It seems to me that forming a federation or even becoming a single state would be greatly beneficial in terms of GDP, security, resource sharing, and influence.

Not the most thrilling question, I know, but I work at a steakhouse and in the midst of chatting with a table, they asked. Didn't have a good answer for them and Google isn't being very helpful. Thanks!

So I was looking up about this guy named Tarleton from the American Revolution, a dude known for burning down churches with people inside and other such atrocities. I also know that he was defeated at the Battle of Cowpens. I'm not stupid enough to believe that the Brits were evil in that war but Tarleton did some terrible things. Why wasn't he punished?

With Spain being fervently Catholic didn't they view anything of Moorish origin as tainted or inferior?

I heard about Austria-Hungary talking with Britain and France about a separate peace in 1917 and I wondered if any historians knew more about it.

A book i'm reading mentioned that both his mother and his stepfather counselled him not to accept the will that would see him adopted by Caesar.

Is there any source to this, and why would they council this?

Time period: World War 1 just ending (1918).

Also, What are some stereotypes of the Belgians at this point in time? What would they eat and drink? How would they be talking to people from other countries.

I hear from time to time that we lost a great deal of the major philosopher's work or that the only record we have of their contribution is from their disciples who recorded it.

How did this happen?

To what extent is this true for the entire Greek record?

It is seen nowadays that the LGBT rights are mainly related to left-wing parties around the world, opposing the religious right-wing ones. Has this always been a thing? Did the socialist countries in the XX century also defend it as well?

Hi, long time lurker here. I was speaking with my husband this morning, and we were comparing the way American Economics is now and the way it was (in France) leading up to the French Revolution. He didn't think they compared, and I did. In your educated opinions, do you believe the two could be compared? What would the differences be? What exactly were the stigmas leading to the Revolution?

Thanks!

What were Prussia's motives in creating the Zollverein?

I know it is not uncommon to be promoted after death, but has the opposite ever occurred?

Says it all in the title. Not discussing his generalship, or leadership ability, I'm solely referencing his actual skill as a fighter.

I was casually looking at a world map and noticed just how close to Greenland Iceland is. I am aware that there were Viking travels to Greenland and what is now Eastern Canada during that age, but was this knowledge somehow lost? It seems remarkable that when Columbus sailed to try and find another way to the Indies that he had no idea that there was land where the Americas are after other Europeans had already been there and its not too far from Iceland and North West Europe.

I am currently reading Dan Jones' The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England and he casually dismisses questions of Richard's sexuality. I always thought that this issues was still a debate among historians. Is it? On top of that, what sort of evidence do you look for to explore his sexuality?

This is from a book I'm reading:

The word “feudalism” comes from the Latin feuda, translated as “fief”, which means a piece land held in exchange for service to a lord. Feudalism, in the sense of the widespread division of the land into fiefs, is a common phenomenon in many lands in time of invasion or social decline. But the term was invented to describe the particular socio-political organisation of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages. It arose as a defensive reaction to the Viking invasions of the ninth century, and the breakdown in central authority which they caused. The breakdown was worst in West Francia, modern France, where royal authority almost disappeared. One result was serfdom: the lands which had belonged to the crown, the royal “fisc”, were given to local landowners, both ecclesiastical and lay, and the peasants who had cultivated the land, deprived of any protection from the crown, threw themselves on the mercy of the local landowners, bartering their and their children’s labour in return for protection. The second was feudalism proper: the freemen became vassals of lords, swearing to fight the lord’s battles in exchange for protection. A vassal was a knight – that is, he owned arms and a horse and was able to fight. Since this required money, he very likely owned land – either inherited, “allodial” land, or a “benefice” or “fief” granted temporarily, in the vassal’s lifetime only. A vassal might himself have vassals. Thus many of the king’s counts, or local officials, were at the same time both feudal lords and vassals of the king.

Feudalism ate into the king’s power in two ways: first, the kings’ peasants hardly counted as his subjects any more since their real masters were now their landowners; and secondly, the king’s vassals tended to leave his service for that of the most powerful local feudal lord. The king did not always resist this process, but rather reinforced it, since he saw that the feudal lord was the only guarantee of law and order in the countryside. Thus in the capitulary of Meersen in 847 King Charles the Bald ordered all free men to choose a lord, and likewise forbade them to leave their lord without just reason – which effectively made the bond of vassalage permanent in all normal cases. Again, in a capitulary issued at Thionville, he gave official recognition to the vassal’s oath, which thereby replaced the oath of allegiance as the main glue holding society together. Finally, in the capitulary of Kiersy in 877, Charles sanctioned hereditary succession to counties and other fiefs, which meant that county administration became hereditary and passed out of the king’s control.[456]

As a defensive system to preserve a minimum of order in a time of foreign invasion, feudalism undoubtedly had merits. But it was evidently much inferior not only to Byzantine-style autocracy, but also to the Carolingian system that preceded it. Moreover, as the threat of invasion passed, and feudalism spread from its homeland in Northern France throughout Western Europe in the eleventh century, its degrading and coarsening effect on general morality, and its potential, in certain circumstances, for a more-than-local despotism, became more obvious.

The author contrasts the Byzantine economy with Feudalism. How were things different in the Byzantine Empire?