The general attitude toward nudes in advertising in the 19th and early 20th century were not dissimilar to the attitude toward nudity in fine art.

Generally speaking, nude art that had some kind of historical or mythological background was fine, but nudes of contemporary women in contemporary settings were considered much more shocking and risqué. It's why Cabanel and Bouguereau's depictions of the Birth of Venus were both considered beautiful and respectable works of art, but Manet's Olympia caused a furor. Orientalist nudes, like of Odalisques in idealized harems, were also far more acceptable than those of contemporary European women.

Most nude ads I've seen from the 19th and early 20th century are tended to have ostensibly historical, mythological, or Orientalist subject matter, which is probably why they don't seem to have drawn much contemporary criticism.

You might find this interview with Patricia Tilburg interesting. It's about women working in the garment industry in France at the time you're curious about. It talks about their sexualized image and their depiction in advertising and gets into ideas of working women, their independence and their sexuality as popularly perceived.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/working-girls

Nudity has a strange and odd history as to how societies have viewed it over history. But as what you're asking about is most likely the Edwardian influence on that era in Europe. With the death of Queen Victoria, the prudish Victorian era had come to a close and the more flamboyant and and open Edwardian era began. King Edward VII was a bovivant and loved the excesses of life. This translated into a freer society in terms of nudity and sex. Also this was a time of "accepted" medical practices and the "settled science" of the day were being questioned which lead to a growing interest in naturism, basically nudism in the woods, countryside, beach resorts, anywhere away from cities of smog, pollution and disease. The women on bicycles are probably advertising for a naturist resort where clothes were barred, people bathed regularly, focus was on a healthy diet and daily exercise for the time the person spent there, the naturism movement spawned magazines (one of which H&E which stands for Health & Efficiency was started in 1900 & continues today to be in publication) posters and short movies. Naturism was about reconnecting with nature by being naked outside but also about better health and over all quality of life, naturists often didn't smoke or consume alcohol which was more than unusual at that time. The opposition to this came from the United States where it was seen as pornographic and sinful and these posters, magazines and films were largely banned, people caught in possession, mailing them or buying them could be arrested and jailed.

Plenty of knowledge has been lost; it's just not of the type that Ancient Aliens and the like imagine. Rather, it's of smaller things, like great works of literature or things that could have given us greater knowledge of the past.

For instance, the biggest reason why we know so little of the ancient Minoans is because their scripts, Cretan hieroglyphs and Linear A, are still undeciphered.

There are also numerous lost works of literature, like most of Sappho's poetry, the other six works of the Trojan Cycle, Cleitarchus' History of Alexander, Cato the Elder's Origines, Claudius' history of the Etruscans, the memoirs of Agrippina the Younger, the hypothesized Q document that served as a source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and countless others.

None of these are likely to have contained instructions on how to build a nuclear fusion reactor or whatever, but it's still lost knowledge.

Not really, when something is found that contradicts the record they weigh the evidence (it almost always turns out to be sloppy site work or just fraud) and withhold judgement on that artifact. One potsherd against thousands and all of that.

>lost knowledge

Roman concrete. Greek fire.

Everyone wants their kids to have a good life. If I have to support the King's son becoming King if it means my son will replace me as Duke, so be it. At least, that's how I've always thought of it. The nobles want to uphold the status quo and the peasants don't really get a say. Plus, propaganda.

Sometimes it's not the question of who your father is, but who back your claim to the throne. Kings and princes always need to form personal connection with nobles in the court to gain their support in matters of the state, and in return award them with title, land and power. As long as you manage to keep the close circle happy they have no reason to rebel against you, and they'll put their trust on your heir to honor this system. Not to say the status quo can't be changed; rebellion and usurpation happened all the times even in countries with long hereditary tradition. When the nobles dissatisfy with their monarch and see some other person, or other political system, as a better alternative, they're willingly to revolt (look at the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution as examples).

