Were they more experienced? Better trained? Did they have better equipment or were they much more numerous?

Maybe this is just faulty memory from back when I was in school but I remember learning about Christopher Columbus "discovering" America. Then the puritans came and settled in America. Then the revolutionary War happened. Obviously there are centuries between these events and I got to wondering what exactly happened to the puritans between them settling in America and the revolutionary war? Were they still around during the war? Did they participate in it? Or by that point had they faded to history and if so what happened to them?

The UK produced multiple developed and rich nations like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I'm also aware of India and Pakistan.

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But Spain does not have any rich "children" and to this day it is the only spanish speaking country that is also a developed nation. What did Spain do wrong that the UK did right?

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I'm not taking into account other british colonies, I know not all ended up rich. But I ams asking why none of the spanish colonies ended up developed but some UK colonies ended up rich

I was thinking like a blacksmith in rural France, Germany, England, etc in 1200. Were they constantly having to produce new tools and repair old ones?

Did they have busy work forging together old scrap for fresh stock or making objects for the market?

Did they take saint days off?

Currently reading In The Name Of Rome by Adrian Goldsworth and he mentions that in August 216 BC nearly 50,000 Roman soldiers were killed or captured near Cannae. But that Hannibal didn't march against Rome, which the Romans never understood. The book never goes into why Hannibal chose not to do this (which allowed the Romans to rebuild their strength). So why didn't Hannibal do this? And what would have been the long term result if he did?

Often in my reading around the Haudenosaunee and related peoples I come across the word 'adopted' in regards to survivors of tribes that have been defeated to the point of breaking apart. To one part of my mind this sounds suspiciously like a twee euphemism for (at best) forced assimilation. How skeptical should someone be of that word? Is there something to it or is just it describing the oldest way of war filtered through _noble savage_ condescension?

Basically... how do we know someone didn't make it up, all of it or parts of it, a thousand years after Tacitus died?

This question spawns from a silly reddit debate in which the age of the oldest known manuscript of the Annals is being used as the entire reason we should doubt such a document is authentic. The argument goes since we cannot claim as 100% fact that the manuscript was not altered or even wholly made up, it cannot be used as a source.

Since a giant chunk of historical records we currently have are copies of older texts, how do historians know what should or should not be treated as authentic?

This might be a stupid question but there we go.

Whenever someone explains to me WWII, they always go on about Germany/URSS invading Poland and then the rest of the countries joining the war little by little until everybody is fighting each other to win more territory. However, when I was little I always saw people and movies talking about the Holocaust as if that was the main cause of conflict between countries, and the think they fixated on. I understand now it was done because it was a horrible hate crime with no precedents in all humanity history. However, this has given me a confusion knowledge on the importance the Holocaust had during the war.

My question is, therefore, why did the Nazi party start killing jews and gypsies on top of fighting other countries for territory: was it to keep their population happy because German’s hated Jews? Or is it non-related at all with the war and something that happened on “the side”?

I don’t understand the exact link between World War II as a whole with the Holocaust and the decision to exterminate Jews.

I was thinking about a time I visited the Copenhagen museum and saw ancient Viking swords. They were nothing spectacular. (Amazing, but not jewel encrusted or fancy or anything). Would this have been a weapon any Viking would have owned, or would a sword have only been available to the elite or given out to people during wartime?

Thank you! (And sorry for any inaccuracies with the word Viking and a lack of a time period)

Over the last 800 years, England has always had a foothold in Ireland aside for some very brief periods. Meanwhile, The Scots managed to keep the English at bay for much of the last 800 years even though they had the smaller population and had a land border with England. I would've thought that Ireland would be far easier to defend from the English since it is an Island.

Why did the Scots have more success than the Irish at keeping the English away?

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I’m really fascinated about ancient history, and this idea has interested me recently: a general going into politics. How battle would change their approach.

Specifically in Rome, how was it done?

I know the senate and army are closely linked, so If my question is poorly worded, my apologies.

In my limited historical religious schooling, I was lead to believe that each society and civilization had their own form of religion where many were based off each other but still had their own identity that, that specific culture would follow and be known for. For example, the Greek pantheon and their Roman counterparts. While the Romans based their gods and religious beliefs from the Greek pantheon, their version of religion was still unique to them.

As a former Christian, I recently became interested in understanding the Mesopatamian and Sumerian religions from an unbiased point-of-view and how different they were from the Hebrew religion. During that search, I read and remembered from the Bible, that the Egyptians believed in the same pantheon as the Ugarit and worshipped the Baalim that the Canaanites did. And this is where I became puzzled.

