I've seen it most in reading about the Yugoslav wars but I presume it exists elsewhere. I find it unsatisfying, but I'm not well versed in it. If you've reading recommendations arguing for or against it, I'm interested.

I've been reading article about sugar recently and figured out that sugar from sugar cane was brought from Indonesia to Europe around 1500. However, white refined sugar as we know it from today was spread in Napoleon era. What people used before? Did they bake pastry using honey? How common or luxury sugar was back in times. I am just surprised because we have many sweets, baked stuff around nowadays, but I doubt it was common lets say 200 years ago.

from "new books in " podcast interviews specifically the april 8 interview with Tim Nunan's on his new book "Humanitarian Invasion: global development in cold war Afghanistan

Was it in reference to Jews? To capitalism? To Britain? To isolationism?

Like just for example, say the King of England has a number of Lords, and two of them squabble amongst each other so much that one marches an army against the other. Was this common within Medieval kingdoms? what if the king had weaker control over his subjects? the HRE had dozens of independent states and city-states that all fought with each other for power, but our modern interpretation of a country muddles what that means. were HRE princes independent enough to do this while kings' vassals weren't?

Sorry if this is not OK for the sub, I checked the FAQ and couldn't find anything directly against this type of question.

Being Irish myself, I understand that a lot of the Irish records were destroyed during the War of Independence and Civil War.

The British system is much more complete and allows for easier research.

My preliminary research has been very difficult to uncover much beyond 3 generations of my own family.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So, I recently had the displeasure of watching the Roland Emmerich movie, "Anonymous," which, if you don't know, is all about how William Shakespeare didn't write the works that are accredited to William Shakespeare. I found the movie really bad, but I was wondering about the credibility of it. I first passed it off as a silly conspiracy theory, but when I brought it up to my history professor, he said that that was probably true. This caught me off guard, as I thought he would agree with me about how stupid the whole thing is. He went on to say things like, the Gospels of the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, weren't written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So now I am curious. Did Shakespeare really write Shakespeare?

A general breakdown would be nice, or even just some sources to read through. I'm trying to research this topic and am lost. Thanks!

Was it just for kings and nobility or would peasants have long hair as well?

Adm. Mark Kerr headed the Royal Hellenic Navy for two years or so, right when WWI broke out, but I can't find anything on why beyond the small blurb below on his Wiki page.

In 1913, he succeeded Vice Admiral Lionel Grand Tufnell as head of the British Naval Mission to Greece, and as Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Hellenic Navy, a post he retained until 1915. As commander of the Greek Navy at the outbreak of the First World War, Kerr helped keep Greece out of the war.

It seems strange that the relationship between the UK and Greece would close enough that a British officer would literally be put in command, yet there obviously wasn't a formal alliance that would bring Greece into the war... So what was the origin of this arrangement, how long did it last, how much actual power did the British have over the Greek Navy? And did this extend beyond the Navy into the Army?

I've been trying to learn the reasons for the fall of the Berlin Wall. I understand that the press conference was botched and people thought the wall was then open for everybody, and the guards were uninformed and their superiors didn't know much more, then they freaked out and let everyone through.

But I don't understand how this misunderstanding leads to the fall of the wall. Why wouldn't they just say "Oops, our bad" and close the gates up again, business as usual? All that happened is that people crossed the border, if they'd closed it again, nothing should have changed, right? I feel like I'm missing something. If the wall was such an integral part of how everything worked in East Germany, it seems like they would care about keeping it the same, right?

After watching the World at War, I began trying to read up on various things I heard about for the first time. Among them was Free France (I'd previously only heard of Vichy France).

Whenever I look up Free France I can never find a map of their territorial holdings, where their government was located, or anything of that sort. Where were they based? How did they regain control of France? Considering how far flung the French colonial holdings were, how did they regain control of those? Did the colonial holdings know which France they were apart of?

I'm reading several translations of the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Some translators say that the Athenians executed "all men of military age" after conquering the island of Melos. Other translators translated this to "adult men". Are they really synonymous? Would an elderly man be considered "of military age"?

I just started reading James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and he says that the South's economic practices amounted to (quoting a northerner), "to sell cotton in order to buy negroes - to make more cotton to by more negroes, 'ad infinitum'..." (p. 97), and that industrialization attempts in the South were - more or less - failed and pointless. Assuming Lincoln hadn't won the 1860 election, and the violence across the country hadn't escalated so much to that point, would the South have driven itself "out of business" with slavery?

McPhearson mentions on the same page that historians disagree on if it was a good economic practice for the South, but this is also a almost-30 year old book, so has any opinion changed on this? Or is the whole thing greatly oversimplifying the matter entirely?

I've seen this term being used in various threads involving China and people saying it was because of "Chinese Arrogance" that led to China's demise during the 19th century. And recently with the Rise of China, "Chinese Arrogance" is again wide spread among it's populous leading to increased tensions in regions near China.

Are there any objects that are still extant that we know (fairly definitively) that a famous person from classical antiquity actually held or touched (not just gazed upon)? Ideally someone very famous (e.g., Augustus, Alexander the Great, Socrates, Cleopatra, et al.), but if that's not likely than maybe some of lesser importance.

Hi y'all, first time poster. Im something of a military history fanatic and I'm highly excited to have discovered this subreddit!

Essentially I am wondering as to what extent (if any) the Japanese and German military cooperated during WW2. If there wasn't any cooperation I would follow that up with why. To my knowledge the Japanese had a few dust ups with Russia in the past and with how territory hungry Imperial Japan was during this period it seems to me that they would have jumped at the chance to attack an already overstretched Red Army from the east while they were tied up with the Germans in the West.

Thank you in advance for your insights, I definitely look forward to learning a lot here.

I have found multiple articles online saying there was human sacrifice but they don't seem that reliable. I have been learning/taking latin in school for the last 4 years and throughout my time in class, there was no mention of human sacrifice, but of the sacrifice of animals. I looked up the general topic of human sacrifice and I found that happened very rarely and was only documented a few times by livy and Pulcher. I also found that it was outlawed around 100 BCE but that was more or less a formality because human sacrifice almost never happened. This is why I'm confused I have conflicting sources saying that human sacrifice happened during saturnalia but also I have sources saying that it rarely happened at all in Roman culture.

Edit: Spelling