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  1. What If: Atheist Ancient India

    India once had multiple schools of materialist thought like Lokayata, Ajñana, and Ajivika if I'm not mistaken, but they have vanished. Under what circumstances might you get a majority of Indians following these Nastika philosophies? Or at least the elites?

  2. What if the Arab raids on Rome in 846 were more successful?

    According to Absolute Monarchs by John Julius Norwich, there was an attack on Rome in 846 by Arab raiders that was driven off by Pope Leo IV. If Leo had failed, or if someone less competent was in power, could there have been an Islamic Rome? It seems possible if the raiders were allied with...

  3. How proficient were 19th century British aristocrats in Greek and Latin?

    In the Victorian sensation novel The Grey Monk by TW Speight, the impostor heir Luigi is forced to study Greek and Latin to appease his baronet "grandfather". Luigi has no talent for classical languages or horseback riding, showing how far removed he is from the "gentleman" ideal. Another 19th...

  4. What If: No Rinderpest Outbreak in 1887

    This is mostly based on Wikipedia, so I'll probably get some facts wrong. The tsetse fly that causes sleeping sickness supposedly had a much smaller range before a rinderpest plague killed massive numbers of cows in 1887. This led to a famine, and the lack of livestock allowed plants to grow...

  5. Earlier South African empire

    If a Bantu empire had been created in South Africa earlier than the 19th century, could it defeat would-be colonists? How would it be formed? If you believe Wikipedia, the importation of maize from the Americas allowed the Zulu population to grow to the point where Shaka could begin his...

  6. Other Dominant Languages For the Internet

    If an equivalent to the Internet is created in a non-English speaking culture, will its language become much more influential than in our world? German seems to be a possible candidate, if it can maintain its status as the "language of science" (most likely by either avoiding World War I or a...

  7. Best History Books on Project Gutenberg

    I often download books from Project Gutenberg on my Kindle, and I'm curious about which history books are worth reading there. All suggestions must be available in English or Spanish. Biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies are welcome too.

  8. Effects of Hugo Chávez living longer

    Venezuela's economy has rapidly deteriorated after Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013 and the vice-president Nicolás Maduro took his place. Maduro is also known for his erratic behavior, such as claiming Hugo Chávez visited him as a "pajarito" ("little birdie"). Would Venezuela's economy and...

  9. Maximum Spread of Invasive Fire Ants

    After thinking about silly Mark Trail comic strips much more than I should, I thought I'd ask this forum about red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta). Fire ants originally came from South America, and they became a common pest in the United States. However, in our history, it took until...

  10. False Dmitry I keeps the throne

    False Dmitry I was the most successful of the Russian royal impostors, and managed to be crowned czar after fooling people into believing he was Ivan the Terrible's son. His marriage to Polish noblewoman Marina Mniszech angered Russians after she refused to convert from Catholicism to...

  11. Challenge: Make non-superhero comics more popular in the U.S.

    Usually, when you think of American comics outside of the funny pages, you think superheroes. (And even the newspapers have Spider-Man and the Phantom.) Yet romance comics were once popular, in addition to crime and horror comics. In the alternate world of Watchmen, pirate-themed comics are...

  12. Earlier Trading Card Games

    I sometimes wonder why it took until the 1990s for trading card games like Magic the Gathering to be created. Your challenge is to create a scenario where a similar trading card game would both be technically possible and profitable earlier in history. If you're feeling audacious enough, you...

  13. What if William Macready did not do his "fancy dance" while playing Hamlet?

    Apparently, the British actor William Macready once decided to dance in a performance of Hamlet on March 2, 1846 after saying the line "They are coming to the play; I must be idle". This annoyed the American actor Edwin Forrest, who hissed at Macready after the infamous "fancy dance". The...

  14. Earlier Joint Stock Companies?

    I've been reading enough 16th-17th century history recently that now I'm wondering why joint stock companies developed when they did, and not earlier. Examples include the Muscovy Company, the Virginia Company, the VOC, the British East India Company, the South Sea Company, etc. Shouldn't...

  15. How common were bandits in the pre-industrial world?

    I was playing Mount & Blade Warband after I came home from work today, and I wondered how much of a problem banditry was before industrialization given its prevalence in fantasy fiction. Was "We'll have our pay, or we'll have our fun!" a typical phrase before the Industrial Revolution and the...

  16. Would Spain have been better off without its American colonies?

    I was reading Spain: A History by Malveena McKendrick today when I came across this quote: "The supreme irony is that it is possible to regard the acquisition and colonization of America as, not the saving, but the downfall of Spain." She then goes on to cite the inflation caused by gold and...

  17. What if Opechancanough's 1622 raid were more successful?

    I was reading The Barbarous Years by Bernard Bailyn the other day, and I learned about the extent of the damage that Opechancanough (Powhatan's brother and successor) caused to the Virginia colony with his 1622 massacre in the Jamestown area. Could this attack have destroyed Jamestown and the...

  18. Plausibility of Modern or Future Filibuster Raids?

    No, not the Jimmy Stewart kind of filibuster. The William Walker variety is what I have in mind. What would it take for random groups of American adventurers or mercenaries to try to conquer a poor developing country in the 20th or 21st centuries without being backed or endorsed by the U.S...

  19. Why didn't Spain have successful colonies north of Florida?

    I wonder what made the Spaniards stop at Florida instead of advancing farther northeast. Given that conquistadores took on the Aztec and Incan empires, you'd think the Algonquian and Siouan peoples on the east coast wouldn't be as big of a problem. So it seems that the problem might have been...

  20. What would happen to the Spanish and Portuguese empires if Napoleon never took power?

    If my impressions of Latin American history are correct, the wars for independence started as anti-Bonapartist revolts on behalf of Ferdinand VII when Joseph Bonaparte was placed on the Spanish throne. What would happen in a world where Napoleon never became the conqueror that he was in ours...
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