How did ship design, especially warships, work during the 18th and early 19th century? Was it centralised, like it would be in the 20th, with a central corps of naval architects passing designs out to the shipyards to build? Or would each shipyard have its own designer, and do it's own thing? Were there standardised classes of ships, or was each ship unique?

Today's post will have a looser theme than most Monday Methods threads. For Black History Month, I invite you to post about topics related to the topic of African American history, and the study thereof.

• What are some useful or interesting archives or other resources for studying African American history?

• What is "hot" in Black studies right now?

• Talk about different aspects of African American religious experience.

• What should the boundaries of study be? Should the focus only be on Black people in America, or should we expand the scope to the wider African diaspora?

Those are only some suggested themes to get people writing. If you have a question or comment about an aspect I did not mention, please feel free to contribute.

I understand their distaste for the USSR, especially after the April 9 tragedy. Do the Abkhazians hate Georgians because it was the Georgian Communist Party that sent for USSR troops to crush the separatists?

Those are huge spaces. But I don't recall having ever seen a fireplace in one or noticed vents for a heating system.

Why was it made made in the first place? Is it right to say it was the birth of the Nazi party?

The Merovingians are known as the "long haired kings" due to how their long hair set them apart from the generally short hair favored by the rest of the Franks. Those who had their hair cut were no longer able to be king. Why was long hair such an important symbol for kingship? Is it just a tradition that has origins from the Franks' time in Germania when they lacked written records? Do historians not know and its a strange idiosyncrasy of the dynasty?

In the last few years I have started to study the history of my field, cheminformatics, which is a combination of chemistry, computer science, and library science. I began by tracing the development of some of the fundamental ideas in the field - how to represent a molecule on a computer, how do do so uniquely, and how to find molecules based on various approaches. I've also been trying to figure out the role of social and technological factors, and have identified some themes that help tie the different stream of thought together, including some new ones.

Learning about the process of writing has improved my own writing, and given me a vocabulary to understand other writings. I can't imagine any field without its own set of common practices and methods of analysis and criticism. I believe learning the techniques of historical analysis would help me in my historical research.

Last year I read Thomas Haigh's "The Tear of Donald Knuth" in the Communications of the ACM. Knuth is a computer scientist who is also interested in the history of computer science. Knuth lists a few reasons why he, as a practitioner, studies history. For example, by learning where people struggled, and why, he is better able to explain those concepts. These reasons resonate with me.

Haigh goes on to say that in the 1970s there were quite a few people in computer science who wrote these sorts of histories, though that has since decreased. He then writes "The truth is that regrettably little history of computer science, whether dumb or deep, has been written by trained historians even though the history of computing literature as a whole has been expanding rapidly." This seems to confirm my belief that there techniques of historical analysis that I might learn and apply.

My questions are: 1) are there any books or similar self-study resources for people like me (non-historian researchers in a scientific field) who are trying to understand and document the history of their scientific field, 2) what are the tools, methods, or approaches that a trained historian might bring to topic, and 3) how would I gain those skills as they apply to my topic? I've considered a part-time Master's degree, but the local-ish schools look more into the interplay between science and social or environmental policy, while my sort of tight study seems passé.

If it helps any, I live in western Sweden, have an MS in physics, and the last history course I took was in high school. I am also self-employed, which gives me some of the freedom to do this historical research.

I've read quite a number of historical accounts by scientists which are little more than after-dinner anecdotes that don't build up a thesis; I don't want to do that. The "history of science" books I've read tend to be more about Science In All It's Glory, no doubt because I tend to only see the popular books, and big topics sell better than specialized ones. The historiography of science books (Kuhn, Poppler), which I haven't read, seem like they are at too high of a level, and in any case, much of what I'm interested is driven more by engineering goals, like cost reduction, than some sense of scientific truth. I haven't even found a historian who does something like this that I can talk with, though as Haigh points out there are likely good sociological reasons for that.

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Hello, I know this a very restrictive question and I hope someone knows enough about the Russian All-Military Union to answer this. I recently read about Yevgeny-Ludvig Karlovich Miller and was intrigued by his very eventful life.

I realize why he was an enemy of the NKVD and the Soviets because of his past in the White Army, the All-Military Union and his very anti-bolshevik activities.

My question is was he such a threat that it was worth all the troubles the NKVD took to capture him in Paris, smuggle him to the port of Le Havre then bring him to Moscow ? Was it worth the diplomatic risk with the French police and government ? Was he really such a threat ?

If anyone knows enough, and if there's even sources from the Soviets that exist or are available, then I am quite lucky. But his story really intrigues me.

I've came across this claim a couple of times, but I really seem not to find any references or sources that would look legitimate.

Only thing I have found obscure internet sites with very political leftist tint. While it doesn't make me to outright dismiss them as conspiracy theories par excellence, the sources are such that I'd would like to find some other confirmation.

Only other thing I know about is an episode in British TV drama series Foyle's War that referenced this, but that at most proves that writers of series have also heard stories about this kind of profiteering and were inspired enough to write an episode.

For example, contrast with the IBM subsidiary or such that sold some equipment to Nazis, which is at least somewhat documented.

This question falls within the 20 year rule, because by 1996, then US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright was questioned on 60 Minutes regarding the veracity of the 500,000 figure and whether it was "worth it".

Albright, and the US government at the time, claimed the figure was inaccurate and based on flawed methodology. I am curious if any of our illustrious contributors could elaborate on this claim, and whether any new information has come out since then as to the truth of that figure.

Obviously we say things like 900 B.C.E. or 250 A.D. But how did the Egyptians or other ancient cultures label years?

In today's world, innovations seem to burst onto the scene from many producers indicating simultaneous inventing or at least copying activity from multiple players. For instance, right now multiple players are racing to produce an autonomous car. Just a few years ago, motion-trackable wrist-mounted devices exploded onto the market.

In the past, for most major inventions which we tend to attribute to a single inventor, like Edison with the light bulb or Ford with the Model T, were there multiple inventors racing to be the first to solve a well known problem or was the invention a solution brought forth by a lone creative inventor? What did the competitive environment look like? Additionally, was there a flood of competitive products that were introduced?

I mean it was obvious france would be a superpower looking at the franks location and resources.

But what made england successful compared to tons of european nations who also have more natural resources than england?

I'm not saying britan doesn't have resources, I mean as compared to italian city states for example who have loads of resources and the whole mediterranean to trade with. or compared to any other mainland european states

I was always under the impression that Franco was a fascist. Did his support of monarchist ideals lead to a significant difference between his party and other fascist movements throughout Europe? I also understand that Hitler and Mussolini had their own differences as well so any issues on which all three of them disagreed would be very interesting to hear about too.

WWI is a bit of a blind spot to me. My knowledge of it extends about as far as anybody else who learned about it in an American high school. The common story of WWI is that a bunch of clueless soldiers and generals marched to war thinking it was going to be a fun little adventure that would be over in mere months. Everybody thought they would just march through to the capital of whomever their enemy was and be home by Christmas.

How accurate is this depiction of politicians, generals, and the average person at the start of the war? Were there any major figures talking, either openly or secretly, about how violent and devastating the war could be? If not, how long was it before the inevitably of a long and catastrophic war was acknowledged?