In many university history departments, many courses are focused on a country or regional focus, e.g. intro to Latin American history, modern Germany, Caribbean history.

AskHistorians follows that regional model to an extent, with flair tags for North American, European, Middle Eastern history. Of course, AH grants flair for topics that do not have a geographic focus, like religious history, or science and technology, as universities also do.

With international history being a hot topic in historical scholarship now, will that force a realignment in the "regional" framework of history departments, or will international history simply become another region in the existing framework? Are international histories a necessary antidote to compartmentalizing history into regions?

Shifting gears a bit, what are the challenges of studying and writing good international histories? Is a strong grounding in both African, European and New World history needed to be able to write Atlantic history? Can a scholar with a traditional regional focus easily switch to writing international history, or are there tricks of the trade specific to international history?

Just interested to know...

Plus how did they feel towards other religions around them? Or non-religious people living with them?

The information I've gathered so far seems really fragmented, and I'd like to finally understand which factions were allied with each other, and what they're ideologies were. Specifically : -Maronite Christians -Israel -Shiite Islamists (Hezbollah) -Palestinians -Sunni Islamists -Syria (Ba'ath Party) -Muslim Lebanese Nationalists -Marxists -Pan-Arabists -Non-Socialist Secular Factions

I've been trying to read up on it for an exam but I can't find any source with clear simple distinctions

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Was the idea of "Lebensraum" which was part of the Nazi platform always centered on expansion into the east as suggested by Hitler, or were there earlier German nationalists who had different ideas, perhaps as a part of an exclusionary German nativist movement?

As far as I understand, the system of ships traveling close for mutual protection was successful during World War I. In The Battle of the Atlantic, the allies let months pass and hundreds of ships be sunk by German Uboats before implementing the system again. Why did they wait so long if the idea worked before?

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I am currently doing a Model Union committee based on Caesar's war, and I would like to know why it occurred.

I'm specifically looking for differences that stem from the Russians expanding against horse riding pastoral groups, versus the Americans expanding against unmounted hunter-gatherers/farmers.

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Was there a specific tactical reason, contextual, or overall strategy for it?

EDIT: There must have been a reason why this idea wasn't adopted in later mercenary armies.

This can apply to a broader period, but an answer like "we can say at 18xx, steamships overwhelmed sailships in number" would be a better answer. And I know "hybrid ships" ran for a while, but was the period they needed sails on a steamship long?

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Japan, during the Meiji Restoration, has always been a fascinating period in time for me. From the romanticized "end of the Samurai" to the rapid changes that shook the country to its core; yet what's always intrigued me the most is just how swiftly (comparatively) Japan managed to westernize itself.

We're talking about a nation that, in a comparatively short period of time, went from fighting with sword and bow to earnestly participating in a seemingly "western" conflict during the first world war, to being a power that was arguably eclipsing some European nations during the second world war. For a long period of time "Japan takes over the world" was arguably a trope in its own right given just how powerful the tiny island nation was, from an economic standpoint at least.

In spite of all this, I can't exactly figure out just what Japan did to westernize faster or to a greater degree than other nations, both in Asia and across the world, especially when it arguably had the least amount of contact with the west before Commodore Perry opened up their ports for trade.

If I recall, Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" suggested that the reason Japan became an economic power in spite of scarce resources while India was still in the grips of poverty in spite of an abundance of resources was because Japan had less "humanitarian" concerns and so focused more on pushing for a strong economy rather than a "fair" one.

It could also be that, compared to countries like India, the Ottoman Empire, and even China, Japan was a lot more ethnically homogenous and so didn't have to deal with the turbulence of revolution and ethnic conflict to as great a degree as those nations. Or perhaps it's the fact that, for the most part, Japan managed to avoid outright colonial rule while the same can't be sad for vast swathes of the Ottoman Empire, in the case of China there was Hong Kong and Macau, so on.

So, I'm interested, could any historian explain Japan's mysteriously swift westernization? Even today I'd feel many people, if they were in the center of Beijing and then the center of Tokyo, would feel as if Japan is more "advanced" and "first world" than many of its neighbors.

I've read a thread here saying they only washed a little, I'm wondering why didn't they wash more often, didn't they smell the smell?

I've been watching a few documentaries about world war 2 and whenever they cover the German invasion of the Soviet Union, they talk about how at times the Soviet soldiers were so poorly equipped that they shared one rifle between ten men. It seems to me that if the soldiers were simply properly equipped they would have done a much more effective job at defending against the invasion. Why didn't the Soviet army issue enough rifles to go around? Did they simply not have the material or labor resources?