When two civilizations with no common language discovered each other, how did they communicate?

okay so.... I am aware of a few (potentially half) truths about this subject. I'd like to lay them bare as possible in order to have my titular question answered more fully.

dad's a Vietnam vet. He says Vietnam was due to American and French colonies on rubber plantations, not Communism, that there was a physical resource there and so it resembles, like, Iraq for oil (in my mind).

I learned in high school that Joseph McCarthy led the 'witch hunts' regarding Communism. Which in movies I've seen appears to resemble 'Communism' only insofar as Marxism as a political entity is usually taken to be furthering Communistic goals.

But the ultimate takeaway I have is that life in the Soviet Union doesn't appear much less inundated with horrific figures than the United States does, so I'd say the USSR was ultimately a failure by critical theory's standards.

However idk really what sponsored this sentiment in the beginning. Who were the Communists in Vietnam that had called themselves as such and were they seen as threatening to Americans, French, both, or somebody else? What exactly led to the anti-Communist wars that preceded our current wars? Thanks

I'm not sure if this is a biased standpoint or not, but the more I read about the American Revolution the more it seems that it was a revolution by the rich, for the rich, to protect the interests of the rich landed classes in America, especially as opposed to the French Revolution. If that is the case, why did the average American farmer (turned militia) fight?

I guess there was a letter sent out by a few historians who questioned, not the facts, but the emphasis placed on the facts.

Has anyone taken a look at it?

I know this question is a cliche, but what I'm really wondering is why Napoleon behaved as if time was against him, and he expected to be in a weaker position in 1813 than 1812?

Napoleon planned a high-risk campaign that hinged on out-marching, and forcing a decisive battle on a Russian army that was falling back on its lines of supply, before superior Russian forces redeploying from Sweden and the Danube could threaten his rear.

Why would Napoleon take this risk when his state finances don't appear to be in crises, his hold on Germany seems stronger than ever, and when every year means the war in Spain could still be ended successfully?

This is consistently the “highest return” subreddit on the internet. I don’t think a day has gone by without my learning something. Sometimes I learn something I didn’t know about something I didn’t know about, more often I learn that what I did know about what I did think I knew about isn’t true (if you follow me).

I actually come here to learn rather than to “pick a fight with stupid people whom I don’t know and won’t listen and eighty percent of the time are Russian bots anyway”, which is what I otherwise do.

So thank you to everyone here. You freely give something valuable to people who need it.

PS: I don’t mind if this gets deleted because the rules and the vigilance of the moderators is what makes this subreddit excellent. But what I am saying is true.

Were they given special privileges, given how the Qing Dynasty was Manchurian in origin, or were they viewed as just another ethnic group?

For example, if I research the Romani people on wikipedia, they are referred to as being Indo-Aryan, and there is the usage of the Swastika and the term "Aryan" being used in Nazi ideology. The term also comes up a lot when I google languages. I really don't see any similarities between European and Indian culture the same way I would with America, Britain, Germany and France, or Korea and Japan, so why are they so heavily associated with each other like this?

I've been rewatching the crown lately, and got to the point where they depict the Suez crisis as kind of the practical and symbolic end of Britain's role as a great power; it destroyed a prime minister's career, ruined the economy, and seemingly putting the UK in a funk that lasts all the way through the rest of the show thus far, etc. I guess my question is, How did other western allies fare? I'd imagine Israel being seen as an aggressor set the stage for later wars (its more complicated than that of course, just explaining my thoughts), and I'd guess the US siding against its European allies led to some awkward government summits, for example.

An obvious example is Zeus and his (sometimes unsuccesfull ) attempts at cheating on Hera.