A lot of good answers have been given pertaining to this not being an absolute concept. Still, there was a traditional order that, by and large, remained accepted in many regions. If we stick with, for example, medieval Europe , the example of Henry II before Toulouse may be instructive.

The Angevin king Henry II ruled one of the most powerful kingdoms of 12th century Europe, and this created a fair amount of tension in the complicated diplomatic web that was feudal Europe. So in 1159, the king of England had set his sights on conquering Toulouse, a piece of territory disputed between him and count Raymond. Now Raymond was the brother-in-law to the king of France, Louis VII. Louis was worried since Henry - also his vassal on the continent, as he was only king in England - was already so darn powerful, acquiring Toulouse would only strengthen his position. Yet ultimately, he made a genius move. As Henry II arrived before Toulouse at the head of one of the largests contemporary armies, his heart sank when he saw the banner hoisted over the city: Louis VII had taken up quarters inside before his army arrived...

The game was up, and Henry knew it. He ordered his army to ransack the countryside and went back home, failing his ultimate objective. So, what happened? Why did Henry hold back & why is this instructive for your question?

Because Henry had sworn fealty to Louis (for those lands for which he was beholden to him). Henry himself had more than enough rebellious lords under him, keen to resist his royal authority. To attack Toulouse with Louis inside was to break all his oaths he had sworn (under his god), making him that thing medieval society as an honour-culture despised so hard: the honourless oathbreaker. So Henry knew that if here and now he pressed his claim on Toulouse and violated the person of Louis VII, he would enable each and every lord who held a grudge towards him from Scotland to the Pyrenees, to safely renounce their allegiance and rebel.

Medieval society, like many, was structured on concepts of honour, typically expressed through oaths and the like. People took these seriously, for breaking the social contract - then as much as now - renders one open to the fallout.

So many things underpinned royal authority, from the more raw aspects of money and power (soft or hard) to the those of concepts of legitimacy.

IDK, medieval history seems to be mostly about the king fighting with his vassals, and then when the king dies, vassals fighting with the princes.

In Persian and Turkish history, there always seems to be a period when one brother kills all the others and then becomes king and has to go and put down all the revolts that spring up.

So I would say mostly through superior violence is how the hereditary monarch maintains their power.

The relationship between monarchs and their nobility was often extremely fraught, so much so that most of Asian and European history involves monarchs and nobility trying to curb the power of the other.

If enough of the nobility decided that the current monarch was not to their liking for whatever reason, they could and often did choose to back someone else, who could be a relative of the current monarch or someone else entirely. Most of ancient and medieval history in much of Europe and Asia is that happening over and over again.

China did away with its warrior aristocrat class first and replaced them with scholar officials, but that didn't prevent the eventual toppling of all subsequent dynasties when economic and political troubles inevitably occurred.

> how did hereditary monarchs actually hold on to power?

Divinity might help. When the king is seen as a god or chosen by god/gods, it validates his power to everyone. If the autocracy/nobility also derives their power and privileges on the same basis they have little interest in challenging the system.

When and where?

>But the older I get, the more skeptical I am that the social class just below the monarch would blindly subject themselves to the monarch's authority for the sake of upholding tradition.

They never did. The nobility had no problem revolting or disobeying in states that were often sorely lacking in centralisation; Magna Carta was practically signed at swordpoint for instance, by King John, who was compelled to do so by a bunch of rebellious nobility.

You are not talking about a modern state where we all reluctantly agree to elect a leader, and that leader wields vast power we have no access to. You're talking about a tiny minority who already has an enormous amount of power (physical, financial, political, social, etc) being kept somewhat in line by constant application of power-sharing agreements and marriages, competition, open violence and threats, gifts of land, money, and so on.

definitely not as much of an academic answer as everyone else gave here, but your question reminds me of how when Queen Elizabeth II died, no one (or at least i didnt hear of anyone) questioned who was next in line to the throne. maybe we do just blindly accept this stuff and maybe they did the same thing back then? plus they had all the religious arguments that it was their divine right to rule- cant mess with gods choice!

