My understanding is that the Kingdom of France and all of its fiefs adhered strictly to agnatic primogeniture, but I also know that Joan I of Navarre, wife of Philip IV, ruled the county of Champagne in her own right. Was this only because she was queen regnant of Navarre and inherited the lands through her Father, King Henry I of Navarre and Count of Champagne, or were there more instances of women holding titles and lands of their own?

It seems to me that it would be an incredibly dangerous job to go and meet the enemy's army?

I was thinking about the story of the 47 ronin and how the incident was resolved. Asano's men were allowed to commit seppuku after exacting their revenge on Kira, which maintained honor for themselves and their families. Besides being the punishment for murder, was this done to prevent further incidents that could feed into a blood feud? (If the concept of blood feuds even existed in Japanese culture?)

Considering, the pretty violent breakaway from the empire, and then both world wars when they fought side by side.

I've read a handful of Stalin biographies, but none mention meeting Trotsky in this period. While Trotsky was interested in psychoanalysis, I've never heard of him meeting Freud directly.

From my understanding, the German Schwerpunkt was a tactic where they focused firepower on one point to break the enemy, and then break through. But was this more useful than a pincer maneuver, where they would envelope the enemy forces and attack from multiple directions?

I've read about the process of Roman citizens gathering in centuries based on tribes or locations within the city in order to organise how elections were held - but repeatedly I encounter comments about how this voting structure benefited the upper class' choice of candidate over those from lower class centuries.

I don't understand how this worked in practice. Each century takes its own vote, and then the winning candidate in that century translates to a single 'century vote' for that candidate - and the upper classes voted first within those centuries.

This doesn't effectively explain any advantage to me... Surely even with a preferential place in the century position, or century structure, the upper classes would still be too small in number compared to everyone else to be able to significantly sway the decision?

Structures like the colosseum, amphitheatres, circus.

I've sometimes seen works of history being criticised for having too Marxist a view of history, but I've never really had anybody explain to me what precisely that means, nor precisely how that is a problem. So what makes a work Marxist? And how should one go about analysing that work in order to balance against that bias?

I saw the following text on a Facebook post by an Irish immigrant friend of mine, and was curious about the historical accuracy and if there was more info available.

The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.

The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company. England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.

But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.

Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.

But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?

Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?

Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.

None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.

How easy was to "vanish" at the end of WW2 in Europe? Let's say its year 1945 , end of war in Europe and i need new identity. If I just throw away my documents, pick new ones from a nearby corpse and start a new life what will be the chance i am ever discovered?

Not saying I believe in this theory, but I think it makes for an interesting read. Looking back, there are numerous strange things pertaining to Hendrix's death. I'm by no means an expert, which is why I ask - how likely is it that he was assassinated?

Hey everyone, I'm a first year architecture student and part of my study involves the History of Architecture, and as our major assessment we have to write an essay on a chosen building from any time period we have covered. I have chosen the Palace of Versailles, in particular focusing on the building style of the facade, the construction period and the gardens. If anyone has any links to sources, preferably scholarly articles, or can help me out it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

A while back, I remember reading a quote relating to the Munich Agreement and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia from some statesman or military leader, who might have been British, to the effect of "The Germans act like they are always at war." I think, too, that there might have been a reference to Prussia in there. He was making a point about the aggressiveness of the German leaders, and I think also their negotiating in bad faith, like they were always trying to get one over on the other countries.

Does anyone know who that was?

Mostly, the title. Going by the time frames those example names came from, I have an idea, but thought I can get more details. Also, sorry if this has been asked and answered, in which case a link will work.

If the government of Texas had been better, would the Republic of Texas have been able to survive as something other than the Zimbabwe of the 1800's?

If so, was there an extensive network of tunnels? How did the Soviets prevent Germans from simply digging tunnels from under their homes to West Berlin?