So I've always enjoyed history but I have not done much reading about history since my freshman level US history courses in college nearly 20 years ago. I've read a handful of WW2 books and a couple presidential biographies, otherwise most of my reading is other non fiction genres amd fiction.

I made one of my reading goals for 2019 to start digging into history for fun but I have no idea where or how to start. One idea I had was maybe reading a broad survey history text (US, World, or European) and just sorting veering towards whatever interests me there.

Any thoughts on this idea? Do you think it is benefical to read a broad survey history book for persomal enrichment to get my feet wet or would my time be better served reading a broad history book written for general readers?

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Thanks!

2430 metres above sea level, technically a Citadel so easily defensible if it were discovered at all...It seemed like such a natural choice for the last surviving Inca to escape to yet it appears the thought never even crossed their minds.

In Elia Kazan's America America, the main character is in a small village in Ottoman Turkey dreaming of finding a way to America to escape persecution. Whether it's Turkey or Ireland or Austria-Hungary, people made the journey to the United States in search of a better life. But how would a peasant/serf/laborer learn of America as a place they could reasonably travel to and theoretically thrive? Through books? Newspapers? Simply orally told stories?

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Native American tribes had territory but I can’t seem to find information on how the population was spread over the territory. Did they have one centralized area where everyone lived?(I doubt) Or did they have a sort of capital area with satellite settlements spread over the territory?

If the Dutch government surrendered to the Germans in 1940 why wasn’t the Dutch East Indies simply up for grabs? Couldn’t the Japanese have worked something out with the Germans to annex The Netherlands’ pacific holdings as part of their Axis pact? I’m just curious why the Japanese let a territory abandoned by an occupied government just sit there until after they had already declared war on the U.S. They could’ve solved their oil shortage years before it even became an issue.

I've been meaning to get access to his genealogy research (He is required to maintain those by the Japanese government since he is technically a Japanese citizen), but he has told me on several occasions that during the feudal period, our family's male line were small-time samurai working small plots of land in the countryside (historically the most I know at the moment is that we have always been from the Hiroshima region). He told me he had learned much of this while he was more or less deported-in-exile to Japan from Canada during World War II, but he hasn't really provided me with the better specifics of historicity which would help me ask (and help you answer) this question. I'm currently bugging him since I know he has a giant-ass folder in his office so I'll have to ask if I can look at it when I visit him.

I have just watched Son of Saul and was wondering if there exists any number of how many people that escaped concentration camps? How did they manage to escape? Where there riots like the one in the movie?

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Hi all! I'm a fairly casual reader of Southeast Asian history, and I'm always on the lookout for detailed sources on the Indonesian National Revolution. My understanding of the 1949-1950 period is fairly barebones - it seems to me that the NICA/AMACAB had been organising community leaders from the non-Republican-held regions of Indonesia to form a series of small regional protectorates. What was the Dutch motivation behind this decision, and was the Republican side justified in its suspicion that it was meant to weaken the fledgling Indonesian state? Did the populations of the federal states generally support their integration with the Republic? And how did the transition itself go? Was it peaceful, or did it involve any forceful takeover?

I know this might sound stupid but this is my first post,when a soldier got trench foot did they still fight or did they go home or sit the battle out

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Hi everyone,

I'm starting a course about Indigenous self-determination in Canada and I am curious about the concept of decolonization. Frankly, I don't know a whole lot about the movement/push by some for the decolonization of Canada and abroad, but I would like to understand more.

Firstly, what exactly does(/n't) decolonization entail from a theoretical standpoint? Second, what are the desires of groups wanting decolonization in Canada/US, and how realistic are their goals? Thirdly, has there been any significant "progress" in this respect in recent years?

Thank you and I look forward to hearing some inspiring replies.

This whole relationship of Central Asian groups throughout history and the lack of sources just perplexes me, and the relationship they share is dauntingly complex. To my knowledge, the Bulgars are a cousin group to the Turks, yet speak a Slavic language. There is also the oft mentioned Turco Mongol tradition of Central Asia, and obvious cultural ties, but they are classified as distinct groups. Were they once one group in the past or were they always separate and simply diffused culture significantly? And how do the Huns, Hungarians, and Xiongnu fit into all this, as I've heard they were one people, three completely separate people, or distant cousins?

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EDIT: This is just an add on I thought of later, as I recently recalled as well the Tartar people, along with the distinct Tatar people, and the geographic regions of modern day Tatarstan in Russia, Great Tartary, and Chinese Tartary. To my knowledge, the Tatars and Tartars are distinct classifications, and the Tatars of Russia and Ukraine are Turkic. How they relate to the Tartars, I don't know, and I have also read that the Tartars were a Mongolic people, but also Turkic in different sources. Then there's the Manchus, the native people of Manchuria in North Eastern China, whom I see often thrown into all this as part of Chinese Tartary.