I was led to believe that the Egyptians had their own religion revolving around their own pantheon of gods that included Osiris, Thoth, Re, and etc. Which, influenced and shaped their culture and were not the same gods of the Ugaritic pantheon. So, I guess my question is, if Egpyt was not considered part of Mesopotamia then how and why did they worship the same gods? And additionally, if they did believe in the Ugaritic religion when and why did they change to the Egyptian pantheon that we recognize today? How can a civilization go from firmly believing one religion to completely abandoning it and creating their own, unless their gods are representative of the ones from the Ugarit like the Romans did with the Greek? Or, did the Egyptian pantheon came first and at some points in history they switched between believing in their own pantheon and adopting the Ugaritic one then switched back? That seems like a drastic change for a civilization and their culture.

And now that I think about it, I don't remember the bible ever mentioning the Egyptian gods (or I am just forgetting and it actually did) so which Egyptian religion came first?

Not sure if this is better suited for the anthropology subreddit or not and long question, but I'd appreciate some insight. I am very curious as to the what, why, and how of this huge change for the Egyptian religion and culture. Also curious as to why this never mentioned when teaching Mesopotamian/Egyptian history.

Old English, Middle English, and Modern English all have threads of commonality through them, but how recognizable would the Conquistadore’s Spanish be to a modern Spanish speaker?

I've read in a number of places that around the time of the Persian Wars through to the rise of Macedon bronze and even linothorax(thoraces?) panoplies were discarded even by the wealthier Greek citizen soldiers in favor of a less cumbersome hoplon of a helmet, spear and aspis shield. How much truth is there to this? I've heard varying accounts, some, such as Donald Kagan, love to relish in how much better equipped Greek infantry was compared to the multi-ethnic invading Persians in lighter gear; according to him, this was key to their success in resisting them. If this was true, why would they ever give it up? To what extent did they actually give it up? What evidence do we have that attests to it? For example, would Xenophon's '10,000' mercenaries have been mostly bear-chested? How many of them can we guesstimate wore breastplates, or at least some form of thorax? We know they gave up some of their gear to lighten their load and fight ekdromoi style, does this suggest that many had opted to go full panoply in the first place?

I know about the development of 'ekdromoi' hoplites, who 'ekdrome' and can better adapt to situations outside the phalanx, I understand some of the reasoning... But can I get a detailed account as to what developments took place that would cause such a shift towards objectively inferior defense in favor of more maneuverability-- and to what extent this was true? It's all a bit confusing; how sweeping was this change, and when did it start to reverse? Pezhetairoi seem to often be depicted with linothoraxes, but is this accurate? I've often heard it said that the sarissa was actually the main form of defense for the Macedonian phalanx... Philip obviously would have been savvy to the latest trends in Greek war-fare, having grown up under Epaminondas and Pelopidas (excuse the pun), right? Did this situation continue into the Hellenistic period? Is too much perhaps made of this? Would wealthy eupatridae opt to march into battle bear-chested, even if they could afford a fabulous bronze bod, or a scaled linothorax? How major of a change was it, and what evidence do we have that armor was or was not important in this (admittedly rather long) period. It just seems like there are conflicting opinions, when you hear the popular 'Greeks reinvented heavy-infantry with the phalanx and their armor really helped them beat back the Persians' espoused by certain people, and then you also hear people frequently say 'most Greeks chose not to wear body armor in the classical period even if they could afford it'. How sure are we of any of this?

Bonus question: Was the linothorax linen or leather based? It seems like people are divided on whether it was linen or leather and I've heard convincing arguments both ways. If it was indeed linen, how much evidence do we have that leather was used for armor in the ancient mediterranean (again, have heard conflicting argumetns)?

For example, there were churches and priests. But did other aspects of Roman influence linger on?

I'm curious about this because I've seen it come up a few times in fiction, with both results. On Game of Thrones and Disenchantment (albeit the latter's a comedy) the implication seemed to be that the Regent still couldn't do anything against an explicit order from the King (ie Joffrey had Ned Stark executed against the Regent's wishes, and Odval was unable to have Bean executed without King Derek's guilty verdict).

On the flip side, Rome seemed to imply that no one took orders from an underaged King seriously (ie everyone just kind of ignored Ptolemy's ranting).

So, historically, could Regents overrule underaged monarchs? If not, then why bother with a Regent? Why not just let the advisors run all the stuff the King was too young to understand or care about?

I think that it's safe to assume that while the bulk of medieval people worked on the land, the idea that cities weren't important at all in these times is an exaggeration. That said, what were the medieval views on the subject of cities? I would guess that lords and kings saw the importance of having urban centers for trade and these sorts of things, but what were the philosophical views about cities? There's this sort of production in antiquity: City of God from Saint Augustine comes to mind. And there's a lot about the bucolic rural settlements from the romantic period across Europe. But I'm curious to know how medieval people saw their cities.