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Adding to all the excellent answers here, there were also cases like that of Charles VI of France, who ascended the throne at the age of 11 in 1380. However, he was regulated to the position of a regent by his uncles who called most of the shots in how things were done. He had a very hard time, even after coming of age, asserting his position as the monarch. He eventually did, though that was also debilitated by the madness that seized him in later years.

Interesting question honestly. You got to wonder what was going through a noble's mind when he saw that the heir was young, sick, or mad. They respected traditions but they were also pragmatic enough to see that there were ways of working around an invalidated monarch.

The democratic tradition in antiquity is hugely overblown.

Athens of course being the prime example of a democracy, but it has absolutely nothing to do with democracy as we know it today. It’s a democracy based on privilege and wealth.

Same goes for Rome’s Res Publica, which was never a democracy. Just because something was a republic does not mean it’s democratic, and obviously Rome developed to an extremely autocratic state.

I’d argue it’s easier for civilizations to expand fast when connected to rivers. The larger a civilization the sooner it’s autocratic.

It's important to remember three things:

1. Historical democracy was generally diffrent from modern versions, being either exclusively available to aristocrats, or heavily weighed in their favor; and violence was pretty much always an option for deciding disputes if voting didn't go so well. As such, the difference between a kingdom with democratic elements and one without was often more academic than practical.

2. Historical democracies often gave way to autocracy: Rome most obviously, but even Athens ended up becoming more of an argument against Democracy than for it given the wars it lost to autocrats.

3. Democratic impulses aren't always obvious: China might not have voted for emperors or bureaucrats, but the idea of the public overthrowing non-virtuous ones is at least as old as Mencius (300 BC,) and massive popular revolts are a common theme in Chinese history. It may not be conventional, but then, western democracy was also built on incompetent autocrats getting overthrown by the people doing the actual work, so most of the world may just have never gotten the chance to do this once Europe started playing king maker.

As to why western democracy emerged and ultimately dominated, there are probably as many theories as historians, and the effect of trade is certainly a major one, but so is the branching effect of gunpowder coming to dominate warfare. There isn't really a simplified answer.

This is a version of environmental determinism. It basically comes out of the Victorian "race science" with things like phrenology and it's bunk. It starts from a bad assumption and then works backwards. So, it starts by assuming Anglo Saxon protestant and Nordic peoples are the superior race and then tries to make up evidence to support it.

There was just as much democratic tradition in the Americas, Polynesia, Australia, and Africa, but b/c a decision was already made about those cultures the evidence was either ignored, or more often not even considered. Ideas of tribal communities with all power chiefs was assumed to be their system of governance and that was that.

It was mostly used as a justification of colonialism and imperialism. In the Americas it's also very closely tied to the justifications of genocide and land appropriation of the indigenous residents.

On top of that, it just doesn't make sense. Florida is also a peninsula. Korea is also a peninsula, south east Asia is basically peninsula after peninsula. There's mountains pretty much everywhere and the biggest mountains are in Asia. There's natural harbors along pretty much every coast and some places, like the Gulf of Mexico is basically one big harbor. The Americas were probably the most forested land in the world, and still are. No one is looking at Brazil for examples of democracy.

No respected historians believe it b/c it's so easy to find counterexamples.

> I have heard of a hypothesis that geography can determined development path.

Is that Jared Diamond I smell?

Your talking about "hydraulic despotism". It might be real, but we can't know for sure. Basically, the despot oversees the water supply for irrigation and, due to the nature of the enterprise, is given full power over it and the society that relies on it. You can see it in other places as well with other resources. Thomas Friedman says the same thing is going on with petroleum, as nations that base their economy on oil almost all have dictatorships.

The reality is that the Hellenic democracies evolved out of despotism, as did Roman republicanism. Urbanism probably had more to do with democratizing Greece and Rome than environment. All the destabilizing able people living in a city rather than on their own lands created a requirement that they all have a chance to exercise power.

