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I asked specifically about WWI because it was the next major war the US was in that involved mass conscription, but don't feel the need to exclude relevant data from previous conflicts.

EDIT: Just for clarification, I'm asking if these improvements, if any, can be linked to the NRA's efforts. In other words, was the NRA successful in its founding mission at the time?

I'm a filmmaker and I'm looking for a "road historian" for a script I'm working on. I would love to interview someone about specific and general questions about the paving of roads during the early 1900's (Specifically, the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916). If interested, I would also love for the person I interview to be a consultant so that we get much accurate for the film as possible. Feel free to comment or PM me if you are someone (or if you know someone) that could help.

It seems vital to Russian interest and they kept Austria succesfully out of NATO earlier. Was it that Moscow didn't have enough leverage? Did they even try? Was it too chaotic?

I put time zone in quotes because the phrase is a fairly modern interpretation.

I'm wondering if the Iberian Christian kingdoms ever publicly said anything against the crusades to try to divert them to Iberia, or expressed dissatisfction with troops being sent so far away. Or am I making a mistake thinking that the Levant was actually more difficult to reach for most of the participating armies than Iberia?

EDIT: Changed "less" to "more".

I am enrolling in two courses in the next academic season and am completely unfamiliar with the course content, where is the best place for me to start? Thanks!

I read an article recently discussing whether or not the US is headed into another Civil War. That made me think about the sources historians use to study the Civil War today, and whether the most useful kinds of sources, or type of information most helpful for historians in reconstructing events or time periods, may have changed due to technology, especially considering what seems like a glut of information in the internet age.

If historians 150+ years from now were studying the early 21st century, what information, in what format, would be most useful to leave behind for them?

Mods, I suspect this question might be too vague or future-oriented! I was worried about making it too specific to highly charged politics of the moment, when the main thing I’m interested in is what would be useful in the information we’re creating today for the purposes of studying history later on. As in, Twitter is very useful for me today in learning about something that happened across the world an hour ago, but would a historian prefer a journalist’s article a week later, or the comments on that article over the course of years afterward, or whatever the Wikipedia article eventually became after a decade, or a livejournal account from somebody in that location, or emails between informed, interested people sending each other links?

Please let me know if there’s a better subreddit for this question!

They stopped the Iroquois confederacy's expansion west and pushed them back into their homelands of New York State , they pushed very well known powerful tribes such as the Dakota , Arapaho , Cheyenne , Omaha , Sauk , Fox and others from their homelands in the Great Lakes region to the plains or west of the Mississippi.

They numbered at over 100,000 in the 1600s and 35,000 ( low est) in the 17-1800s due to Europeans diseases . It was said they had 25,000 warriors on stand by during the 18th and 19th centuries .

They held the largest amount of land by any indigenous group north of Mexico ( dwarfing the Aztec empires territory )

And they never lost an outright battle against a European nation or Americans .

And signed more than 150 treaties with France , the United States , Canada and the British. Which is by far more than anyone else

So I'm curious why tribes like the Lakota , Iroquois , Comanche etc get more press or fame when the Chippewa were clearly more successful than almost every other indigenous american nation .

And today they number at 330,000 + full blood or tribally enrolled people making them the 3rd biggest tribe in the United States and Canada combined , but if you add in mixed blood ( non tribally enrolled ) people that # skyrockets to about 800,000 people .

Or are there reasons why he didn’t do this? He was still flying at speed when his spitfire landed and that surely amplified the roughness of the landing.

I’ve read the canon works of Herodotus and Thucydides and can’t get enough, but my experience learning about Greek history in class largely cuts out after Thebes becomes the predominant power on the peninsula. I’m especially interested in the conquests of Macedon and the wars that followed as I’ve never quite understood them fully. Any recommended sources? If this question is against the rules please pm me as I am extremely curious

The book is Jay Caplan’s Postal Culture in Europe, 1500-1800. (p. 26 for the quote)

I've had to do some research about the Translation Movement in the 2nd and 3rd Caliphates, so I've had to punch up a lot of Greeks and their results always have their books with Latin titles instead of transliterated Greek ones.

Is this just a matter of tradition, since The Lads translated them in to Latin later to be disseminated in the West?

