Open Questions

Open Panthay Rebellion

Why It Is Open Yunnan's population fell steeply during the Panthay Rebellion, but that collapse combines the war's own combat and reprisal deaths with a major plague epidemic that swept the province in the same decades, and no modern historian has disaggregated a war caused figure from the rest.

What Would Settle It A modern demographic or historical study working through Yunnanese provincial and Qing administrative records to separate combat, reprisal and famine deaths tied directly to the fighting from the mortality caused by the era's plague epidemic.

Expertise Needed Chinese history; historical demography

Question posed in The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwest China, 1856-1873, David G. Atwill.

Open Munster Rebellion

Why It Is Open Surviving accounts of the Munster siege report starvation deaths during the blockade, combat deaths in the final storming, and post-capture executions as separate, unreconciled figures rather than a single running total, and no modern historian has combined them into one reliable death toll for the episode as a whole.

What Would Settle It A demographic or archival study working from Munster's own municipal and parish records, where they survive, to establish the city's population immediately before the siege and reconcile the chronicle accounts of starvation, combat and execution deaths into a single disaggregated total.

Expertise Needed Reformation history; historical demography

Question posed in In the Shadow of "Savage Wolves": Anabaptist Munster and the German Reformation during the 1530s, Sigrun Haude.

Open Poso Conflict

Why It Is Open Official registers were incomplete for a conflict fought partly in remote villages across a large rural regency over three separate episodes; Human Rights Watch's field investigation and van Klinken's comparative study both work from local reporting and testimony rather than from a single comprehensive census, and their figures have not been formally reconciled against each other or against each community's own, generally higher, local counts.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from Poso Regency hospital, police and village-level records surviving from 1998 to 2001, cross-checked against Muslim and Christian community-held counts, to build one reconciled casualty estimate across all three episodes of the conflict.

Expertise Needed Southeast Asian history; Indonesian regional studies

Question posed in Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia: Small Town Wars, Gerry van Klinken.

Open 1860 Mount Lebanon and Damascus Massacres

Why It Is Open Fawaz's Mount Lebanon estimate and Rogan's Damascus estimate come from two separate archival reconstructions written thirty years apart, each focused on a different phase and place; no single study has combined them into one reconciled figure for the whole 1860 violence, and the much higher contemporary press and missionary claims that circulated at the time remain uncorrected in some popular accounts.

What Would Settle It A study working from Ottoman provincial and central archives, European consular correspondence and the records of the 1860 international commission of inquiry, applying a consistent method across both Mount Lebanon and Damascus, to produce one combined, reconciled casualty estimate for the whole episode.

Expertise Needed Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern history

Question posed in An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860, Leila Tarazi Fawaz.

Open Maitatsine Risings

Why It Is Open The 1981 federal tribunal of inquiry investigated only the December 1980 Kano rising, and even for that episode its civilian count of 4,177 sits beside a separately reported, less formally sourced figure of about 5,000. The four later risings at Bulumkutu, Rigasa, Jimeta and Gombe were never subject to a comparable tribunal, and no historian has combined all five episodes into one reconciled total.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from Nigerian federal and state records, hospital and mortuary registers where they survive, and local press archives for the 1982, 1984 and 1985 risings on the same footing as the 1981 tribunal covered the 1980 Kano rising, to build one casualty estimate across all five episodes.

Expertise Needed Nigerian and West African history; the sociology of religious movements

Question posed in The Maitatsine Risings in Nigeria 1980 to 85: A Revolt of the Disinherited, Elizabeth Isichei.

Open Sokoto Jihad

Why It Is Open Only one battle of the jihad, the December 1804 defeat at Tsuntua, carries a specifically sourced casualty figure, and no historian has reconciled or extended that single data point into a war-wide total across the four years of campaigning that followed against Kebbi, Katsina, Daura, Kano and Gobir.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from surviving Arabic-language chronicles of the jihad, including Muhammad Bello's own history of his father's campaigns, cross-checked against Hausa oral and written tradition, to build a reconciled casualty estimate across the war's major engagements and its civilian displacement.

Expertise Needed West African Islamic history; Hausa and Fulani chronicle sources

Question posed in The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, Mervyn Hiskett.

Open Padri War

Why It Is Open Surviving casualty figures cover only individual sieges and engagements within the Dutch military campaigns after 1821, and no historian has reconciled these into a total for the whole thirty four year conflict, nor extended any estimate back to cover the internal Minangkabau religious civil war of 1803 to 1821, for which Dutch records do not exist.

What Would Settle It A study working from surviving Dutch colonial military and administrative archives for the 1821 to 1837 campaigns, cross-checked against Minangkabau oral and written tradition for the earlier internal conflict, to build a reconciled casualty estimate across both phases of the war.

