When looking at the British Raj one can see that they not only controlled India but also Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Why didn't they also controll Nepal and Bhutan which would be easy to conquer?

The Total War series of video games are obviously designed to be fun and accessible to players. Nevertheless, all of the entries in the series, specifically in this case Rome 2, portray battles as taking place between formations of soldiers on wide open battle fields.

Whether a Roman cohort or Gothic swordsman, soldiers exist in units which move and fight in generic rectangular formations. Battles are localised to a small area with the whole army engaging within short distance of each other.

I understand that this is a simplified portrayal for the sake of gameplay and technical limitations, but just how far removed is this? For example, would a Gallic (sp?) “army” really draw up in complex formations against a Roman legion? Would it be a local affair, or would battles take place across a much larger geographical area, like in more recent times?

I really want to try and imagine what these engagements would look like.

If anyone knows how this worked in other communist countries I'd be interested in that too

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The number 12 seems to be an important number in many spiritualities: Ancient Greek mythology, Norse Mythology, Buddhism, and Judaism just to name a few. Is the number of disciples just a coincidence, or did Jesus really have 12?

A while ago I remember reading somewhere about how the Geneva convention laid out ground-rules not allowing counteries to take ownership of civilian life during war.

Not quite sure how they addressed it, I might be mistaken and it wasn't the Geneva convention at all.

I'm looking for an international rule/law which addresses usage of civilian life during war.

I'm researching how the defeat at Stalingrad changed the way in which propaganda was implemented in Germany, and was wondering especially how the image of both Hitler and the German folk changed. If the propaganda before 1943 was about the unification of the folk, did it then become about the survival of the German/Nazi ideals against Bolshevism? Thank you

I'm not sure if I worded this correctly. To my understanding (and I am VERY bad with Roman history) the late Roman period with the East and West Empires saw many "barbarian" tribes use longer swords which are "kinda" a precursor to medieval long swords. So these weapons were around during the Roman's time (for simplicity I'm talking about the two empires before the Western empire fell, so not talking about medieval Byzantium). I understand the Romans were very organised and had a set way of doing things and their short Roman swords worked well, but was the long sword ever implement? Why wasn't it more widely used in the empires yet in the dark ages it became the norm?

This was posted originally on r/history, but I hope I'm in the right place this time.

My husband and I are going to Athens for our honeymoon in less than 2 weeks. We love going to historical sites, but as neither of us recalls much from our history classes, a refresher would be very helpful. Does anyone know of a good book, podcast, or video series that might help guide our trip?

Some scholars have proposed the idea that use of stimulants such as pervitin (methamphetamine) or other drugs like alcohol may have been responsible for war crimes committed by soldiers on the ground. On the eastern front it’s clear that the conflict between fascism and communism was an existential struggle and heinous acts were often supported by the higher ups. Another example is in kamikaze pilots who were also given methamphetamine before their suicide attacks. But apart from “sanctioned” war crimes is there any cases where atrocities were committed by soldiers clearly under the influence or was drug use so prevalent it’s impossible to discern the cause?

Rather morbid I know, but I've wondered for a while what (if any) advancements in medical related things (understand of diseases, disorders, treatments etc.) were made due to the human experiments conducted by the Nazi's at concentration camps

I'm aware that torture was sometimes required for legal trials. How did it work? Both legally (what were the circumstances) and in terms of what kind of torture?

As a related question, how long did this law continue?

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This comes up in language games quite often in modern Mandarin, but seems to have largely disappeared from modern English verse. I know such linguistic trends come and go, but knowing relatively little about English, I was hoping to learn more about the apparent trend.

The spread of the Napoleonic legal code throughout Europe was tied to Napoleon's military victories. After Napoleon was defeated, why wasn't his legal code rescinded by the victors, both in France and in the other countries of Europe?

In say 50 bc they wouldn’t have called it 50bc. That was decided later. So what calendar year system was used? What year or équivalant frame of time would they have used in place of 50 bc?

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There is a commonly debated myth about Erwin Rommel-that he was simply an apolitical and brilliant commander. I've researched this myself and only got more contradictory information. My question is to ask, once and for all: was Rommel a supporter of the Nazis or just a German nationalist?

Every show uses brass horns and airy flutes, but is that what things actually sound like or is it just Hollywood inventing things?