If we look at the classical era and certain time periods within it, you find great people that normally appear once every hundred years almost everywhere.

For example at the end of the Roman republic you had:

- Caesar

- Pompey the Great

- Cicero

- Cato

- Crassus

- Augustus (Emperor)

- Agrippa (General)

and around 350 bc in Greece you had:

- Demosthenes (Orator)

- Alexander the Great

- Philip II (Father of Alexander)

- Aristotle

- Plato

You would normally be lucky to just have one of these people in an era, but in those times they were everywhere.

Are these people shaped into success by the times they live in (chaos in the examples) or were they coincidentally all born around the same time?

Edit: Forgive the typo in my question, I’m still curious though :)

I'm a big fan of Mike Duncan's history of Rome podcast and have read a few other books on the Romans (secondary sources but of reasonable academic quality: now reading Polybius).

One theme that keeps coming up, especially for the Republic and early Empire, is the idea that the Romans had an unusual capacity to keep going after massive defeats: to not know if they were beaten. Including e.g. in the Samnite Wars, various points in the Punic Wars but especially after Cannae. Linked to this seems to be the idea (not always but often followed) that the only acceptable end to a war is the enemy 'losing' (preferably unconditional surrender, but at the very least until the late Empire they seem to have only really considered peace treaties after a major victory, not really in the aftermath of defeat, and the idea of 'Terminus' and that it's sacrilege to reduce Rome's boundaries (have only come across this last in Mike Duncan's podcast).

This makes a lot of sense to me as something that could make a real difference given the uncertainty and fortunes of war: if you just refuse to surrender when you seem to be clearly doomed, there's always a chance something will come up!

Linked quote from Polybius (book 1 section 37 Waterford translation) which identifies both positive and negative aspects: "Generally speaking the Romans rely on force for everything. They feel obliged to finish anything they start and regard nothing as impossible once they have made up their minds. This forward impetus often brings them success, but sometimes they conspicuously fail, and it is most likely to be at sea "

It's not clear to me if this was really a distinctive thing or is more part of Rome's self-mythology. If it is real, do we know why? Obviously traditionally people would have just said something about national character, but can we identify reasons for difference between Rome and others in terms of e.g.

- Resources: Rome seems to just keep raising more legions after being slaughtered in a way that others don't and I'm not sure if this means that the other combatants can't for economic/manpower reasons

- Citizen army and citizen identification with military success: e.g. Carthage relying on allies and mercenaries might mean that it runs out of money whereas Rome is drawing more on its own citizenry so their desire to win and thus willingness to fight matters more: in this sense Rome might have managed to act as a state how often factions only manage during intense revolution or civil war: notably Polybius mentions (Book 1 Section 72) in Carthage's mercenary war that when Carthage's allies rebelled the women of the city sold jewellery to contribute to the warchest etc whereas (Section 59) in the case of Rome the leading citizens funded ship-building for Rome itself with a mix of patriotism and the hope of reward in victory

- Political institutions and the incentives they create on the leadership: (this might suggest it was formed with Republican institutions and then persisted into the Empire through self-identity). E.g. did the one-year limit of the Consuls mean that nobody would surrender in* thei*r year? Notable that the Fabian strategy which somewhat conflicts with the 'brute force' approach required a dictator and even then was stopped by a population who wanted Rome to gloriously fight and win

- Military institutions: did the regular structure of legions etc. mean it was easier to just raise more men and fit them into the cookie-cutter whereas in Carthage armies were diverse and you needed to work out ways to combine the various troop types

- Other things???

So i recently learnt Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, which has got me wondering how and when Islam reached Indonesia?

I learned of a truce during the christmas of 1914, between the germans and the english at the wester front. I learned they burried their dead together, shared their food, gave gifts and even played a friendly game of soccer.

I then wonder, what was the day after the christmas truce like. They have shared what they had and were incredibly friendly with eachother, I can imagine that they would get to know eachother. I can imagine it to be a tremenous psychological difference as instead of firing at enemy strangers, they now have to fire at actual people who now have a name, a face and maybe even a story.

Are there any reports or journals talking about the day after the christmas truce?