Hello I am a student in high school and i have to do a research project for my class where i have to pick any empire between 500 ad to the 1700s and I have no idea what i should pick and was looking for some guidance on what empires you history buffs find interesting! Any help is greatly appreciated! Also no im not looking to just copy what others say just looking for ideas :)

TLDR: i have a research project and im looking for an empire between 500 ad to the 1700s to research about

I know many groups across North America relied heavily on hunting and gathering as well as farming/managing large scale ecosystems, perhaps both intentionally and unintentionally. But for those groups that did cultivate, what techniques would they have used? How would their "farms" have looked? Would they be managed by just a few individuals, or members of the entire group?

I have heard from people like Noam Chomsky that Lincoln and the Republican party of his time was opposed to wage labor. Is this true? And are there any good books on the history of wage labor and its support/opposition in the United States? Thanks in advance.

By this, I mean that in media and conversation concerning Germany's defeat, it's often depicted that Hitler and his generals frequently quarreled on the matter of operations on the Eastern Front; e.g., Hitler's unwillingness to greenlight a push into Moscow before other cities such as Leningrad were captured, in contrast with the wishes of some generals.

The documentary which prompted this question, Soviet Storm: World War II on the Eastern Front, invites a secondary question: Joseph Stalin is rarely depicted in such a way in the programme, i.e. of being a meddlesome politician contradicting his generals and botching the war on an operational level. How involved was Stalin (militarily speaking), and how far can one say that his involvement contributed to or confounded the Soviet victory in that war?

I've been reading a couple of books lately about some of our Cold War Era technological advancements. It got me thinking if somehow a conventional war would have broken out in Europe that most of Europe would have been steamrolled by the Soviet conventional forces up until about the '80s. Is that an accurate assessment?

And what actually brought the Soviet Union to collapse? Was it economic factors or our massive buildup spurred by Reagan as some like to think? Or was it a combination of things?

I've just been holidaying in Angus, Scotland- a heartland of Pictish culture (c. 3rd-10th C BCE). Have had great fun tracking down as many sculptured stones as permitted by museum's winter opening hours and speculating on the meaning of the symbols and functions of these pre-literate monuments.

I would love to understand better the connection (or lack of) between these Iron Age Picts and preceding Neolithic/Bronze Age cultures of Scotland (~5000-500 BCE).

1. Were the Picts descendants of the Neolithic/Bronze Age peoples of Scotland who built so many megalithic monuments, or germanic migrants after a Bronze Age collapse?

2. Were the Picts Celts? In favour would be if Pictish was, as I've read, a P-Celtic language. How is this known, given that Picts (famously) left no writing?

3. What is the reason for the strong congruity in art motifs between Pictish, Anglo-Saxon and Viking artefacts, e.g. knotwork, stylised animal representations, ‘beasts’. Do they have recent common antecedents?

4. Are the Picts the broch-makers of northern Scotland, e.g. Carloway, Gurness? Are they defenses against raiding by fellow Picts, or Nordic seafarers?

So many questions, so much to learn! Any light on these issues much appreciated.

Edit- Originally wrote Picts as 3-10th C BCE when I meant CE. Pretty massive error, really.

Pius VI reigned from 1775 to 1799, during the entirety of the American Revolution (officially). I am aware that he harbored no good feelings towards the French Revolution (understandable, as the pope), but I can't find anything he wrote about the American revolution a few years earlier.

Other well known ancient events, at that.

I'm referring to meta theories like Toynbee's "Study of History", or Spengler's "Decline of the West", Hegel, or Diamond, etc. Is there any accepted theory of history that is widely accepted?

Now a few months ago I remember there being a question asking why Allied intelligence performed so much stronger than their Tripartite intelligence counterparts. And the answers being that they mainly focused on different things and a small mention being that the Navajo code talkers also being particularly very hard to understand.

So yeah, how strong was Japanese and German intelligence in their specific fields.

How did Alexander the Great survive and win so many battles when he himself used to take the front lines and get wounded numerous times?

My Lai is often portrayed as the symbol of US misconduct during the Vietnam conflict. Was there other My Lai-style massacres before or after the event which comparatively recieve little attention, and if so how widespread were they? Is the Vietnam stereotype of constant misconduct - summed up by Walter in The Big Lebowski "Smokey this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules" - true?

I know American reconnaissance aircraft saw a good deal of action flying around the world during the cold war, but how did the USSR compare? Did they have the same level of activity? Did they launch missions over the continental United states or if they didn't where did they go?

I know our numeric system is based upon Arabic numerals. Did X I V just enter our language usage based on phonetics?

When there were no cameras, TVs, computers, magazines, was there anything remotely like today's porn? I know there were hookers and mistresses, but was there such a thing as entertainment erotic stuff like today's porn?

English people commonly identify themselves as Anglo-Saxon's despite being ruled by the French for hundreds of years i.e. The Normans and Plantagenets. So should we not identify as Anglo-Normans for example?

Can someone explain The Twelve Tribes of Israel in depth for me? Anyway I look at it seems confusing and If someone could give me a simple analysis that'd be outstanding.