Franconia has a distinct culture and dialect, so why are similar groups like the Hessians and Thuringians represented by federal states while Franconia is part of other states?

Basically i'm asking, why did people who considered themselves roman at the fall of the WRE come to see themselves as French, Spanish, or Italian? This is in contrast to how the Turks, Persians or Greeks kept their ethnic identities despite fracturing and political upheaval. For that matter, why did "Greek" survive as an identity and "Roman" didn't?

This may seem like a really stupid ass question but I'm kinda wondering.

How do we know that anything far into the past actually happened? Like for example, certain small battles of the Civil War which happened like 160 years ago, how do we know specific details of certain battles or altercations? How do we know the death tolls and stuff like that when it happened such a long time ago? Was there actually a reputable person keeping count of the deaths?

And let's go even further. If you take the "Three Kingdoms War" according to Wikipedia 36-40 million people died and it took place in the years 184-280. How can we ever know that this many people died or even give an accurate estimate? How can we even write an entire Wikipedia article on something that happened 1739 years ago? The only thing standing after 1700 years would be an extremely small and broken artifact and that's it, how can we extrapolate that an entire war with 36-40 million estimated casualties occurred between two dynasties in China from this?

It doesn't even have to be wars, you can take something like the Shaanxi Earthquake that happened in 1556 (463 years ago). According to the Wikipedia, it lists the cities where buildings were lightly damaged and a region of 840 km was completely destroyed. How can we know this for sure? Did someone in Beijing write "Earthquake occured on so-and-so date, light damage, etc" and we recovered this writing or do we base it on something else?

I recently finished her book The Princes in the Tower and was really frustrated by the fact that it contains absolutely no footnotes (though it does contain a lengthy list of works consulted). Some of the things that she presents as absolute fact strike me as wildly specious and without notes to point to what she's using as a specific source for a specific piece of information it's difficult to differentiate between what's actually backed up by evidence and what's just speculation on her part.

Is this common in her non-fiction work (I've never read anything she's written before this)?

Isn't it considered bad practice in this type of non-fiction to not cite your sources when presenting something as a fact?

Has there been any attempt to rename what was probably the first truly global conflict as World War 1? Given the nature of conflicts receiving different names relative to the belligerents, it seems like a potentially lucrative move by scholars or politicians.

My understanding is that while older historiography of the period was a narrative of discontinuity in which invading barbarian foedorati seized control of Western Europe from the increasingly decentralizing Western Roman Empire via elite replacement and replaced Roman culture and institutions with their own, more recent historiography emphasizes a narrative of continuity in which Roman provincial elites invited foederati and hired mercenaries from the frontiers to help defend them after the Empire withdrew its military support, with the Roman elites adopting martial practices both to try to maintain their monopolies on violence and to gain legitimacy as warrior-aristocrats. These elites maintained much of the symbols, culture, etc. of the former Western Roman Empire when such institutions were thought highly of but slowly abandoned them as they lost their legitimacy for more of the trappings of a warrior aristocracy. Archaeology and genetic evidence continues to revise down the size of the so called barbian invasions, which has made wholesale replacement or conquest narratives ever more unlikely compared to those emphasizing transofrmation and accomodation.

In this new narrative of transformation of Western Europe, to what extent did the foederati and hired mercenaries actually become part of the elite as opposed to the Roman elite just eventually turning into warrior-aristocrats culminating much later on in the nobility and royalty of the High and Late Medieval periods? Did many of the secular institutions of the Western Roman Empire used by these elites stick with them as they turned into the medieval nobility?

I’ve heard people comment that the Korean War was a civil war, but I don’t believe it. North Korea and South Korea became their own nation in 1948. Meaning that when North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, it couldn’t have been a civil war because two separate nations were attacking each other.

I’m willing to accept that my stance on this is wrong, but can someone provide an explanation as to whether or not this was a civil war.

My impression of the Great Purge is that most of what the people "confessed" to with regard to Trotsky was mostly bogus; Trotsky had no contact with these people, and he had no network of spies and saboteurs in the Soviet Union. HOI4 plays this a little differently, obviously. I was just wondering, did Trotsky actually have a base of support in the Soviet Union, and how likely or not is it that he would have been able to overthrow Stalin?

I’m currently reading Dan Jones’ Hollow Crown which tells the story of the Wars of the Roses in 15th century England. The book goes into quite a lot of detail on which lords raised armies and how they participated in the conflict. When did English lords move away from these warlike practices and transition into the landed gentry with no military power?

So if you go to any of the old stone churches why were they all so dark? Even the windows were stained glass.

What was the opinion of people who lived in the Roman provinces concerning the central government in Rome (the emperor + his bureaucracy)?

Were there provinces that generally were more loyal to the government? Some more rebellious? How did the views differ between local elites and the commoners?

Hi, I though I’d ask- I have some guesses about Scandinavian Lucia traditions but wondered if you all have more information. St. Lucia is Dec 13, the solstice on the “old” calendar, and I’m curious how much may have been straight up co-opted by Christian missionaries. Specifically thinking about Lucy cats and other traditionally shaped pastries- this makes me think it’s a prior or maybe a covert celebration of Freya: solar, light, cats, hair, necklaces are all symbols I’ve seen in old drawings of possible Lucy-bun shapes. Any sources or information you have would be appreciated!!

The contact could have been as little as a few stranded people and animals reaching miraculously the South American shores, it could have been regular trade with the two peoples aware of each other and their geographies, maybe even diplomatic missions, or anything in between, can we say with any confidence the degree of this contact?

What exactly was a prisoner’s day to day schedule at a concentration camp? Why did they have them work and what labor were the doing?

Also, what were some of the experiments they were doing to prisoners and why?

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the Merovingian Age like it was complete chaos and everyone was filthy and miserable. While I know that this is a misconception, I haven’t found many good sources on life in this time period. I’ve seen the jewelry of Merovingian nobles and royals, however, and it points to at least a few people having a great deal of wealth. What would life be like for a member of the Merovingian upper class? What was served at banquets? What fashion was popular at the time? Did the nobles live in villas like the Romans?

Sorry if the question sounds a bit clunky but I couldn't think of a better way to word it, but I seem to rember hearing this but I can't find a source. It seems to make sense to me as they'd probably do most of their fighting on the continent and getting lots of horses on to boats to get them across the channel could be difficult.

What was their lifestyle like? What types of houses did they live in, and did they live alone or in groups? Were they hunter gatherers or farmers?

I know of Operation Unthinkable but it was unrealistic and there is a good chance the Soviets knew of the plan beforehand.