The problem with that is that only Greece works as an example here. By the time Rome arose many other civilizations had developed in regions with similar geography

I would go with Sun Jian simply because whenever China has a war it’s always stats like 20 million dead in an indecisive battle… just throw bodies at the Spartans until they collapse

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I don't know about Accuracy per say but I do know that when westerns became a thing Wyatt Earp was a consultant for several silent era westerns. He became friends with a few western actors so im sure they at least got his perspective. Another thing I've always heard but im not sure about truth wise is that John Wayne met Earp when he was still a bit player in silent films and going by his birth name. He may have gleaned some knowledge from him as well

Ive heard that Ride with the Devil is fairly accurate, but most people consider it boring.

I think the HBO series Deadwood made efforts to stay true to historical details.

They did, the major agonists in the scenario all rose to the position to be possible emperor during these conflicts with Persia, gaul, etc. Caesar ended any possibility of revolt in gaul by pacifying them with arms, winning their loyalty citizenship. Crassus was killed in Persia, but IIRC, Pompey went and fixed their wagon.

While I can't name any particular ones, as more things are translated and spread the mythology of Siberia, Central Asia, and the Native Americans are being discovered. I would start there if you are interested in new myths.

it can be tough, but the first place to start would be in the works of the most recent studies on the topic published for an academic audience. Look for ones that are published by University of _____ Press, and the like. Usually there will be a historiography in the introduction or first chapter. This isn't a universal rule, but it's the quickest way.

Now if you are studying to be a historian, building your own is good practice and a skill you'll need to get down before you get to the postgraduate level. Again, you'd want to start with the most recent academic works published by university presses and the like. Things that are peer-reviewed, and written for an academic audience. See who they keep mentioning, who they keep citing, and note whether it's in agreement, or disagreement. Then trace that back, who are those people citing, who are they discussing, and again their thoughts. What new evidence or approaches are they bringing to the table? Eventually it will become evident who the big dogs are, the most impactful works, study those ones well. Build an annotated bibliography to help keep things sorted (and to remind you of what you've already read and the gist of it) and then once you have that solid foundation it's about then approaching it from the start and showing how the field grew, and changed, over time and what's now missing and how your own research will fit into that gap.

It's impossible to know, and I'm an institutionalist, so my bias comes from that POV, but I don't think it would have mattered. The problem with the USSR had more to do with corrupt and ineffective institutions, and that's carried through to the modern day. This treaty, and pretty much any other treaty like it, would just be putting different curtains on the windows. It wouldn't have done anything to fix a court system to make enforceable contracts, or to protect people from the government, or to make the incentives for public employees to not be corrupt, or to make businesses competitive in the world markets. Also, as countries like the Baltic states and Poland improved their economies, the failure would have been more apparent and created resentment. I think it would have just delayed Ukrainian independence for a little while, but that's probably it.

FYI, alternate history and anything less than 20 years ago aren't "history" (see Rules 3 and 5 of the subreddit). You're definitely not adhering to the former and most of the discussion of long-term consequences would violate the latter.

That being said, for the New Union Treaty to have had a chance and not just be another dying gasp of the USSR, it would have needed to at least appear to fix the perceived problems of the USSR: including (but not limited to!) too much central control and the inherent corruption in any centralized power structure. But, those in power liked those "problems" since they were the basis of their power. The fact that 6 of the 15 socialist republics weren't even invited to participate in drafting it, and that opposition to the treaty (among hardliners) focused on how it might let the Baltic states and Ukraine be too independent, says to me that the same forces that led to the anti-treaty coup would have torn the government apart from the inside, probably relatively quickly (like the USA almost did a few times in the early years, culminating in the US Civil War, or how bastard feudalism in England inevitably built competing power blocks culminating in the War of the Roses).

Germany, by its own estimates, wouldn't have had a nuke before 1947 at best, which is why the program was shelved; and if Germany doesn't invade the USSR by the start of 1942, there isn't a World War 2 at all, as Germany would start to run out of oil for its military machine, and thus, be in no position to win an offensive war.

Whatever such a conflict would look like, it would be a different beast than WW2, and the Germans still aren't getting a nuke first if Japan still attacks the US.

