I know that Byzantium is actually just the Eastern Roman Empire and the true continuation of Rome, but what did the other European kingdoms think of it? It would seem that the HRE would argue that they were the real Roman Empire. Did European states recognize that Byzantium was the Roman Empire? If not, what did they address it as?

I'm guessing they just didn't go out at sea for very long, but even a week of that many people in a wooden crate must have been difficult to manage. How did they do it?

What were some Secrete Intelligence Service operations in WWII? I am aware of the SOE and their insurgency, reconnaissance and demolition/sabotage operations (such as the operations in France, the assassination of Reynard Heydrich and the raid on the Norwegian heavy water plants), and the work of the Special Liaison Unit disseminating Ultra intercepts, but what other SIS operations were there?

I found a bracelet in a coin jar previously owned by my recently passed grandfather. It is made out of 3 French coins that were engraved on the back. The engravings list those locations, the years 1918-1919, and the words "US Army" and "Army of Occupation." From those years, I can assume that this is from WWI but I want to know what the US had to do with these events and what the effect was on the war.

I'm also interested in knowing their economic situation, I've read somewhere that Qing was actually quite rich. Was this true? Did they had the economic means of doing that.

I know they tried to also set up western style officer training as well, but how effective was it? Was this training extended towards the soldiers?

Finally, was the administration system to blame? Did it cause problems towards westernization as well?

This is a lot of question, so feel free to answer them partially if you can.

I apologize if this has been rehashed to death by now, but I'm confused on a particular topic. Every discussion I've seen online (either here on reddit or other WWI-themed sites) definitively states that the Serbian government had no links to the assassination attempt. However, I feel like I've gotten conflicting information from my reading. In the first chapter of Max Hasting's 1914, he discusses a certain higher-up in the Serbian military as being one of Princip's contacts in Belgrade. (I wish I could remember the individual's name but I don't have the book in front of me right now). If I recall correctly, most damningly, this military bigwig was the one that supplied Princip and his outfit with the guns they were supposed to use in the assassination.

So where am I going wrong on this one? As always, thank you for your replies, kind AskHistorians users.

I just finished reading "Tolkien and the Great War" by John Garth, and he points out a quote by Tolkien that says that all but one of his close friends were killed during the war. This got me thinking: were junior officers hit harder than their enlisted counterparts? If they were higher, how did this impact the middle and upper classes of Great Britain? What about the other major belligerents?

Was it similar to how the UK is administrated? Was there different laws and autonomous legislative bodies?

EDIT: should say "AT all known"

In their heyday in the Golden Age of Piracy, how significant a menace were pirates? I.e. what percentage of government revenues for England, France, Spain, Portugal or the Netherlands would have been lost to piracy? Were they ever a financially existential threat to colonial regions?

I'm a graduate student and I'm feeling a bit lost with my research topic. If anyone here has formal training (graduate level) I could really use some help. I'm constructing a survey of scholarship on women's bodies in early New England and I have a few questions about crafting such a large project.

Whenever I watch a old vision of the future from the 1950s the always seem to think the year 2000 will have Jetpacks, flying cars, hover boards, super tall skyscrapers, space stations, moon and underseas bases, food pills. Domesticated robots, and a wide variety of other gadgets. Why was this vision of the future back in the 1950s so common?

For a report, we have to defend/"prosecute" Louis Riel, and to do this I would need to know what the treason charges were, where etc. but I can't seem to find anything on this topic.

Source would be lovely too.

I know that there are suspicions that he didn't commit suicide, but was murdered on the orders of someone in the Communist Party, but is this hypothesis taken seriously?