As the title states, I'm a fan of his works of history. But given how explosive the claims and revelations I'd love to hear from people qualified to weigh in on it.

We often hear how German, Irish, and Italian immigrants were treated poorly for one reason or another, from being Catholic or importing their drinking culture at a time where teetotaling was the rage. But immigrants from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are rarely talked about. Many Scandinavians settled in Minnesota and the Dakotas, how did the population that was there before them react? Was there anti-scandinavian nativist sentiment in Washington, or were they broadly accepted because they were white and mainly Protestant (albeit high church Lutheran that closely resembles Catholic liturgy)?

I was asked recently why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and I realized I didn't know the full answer. So why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor and did Hitler want them to do it? If not, why?

I saw the video of Oversimplified on the Napoleonic Wars and what I kept noticing was how Austria kept getting beaten again and again by Revolutionary France/Napoleon and having harsh treaties imposed on them, and yet always seemed ready to fight again in a few years time in another coalition. How was Austria able to keep doing this without collapsing from lack of manpower or internal dissent? How was Emperor Francis able to keep his throne after all his defeats?

This post will probably be deleted because this sub does not like amateurs asking questions. Please direct me to an appropriate place to ask this question.

Title

It is claimed the Japanese population was around 30 million in the early 1700s, and was only 32 million by the time of the meiji restoration.

Considering that Japan was finally at peace, why did this happen?

It is also claimed that at the time (1700s), Japan was perhaps the most urbanized country in the world, and Tokyo had a population of around what million.

What drove this push to urbanize? And how did they sustain it?

Hi Everyone,

I recently bought a book on African history 'The History of Africa' by Molefi Ketr Asante with the aim of catching up with what was happening on this continent.

I thought the book should be legitimate, since the author seems to be a university profesor and the book itself comes from the Routledge publishing house which in my field (Physics) is considered a decent publisher.

Now alredy in the intro chapter there are some outlandish claims of man made stone circles in South Africa that are 200k years old (Adams Calendar).

Does anyone know if the remainder of the book is worth reading or is it all just pseudoscience garbage?

Hello. I've recently been looking into pictorial art from the early middle ages of celtic speaking people (Not a very serious reason, I'm just painting a viking era shield and thought it would be cool to paint it with bits of art resembling the style of the period, had been hoping to find a welsh dragon or a horseman :D).

I found several uniquely decorated Breton manuscripts, beautiful Pictish stones, and of course there is the beautiful book of Kells in Ireland, but so far absolutely no luck with Wales. I only found the Juvencus manuscript in the tenth century which isn't illustrated.

The next illustrated manuscripts I found were copies from the 13th century of the laws of Hywel dda I believe. Am I just looking at the wrong place or do we lack pictorial art from Wales in the age of princes ? If that is so, I'm curiois about the reason behind it, was there no important monastic production ?

Like with boob armor i know its not a thing but was there any way for breasts instead, like a altered breastplate thats bigger or? Like a larger armor set to compensate? Or was there anything else? Did they just use standard armor as i know gladius (i belive thats the female ones) wore skirts with from what i hear but idk

As an aspiring student of German history, I've recently been reading a fair bit about the 1960s trials of Nazi criminals in the West German legal system, most notably the trial of over 20 former Auschwitz staff in Frankfurt. I know that a large number of Japanese war criminals were prosecuted by the International Military Tribunal of the East and individually by many allied powers, but did the domestic Japanese legal system itself ever conduct any investigations or prosecutions of war criminals who escaped justice? Cursory google searches have yielded little results, and I suspect the answer is no.

If the point was to raise her up to his level, she was still “mere” nobility compared to royalty.

If the point was for her to bring something to the marriage, that’s hardly true because any lands or titles he gave her would have been at his expense.

If the point was to elevate her or give their children something to inherit, she was about to become queen anyway (and wouldn’t the title dissolve back into the crown once she did become queen).

If the point was to make her seem respectable by making her nobility, didn’t everyone important in England already know of her affair with Henry?

What exactly was the point of this?

From what I know, all Germanic religions are thought to come from a proto-Germanic faith, tying together their similarities. The Celtic family is of course categorized together, and Norse is distantly connected. Norse is of course much much more recent than most of Celtic and definitely Greek.

But I wonder if Greek mythology was also descended from this proto-Germanic mythology. I have read that the Mycenaean Geeks were southbound settlers from northern Europe, so it makes sense to me that ancient Greek culture has ties to the Germanic family. However, I have not found any notes or references to this.

Byzantine military fortunes began to decline around 1059 A.D., and kept declining until Alexios I Komnenos managed to stabilize things around 1090. But even Alexios lost a lot of battles. It seems like he stopped losing battles when he decided to fight more conservatively.

But Alexios's heirs, John II and his son Manuel, abandoned that playbook. They took their armies on risky marches deep into enemy territory, and it regularly paid off. Both recaptured forts and cities in a way their predecessors seemed unable to do. Their troops seemed way more disciplined and rarely routed, even when situations were tough.

If you read Byzantine military accounts from the previous period, Byzantine troops regularly routed when surprised or faced with horse archer-based armies. That doesn't seem to happen much under these two.

Also, their success in siege warfare was remarkable. Both suffered some losses, but they won far more than they lost.

Questions:

1. Was their military success based on keeping a veteran army almost constantly in the field, and therefore always training and preparing?
2. Why were the troops so much steadier than their predecessors?
3. Military accounts mention both battering down walls with trebuchets. Was this a new development, or a new strategy?

I learned a while back that the person celebrated in the folk song "Whiskey on a Sunday" was a man by the name of Seth Davy, a black Liverpudlian* street entertainer who passed away in 1902. My ill-informed stereotypical image of English or Irish cities in 1900 doesn't have many black people in it. So I'm curious: what was life like for a black person in a big city on the coast of the Irish Sea around 1900? While Seth Davy was a celebrated local figure, what kind of discrimination, official or otherwise, would someone like him face? Did he go to the same churches and pubs as his neighbors? What were his economic and social opportunities and limitations? And how would they differ from a white person of similar economic circumstances, i.e. manual laboring/working class/poor?

*The version I'm most familiar with actually moves his home to Dublin