For background as to why im asking this -I was thinking the other day about how our increasingly secular world makes it possible for modern artists to take creative liberties in reintepreting things like bible stories for dramatic and sometimes even comedic effect. This made me wonder whether some future civilization would unearth the remains of ours and think that The Life of Brian or Jesus Chris Superstar was legitimately part of western religious canon

Is there some possibility that stories like that of Zeus disgusiing himself but getting caught in the act are later addiitons made my bards and playwrights who were trying to excite an almost irreligous audience? I understand that one reason Christianity did so well in the late Roman empire was because it had filled a void where genuine pagan belief had once been so is it possible that our view of Roman and Greek religion was influenced by later, more cynical myths that surrounded them during their twilight, and that some Dorian sheppard from after the Broze Age Collapse or some Iron age farmer in Pre-Roman Italy would have taken some offence at the idea that the Sky-Father at the head of their pantheon was some incompetent oaf who got caught cheating? Am i maybe being too abrahamic in my idea of what older religions were like?

While I’m not a historian through various books I’ve read during varying time periods it seems like anti semitism has been a major problem for many centuries and since the most well known instance of that (at least where I am) is WWII I never really though about just how long this has been a thing. The only reason I can think of one group of people being so continuously be made pariahs would be if it had root in some foundational religious text like the Bible. But to be honest I have no idea and it’s really interesting to me.

I'm aware Emishi is a very broad term and could be applied to any native Japanese group (most notably the Ainu). I'm specifically looking for books on the Ezo tribe that was involved in the Thirty-Eight Year War with the Yamato people in the 700s AD. Really, I'd prefer a book that covers all the Honshu based native tribes, but that seems far-fetched to even exist, let alone in English. As a follow up question: Nihongi was written just before the Thirty-Eight Year War. Does it refer to the Ezo (or any Honshu based Emishi), Ainu, or Jōmon people at all?

I had a writing professor comment one time that he thought it was interesting that universities and colleges in the Western US put History under Social Sciences (with Sociology, Anthropolgy, Psychology, etc.) where as in the Eastern US they would be in the Humanities (with English, Writing, Art, etc).

Is this true, and indicative the discipline changing over time? My understanding is historians prior to 1960s(ish) were more focused on producing literature on the stories of the past, rather than any sort of scientific analysis (or bringing to light ignores stories).

And, has that change been somewhat uniform? Are there competing ideas of what the discipline should be/should be accomplishing depending on where in the world you are studying? Or has the discipline, on sort of a global level, settled into a shared idea of practice and purpose?

It seems it would've gotten along pretty well with the other far-right extremist members of the faction, and military and financial support from the prospering German and Italian states could help solidify the shaky regime of the new nation, allowing them to expand into Portugal, southern France and North Africa, and take back Gibraltar from the British. So why did they decide not to join?

In pop culture, it seems like the city of New Orleans is just as famous for the supernatural and spooky as Salem, and for whatever reason, vampires are a large part of its mythos. From urban legend to the novels of Anne Rice, vampirism seems to play as big a role as voodoo in the collective imagination. I've even read about the "real" vampires in New Orleans, who drink blood for whatever reason. What is the connection between Louisiana and vampirism? Does it have something to do with its French history? Were vampires even a popular legend in France?

Is it ok to judge historical figures with modern day standards. And is it ok to say that historical figures are still human beings and not gods and its natural for them to have flaws, so they can have good aspects and bad aspects both

From what I understand, the people of pre-Saxon England/Lowland Scotland would have spoken a Brittonic language related to the ancestors of modern Welsh/Cornish/Breton. The Anglo-Saxons supposedly did not wipe out the native populations of Britain upon their arrival, but simply took positions of power. Consequently, the Anglo-Saxon language became the language of prestige and the native Britons simply adopted it, displacing the Brittonic languages to such an extent that there is very little evidence of Celtic influence on modern English, aside from place and river names etc.

However, Old Norse and Norman-French did not have the same effect on English. Despite holding significant positions of influence within the English state, the Danes and Normans only influenced the language, they didn't entirely displace it, leaving almost no trace of the original language. Why was there such a difference in the level of effect on the native language that these invasions had? Is there any other instance of a populace almost completely abandoning their native language to adopt the language of their new overlords? From what I understand, even in former colonies where large portions of the native population now speak European languages, the European language is often significantly influenced by native languages.