As the title says, I'm looking to get a feel for the timeline and culture of Japan during the Age of the Samurai, with a bit of a focus on the Warring States period. I hope to not only come away with an overview of events, but a real sense of what living in the time would be like for different individuals as well. A nice bonus would be characterizations of major figures during the time. Are there any podcasts that cover this well?

The more I read about US intelligence specifically before Pearl harbor, authors tend to fall into two camps.

Those like Wohlstetter state that we had enough intelligence to conclude of an attack, and it was improper analysis or underestimating by our national leaders.

Other view that the US didn't throw well enough resources and funding to properly find out about the attack beforehand.

So what exactly was the cause for the US being surprised by the Attack on pearl harbor?

Why is it that Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary in their time were able to take the throne, but after King George III, they skipped his daughters and only had his sons take the throne until Queen Victoria began her reign?

He found it while squirrel hunting in western NC after he tripped over it under a thick layer of plants. He claims to see carvings (Which I myself have seen), of trees and a Cheif. A couple months ago we called the museum in Cherokee to ask if we could possibly have it appraised, they responded saying that we can stop by there to let a professional take a look but we have yet to do so. I would like to see if anyone may know the origin of this and if there actually could be carvings. I'll post the picture in comments

A cursory read on Wikipedia about the New Model Army of Cromwellian England indicated that soldiers within the New Model Armys ranks would "draw lots to decide who would go on the expedition" as "as Ireland had a bad reputation amongst English soldiers" (from the Wikipedia page). I was hoping that someone here could shed light on if there are any actual accounts of New Model Army soldiers or officers commenting on Ireland being less desirable to fight in than elsewhere.

The First battle of the Piave river happened during the rout of the italian army after the austrian offensive of Caporetto, and what was left of the army, retreated behind the Piave line, managed to stop the austrian offensive and avoid the capture of Venice. But I've noticed that, contrary to the italian historiography, there is a lack of english sources or a downplay of this event, almost like this was just a minor skirmish.

Why wasn't the Indian subcontinent turned into multiple different countries like the Middle East and Africa?

Am I right in assuming when Britain and France carved up their colonies they separated people of the same ethnicity to make sure that they wouldn't overtake them?

So if places like Arabia were split into multiple different countries, Kurds not given a nation, many African ethnic groups split up ETC

So how come India became just 3 nations (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) when all the ethnic groups, languages and religions are so diverse? They could have made at least 10 large nations out of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In the UK, South Asians identify with the Ethnicity (Balochi, Punjabi/Sikh, Bengali, Tamil, Sindhi, Anglo-Indian, Marathi, Hindi ETC) more than nationality (Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian ETC). Surely it would be the same in India?

What caused India to be united whilst Arabia, Africa, Kurdistan ETC were not?

Particularly from non-penetrating hits or explosions. Could little flakes of steel chipped off the inside walls be enough to seriously injure crew or disable the tank?

I'm a high school teacher. A student of mine is writing a paper arguing that the "standard narrative" of women in the workplace -- that the labor needs of WWII brought women in and changed cultural mores about their participation -- overlooks the experiences of black women, who had been working outside the home in large numbers since Reconstruction.

She'd like to talk about the problem of "normalizing" the experiences of white women, by which she means assuming that white experience is the "default" or "normal" experience, such that the story of white women becomes in popular understanding the story of women as a whole. I am trying to help her by locating sources that will discuss that issue, but I don't know where to look, and "normalize" doesn't seem to be the right term for this sort of discussion.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I mainly ask this about Alexander the Great. I find him fascinating but find it hard to reconcile the amount of death he caused. Are historical figures only viewed in the context of their times? Is it bad history to apply modern morals to ancient peoples?

As the pretty green letters next to my name suggest, I know a fair bit about the Roman army. Recently, I've been trying to expand that knowledge a bit onwards and upwards, so to say, and started to read Eric McGreer's Sowing the Dragon's Teeth, a rather excellent work that combines translations of some 10th century Byzantine military manuals with quite a bit of analysis.

One thing that surprised me as I read the first manual —emperor Nikephoros Phokas' text known nowadays as the Praecepta Militaria — is the instruction for the cataphract charge.

The text states quite clearly that these extremely heavily armoured cavalry are supposed to form up into a blunt nosed wedge formation and

move in proper formation at a trotting pace and smash into the position of the enemy commander

Was that normal in Byzantine warfare? Do other sources confirm this, and do modern historians believe their testimony?

From what I understand, the roman generals needed to conquer land in order to satisfy their army with bounty and land whilst they needed the army to gain power within the empire. However, what I don't understand is why Rome conquered so much land when they we're still a republic, or why they even begun to expand to begin with?

When you're in history class and you learn about these things it seems so obvious that they were bound to end badly. In hindsight it seems obvious that the powder keg in WWI was going to explode and that Hitler in WWII wasn't going to just stop invading countries, and the temptation is to think "how did people not see that coming," but obviously that's very different when you're living through it. So did they see it coming? Obviously not every single person thought the same thing but was there a general sense that something really bad was about to happen or did they just think it was business as usual? The reason I am asking this question is in relation to people saying now that we're on the brink of WWIII. I'm not asking anybody to discuss, support, or deny this, but when I responded to a friend of mine that I don't actually think that's going to happen, he responded "that's what they said in 1913." So I was wondering if that was really the case. These are the two most recent cases of mass destruction so did people see the tensions and events as separate one-offs that would eventually resolve themselves or did they realize that the world was on the brink of disaster?

And the same question about the gays/jehovas witnesses etc with their own versions

In terms of casualties, disease, living conditions, etc, how did the two fronts compare? I understand that this is a broad question, and I'm more looking for a starting point for my own research.

I hear about a lot of Cuban food and hear about it from a few friends who have visited, but fish never comes up very prominently. Considering it's a large island in the Caribbean, I'd expect the exact opposite. Is there a reason fish doesn't seem to be a big part of Cuban cuisine?

I imagine the cities of today "evolved" from old cities (some colonial, some medieval, etc), but what I'm wondering is why a lot of those cities don't have walls around them. As far as I understand it, a lot of big cities had walls around them, did humans take the time to take the walls off for some reason? Or are walled cities just a fantasy trope that never happened? I get that in America, a lot of cities just had wooden fences instead of huge stone walls, and also that small towns and villages didn't have walls, but it really weirds me out that there's (that I know of) not many cities with walls around them except for maybe places like Briançon or Gardaïa.