I know this is probably a dumb question but I was wondering if there were any equivalents of diss tracks or songs written to target or insult other figures such as other artists, politicians, or leaders like we have currently ? I know there were books which often critiqued people or institutions but were there any songs that were used ? Stupid question I know just curious as to where the modern tradition of diss tracks came from and wondering if anything in the past can explain current times or the origins.

I'm having trouble finding information on the Japanese side of the cryptologists battle. Plenty of information about MAGIC, but none about similar Japanese efforts. What Allied Codes were they able to crack and exploit?

I've been reading Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur and some peripheral stuff on literary history, and it seems to me that Arthurian legend was developed in large part by the French in the 12th and 13th centuries, an era of seemingly constant wars between the two countries. Furthermore, the French influence on Arthurian legend can be seen in English works during and soon after the Hundred Years War. Why did the French embrace a body of work extolling the virtues and prowess of a hero-king of an opposing nation, and why did the English adopt the French adaptations into their own literary tradition when there would seem to be so much animosity between them?

Why did Napoleon conquer so many countries? Was it greed? Was it Because he needed to? Or something third?

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I've been reading up on political philosophy and the history of political ideology, but as an American, I simply don't have a good grounding in political or party thought and history in Great Britain, which makes it hard to know what being a Tory or Liberal or Whig meant 300 years ago, and so on.

As a qualifier, I understand that there are many native American cultures, each with their own foods, and I hope that this question isn't too broad. Please feel free to speak to your area of expertise.

I have read before about how the Colombian exchange changed the culinary landscape of the Old World, but I haven't had much exposure to the other way around (aside from the spread of "firewater"). European settlement would have brought with it a host of foodstuffs and cooking styles native to Eurasia over the Atlantic. As an example, I would assume that cheese was absent from the continent until European colonization. What European foods did the native cultures initially adopt and integrate into their diet? Were there attempts to cultivate any particular European plants, or to breed European livestock like cows and chickens? Did access to metal cutlery change their cooking techniques significantly?

Thank you in advance for any knowledge you could share!

So bear with me. I am no historian or history student, I just take great interest in the subject during my spare time. Thus, my question is : through the ages, Damnatio Memoriae was used as a form of punishment to completely erase the condemned person from History. In that case, how do archaeologists find out about said people and reconstitute the facts?

How did we come to unravel the (partial) truth about Commodus, Shepseskare, and other rulers that were "erased" from History?

It was Hitler's root philosophy to spread influence to the Germans about the glory of the superior Aryan race and he came at the right time when the German Empire was crumbled after the First World War and he wanted to bring back to its former glory and he did that (where he was actually democratically elected) by scapegoating the Jews by the wrongs of the world.

But why exactly? Why did Hitler hate Jews so much that he actually wanted to kill millions of them (and even target other minorities that are not Aryan like the Gemani, the Gypsies and so on)?

I heard that the Jews as scapegoats during that time in history similar to how the U.S. culture used to target the Muslims as terrorists for the evils of the world during the beginning of the 21th Century but I am not sure if that had an effect in Hitler's motivation of antisemitism.

EDIT ... Did other countries of the world actually believed and supported Hitler's antisemitism ideology as well?

While it still has fans, it seems that opera is, at least in America, not incredibly popular among the general public. Has opera's niche appeal always been the case, or did opera's popularity decline over time? Why did the art form lose its popularity if it did decline?

Generally, when talking about the big, liberal, bourgeois revolutions, people are talking about the string of conflicts between the American Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848 (like haiti, france, venezuela, greece etc).

I've never heard anyone refer to the English Civil War as being ideologically or politically similar to the French revolution - yet Marx seems to imply that it was. Was this a common train of thought in English historiography at the time? Is it a common train of thought now? Was Marx just not a very good historian or did the ECW actually have elements of the liberal revolutions we generally think of having started with the American one?

I'm interested in what laws governed firearms in the early United States including the late Colonial period (leading up to the Revolution), the Articles of Confederation era, and the period from the adoption of the Constitution through about 1820. Were firearms regulated? What did ordinary people think about firearm safety and laws? Would people be surprised about our modern regulations?

Thanks!

It seems that looking into the mythic and semi-mythic period of Roman history, all of the 'big events' incorporate sexual violence. Off the top of my head...

• The Founder Romulus, and his brother Remus = result of Ilia's rape by Mars
• Foundation of the city itself = heavily contingent on the abduction of the Sabine women.
• Foundation of the Republic = sparked by the rape of Lucretia
• Implementation of the Twelve Tables/Restablishment of the Republic = Virginia's father prevents her rape by a member of the Decemviri by stabbing her to death...

I might be missing some more I'm unaware of, but, well... it is hard not to see a pattern here, and given that these are far less than well-attested history, I suspect that there has to be deeper meaning to why this theme continues to be seen, so I'm interested in what it tells us about the later Romans.

Is there any moment in the Byzantine empire's history after which most scholars agree that the empire lost all hope or chances of ever recovering, or was it more of a progressive situation where a singular defeat, victory or decision wouldn't have really changed its end, or the date of that end?

Basically I'm intrigued because I got wind of a thesis being written by a rather left-wing acquaintance of mine entitled "Ceci n'est pas un terreur" as such I'm intrigued as to how valid his argument is. On the one hand I can easily imagine that atrocities were exaggerated by the subsequent generations hostile to the Jacobin Republic but on the other hand this guy's political leanings makes me think he's likely inclined to try salvage the reputation of any revolution. So how bad was the Terror?