And would anyone care to discuss any important events that caused the downward trend? Is it purely due to wealth (which seems unlikely to me due to corrupt oil-states), democracy (which again seems unlikely, as many democracies have high corruption) or something else? I recognise these are both tricky questions.

I know that on old timey battlefields (lets just say before the introduction of effective mass-deployed firearms) pole weapons of various types were pretty much king, due to economics, effectiveness and especially what they gained from fighting in formation.

I also know that many people (for example the Vikings) made very effective use of axes.

With all of this being said, I'm struggling to see what advantages a sword would have had, apart from it being easy to carry around on ones hip (sort of like a pistol, now that I think about it).

I've heard people say that swords would have been better one-on-one than spears and such because the spears lose the advantage they gain from fighting in a formation, but on the other hand, I've seen plenty of explanations and demonstrations of how effective spears and the like can be even in situations like that.

So swords didn't have the power of an axe, the reach of a spear, or the anti-armor capabilities of blunt weapons such as maces. So what did they have?

Thank you

It goes without saying that the Native Americans got there first but is there credible evidence for any pre-Columbus explorers getting to the New World before or after the Vikings?

When most people think of fairies/faeries they think of little butterfly winged people but where does this portrayal come from?

I am especially curious about Tolstoy since he was pro-reform, but I also wonder about the others.

She hadn't had her coronation yet, so did she wear the/a crown?

Were the Nazis aware of the atrocities they were committing and were attempting to avoid being charged for war crimes?

I'm doing a research paper and i keep seeing hyphen / em dashed words and i cant figure out the purpose. for example

"the ST—PM—N is coming among us, who is an emblem..."

or

"left the helm to the steerage of E—l B—e..."

these are important names and words that i need but i don't know what they're saying!

I just got Battlefield 1 and there is one mission where you have to defend Britain from German Fokkers. I noticed that whenever I missed a plane, the bullets/rockets would hit London. My question to you is, is there any number or estimate for the damage or lives cost from British fighters missing and therefore hitting London?

Edit: how about planes that were shot down and similar debris?

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For example, in The Last Emperor, the palace eunuchs are portrayed as engaging in widespread theft. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, eunuchs are, as far as I can tell, always portrayed as corrupt. (Zhang Rang, Huang Hao, Cen Hun.)

Is this just picking out an influential, alien-seeming "other" minority and pinning the blame for corruption on them, when in reality they were no more (or less) corrupt than the intact men and rare women in China's power structure?

Or was there a reason eunuchs either had a greater disposition or greater opportunities for corruption than others? For example, if sometimes castration was used as a criminal punishment, and some ex-con eunuchs ended up working for the Imperial Court, and they had criminal inclinations prior to working there, it might make sense if they kept some of those inclinations afterwards.

When the Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) became part of the Soviet Union in 1944, was it an occupation or an incorporation?

My country's history doesn't have much to do with that of the Americas or Western Europe, and neither does my upcoming exam, but having read about the Tordesillas Treaty, I don't quite feel like I'm seeing the whole picture here.

I've been reading Hamlet and noted a peculiar passage in which he comments that he kissed a male friend on the lips quote often.

I know kissing on cheeks as a platonic greeting has not and is not uncommon in Europe, but the lips?

The only mouth-kiss tradition I am familiar with (and could find) is the "Socialist Fraternal Kiss." However, this doesn't seem like it fits, since it's a communist country tradition and a (relatively) new one (in the scheme of world history, considering Hamlet was set somewhere around the 1400s).

I'd really appreciate some help here! I can't seem to find analysis of this scene OR any mention of a historical precedent.

I'm new to this sub so please go easy on me, I've heard that it's notoriously harsh on the quality of questions.

The army was raised by jacobins and sanculottes after they understood that the king wanted to loose the war on purpose (sorry if the names are not correct im not english nor french)

the army was recruited on a volunteer basis, all the officials and lieutenants were very young. now my question is, how did they beat the imperial troops, that logically, should have been way stronger?

It's often said that the late Qing was incredibly corrupt at every level, funds were siphoned off for personal gains rather than given to the government as taxes, or money used for projects were siphoned off and so did nothing.

So exactly how much money was lost? Either an overall figure, or a relative, percentage of GDP or government spending.

It's also been said often that Cixi's summer palace took much needed funds away from the first Sino-Japanese war effort. How much did the summer palace actually cost, and how much was that was diverted from funds requested by the military?

Were they generally returned to their home countries or did many of them emigrate to the UK, US, France, etc? What was the process of their rehabilitation and possible reparations?

This is the second question I'm posting. These are a couple questions that have been kicking around inside my head for a loooong time ever since I read Kissinger's memoirs in detail.

During detente, relations warmed up between the U.S. and the USSR. As a result, many European countries grew increasingly restless about detente, and started to speak out against the possibility that the U.S. might get too friendly with the USSR. The possibility that the two superpowers could strike a grand bilateral bargain for permanent peace and friendship (also known as "condominium") was seen by European states as a huge threat to their national security, interpreting it as essentially the U.S. and USSR teaming up to rule the world and individual European states would have little to no say in how world affairs are operated.

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If this came to pass, it sounds awfully unrealistic to me to think the European states would be disadvantaged somehow. Would a condominium have meant the U.S. wouldn't defend Europe anymore or something? The way I see it, world peace would have been strengthened if the two superpowers had struck a grand bargain and laid aside their nuclear disagreements. Why was Europe so worried about this?

I am a Chinese history major, and I never realised until I was watching the Three Kingdoms series the other night. The Chinese soldiers have some big ass shields. Other than medieval Italian Pavise crossbowmen that wore these huge shields on their backs, I can't think of any groups in history that used shields that big.

On this sub I have seen a few times that you all have said the Han Dynasty and Roman Empire never interacted (still not entirely sure about that), so is it just by coincidence that these two largest empire of that same era share the same kind of equipment?