Considering this was before the Sino-Soviet split and that the USSR held veto rights I'm surprised they don't have a more prominent position when it comes to discussing the war. As a tag on question, what did they actually do to help North Korea after the invasion force landed and did the nature of this help change from that prior to the international involvement in the war?

I know Fitzroy died young (age 17) but still, if Henry VIII already had a son in the wings why not legitimize him? Alternatively, why not marry Bessie when he already knows she can bear him sons?

In 1800s, several ethnicities living under the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans rebelled and gained their independence with Greece as the first one in 1821. It is estimated that several million Muslims were killed or driven from their lands following these.

From 1821 to WWI and end of the Turkish War of Independence, what was the reaction of the European Great Powers to the policies of the newly independent states? Did they support it, ignore it or were against it?

I'm aware of the Regulating the Gauge of Railways Act but I'm wondering why the gauge commission choose the narrower gauge. Was it a cost thing?

So I admit this question stems from reading bad romance novels, but it got me thinking.

Can someone explain how acerage was actually allotted out through the various homesteading acts? I would love to read a non-romance book about the actual nitty gritty of it.

Some specific questions:

were single dudes assigned specific lots or did they sort of go out, see what they liked and claim it through some process? (And what was that process)

If you successfully claimed your acres, and then wanted to expand, was that difficult? Would the land around you be owned by someone else or by the state/government? Could you claim more, or would you buy it?

If you were near a town or small settlement, would there be unowned/claimed land nearby?

I would love to learn more about the process through the Midwest/south or west coast, but my question sort of started rankling on me when I was reading a (trashy) romance novel about Seattle, which inferred that people were still using the homesteading to gain acerage in the area when Seattle was already an established city. So specific information about that area would also be appreciated!

Book recommendations appreciated!

I understand that this is a huge period, I am just asking whatever you know.

Mu church is reading a selection of his works this fall as a congregational project, and I'm curious to learn more about him than I can from the Wiki summary.

I've been doing some reading into the role of Samurai in post Sengoku Japan. I've found that some Samurai were later hit with impoverishment due to outdated land value estimates. Alongside this I've also touched upon the class based system and how this favoured the peasants working the land. My question is this, how were there rich Peasants and poor Samurai? I feel like I'm missing a key bit of info here. Please list any sources as I do like to keep my own library and my Japan-based cache is a young one :)

Well, I was reading the Wikipedia page 'List of Byzantine emperors' but I'm not convinced by its arguments mostly when I read: " It was under Constantine that the major characteristics of what is considered the Byzantine state emerged: a Roman polity centered at Constantinople and culturally dominated by the Greek East, with Christianity as the state religion."

If Christianity as the state religion is a presuppost to have a Byzantine state then we should start the list with Theodosius. What do you think?

I was using it for sightreading practice last night and caught the line "couldn't sleep / until I could sleep where I shouldn't sleep" on the way by. At least from today's vantage, that seems to clearly imply her sleeping with the man in question, but that song was released in the early 1940s. How did people react to a song publicly condoning sex out of wedlock?

(Note: This is the Lorenz Hart lyrics; Linda Ronstadt did a version that cleaned up that particular line)

Hi, I did flick through the FAQ before looking to ask this - Where can I find some literature specific to the Dutch East Indies Company?

Information about the conflict in general is welcome too, I feel like this conflict is too often overlooked.

As a Singaporean Chinese (mom's from Hong Kong), I often hear how the British victory in the Opium Wars was the start of some tumultuous downturn for the Qing Empire, even though I understand its actual fall to be the abdication of the throne in 1911.

At the same time, I'm also reading Jonathan Spence's God's Chinese Son, discussing how the Taiping rebellion killed millions around the same time period- and that was just one of many similar events. Yet I seem to see most of these discussed very abstractly- in terms of some sort of general 'loss of legitimacy' for the Qing, or even the idea of a loss of sovereignty (if such a concept isn't anachronistic when applied)

I suppose this means I have two questions. To what extent were the Opium Wars responsible for the fall of the Qing some 50 years later, in light of other events; and how reliable is most Chinese historiography regarding this 'century of humiliation'?

Hi all, Just trying to figure out a good reading list for the Fall/Transition of the Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon is obviously first on the list, even if we do not all read him anymore, he is still relevant for setting up the entire mentality towards the later Roman Empire. Peter Brown is another obvious one. Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather for people pushing against the Late Antiquity argument of Brown. There's also Herwig Wolfram, Henri Pirenne and Lucien Musset, the latter two being highly influential on Brown. Those are just off the top of my. Further suggestions desired. Will update as things progress.

I saw a video of Bullfighting today and the question in my title sprang to my mind. The Wikipedia article on the history of the event isn't comprehensive enough on the evolution of bullfighting from a gladiatorial event to it's own event to answer my question. What is it about Iberian culture that caused bullfighting to survive as it did? Also, I know long into the medieval period chariot racing survived in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, but beyond that and bullfighting, I'm not aware of other "descendants" of gladiatorial combat persisting in the former provinces of any part of the Roman Empire. Are there any?

Is there any information about how long curtain style castle walls could have withstood a barrage of cannon fire?

Assuming the design of the wall was not a star or circular shape that was made to deflect cannon fire, how long would traditional curtain walls have withstood cannon fire? Assuming the balls were ~10 - 12 inches in diameter and the walls were ~10 feet thick.

I'm looking for any type of written account about how long or how many rounds it would have taken to breech a city wall in this type of scenario?