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Were the Home Guard given effective training, or did this contribute to the image of 'Dad's Army' as well as the age of the volunteers? If they weren't, was that again because it wasn't considered a serious threat or was it lack of resources?

Is it likely that the home guard were just made light of to alleviate the frightening idea of land invasion?

How would I be able to learn about ... for lack of a better way of putting it, the intended comms strategy of the Home Guard? how was it represented to the population and did that change/develop from introduction onwards?

Where can I find out more about the Home Guard and it's actual relationship to the expectation of German invasion vs how it was portrayed by the public?

Currently the picture I have of it is as a morale-boosting community service in war time, not really an actual 'force'. This is obviously mostly from the tv show but that didn't start until the 1960s and is nostalgic.

I've been doing some reading about the "singing girls" of al-Andalus--(mostly) slave courtesans in medieval Islamic Iberia who were (usually skilled) musicians, singers, and sometimes original poets. And surely they weren't the only musicians of the Islamic world! While Christian Europe was slumbering under monophonic plainchant in its churches and dancing to folk music outside them, what did the courts of al-Andalus sound like?

While I am sure that anyone who has ever been conquered has complained that their land was stolen by aggressors, there was a lot of conquering going on in Europe and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries. But by WWI lots of Major western powers were trying to put and end to the Central Powers' land grabbing. Today of course "Unjustified" conquest is looked down on by the whole world. Was there a defining moment when the Western powers kind of said what's yours is yours and nothing else? Was it a gradual change? Has anything changed or is it a history written by the victors kind of thing? If there was a change who were the thinkers that led to it?

Hi all,

I am starting a reading group within our postgraduate group, and wondered how to get the best out of it.

I have circulated a paper around a week ago. Tomorrow is our first meeting and I'm wondering about the best way of critically discussing the article(s).

Discuss the topic the paper is on, thoughts and ideas around it.

Discuss any hidden biases, or agendas that may be present.

Analyse interpretation of sources, secondary as well as primary.

Examine methodology, form and structure of paper.

Conclude with how we might use paper to inform our own research, or how we might have tackled it differently.

Do this all sound sensible? Am I missing something obvious? Any advice, as always, much appreciated :)

As the title says, what is the history of the drug cartels, beyond the bigger guys in South America like the Medellín drug cartel, and Pablo Escobar. I am interested more in the cartels in central america and mexico (both north and south). If this is to broad, then the northern area of mexico would be preferred. Thank You In Advance (TIA)

Hey guys, I'm writing a book review for one of my grad classes and I was wondering if it's kosher to cite other book reviews in your own? We have a 1.500 word requirement so it's pretty long and I was hoping to flesh it out with some info I found through other book reviews. Anyways though, I'm just not sure if this is acceptable or anything like that.

I understand more permanently housed peoples got their arrows from a fletcher who had a turning machine that could be used to more or less uniformly work wood, but how about those who were often on the move?

As a side question, what about bandits and other people who didn't have access to professional fletchers? Where did they get their arrows from?

I would imagine Romans might have been brought up to feel a sense of shame over this event in a way that might be similar to what Germans must feel over the events of World War 2. Then again, it seems as if early Romans were very proud and not a culture that would criticize state actions, at least publicly. Can anyone elaborate on how early Romans dealt with this? I believe Pontius Pilate himself committed suicide largely over his guilt.

I know Cicero had been consul, but he was also a republican. I know a lot of Cicero's biography but one place I don't know much about is his personal and political connection to Julius Caesar. I do know he turned down the offer because he opposed Caesar's vision of empire rather than republic, but what led to Caesar asking in the first place?

I apologize if this question sounds dumb. But Stalingrad just seems like another random Soviet city, like Kiev or Leningrad. Why is it that this one city is considered the pivotal turning point of the whole war?

Even if they lost Stalingrad, why couldn't the Germans just say "oh well" and then proceed to conquer the rest of the USSR?

So obviously in 1542 Henry VIII created the Kingdom of Ireland, and English control slowly increased over the years that point on. A couple of questions...

To what extent was Irish culture still distinctive from that of England/Britain as the years went on. The English tried to stamp out Gaelic culture and Anglicize Ireland, how far were they successful in doing so? I know for instance, that many Irish taught their children English because it was needed if you wanted to achieve certain positions and advance, but I assume Irish was still by far the most dominant language of this period?

More generally, what effect did Ireland's Gaelic culture have on English rule in this period? In terms of laws (Since Gaelic laws were distinct from British law), can we see any remnants of Gaelic law/differences from English common law? Any other sorts of examples of where this might/might not be the case are very welcome.

I am imagining the situation to be one where the top social levels where fairly Anglicized and integrated into British Society, as well as of course the planters from the start of the 17th century, but where the majority of Catholic 'peasants' (For want of better terminology) still remained fairly Gaelic in their culture in terms of language, cultural memories etc. Would that be relatively accurate?

Of course, Irish Gaelic culture was effectively wiped out, or transformed/absorbed anyway...by what point would you say this had happened?

So, thanks for answering what is a lot of questions. Cheers! :)

Some context:

I understand the subreddit uses the 20 year mark, and I'm on board with that.

The first 'required' course in my undergrad history program is HIST 200, Introduction to Historical Interpretation. These classes are unique, so one HIST 200 class might focus on gender in Elizabethan-era England and another on US immigration in the 19th century or the historiography of visual artifacts.

Mine was on the 2003 Iraq War (taught in Spring 2011). Now, we acknowledged that we were breaking history's first rule, it was in the syllabus itself:

This course is an introduction to learning the skills of historians, finding and evaluating primary sources, analyzing second sources, developing an argument and debating the merits of contrasting arguments. The content of the course is U.S. History, 2001 to 2008, with major primary sources consisting of documentary films about this period in U.S. history. Usually historians allow journalists, filmmakers, and social scientists about forty years to produce a first draft of history before they have enough perspective to try their hand. This class will violate that rule and will seek its own first drafts, attempting answers to such questions as Why did the U.S. believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction? Why were relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina so botched? and what caused the Great Recession of 2008? Among the documentary films shown in class will be “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “Inside Job.”

I always felt weird that this class counted towards a history degree. There are a couple of other courses in the catalog over the past decade that have also covered post 9/11 events in detail, with the most recent event I see in the syllabus being the Arab Spring.

Now I'm doing my masters in international relations, but I'm taking a crosslisted course which integrates IR and history students both at the UG and Grad level. We started on the foreign policy of McKinley and just left off at the end of George W. Bush's second term. Two different institutions, both seem to be at the bleeding edge of contemporary events... but can we say I'm studying history at this point?

Thoughts?

I'm curious if anyone has any recommendations for good courses on iTunes U. I searched the site and only found one thread without many responses.

Basically, iTunes U has a crazy amount of courses, but its badly organized and hard to do quality control. I just want to listen to courses which are substantively good and have interesting/entertaining lecturers - don't care much about what the topic is.