Broad questions

There were merchant republics, how come these city states could hold off being taken over by large empires?

I do realize their power could be large in some examples like Venice, but then the question is why these did not expand by land if they did wield so much military power.

How did the power play look specifically if it was the case of the kingdoms rather having these city states independent? Sounds like good political intrigues lasting hundreds of years.

The European Barbarian trope, shirtless, long-haired with blood and paint on his body while shouting in anger is very common.

They also live in little huts of wood, in the face of the great structures of the Romans.

In fact, it's almost the only way people see the Gauls (unless they read Asterix) or early almost all Barbarians, maybe with the exception of Germanic tribes of the late empire.

Does history show another face ? Or is this trope mainly true ?

I know the Gallic Wars and maybe Brennus will come forward as examples, but I'm interested in the trope vs the historical data that expert may have.

Were they generally in favor of him at the time?(until his subsequent military failures) or did they disapprove of an emperor altogether?

So I vaguely remember a scene from a Tom Hanks film where they discuss a meeting in Constantinople (I think) where a bunch of folks got together and essentially kicked out books for being canon. Did this really happen? Any reason for the books (overarching themes, ideologies or otherwise) that were removed and are any of them available to be studied today?

When two medieval armies clashed, what happened to the fallen? Would the victors send the bodies back home? Would they just mass grave everyone? Or was it dependent on where and who was fighting?

Hi. Where should I look to find specific details regarding a Vought Kingfisher that was shot down over Okinawa on June 16th? Particularly interested in the fate of the crew.

Hello, I'm doing a Government project on the history of campaign finance and I was wondering if there was a term for this concept I've noticed, for example;

Presidents become president through the loopholes in campaign finance laws, so therefore they will not change those laws once in power because that's how they a) initially got into office and b) can be reelected into office.

I noticed this concept initially with Theodore Roosevelt.

Is there a title of this concept? Thank you, hopefully this post is relevant to this subreddit.

I'm curious how many American soldiers were defending the island of Midway when the battle for Midway started in World War 2, also how many Japanese were attacking? If you could also say something about the equipment of each side and defense/offense capabilities, training, battle experience and likely outcome of a amphibious operation against the island that would be great as well.

I've listened to the History of Rome, and the History of Byzantium, and I still need some help to wrap my head around the concept.

My question is threefold:

1. When did the city of Rome stop being important to the Roman Empire, and, therefore, its ability to call itself the "Roman Empire"? I.e. When did the people decide that they were "Roman" whether or not their centre was actually the city of Rome, and therefore their identity became more to do with who they were rather than where they or their government lived?

2. Why did the Eastern Roman Empire still consider itself to be the "Roman" Empire after the West fell and, especially, after Rome itself was no longer part of its territory? By that, I mean why didn't it call itself the "Byzantine Empire" or the "Constantinopolitan Empire" ?

3. Robin kind of touched on this in his History podcast, but regardless of whether or not the Eastern Empire considered itself to be Roman right up until 1453, was it truly Roman? If so, how could it be Roman in the same sense that they Western Empire was? If not, at what point between the formation of the Eastern Empire and the collapse of the Western Empire did the Eastern Empire stop being truly "Roman"?

Commonly known history states that after the fall of the Roman Empire fell Western Europe went into a backwards period of the dark ages not fully recovering until the renaissance. If so how was this Roman knowledge lost from the West for so long? Or is this understanding of history wrong?

My question is twofold:

1. Was war always something that was, at least rhetorically, described as being intrinsically undesirable, and as such, was treated with reluctance, spoken of as a last resort and self defense, and such? Or was war and conflict once something that was widely considered "good" or "glorious" and a goal in itself?

2. If there was a shift from war as "desirable" to "undesirable", when did this shift occur, how, and why?

I am here mostly concerned with the outwards rhetoric surrounding war spoken by those in favor of it, rather than the inwards opinion to it from those same persons.

One concrete example I recall from a constitutional law class I took in college was that Lincoln used his executive authority to shut down seditious Southern papers in the Civil War. Were the limitations on government ability to suppress free speech ever extended to the executive branch through the Supreme Court?

The murder of 1.5-3 million people under the Khmer Rouge is mind-boggling to me. Given that every single person involved with the basic levels of the regime would themselves very likely have family members at risk or already dead, how did the bureaucracy, military, and economy even function? Was it simply forced, or who did they recruit?

I'm wondering if Native Americans had any sense of a collective, common identity to one another and if so, if they had a name for themselves as a people or for the land they inhabited that would be more appropriate than the European name imposed on them.

From 1945-49 the US had a four year window during which I would think the entire world understood they were the de facto military authority in the world. Nuclear weapons represented a quantum leap in force and in theory the US could exert their will wherever they wished. Did their foreign policy reflect this attitude? Did they act to try to prevent other countries from getting the bomb? What leverage did the Soviets have that caused things like the division of Germany? Did the US want to return to isolationism and not become the enforcer of liberal democracies?