There's a researcher named Alex Wellerstein who studies nuclear weapons history. He's done some AMAs here and posts on /r/askhistorians occasionally. He keeps a blog called Restricted Data. If you search around on it, there's lots of cool stuff. This post gets a little into your question. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/11/13/when-did-the-allies-know-there-wasnt-a-german-bomb/

Also, there's a BBC podcast called The Bomb. I don't think it was great, but there's enough useful info on it to make it worth listening to. But a few of the episodes address your question.

Germany was in dire shortage of much required for nuclear weapons. Nazi Germany had no uranium mines while the US could import what it needed from as far away as Australia.

This may be a good place to start.
A First Rate Madness covers mental illnesses of historical figures and how this impacted thier leadership, drive, etc. It covers Churchill, Grant, and Sherman among others.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10357675

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed sort of covers this topic for the Old Testament.

Edit: and IIRC, Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted does the same for the New Testament.

He was unpopular, he was by a large measure unsuccessful in his rule and particularly in his conflicts with France, he did not have a particularly strong position, a civil war would be both difficult and costly when he was already not doing well financially, and he had no intention of adhering to it anyway.

Not directly. I think there might have been many intangible benefits, and certainly it may have interfered with and complicated the economies of rivals, and certainly had knock-on effects on their trade, but it's not like there was an abolition betting pool the British Empire was making big money on; abolition efforts were costly and time-consuming.

No, and 'Britain' wasn't importing it into China. It was imported by merchants that were British, American, Indian, and Chinese. Neither the Royal Navy nor the East India Company imported opium into China before the Opium War, because it was technically illegal, despite usage being commonplace. Independent traders imported it, and handed it off to Chinese smugglers before it reached China, because foreigners, outside of some very small enclaves, were not allowed into China.

Opium was unregulated in Britain until about 1862, when sales were restricted to pharmacies only. Serious regulation didn't happen until 1920 when sales of opiates required approval by a doctor.

>Were there "last minute attacks" at the end of WW1, as seen in the new "All quiet on Western front",

There were some last minute attacks, but not as seen in the film, which is not historical. The Germans at that point in the war were incapable of offensive action, paralysed by lack of supplies and ammunition, with shockingly low morale and poor unit cohesion. There were British, French, and American attacks right up until the armistice took effect, in order to ensure that the Germans did not manage to gain a secure, sound defensive position and simply wait the armistice out, gathering their strength.

>Or in any other war, how common was attacking after the peace was signed,

The armistice was not a peace treaty, merely a kind of ceasefire. That was the Treaty of Versailles, which wasn't signed until 1919.

To build on /u/Doctor_Impossible_ answer, the person usually counted as the final casualty in the war was a US soldier, Henry Gunther who was taking part in the Meuse -Argonne offensive. It was a joint offensive by the US and France. Gunther apparently died at 10:59.

But France especially was pushing for these advances up until the last minute. They had suffered extraordinary casualties and now that they had US reinforcements, new and better tactics, and restored morale they were trying to get every benefit they could out of the fighting before armistice.

At least two, because there were two different guns destroyed and their wreckage found. A test model was built, but wasn't used in the war, as far as I know.

There's a bunch of mailing lists, but it's going to be dependent on what area you're looking for. And of course there's always journals, and conferences too.

The 1619 Project by Nicole Hannah-Jones is as good a place as any to start.

"Peace" in this case was entirely relative. There were multiple civil and foreign wars as well as a couple of outright conquests during that time. For example, the Battle of the Tuetoberg Forest (3 legions more-or-less wiped out), the Great Jewish Revolt (up to 350k killed, Jerusalem sacked, the Jewish Temple destroyed, etc.) and the conquest of Britain (hundreds of thousands killed, plus conquered a lot of territory) all happened during the Pax Romana.

Compared to the period of civil wars and purges that started with Marius and Sulla and eventually ended with Octavian and Anthony, or the Crisis of the 3rd Century, the Pax Romana was pretty peaceful for the Empire as a whole, but there was not an absence of war.

