With VE Day just been and gone and the heightened media surround the war at the moment there is always the question of how the war began. One often spoken about cause was the act of appeasement by the then British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.

Appeasement is often spat out when discussing him almost as if it was an act of cowardice or malice in some respects. Is this the case? Or, with the First World War likely fresh in the memory of many adult Britons, was this a misguided and failed attempt to prevent something as horrific from happening again? Was this idea a product of post war feeling? Was there a belief that had he acted defiant then the conflict could have been avoided?

I don't believe horseshoes had been invented to protect the feet or horses by late antiquity, so all those stone-paved roads built by the Romans must have been hard on the feet or horses.

Were there any changes made to roads to accommodate the movement of large cavalry formations? Were the roads used less for the military they were built to serve?

Queen Hatshepsut seems to be the most important female ruler of Ancient Egypt history. Yet her name seems to have been deliberately omitted from the Abydos king list. From the reconstruction of the Saqqara king list I've seen, her name doesn't seem to appear there as well. The Karnak list attributed to the reign of her successor doesn't mention her, but this last list doesn't mention most rulers. The Turin king list is damaged.

At first I thought that the lists don't recognize female rulers, since the Abydos list omits the name of Sobekneferu as well, but the Saqqara and Karnak lists mention Sobekneferu under her throne name Sobek-kare.

I've read somewhere that the Abydos list omits the name of foreigners, usurpers and heretics, to try and erase them from memory. This makes sense as to why the names of the "Amarna heretics" are removed, and why the list skips the whole list of rulers from the 2nd Intermediatd Period. However, this seems inconsistent, since the list jumps from the 8th dynasty during the 1st Intermediate Period to Mentuhotep II, and I could think of a couple of rulers who usurped the throne but were still named (like Userkare, not mentioned in the Saqqara list). Moreover, Hatshepsut is neither a usurper, foreigner, nor a religious heretic. Therefore, I don't understand the logic behind the Abydos king list, especially for Hatshepsut who was in people's fresh memory, unlike rulers from the OK or MK. Why was she omitted?

Writing a story with some scenes set in BC/BCE times, and obviously I can’t have the characters say that ‘it’s 48 BC’ or whatever. So, I was wondering, do we know how ancient cultures like the Greeks or Romans, or any other cultures that existed during BC/BCE kept track of the years? Where was their starting point, and how does it line up with our modern reckoning of that time?

I have recently come across the concept of mega-states and mini-states, where more complex villages and villages groups are considered mini-states and bodies that hold territories that can show up on the world or continental map are considered mini-states.

What exactly is the difference between just a village and a mini-state, how politically complex do the have to be, are city states considered mini-states, would most tribes that surrounded states like the Romans or Greeks be considered state?

Can states be defined based on power as well?

How do historians generally decide whether a figure from an ancient text was probably real or based on a real person? Is there a general standard or is it consensus? For example (not wishing to cause controversy):

Homer - real.

Achilles - probably not real.

Odysseus - maybe real.

Menelaus - probably real.

I'm particularly interested in whether this varies according to the culture and the sources they usually left.

Thanks!

The film "In This Corner of the World" portrays Imperial Japan through the lens of a young girl, Suzu. In the film she gets married to Shusaku, a man which proposed to her. She barely knows him and lives at his home with his parents in Kure for a large duration of the film. I have heard of and seen these kinds of traditional families comprised of a husband, his parents, his wife and their children in other forms of pop-culture but were those kinds of proposal marriages common or at least present in the 30's and 40's?

Eventually, food rationing takes it's toll on the family and prices for many products (caramel as an example from the movie) increase drastically. I am aware of intensity of the rationing that the Japanese government implemented but how accurately does the film portray the effect it had on the average person in Japan?

I'm currently reading through the novel for the first time, and I just about did a literal, real life spit take when I got to that passage. I guess what struck me most is how casually it's treated. Just a little anecdote, all of a paragraph long in my translation. And while Liu Bei weeps as he departs the guy's house after finding a friggin' corpse in the kitchen and realizing what he ate last evening, it's seemingly more about being moved by the regard his host had shown him with this kind gesture. Something Cao Cao evidently agrees with, because he sends the man a hundred ounces of gold as a token of appreciation.

And it's not even like Liu Bei was close to starving and would have died right then and there if it wasn't for Liu An's extreme measure in keeping him alive. Yes, he was fleeing back to the capital on backcountry roads with supplies running low. But in the very sentence before he met Liu An, we were told how people in every village he went to were fighting each other over the privilege of providing for him. The Andes flight disaster this was not.

So what was it? Or rather, what was it intended to be when Luo Guanzhong (or whoever authored the romance) came up with it? How were people supposed to react to this hunter's actions? How were they supposed to react to Liu Bei's and Cao Cao's reactions to his actions? Was it really just meant to show once more what an awesome guy Liu Bei was, for inspiring such loyalty and devotion in people? Or is there more to it than that? And was this as unusual from a 14th century perspective as it seems from a modern one, or was cannibalism as an extreme demonstration of hospitality and respect of ruled to ruler already a well-known trope in Chinese literature and mythology?

Hi there historians

Before the question, just want to give a little background. Me and a group of friends are creating a roleplay community in a game called Red dead redemption 2. That game, if you never heard of it, goes on around 1899 and the map includes some small towns in which every town has its own sheriffs office. To have a “realistic” roleplay, we gonna need lawman. My question is:

• what’s the sheriff hierarchy in the USA back then? Both town hierarchy and federal hierarchy pls. I made some search and there’s a lot of different stuff. From Marshall’s, to deputy Marshall’s to US Marshall’s. Its hard to keep up with all the information around when some conflicts

There's an old wikipedia description of the Ottoman Empire that reads as such:

The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانیه‎ Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye, literally "The Exalted Ottoman State"; Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti; French: Empire ottoman[note 6][13]), known to the Ottomans as the Empire of Rûm/Rome[14][note 7] (Ottoman Turkish: دولت علنإه روم‎, lit. 'The Exalted State of Rome'; Modern Turkish: Roma İmparatorluğu),[15] and known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire[16] or simply Turkey,[note 8][18]

The reference seems to be a single article called "Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400-1750: Cavalry, Guns, Government and Ships". I know the Ottmans referred to themselves as Rumi at one point, but is there any truth to this claim?

Hey guys - I think everything is in the title. I want to learn more about changes in the legal system during that period, and I’d love some book suggestions.

I hope everyone is well and staying safe. Excited to get stuck in to some suggestions.

Thanks

This question is quite simple. How even was the Finnish civil war? Was a red victory possible or was white victory more or less guaranteed from the offset?

It seems in many movies/TV shows books etc, kings have dedicated guards protecting them. Did this happen in history? Were the guards well trained?

Would it be realistic in that time for an entire family, and most people they know, to have fallen victim? I’m curious after following up with a show. Many fans are defending it by saying that rape happened all the time. I believe there was a similar argument after S5 Game of Thrones aired?

Thank you.

If I was to dock a trading ship in Western Europe (let's say France to be specific) in the late 1000s, what kind of buildings would I expect to see/visit?