For example why was Lithuania a grand dutchy while Poland was a Kingdom even though Lithuania was a lot larger?

If it is posible, from different periods of the Middle Ages, as castle desing changed throuth time (from wooden and dirt fortifications to castles desing to resist cannonballs and all on the middle).

I've been reading something about the Baltic region in the early Middle Ages and I was intrigued by the fact that the Prussians etc. are still described as "tribes" when their neighbours are very definitely Kingdoms or at least recognisably States.

So I was wondering when a collection of people goes from being a tribe to being a state? Is there a certain level or organisation involved or is it just that the King stops calling himself King Of The Franks (people) and starts telling everybody that he's King Of France (place)?

I'm hoping that makes sense.

Just wondering how many times this has happened in US history. What was the outcome?

Yes, it knocked Italy out of the war, but it didn't seem like Italy was contributing all that much to the Axis war effort, anyway. And the whole venture didn't satisfy Stalin's demand that the Allies open up a second front in the West (didn't he label it as a "sideshow?" It seems like to me that a lot of Allied troops and Italian civilians (not to mention surrendered Italian military personnel who were then murdered by their former German colleagues) died for very little benefit. I don't want to venture too far into the counterfactual, but perhaps all of those resources could have been better used by landing on the Mediterranean coast of France.

With crops like corn and tomatoes originating from the Old World and wheat and barley from the New World, were there any crops that were grown in both before the commencement of the Columbian Exchange?

It just seems baffling to me how such a petty nation could hold out against an Empire and not fall until Bulgaria invaded Serbia.

So im looking into Curtis LeMay during the missile crisis and i was wondering where i can find information about his time in the JCS, even day to day briefings, memorandums or reports about his time there. I have used the online libraries for the best of my abilities but I cant find much relating to his tenure at the Pentagon, where can i find more?

Being outside the US too im pretty much restricted to online resources as a trip to the lib of congress is out of the question, thank you

I'm interested to know if abolitionism ever seriously took the form of consumer activism. Especially in the case of staple products like cotton, sugar, coffee and tobacco, I'd love to know if there were any instances of:

• boycotts of slave-made goods, whether large or individual in scale (e.g. giving up tobacco, wearing only wool/silk/linen instead of cotton)

• people setting out to provide alternatives made using paid instead of slave labour

• goods being marketed as the work of 'happy'/'well-treated' slaves.

To what extent did concerns like these factor into people's consumption of goods dependent on slave labour?

Did they have any access to Mayan writings? Was there any need or benefit of knowing Mayan language(s) and script for Aztecs?

So I am very confused on the topic. On one side we have the sterotypical image of the dark ages as a period devoid of any type of scientific or technological advancement, which is false, at least from what I read.

On the other it seems to me that there was indeed a slow down. It took Europe centuries to develop any new technology. The Byzantines kept the legacy fo late antiquity alive but did not manage to make significant progress.

So where am I wrong?

For example, how where they convinced to give their taxes to the now overlord and previous enemy, or to fight against their previous kingdom? How loyal were the people? What if the new kingdom had a different language?

I was reading somewhere recently that in order to carry the bomb, the Enola Gay had had its turrets and additional armor removed. We're the allied commanders not worried about Japanese anti air resistance? (I can understand the removal of the turrets since Japanese air power at this point had been pretty crippled.)

I really like comunism history and already red a lot of books about the transition from tsarism to communism, the only thing i never got into is the philosophical conception of communism. I study Russian communism history only in my free time and never attended any course about it so it's too hard fo me to go through all the Capital to understand what communism is about. Is there a book that sums up what communism is and in the specific what Marx mean with communism? If you can also suggest me a book that is traslated in Italian that will be great!