*What makes these 16 so noteworthy? I doubt they were the /only/ polities in India at this time period, so what makes them so apparently special?

*Are the 16 Mahajanapadas useful to modern historians/historiography?

*Notably, the 16 kingdoms are mostly limited to north India. What was the situation like in the south?

I am reading a brief summary of the life of the Prophet Muhammad of Islam, and one thing that immediately struck me was that in Mecca, early Muslims were persecuted and driven out (with an assassination even attempted against Muhammad), while in Medina Muslims were welcomed and overall much more receptive to the new religion.

Do historians know enough about the culture, society, and economies of both cities to guess as to why there was such a different response to the same message?

When the draft happened during the World Wars, did they pull people out of jail to go fight as well, if they had a lesser offense?

Is there anyone here that is really good at reading roll calls for Confederate soldiers and knowing what it means?

I’m also interested in how Catherine the Great built the embankments on the Neva River in Saint Petersburg

Blunders by senior leadership e.g. Archduke Charles? Incomplete reform of the Austrian army? Was attacking the French just a bad idea in the first place from a material perspective? Was it just an extraordinary run of bad luck?

I just finished watching the first part of the Chernobyl mini-series on HBO. In the movie, there's a scene where they show people were spectating the explosion, dancing in the fallout, picking up pieces of radiated materials, etc. They show that many people did not see it as dangerous at all. I could not believe that in the mid 80s (a good ~40 years after the atomic bomb), it wouldn't be well known that this is a dangerous situation and that radiation is destructive to every living thing around it. Especially since nukes were a huge danger to both sides of the cold war... I don't know this myself but I imagine that the Soviets would have some sort of educational material about what to do if an American nuke hit (like we had for theirs). Did they think radiation from a power plant was fine but radiation from an American nuke would be dangerous?

There was a lot in the movie about the Soviets wanting to cover up the disaster. But did they also downplay how dangerous radiation is beforehand, to the engineers working there and the people living in town? Even many of the engineers in the movie seemed surprised by how destructive it was.

Is this due to them genuinely not knowing better/lacking the education, or was there a purposeful effort to mislead people on the potential dangers of living near/working with radiation? Or were people actually aware and this is in the movie for drama?

So I was having a little debate earlier with an American friend about whether or not the American war of independence was primarily just a separatist movement or whether it also included strong elements of fundamental systematic class struggle.

From what I've seen it strikes me that things like the tea tax would have primarily affected the wealthier American colonials. The Stamp tax also seeming to be likely to primarily effect more middle and upper class type markets and businesses, most obviously things like newspapers thus motivating newspapers. Thus drumming up a lot of bad feeling among those likely to be reading such newspapers that would inevitably be predisposed to producing articles criticizing a tax that effected their business. I understand that the number of people working as tenant farmers was much lower in the 13 colonies at the time but at the same the number of agricultural slaves in the south was much higher than in Great Britain itself and this doesn’t seem to have been an issue of actual contention.
So if I were to be a little cynical I’d suggest that much the American War of Independence was basically driven by American and British elites vying for control and their own interests. Is there anything to my argument or am I just pulling this out of my ass.

And how true is that stereotype?

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I’ve seen in game of thrones how the ravens were so efficient and in war movies where pigeons deliver through battle. But how are they taught to be so accurate

While many films and other media portray North America as a "wilderness" when the first colonists arrive...is that true? The continent was populated by hundreds of thousands of Native American groups, with some large conurbations like Cahokia in the midwest and many other mound-based settlements involving large earthworks. Many of these groups farmed as well as hunted, which suggests (to me at least) that they would have cleared fields. Did the colonists take advantage of this native infrastructure?

There seems to be a reasnoble concensus view among historians that the two big failings of the German war effort were the Battle of Britain and operation Barbarosa, but also that there was very little the Germans could have done in military terms to change the outcome.

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So my question is, after the battle of France and given the Nazi's leadership aim of defeating the Soviet Union, were there any other 'grand strategy' decisions that could have changed the outcome?

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For example if they had NOT Blitzed London, would the British have had trouble keeping anti German Morale up at home? Could Churchill have lost power?

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And in the east, if the Germans had come as liberators (Ukrainians hated the Russians for example), was it concievable that they could have actually defeated Stalin?

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Ty for any information

I am currently reading the Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, which is a translation of the account of Cabeza de Vaca’s voyage through North America.

It is super interesting, but what I would really like is to read the translation of Comentarios, which is his account of his epic voyage in South America. I am not finding anything in English, at least nothing I can get my hands on. My Spanish is not so good, but if there is a “modern language” version in Spanish, I could also give it a try.

I noticed in the latest Game of Thrones episode they used the common trope of generals planning a battle by standing around a big map on top of a table pushing miniatures around.

I'm not aware of this having happened in my own flaired time & place, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Does anybody know if they ever actually did do this? While well outside the middle ages, I'll take answers including anything up to the 17th century, and perhaps anything before the middle ages would be ok too.

Hi, I'm interested about the Nazis and how could someone or some political party cease them so they can't win the elections of the 32'. I will appreciate so much your help!

A) How would large light cruisers (like Belfast, Cleveland, etc) fare against heavy cruisers of a comparable era?

B) If it was forced to do so, how would a cruiser fight a battleship?