I was told by a friend that all the empires fell primarily because of a giant wealth gap in their societies that weakened them from outsiders or made the general populace rebel (usually both). Obviously he was saying this because of his political stance, so I have no idea if that claim is right, but it made me start wondering what the economic landscape was actually like for the great empires and did it play any large part in their downfall? Were there any similarities between their economies?

This comes from a friend, who claims that the British/French intentionally left a mess in the Middle East so these colonies would come 'crawling back' asking to be colonies again, after they 'realized' how hard it was to govern themselves.

E.g., Britain 'created Iraq,' where Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds would all live together knowing that it would actually be quite disasterous.

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Follow up question: Has there ever been an attempt by a state to assassinate a visiting foreign leader?

I heard that the word 'Byzantine' is a modern way of referencing the Eastern Roman Empire after the West fell. What did the Sassanids refer to them as? What did the Arabs and Europeans call them? When Constantinople was conquered, did the Turks yell in joy and proclaim they finally destroyed the Roman Empire or did they call it something else?

I'm currently writing a series of stories based upon the premise that the Spartans never lost a battle since the Battle of Thermopylae so I am trying to understand their concept of war better.

If they invaded another country, would they accept surrenders or kill without mercy?

Also, this is more of a religious question, but did Spartans sacrifice human lives for offerings to their Gods?

I know it's a lot to ask, but I'd love to learn more.

Compared to Cyprus, Turkey is FAR stronger and it can easily spam reinforcements to the island. Despite this, the Turks only managed to occupy a third of the Island (North Cyprus), why is this? Did they not want to advance further? Was there too much international pressure? Was the Turkish advance too costly in terms of lives?

I've seen a lot of books and resources about the first two Indochina Wars, but not much about all of the conflicts generally put under the umbrella of the Third Indochina War. Anyone know any good books or documentaries about this topic?

And perhaps create their own satellite there like in North Korea and East Germany?

Due to the migration of the Jews, they've largely picked up genetics of their host countries. Are there still people with similar genetics such as the Palestinians or people in that part of the world?

The First Chechnyan War ended in 1996. The history of breakaway republics from Russia has always interested me. What caused Chechnya to want to break away from Russia?

I am watching the CNN documentaries on the Cold War. It is mentioned in the episode on China that western intellectuals came to Beijing to meet Mao? Which western intellectuals will have been to visit Mao?

After requesting a second front in Europe for almost 3 years, Stalin finally got his request in the form of D-Day. However, as far as I understand it, Stalin saw this as too little too late from Britain and the United States, as the USSR were already marching towards Berlin. So how did Stalin see D-Day? Was it greeted with delight as the invasion he had dreamed of? Or did he simply view it as a case of the west invading at the last possible moment, when victory was all but assured?

So I'm not asking if they were good or if what they were doing was right, but I'm asking for an unbiased analysis of how effective their governing system was. I saw a post earlier about erdogan citing them as being a good example of an effective government but I just want to know how accurate that statement is.

Title.

Basically the title. Why was the agreement held in the US? Furthermore, why Dayton, and not Washington DC or New York?

It's a fairly common story; Billy Waugh recounted fighting a force of Chinese infantry around Bong Son, and that definitely wasn't the first time I heard about the Chinese having boots on the ground in South Vietnam (I think Charlie Beckwith mentioned it in Delta Force, but I could be wrong there). The Chinese were sending massive technical and advisory aid to the North, but were there frontline combat troops in the war?

I was reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, and he mentioned how Jefferson, Clark, and Lewis (as well as many of their contemporaries) viewed native Americans as a sort of "noble savage," who could be "civilized" and brought into the fold of American society (as opposed to black slaves, who they saw as simply inferior). This seems to contrast greatly with the earlier attitudes of the colonists, who warred even more frequently with the native Americans and seemed to just despise them.

Am I assuming the wrong things here? Or if I'm not, what could have caused this change?