Expertise Needed Southeast Asian colonial history; Dutch East Indies archives and Minangkabau oral tradition

Question posed in Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784-1847, Christine Dobbin.

Open Moplah (Malabar) Rebellion

Why It Is Open The only systematically compiled figure is the British government's count of rebels killed in action or executed, drawn from military and administrative reports; no historian has reconciled it with civilian and communal violence deaths, on both the Mappila and Hindu sides, across the affected taluks, or with the disputed higher figures in Mappila oral tradition.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from surviving colonial revenue, police and court records for the Ernad and Walluvanad taluks, cross-checked against local Mappila and Hindu community records where they survive, to build a reconciled casualty estimate covering combat deaths, communal killings on both sides and deaths in custody across the whole rebellion.

Expertise Needed South Asian colonial history; Kerala regional and agrarian history

Question posed in The Moplah Rebellion and Its Genesis, Conrad Wood.

Open 1915 Sinhalese Muslim Riots

Why It Is Open Reported killed figures range from the twenties into the low hundreds across different secondary sources without a consistent breakdown between rioters, bystanders and those killed restoring order, and the standard academic reconstruction concentrates on the riots' course and the government's martial law response rather than compiling a reconciled total.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from the colonial government's martial law court records, coroners' inquests and provincial administrative reports for the Central, Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces to build a reconciled count distinguishing rioters, bystanders and those killed or executed by government forces.

Expertise Needed South Asian and Sri Lankan colonial history

Question posed in The Action Phase of the 1915 Riots, Charles S. Blackton.

Open Noakhali Riots

Why It Is Open Contemporary local police and administrative records for Noakhali and Tippera were extensively lost or destroyed in the displacement and administrative change that followed, so reported figures rest on later witness testimony and compilation rather than a contemporaneous count, and estimates in the secondary literature range from a few hundred to several thousand with no reconciled total.

What Would Settle It A study systematically cross-checking surviving colonial police, relief camp and missionary records against local Hindu and Muslim community testimony collected in the years immediately after the riots, of the kind that has been done for the Great Calcutta Killings but not yet completed for Noakhali specifically.

Expertise Needed South Asian colonial history; Bengal regional history

Question posed in Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905 to 1947, Suranjan Das.

Open The First Jewish-Roman War (66 to 73 CE)

Why It Is Open Josephus's own account gives a total near 1.1 million dead in the siege of Jerusalem alone, a figure the Roman historian Tacitus's separate report of 600,000 under siege does not resolve, and modern historians agree first century Judea's population could not have sustained losses on either scale, without offering a reconciled replacement figure of their own.

What Would Settle It A demographic and archaeological reconstruction of first century Judea's total population and its capacity, of the kind that would let historians test Josephus's and Tacitus's figures against an independent ceiling rather than against each other.

Expertise Needed Roman-era historical demography; classical archaeology

Question posed in The Jewish War, Flavius Josephus.

Open The Nizari-Seljuk Conflicts (1090 to 1194)

Why It Is Open The surviving chronicles, compiled generations after the events by dynasties hostile to the Nizaris, report figures for distinct episodes (assassinated officials, massacred communities, one city's casualties) rather than a single reconciled total, and modern historians including Lewis and Daftary have not synthesized them into an agreed toll for the century-long conflict.

What Would Settle It A systematic cross-check of the Persian chronicle tradition against surviving documentary and archaeological evidence from the Nizari strongholds and the Seljuk provinces, of the kind that could distinguish which reported episodes are independently corroborated from which are hostile chronicle embellishment.

Expertise Needed Medieval Islamic history; Persian and Arabic chronicle source criticism

Question posed in The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis, Farhad Daftary.

Open The Donatist-Catholic Conflict and Circumcellion Violence (312 to 411 CE)

Why It Is Open Augustine's letters and sermons, the fullest surviving contemporary source, name individual incidents of circumcellion violence and its Catholic reprisals but never attempt a running total across the century of intermittent conflict, and no other ancient writer or modern historian has reconstructed one from the surviving legal and ecclesiastical record.

What Would Settle It A systematic collation of every named incident across Augustine's correspondence, sermons and the acts of North African church councils, of the kind that could at least establish a documented floor even without a claim to completeness.

Expertise Needed Late antique church history; patristic source criticism

Question posed in Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine, Brent D. Shaw.

Open The Kitos War (115 to 117 CE)

Why It Is Open The only surviving casualty figures come from Cassius Dio, writing roughly a century after the events, and modern scholarship treats his numbers as rhetorical inflation rather than a demographic count; no archaeological or documentary reconstruction has produced an independent total for the revolt across its several fronts.

