It's said that the civil war has deep roots back to the relationship between Americo-Liberians and the indigenous but I don't quite understand how this is relevant to the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) invading Liberia.

The blood oath seems to be a common trope in fiction. Both participants would put their own blood on the line for a pact or agreement. However, does this hold much truth? Were there any famous, verifiable instances of a blood pact like this?

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I've never heard of any American colonies made by the Arab world, but were there any minor islands or failed expeditions made? I'm imagining Morocco as the most obvious choice because of its location, but also the Ottomans or the Egyptians also seem to have had the technological capacity (mapmaking, shipbuilding, navigation).

Tiny European countries (Holland, Portugal) exercised a large degree of influence in the New World despite both being small and surrounded by powerful neighbors. Even Scotland attempted to colonize the Americas in the disastrous Darien Scheme.

And the prospect of millions of pagan souls in the New World to convert must have been just as attractive to the Islamic rulers as it was to the Christian nations, so what held the Arab world back from joining the colonizing game?

Mortals being born by immaculate conception is common across the world and history - from Jesus in the Middle East to Huitzpochtili in Mexico to several ancient Egyptian myths. Is there a common thread among these examples (and many others)?

Edit - New to this sub, don't know why the South America flair is there.

On 60 minutes tonight they were talking about the large haldron collider and mentioned that they had yet to find alternate deminsions that would aid in proving string theory. However, instead of using that to disprove string theory the scientists being interviewed simply stated that however unlikely other dimensions may still exist. The example a cell phone to someone in 1900 may be how we feel about technology 100 years from now. This lead to my question, what seemed crazy in 1700 that was common in 1800 or 1800 to 1900?

Why did hitler think germans were the superior race if he wasn't german?

This is perhaps more suited to something like /r/AskAcademia or /r/GradSchool, but I was curious to see what folks on here have to say.

For those who work in European history--whether preparing for grad school, or ABD, or tenured--which languages (apart from English) do you draw on the most?

For those in 18-20th-C European history, I've a more personal question: would you find Spanish or Italian more useful? Context is that I'm about to enter grad school in 18th-19th French history, and have French, German, and Latin, but am juggling between moving on now to either Italian or Spanish. My thinking is Italian--assuming it was more dominant during the Enlightenment and 19th C., with Spanish more suited for the early modern period--but I'm interested to hear what others think.

Hello,

I'm interested in hearing information that anyone may have on what the Soviets planned to happen in the event of a successful World War 3 in Europe, assuming that the world was not devastated by nuclear weapons.

Would the policy have been to install Communist governments largely within the same borders of pre-existing countries? Could any of the Warsaw Pact members have counted on some spoils? For example, Bulgaria annexing portions of Greece or Turkey?

In particular I'm interested in the fate of Germany. Was there an expectation that Germany would be re-unified under the control of the existing East German government? Was there ever serious thought on the logistics and difficulties such a thing would entail?

Or would the Soviets be too wary of a unified Germany and would instead insist on Balkanizing West Germany into several different states - i.e. People's Republic of Bavaria, People's Republic of North Germany, or whatever?

I mean, I assume they are projecting European anxieties about "crypto-Jewish" conversos secretly converting each other away from Christianity. (Right? There are not a bunch of Talmuds traveling around 17th century Latin America, right?)

But what was happening in 1600s Peru/Colombia area that made the Spanish missionaries so newly anxious, that they turned to this expression of fear? And how does it, apparently, tie in with Spanish-Portuguese tensions at the time? (My source here is Justo Gonzalez, Christianity in Latin America, but my notes are old old old and only say "also political dimension through association of Judaism with Portugal".)

Im guessing it must be a quite modern phenomenom (planes, bombs etc). The japanese used it in WWII but are there any older historical evidence of the use of suicide attacks? Im reading about North Korean propaganda showing soldiers shouting "Long live General Kim Il Sung" as they performed their suicide attacks and started wondering where this tactic came from.

Edit: Im sorry, I am meaning suicide attack as in an individual using their own life to make as much harm on their enemy as possible in a single blow.

I'd like to know specifically about nobility traveling to far away places, like different continents.

Did they carry papers that would officially link them back to their country that would open doors for them? Did they just bring money and that would be like a royal passport?

By 'ancient documents' I mean things such as cuneiform texts and hieroglyphs, and by 'translated' I mean into any modern language. Are there a lot of those lying around waited for an interested scholar, or is it more the case that anything scholars can find they translate rather quickly?

Also, assuming there are such things as troves of cuneiform lying around waiting for specialists to translate, would it be of any use to scan them and run them through not-great-but-fast automatic translation?

I don't even need a huge amount of detail, just to know where you could reasonably get a direct train to from Bucharest in October of that year.

Here's what I've always wondered, and maybe you can shed some light on it for me. How? Just how, did all those people march on the mall of Washington D.C. in such great numbers for rights such as civil, women's suffrage, to protest vietnam?

As well as the turnout of Woodstock to throw in another mass gathering of Americans.

HOW? If I were to go to protest in D.C. right now or on the days coming up in November, because of life choices I have made, I would lose my apartment. I've been living paycheck to paycheck from medical bills, car repairs, etc. How did the generations before us just drop everything and go?

I know that there are at least 100 million adults in America, and lets say half have a well-off savings account, (maybe not even that many) are these the only people who are able to protest and try to protect freedoms and affect change?

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I understand that the Jews have been outnumbered throughout much history, and that "the Kingdom of Israel" could not be recreated by anyone but the antichrist or Jesus. However, I'm unaware of any efforts (similar to the Crusades) made by the Jews to reclaim power in their ancient city and surrounding lands.