciano Canfora. In his short section on the English Civil War he states
There is another element in the Levellers' thinking that should also be taken ...
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Is there any documented evidence that these three North American cities were named due to the locations of their namesakes?
Two years ago, I was studying an online atlas of the world and I happened to notice that there are three cities located in North America which have a geographical similarity with three cities located ...
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What was Iceland officially & commonly called before 1918 (1874~)?
In 1918, The Kingdom of Iceland was founded. In 1944, it changed to just Iceland.
I have researched about what Iceland was originally called, and apparently, it's first name was given to the person ...
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What was Portugal and Spain's primary export which sparked their trade with Africa in the early 15th century?
I’ve read so many resources about how Europe’s desire to trade with the east, and the resistance by the Ottoman Empire to gain access was what triggered their voyage around the African continent, and ...
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Traditionally, did Europeans not heat milk before drinking it?
My impression was that before modern pasteurization and refrigeration, most cultures that drank milk considered it a good idea to heat milk before drinking it and so usually did heat milk before ...
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Why the wording "land war" rather than just "war"?
Many media outlets call the Russian-Ukraine war the biggest "land war" in Europe since WW2. Examples:
The Economist (2022-11-18):
biggest land war in Europe since 1945
Reuters (2023-09-12):...
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What was the ethno-linguistic makeup of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?
What was the ethno-linguistic makeup of the Rzeczpospolita, that is, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth prior to the partitions?
EDIT: Clarification, asking what were the percentages to total ...
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What was Martin Luther's incentive for reformation? [closed]
Luther was both a theologian and a politician. How much of his reformation stemmed from his political side of consideration?
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Why wasn’t Japan colonized by the European empires?
Why wasn’t Japan colonized by the European empires?
That is a question that I have some doubts, European countries like Portugal had already been there, but they never colonized that land.
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Does anyone recognize these uniforms?
Need assistance identifying the country of origin of a painting depicting men at war. I have also included pictures of the back in case anyone knows the language and can narrow it down. The language ...
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What did Europeans do with captured war elephants?
I recently saw this rather tongue-in-cheek graphic:
Now I have no idea regarding the veracity of the above, but assuming it is somewhat true it begs the question: If Europeans didn't eat them, what ...
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Why were eastern European states larger than western European states for much of history?
For reference, ever since the Treaty of Verdun in 843, large, centralized states in western Europe seemed to be the exception rather than the norm. Of course, there are exceptions, such as England and ...
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What anti-smuggling measures were implemented on the border between Ukraine and Hungary in the late 1990s and early 2000s?
Closely related cross-site: Why did Hungary joining the E.U. cause oil prices fall to be only marginally higher than they were in Ukraine?
Somewhat related cross-site: Were schoolteachers really paid ...
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Is it true that some early modern Europeans refused to believe giraffes existed?
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that some of the first Europeans to see a giraffe in Europe refused to believe that such a creature could really exist. Presumably they thought the giraffe(s) ...
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Was wool packing a main task for medieval peasants?
In Europe/UK, would a main task for peasants/working classes been to pack wool? And, if so, roughly what dates would this have been please? What did the entire process involve from obtaining the ...
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Were the Western World's general political and ideological consensus and consequent actions primarily responsible for the global ending of slavery?
Would one be accurate in stating that it was the general ideological and political consensus and subsequent actions of the Western World during the early to mid 1800s that were primarily responsible ...
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Would a common person in the 18th century have heard Mozart's music during his lifetime?
Mozart was and is one of the most influential musicians and today nearly everyone knows his name and probably some of his famous compositions.
During his lifetime he certainly was a well known ...
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(How) Did criminals in the middle ages get treatment for injuries?
Were criminals in the middle ages able to get treatment for injuries, and if so, how? I mean criminals such as bandits who wouldn't be able to seek whatever medical care was normally available, even ...
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Who is 'Ebinichibel' mentioned in the Borgia Map?
Wikipedia:BorgiaMap page gives this detail,
The Borgia map includes a legend referring to Ebinichibel, who is described as "the Saracen Ethiopian king with his dog-headed people".
Is this ...
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To what extent has ideographic script contributed to the unification of China？
The different languages of Europe are, by Chinese standards, just successive variants of one language. But the phonetic alphabet is so flexible that the same set of letters can spell almost any ...
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Did medieval peasants work 150 days a year?
The following meme arrived in my inbox.
Peasants in the medieval era worked just 150 days a year on average. The church believed it was crucial to keep them content by making frequent required ...
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Was there a time when Montenegro executed all of its millionaires?
I bought the complete works of G. K. Chesterton for $1 for my Kindle and read them. Somewhere in all those volumes (as I remember) he asserts that Montenegro executed all of its millionaires (and ...
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How would a musician travel from Venice to Dresden around 1700?
I'm writing a historical fiction TV pilot and I need some help from the history buffs here. One of my characters, a young, aspiring, musician needs to travel from Venice to Dresden, Germany. I suspect ...
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Is there a database of wars in Europe since 1945?
I'm currently improving a Timeline I build some time ago, this Timeline of Wars in Europe since 1945. I did used several sources, including Wikidata, to get the list of conflicts to include. Yet, ...
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What is "trek-leertje" and what it was used for in the 17th century Dutch Republic?
Encountered this expression in the writing of the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. In this passage from his Arcana naturae detecta (another version little different) , he describes a tool that ...
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How difficult would it have been for a European to obtain access to US scientific journals in 1945?
On May 1, 1945, volume 158 of the Journal of Biologic Chemistry was published.
I'd like to establish to what degree –and how soon thereafter– its content may have been accessible in continental Europe ...
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What were the goals of the lesser powers in the Congress of Vienna 1814-1815?
Going into the Congress of Vienna, the Great Powers (usually defined as Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia) had many goals in mind of what they wanted out of the negotiations. In fact,...
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What is this Eastern European military uniform?
These photographs are of my great-granduncle who lived in the village of Velyki Laz, just outside of Uzhhorod in today's western Ukraine. He was born in 1905. I would like to identify the uniforms ...
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Are there any examples of two medieval kingdoms trying to unify but eventually failing to do so?
Recently, I started to read about history as a hobby like I used to when I was a kid. I realized that reading about "generic history" does not do it for me anymore. Instead I have some ...
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What was a plausible timetable for a train journey across Europe in 1870?
I'm writing historical fiction set in 1870 (June, some weeks before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war) in which some of the protagonists are traveling by train across Europe, from Calais to ...
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Did it really take until 1990 for "Europe"/UK to switch from glass bottles of milk to cartons? [closed]
I came across this weird claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_delivery#Europe
By 1975, 94% of milk was in glass bottles, but in 1990, supermarkets started offering plastic and carton containers, ...
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Why did the Vikings stop raiding Europe?
Was it because of their defeats by Alfred and the settlement of Normandy?
Were there issues at home which changed their focus?
I did search through quite a few of the questions on here, but did not ...
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How did public opinion of the wars change from 19th to the 21th century?
This question is inspired by a discussion I had with my friend recently, about ordinary people's perception and support of the many wars in the 19 and 20th century. Nowadays, the overwhelming majority ...
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