Pax Romana by Adrian Goldsworthy looks at this very question. Been a long while since I read it but I think his conclusion was that the pax Romana was a relatively peaceful and stable period compared to what had come before and after. That said, this does have to be measured against what was done to achieve it. Roman conquest could be incredibly brutal and they had no compunctions about wiping out entire people groups, enslaving and/or relocating them, and colonizing their own people. The period was also marked by a number of wars and rebellions but, comparatively speaking, these were pretty minor and very localized. Within a couple generations of conquest, most people had learned to accept Roman overlordship and focused their efforts on moving up in the hierarchy.

Rasputin?

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, very readable and informative. You can really see how much of an impact geography has had on the formation of nation states and their notions of 'national interest.'

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Warring states was before Han, 3 kingdons afterwards

>medieval

When, because that's about a thousand years.

>to wear a leather vest+skirt combo over a full chainmail suit?

I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing.

>Or would it be more common to just wear some clothes over the mail if they wanted to show the colors of their master?

You might be thinking of a surcoat, jupon, or tabard, depending upon the era. These could be simple colours or embroidered, and while a squire would want to show his allegiance, for most of that era a man-at-arms wouldn't get the same sort of consideration, and many of them would be lucky to get a 'uniform'.

The two governing factors here are likely padding and heat. If they're only wearing one leather article of clothing, it would be under the mail to provide extra padding to both further spread out the force of a blow and to provide better protection in the event a blow got through the chain links.

If they're wearing a padded aketon/gambeson and then mail, and then a leather waistcoat, that's basically wearing two winter coats with 20 lbs/10kg of weight in the middle. The heat load is going to be severe.

In battle, if they're wearing their knight's colors or badge, you'd be more likely to see it on a shield, a strip of cloth tied around an upper arm, a light surcoat/tabard, or a hat/helmet badge. But, they're not going to be in full harness most of the time, and a leather coat with a badge could be reasonable "around town" uniform/light armor, just like they might carry a large-but-not-huge knife instead of their battleaxe when going into town. As.a garment, it's an extravagant use of leather, but it's not crazy.

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The Chetniks were Serbian ethnonationalists and guerrillas, who had a decidedly genocidal lean, in terms of 'removing' Albanians, Croats, Bosniaks, and Jews, from 'their' territory.

I'm guessing this is for some alternate history thing?

The first image for 1100 would have been broadly accurate for western Europe during the preceding 11^th C, while regional variations existed, they tend to be not overly pronounced unless economic factors (like in the celtic fringe) enter play. Later English plate armour did see variation from continental patterns, favouring longer rerebraces than other continental styles, perhaps as a reflection of the English predilection for fighting on foot at the time, but were at a glance similar to the general trend of plate armours. While Peter Jackson's Rohirrim are fictional, the use of leather over maille in the form of cuir boiulle was an actual historical trend during the late 13^th to early 14^th C as a sort of proto plate armour during the transitional period with some extent pieces surviving.

Regarding archery, while the Normans seem to have imported the Frankish custom of the poorest levies being armed as bowmen, the Saxons too practiced archery and seemed to have incorporated it into the 'shieldwall'. Archery for both peoples wasn't very respected, even compared to fighting in the main line of battle as a common levy and would only see a greater degree of use following the battle of Falkirk and the effective display of archery by the welsh brought along by Edward I. Prior to this, archers were seen as being of limited overall importance (see the ineffective stopping power against even unarmoured targets such as that at the battle of the standard for example) albeit a necessary one, being valued significantly less than crossbowmen who performed far better in terms of range and power. Clifford Rogers goes into some detail regarding what I've written. What the course of English warfare may have been had the Saxons repulsed the Normans is uncertain, although it is possible if the tradition of fighting on foot continued that it may have mirrored the latter English practice during the Hundred Years wars with massed archers and well armed heavy infantry although it may have just as likely have went the same path as Denmark and adopted aristocratic heavy cavalry in some form.