Hello everyone, This is my first post on Reddit so apologies if it is in the wrong section. I am currently working on my undergrad thesis, and am in search of some insight from you all. I am going to a local archive tomorrow to go through some primary sources. The last time I went I was overwhelmed by the amount of sources available, and decided to spend my time just seeing what I had available to work with. Tomorrow I hope to be more precise in my research and start collecting what I believe to be valuable to my thesis. I am looking for advice on how you would go about gathering your sources i.e. photocopying, taking pictures, etc. I would imagine photocopying is not an option for me as there are so many sources it would take a large amount of time. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have done so much reading and research on WW2. Im a obsessed with it. I have never seen a clear answer on why. I have heard people say that Jews in 30-40s Germany were similar to Muslims in the US. Where the consensus is that no one is really a big fan. Can anyone answer? Forgive me if this comes up a lot, but im on mobile and couldnt produce any search results

I'm interested in a general sense and would love to hear from experts on the topc, but would specifically like to know:

Who were these people? Considering Portugal's small population today (10 million), that seems like a huge number of colonists. Had they been there long? I know the portuguese had been exploring and colonizing Africa since the fifteenth century, does their presence date to that period or was it a more recent phenomenon? If they had been there many years, what was their relationship with Portugal like?

What was their status in society? Were they largely bureaucrats? Merchants? Farmers? Was their anything resembling South African apartheid?

Was it expected? Did the colonists see the "writing on the wall" and perhaps expect what was to come? Or were they blindsided by it?

Was it "necessary"? In other words, if the Portuguese people hadn't left, what would have happened to them? Would they have continued to live peacefully (albeit in perhaps reduced circumstances) or was the political situation such that they would have been forced to leave in any event?

I was recently watching an episode of History's "Vikings" and one of the characters - an Anglo-Saxon king - commented that many of his subjects weren't aware that ancient ruins and sculptures around them were built by the Romans. Some even believed them to have been built by giants.

Was this in any way true? Did Dark Age Britons really forget the Romans? If so, to what extent?

I am taking a chinese history class for fun, and in my texbooks I am reading two different opinions which are leaving me confused. Neither one really mentioned which kind of opinion it is (since they are focused on the chinese view), but I think there might be a difference between how it was received by the public, and how the military advisors received it?

One textbook said that while the terms for Japan seemed not very ideal and unequal, it was enough to ensure that Japan would have naval superiority despite being allowed to only have 3 tons of armored ships. Even though the US and Britian would get 5 tons, and Japan would have to go back on their 21 demands made in 1915

The other one mentioned in passing that unequal treatment on terms, along with stonewalling of imperialistic desires by the west (through this treaty, and the lytton report) led to heightened aggression by Japan, and caused Japan to leave the League of Nations.

I am curious to what degree each of these statements are true, and if there is important parts being left out from the Japanese perspective since my books are focused on chinese history.

My ESL students and I are reading an introductory version of Sherlock Holmes, and we wanted to illustrate the purchasing power £100 gave them at the time. Rather than simply what £100 is in 2016 USD, are there any resources that illustrate all the average English citizen could buy with £100 back then?

Although I know this is vague, it is something that I've had lot of issues finding results through tradition searching means and thought I'd reach out to experts. Thank you in advance, r/AskHistorians!

Hello r/AskHistorians. What colors were woolen/linen tunics of common vikings? What colors did nobility use?

To quote:

'he liked going round festooned with weapons - apart from his rifle, from which he was inseparable, he wore numerous daggers, pistols, hand-grenades, and a torch tucked into his belt. Encountering him in the trench was like suddenly coming upon an Armenian or some such.'

The time at wich monestaries flourished seems like a dangerous and chaotic time. Monestaries were also a bastion of wealth so it seems logical to me.

I feel like Poland did nothing to prevent Germany's rearmement and even helped them (like during the partition of Czechoslovakia). Were they even aware of the threat that Hitler could be? What did they do to prevent german remilitarization before war broke out?

I was always fascinated with movies and stories about old libraries, where the protagonist researches old books or scrolls about supernatural, religious or philosophical themes. Did these really exist in some form, say for example in monastic libraries? And was there "interesting content" like stories, philosophic essays etc. or mainly birth and death registers?

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I was looking for ancient Egyptian world maps, but I couldn't find any. Thank you.

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Hello /r/askhistorians, I am back again in much more dire need of help regarding the question above.
I've posted this before (see quoted text below) in hopes of answering a very narrow question. I've approached my teacher to tweak the question, looking more into the wars in the entirety of the industrial revolution of the United States (early to mid 19th century) than just a single war in the latter of the industrial revolution. Again, any help is appreciated.

I am writing an essay on the use of horses and their comparative effectiveness in the Great Sioux War. My difficulty has been in finding sources for this topic: something that I would regard as perhaps too general and too "obvious" to be recorded historically (in my mind, no historian would write about the effectiveness of horses in a war that concerns Great Plains Native Americans, for it is likely a given or piece of common knowledge). I’ve looked at few resources so far, one being Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877 by Greene, Jerome A., but it really only was an anthology of Native American views of the war. Some other elaborations of the question that can come off the top of my head are:

1. The 1870's is a time of industrialization in America; did the emerging technologies of the times diminish the value of a horse in the Great Sioux War?
2. How valuable were horses compared to other means of transportation/ communications/ battle forces in the Great Sioux War? It would be great to consider both sides of the war; Americans and native Americans. Even if it is just to say that my assumption of "this is too obvious" is wrong, any help from a list of books to check to a connection to a tribe member or professor that could help would be great.

In high school I was taught that the bourgeoisie were society's middle class. I took only one History class in College and that was on Islamic civilization so I'm rather uninformed about this.

Today in America we have left-leaning people like self-described socialist Bernie Sanders talk about their concern for the middle class. Aren't the bourgeoisie, and therefore the middle class, supposed to be enemies of the proletariat? Can someone explain this for me?