First off i don't mean any disrespect to anyone.

Recently I've been wondering about my family history, and I don't seem to understand why jews have BLUE/GREEN eyes, and some blonde/red hair.

Allegedly, "we" the jews came all from the old Israel. (Pre-Greece/Roman Empire) then they scattered all around europe, but mostly REMAINED ghettoed, and didn't merge completely, trying to keep their identity. (At least this we can tell from the WWII) Nevertheless knowing that, jews remained with jews, there must have came a point where something happened to our genetic pool/merged or something that lead to some have blue eyes since we are supponsed to be semites.

For example, my grandmother family comes from RUSSIA, blue diamond eyes. Jew to the bones. So, what happened there? I can only think about conversions, but is that in a land of christianity a possibility? Maybe there was merging with the local people (all around europe, grandfather poland, green eyes and blonde), but im afraid that even if there was merging, it would have been difficult to maintain the religion.

Anyway is there any explication, or history facts about this? Maybe this question would work better in /AskScience, but i guess its a mix of history and science.

Once again, i don't mean any disrespect, just blunt curiosity.

Did they say it was a Civil War, an insurrection, or did they just call it a revolution?

Did they really collaborate with the Nazis? It's baffling to me that the USSR would do it in such a brutal way and just after the war ended.

I understand that the Early Church did a lot of work to define a list of books that were to be the standard, and iirc they mostly based it on actual use more than theology, so I guess it was mostly a power struggle among the communities? Afterwards the power was very much centralized though, so why keep four different, and on many points contradictory, accounts of the same story? Why not try and present a single narrative?

Have there been any examples of different powers in Europe unifying under a European identity to fend off invasion from elsewhere?

I'm asking in consideration of the concept and identity of Europe itself. It seems to me that Europe as an identity holds significant economic and political weight in modern times, mainly through the EU, but has this same European identity existed or been used in defence of Europe pre-Napoleon?

One possibility that springs to mind is a unified Europe against threat from the Mongolian Empire that got as far as Poland but I'm largely stabbing in the dark here and merely speculating.

Any answers or reading is much appreciated! (I have an essay due)

[deleted]

I've been looking for a 'birds-eye' view of the colonial empires (Dutch, Spanish, British, Portugese and French primarily).
Basically how they formed, what characterized the different regions and colonies, what the differences were between the way nations handled their colonies, that kind of info.
Most books in the (excellent) book list in the sidebar are about specific individual regions, I was wondering if there is a book that serves as a sort of 'travel guide' about all of them.
Thanks in advance.

I'm currently studying the Holocaust in history class (visited a Holocaust museum last week) and learnt about what is called 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung'. So interested in asking further about how the Germans came to terms with the concentration camps, and how they reacted and reconciled themselves - must have been difficult.

I've seen stuff on the holocaust like Schindler's List, The Pianist, The Reader, but if people could point me in the right direction with more academic references and information that would be great.

Thanks.

[deleted]

Chinese-Indonesian here. My grandparents all came from China during early 1900s.

My grandparents have all died before I was born (except a grandmother who spoke minimum Indonesian and just basic Chinese; she spoke Hakka instead, and died when I was 16) so I have difficulty tracing even for grand-aunts or grand-uncles.

For more information, my surname is Xiao (written 萧) and my grandfather from my father came from Meixian. His name is Xiao Mugui (written 萧木贵) and he was once a soldier under Mao Zedong who also joined the Long March.

My uncle told me he ran away from the Long March, hid somewhere around his hometown, and then the Japanese came and did massacres here and there. He fled to Indonesia to avoid being killed, but no idea on the exact year or date.

This is not intended to be a political discussion, I'm just genuinely curious.

[deleted]

We tend to refer to Austria-Hungary with its full title, but when talking about it possessively we often refer to it as Austrian and its people as Austrians.

A similar phenomenon happens with Poland-Lithuania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are respectively Polish and Bosnian.

Why and when did this begin to occur?