What Would Settle It Archaeological and papyrological evidence of settlement destruction and population loss in Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus specifically datable to 115 to 117 CE, of the kind that could ground an independent estimate against Cassius Dio's figures.

Expertise Needed Roman imperial history; classical archaeology of Cyrenaica and Cyprus

Question posed in Jewish War under Trajan and Hadrian, William Horbury.

Open The Kharijite Rebellions (685 to 699 CE)

Why It Is Open The surviving Arabic chronicle tradition records the rebellions as a sequence of individual battles and sieges across Iraq, Persia and Arabia rather than one accounted campaign, and no modern historian has combined the separate engagements into a war-wide casualty total.

What Would Settle It A systematic tally of the individual battle and siege accounts already preserved in the early Arabic chronicle tradition, cross-checked against what independent evidence of the period's population and military scale can bear, of the kind no historian of the rebellions has yet undertaken.

Expertise Needed Early Islamic history; Arabic chronicle source criticism

Question posed in The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, Hugh Kennedy.

Open The Macina Jihad and the Diina of Maasina (1818 to 1862)

Why It Is Open Surviving sources describe troop strengths for individual engagements such as the Battle of Noukouma rather than casualties, and Sanankoua's specialist study drawing on family papers and regional archives does not attempt a running total across the jihad's founding, the Diina's four decades as a state, or its 1862 fall.

What Would Settle It A systematic reconstruction from Arabic-language chronicles, oral tradition and colonial-era administrative records of the Inner Niger Delta region, of the kind that could establish at least a documented floor for the jihad's opening campaigns and the Diina's 1862 fall.

Expertise Needed West African history; Arabic and oral-tradition source criticism

Question posed in Un Empire peul au XIXe siecle: la Diina du Maasina, Bintou Sanankoua.

Open 1953 Lahore (Punjab) Anti-Ahmadi Riots

Why It Is Open The Punjab government's own Court of Inquiry documented roughly twenty three deaths from military and police action, a figure drawn from official operational reports rather than a citywide casualty survey. Later accounts of the riots commonly cite a far higher toll approaching two thousand, but no version of that figure traced here names the study, archive or method behind it, and no historian has reconciled the two.

What Would Settle It A systematic reconstruction working from Lahore and Punjab hospital, police and municipal burial records for February to May 1953, of the kind that would let a historian check the widely repeated higher estimate against a documented count rather than against the Court of Inquiry's own operational figures alone.

Expertise Needed Modern South Asian and Pakistani history; historical demography

Question posed in Politics of Desecularization: Law and the Minority Question in Pakistan, Sadia Saeed.

Open 1969 Ahmedabad Riots

Why It Is Open The Reddy Commission of Inquiry's own report acknowledges its recorded figure of more than six hundred and sixty dead as an undercount, since many bodies were never retrieved in a condition allowing identification and some deaths were never formally reported to police; historians' higher estimates of one to two thousand are themselves not built from a systematic recount but from unofficial contemporary reports.

What Would Settle It A systematic archival study working from Ahmedabad hospital, mortuary and municipal burial records alongside contemporary press and community accounts, on the model of later Indian communal-violence casualty reconstructions, to produce one reconciled toll for the September 1969 riots.

Expertise Needed Modern South Asian history; historical demography

Question posed in Communalism and Sexual Violence in India: The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Conflict, Megha Kumar.

Open Dungan Revolt (1862 to 1877)

Why It Is Open Population-history reconstructions for Shaanxi and Gansu document a catastrophic regional population collapse across 1862 to 1877, but no historian has separated deaths directly caused by combat and massacre from the era's simultaneous famine, disease and mass flight, and Chu's political and military study of the revolt's course does not attempt a casualty count at all.

What Would Settle It A demographic study working from surviving Qing provincial and local gazetteer population records across Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, applying a consistent method capable of separating war and massacre deaths from the period's independently documented famine and plague mortality.

Expertise Needed Late Qing history; historical demography

Question posed in The Moslem Rebellion in Northwest China, 1862 to 1878: A Study of Government Minority Policy, Wen-djang Chu.

Open Irish Confederate Wars

Why It Is Open William Petty's 1650s Down Survey remains the era's only systematic contemporary count, and modern historians including Lenihan treat his method, extrapolating from incomplete surveys and combining combat, massacre, famine and plague deaths into one total, as unreliable for a precise war-specific figure without offering a reconciled alternative of their own.

What Would Settle It A modern demographic reconstruction applying consistent method to seventeenth century Irish parish, estate and muster records, capable of separating combat and massacre deaths from the era's simultaneous, and largely coincidental, famine and plague mortality.

Expertise Needed Early modern Irish history; historical demography

Question posed in Confederate Catholics at War, 1641 to 1649, Padraig Lenihan.