Say if the phalanx were to break formation, how would the hoplites fight? Would they try force their opponents to the ground with their shield and finish with with a spear thrust?

Not sure this is the right place to ask, but I'll try my luck. If it isn't the right place please tell me where to ask. When I talk about remnants I'm referring to both words which don't derive from Latin and the pronunciation (for example I know that the French "u" derives from Celtic languages). Are there any other examples?

As I understand it, at the end of WWI the Allies went about carving up a great deal of the old empires in Central Europe. The Austro-Hungarian Empire became Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc. The Ottoman Empire got fragmented as well.

What I don't understand is why those empires (which were both, I'm given to believe, hundreds of years old) were dismantled while the ~40 year old German Empire was allowed to remain... Germany. Surely, unlike the case of the Ottomans and the Austrians, there were people in Germany who could honestly say 'I remember when this was Prussia/Wurttemberg/Bavaria/Hannover/etc.'

Of all the Central Powers to be dismantled like that, Germany seems like the most obviously easy one, yet I've never even heard of an attempt made to do something like that. I realise they ceded territory as well, to create Poland and so on, but they weren't shattered into their constituent parts like the others. Why not?

What was the official opinion of the governments, what was the opinion of the "official" media, what did the "underground" media say and what the citizens seemed to think?

Has this practice been around for a long time or is it something recent? It's present in print media, but is this also used in speaking?

I was writing a paper on this the other day. I read an article that made some pretty good arguments that McMahon and Hussein were pretty much agreed that Palestine was not included.(The Article was The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence and the Question of Palestine by Isaiah Friedman from the Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1970), pp. 83-122)

Don't quite remember how he came to the conclusion based on the wording, I believe McMahon's statement was that the word vilayet meant district which would discount Palestine. Also Friedman mentioned that Hussein remained intentionally silent about the Balfour Declaration which would have been a slap in the face had he believed Palestine was included. I looked into it a little more today though and I found an article that states George Antonius spoke with McMahon and was told by him that Palestine was originally included but then removed afterwards. (George Antonius: The Formative Years, Susan Silsby, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 83)

I suppose its also worth noting that Friedman seems to say that Hussein wasn't really that helpful as he basically inflated his status and promised substantially more than he delivered.

At any rate I'd love to hear some opinions on the matter. Also any sources on the matter that anyone one knows of would be amazing. I would really appreciate any good comprehensive articles, or books, on Palestine/Israel's past that I could access. I have a pretty good collection of scholarly databases from my college but I'm having trouble finding good detailed articles on events.

It's pretty clear that the Americas got the short end of the stick during European colonization, but can a case be made that colonization hurt Europe too? The most I can think of is that colonization strained an already rocky relationship between Britain, France, and Spain.

So this is for an essay in my History of the Americas class, and any help is appreciated!

I understand that it would vary by time and place, but are there any good examples of exorbitant or otherwise interesting ransoms whose values are known? What would the ones we know about be worth in modern value?

Why is it that neither the Sunni nor the Shia have elected a new Caliph? Wouldn't the Sunni hold an election, or the Shia choose a descendent of Muhammad as the new Caliph? Is there any reason that the Muslim world has decided against having one since 1924?

Sorry if this is way too obscure, but this is bugging me and I'd love to get some ideas/help.

I'm reading Amin Maalouf's 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes' and I came across this passage: "Because of their worse-than-primitive health standards and their failure to adapt to the living conditions of the Orient, the Occidentals suffered a very high infant-mortality rate, which according to a well-known natural law affects boys more than girls." (pg. 116, ch 6) what. what the fucking fuck. (excuse my French)

Where did that come from? Is it at all true? Or was it 'folksy wisdom'? Am I missing sarcasm? If it's true, why did it happen? Was it part of their medical science cannon at the time? If that was the case, why?

I've tried looking into it on my own but I can barely find anything on infant mortality rates south of Germany before the 1800s and there is nothing in Maalouf's Notes section about it. :/ Any help is vastly appreciated!

Is O'Reilly's "Killing Patton" conspiracy theory nonsense or is there something to it? How about O'Reilly's other "Killing" books? From a historian's perspective, do they have any redeeming qualities or are they garbage?