When the Roman Empire fell and the Germanic tribes moved in to the old Roman Provinces, they didn't continue the Roman way of governing but reverted back to there old German ways of ruling. Why is this so? Why didn't the inertia of the system keep it going even after the Ravenna fell? Wouldnt they be impressed with the Romans and try to emulate this? Was this overall bad or good for Gaul, Italy, Hispania, Germania, and Britannia?

Like the title says. It doesn't have to be a full site archive like archive.org, more interested in registrar records. Doesn't need to contain IP addresses, which wouldn't be useful anyways.

It seems there is the Emperor > Prime Minister > Provincial Governors as a basic outline of the government. I know the book is fictionalized, but take Dong Zhuo for example.

As a provincial governor, he deposes the current emperor and places someone he's more keen on in his stead. He gets the consent of the other officials to do this through their fear of him. Dong Zhuo then places himself as Prime Minister (which seems to be the position that wields the real power). Then you have Cao Cao trying to kill Dong Zhuo and restore the original line of emperors (and he eventually becomes Prime Minister I think because he's as brutally ambitious as Dong Zhuo...I haven't gotten that far yet but remember from some videogames based on this time period).

But meanwhile, it seems like the governors are always fighting each other for power even though they all mutually accept the authority of the one emperor. They raise huge armies to slaughter one another at times. So it seems like they are allies in the sense that they bow to the same emperor, but are at each other's necks at the same time. How could this system work?! (Feudal Japan was like this as well, at least in one period (correct me if I'm wrong). All the lesser leaders were all trying to fight each other while simultaneously pledging allegiance to the emperor.)

Could someone clear all this up for me?

And also, if Dong Zhuo and others are so bent on being that powerful, why would they stop at Prime Minister? Why not kill the emperor and establish their own dynasty? Would this be too bold of a move, basically ensuring a huge rebellion against their own ambition?

edit: I've read some more since posting this (so much happens in this book!). A confederacy led by Yuan Shao is created to oppose Dong Zhuo's tyranny. Many high officials and main characters lead armies in the confederacy. Sun Jian leads the first battle, but is denied supplies by Yuan Shao because of fear of Sun Jian's ambition being like Dong Zhuo! Sun Jian's army becomes decimated as a result. This is the kind of contradictory nature of the political system I'm talking about, where even in a confederacy aligned to destroy an oppressor, they are all constantly throwing daggers in each other's backs.

Then Sun Jian leaves the confederacy, followed by Cao Cao leaving too after his own massive defeat. Cao Cao goes back to camp and realizes everyone is just planning their own schemes for domination (including himself!) and the confederacy crumbles. I'm now at a chapter when Yuan Shao has turned his army on another leader's army of the confederation, Gongsun Zan.

Because they can't have realistically expected that the United States would just suffer such an attack and let it slide, right? Japan must have known that the U.S. would be angry and want to strike back somehow. As the saying goes: people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. So did Japan at least put up its defenses in any way following the attack, fearing reprisal?

If this remarkable story is true, that they all lived within a 5 mile radius in one summer in Vienna, then I wonder if the devil was there as well.

Looking at old paintings of Romans ("Pompey in the temple of Solomon") they appear very different from what we now portray them as. Medieval and Renaissance drawings of them don't show any togas, lorica segmentata/hamata, etc. How would Julius Caesar & Co have been portrayed in Shakespeare's play at the time it was written?

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Watching the first few episodes of outlander (1700s) and a scottish person was confused about the use of "germany" before the primary character clarified "prussia". how historically accurate is this? When was the term german widely accepted?

If you need more specifics, I'm interested in the 1400s and 1500s, and in the regions that eventually became Protestant (so mainly northern Europe and England). I'm aware from my studies of religious history that the interactions of these two types of "power" were sometimes hostile and sometimes accommodating (and sometimes both at the same time, by the same people). However, I'd like to spend my money wisely and get the best book on the subject.

Medieval or religious historians, what are your recommendations?

I recently rewatched Saving Private Ryan and was wondering, how was the training different between the types/units of infantry in the American military in WW2? For example, how would a regular private of been trained in the 101st airborne vs Rangers vs 1st Division?

I'm reading my US History textbook, and it states:

"In 1519, the governor of Cuba authorized Cortes to organize an expedition of about six hundred men and eleven ships to investigate rumors of a fabulously wealthy kingdom somewhere in the interior of the mainland."

This is implying that people have been there or have met people that have. Did this happen?

It seems kind of strange to me that after France capitulated officially in 1940 and spent the next four years under German occupation that the Allies would grant them high status when the war ended.

But France was given a swath of Germany and Berlin to occupy, had a team of prosecutors at Nuremburg, and generally in photo-ops that I see, there's often a French general standing next to Ike, Montgomery, Zhukov, et al.

What led the Allies to grant France this distinguished status after they had spent most of the war under the Nazi jackboot, and aside from the resistance and Charles De Gaulle's Free French, didn't really do a lot of hard fighting? Was there any resentment on the part of the other Allies that France was being given more credit than it was due, in a sense?

The passages that struck me were "a corporeal act, generally of a symbolic character, was indispensable, and in the case of homage this act was the immixtio manuum. When one remembers the legal atmosphere of the time and takes into account the incapacity of the early medieval man for thinking in abstract terms, and one recollects his taste for the concrete and actual, one can understand how in his eyes the essential element in becoming a vassal was that of making some gesture of the hands," (page 73) and "in the first half of the eleventh century there was at least one man alive who was well acquainted with feudal relations in practice and whose intellectual development rendered him capable of expressing them in abstract terms," (page 83) emphasis mine. Quotes and page numbers are from FL Ganshof, Feudalism, 3rd English edition (1963).

I've always thought that mankind has been roughly on the same intellectual level for all of history, outside of advances in technology and educational structure. Is there any other record that would indicate that the medieval commoner would struggle with abstract thought? For specificity's sake, I am most interested in France and the Angevin empire around the 12th century, but any responses would be appreciated.

Say I wanted to stockpile food or drive across the country. I may even have a legitimate reason to do so beyond mere acquisition or immediate self-interest -- to financially support or care for a relative, say, or move to a new job or business opportunity. How strict was rationing in practice? Was it easy to trade or bribe for extra coupons/stamps or an exemption? Were some merchants or ration board workers known to look the other way or fudge their records?

Wikipedia says the rise of realistic portraits coincides with Northern European painters discovering the use of oil painting to produce more depth and variation. However, it also mentions it Indian and Chinese painters used oil painting much earlier. How come realistic portraits did not become popular in Asia much earlier if oil painting was already in use?

When the Romans consulted the Sibylline books, they were usually looking for guidance in relation to specific events. How specific were the prophecies outlined in the Sibylline books? When the books told the Romans to bury alive two Greeks and two Gauls to defeat Hannibal, what exactly did the books say? Presumably there couldn't have been a prophecy specifically mentioning Hannibal, so how did they flip through the pages and decide which prophecy was relevant to their specific situation? Were the books a collection of vague prophecies that could be applied to a wide variety of events? Or were there just a tremendous number of specific prohpecies, such that some were bound to come true?