So for starters I am doing a project for school and I need some help learning about the United Provinces (let's just call them the UP). From what I understand the UP had a nice grasp on Asia and had a very good economy at the time. However, I can't seem to find who lead the UP against the Spanish, and military resources. Furthermore, what did they do in the war? Really anything about the UP and the war would help a ton.

I examine a lot of really old land titles, and I have not once come across a land transfer record in the South dating from the years 1861-1865. Did all commerce land completely shutdown for the duration of the war, or, alternatively, did a victorious Union destroy any such records?

Not meant to be a silly question but was it a common name , and as a related question, if it was common when did people stop using it since it was now associated with Christianity?

And how would you arrange for such a letter to be sent? Could you just take it to a Post Office?

How did the revival of Evangelical mass baptisms such as those loosely portrayed in media such as Oh Brother, Where Art Thou and Bioshock Infinite come about? Was the movement in response to specific occurrences in American social politics at the time? What were the main movements, and who were the primary leaders?

Thanks in advance for any answers. Let me know if I can clarify my question.

I think most folks that are already interested have a fairly cursory knowledge in mysticism re: the big 3 (Gnosticism, Qabbalah, & Sufism at least) and how they became en vogue in the Victorian and Edwardian eras and again in the 1960s. I suspect periods of revival make it a little difficult to separate historical fact from crafted fiction (looking at you, Crowley) maybe even for historians, though that's another subject perhaps.

I know that they all share common origins in early Abrahamic cults and Hermeticism, so I really feel like that mystery is somewhat solved. Leaving aside the beaten to death topic of Druids (it's my understanding we know next to nothing about them despite what many claim) I'm far more interested in the stuff we get little to no exposure to on my side of the Alps. Eastern mysticism comes to us often as either a caricature of ignorance (such as in popular films) or a caricature of convenience (your classic new ager's source of income).

Rasputin, for instance, is often referred to as a magician or sorcerer but of what? Was his mysticism post-Christian or wholly invented? Gogol's evil sorcerer is clearly pre-Christian but his dark lord is trusted to the reader to know and never explained. Then in the orient we have loads of myths of powerful sorcerers trapping or freeing demons seemingly willy-nilly but we never get more explanation for that than you can fit in a short prologue to a film. Is this ancient Shintoism or does it predate it?

What do we know (as with the Hermetic roots of the western mystic) and what has been lost to time that draws charlatans with false histories (as with the Druids)? And, also, is there any explanation more concrete than Jungian philosophy for how the Inuits and the Greeks (and everyone in between) seemed to have invented nearly identical monsters in many cases with no apparent cross-cultural contact?

Perhaps this is too broad for /r/AskHistorians, but where does one start?

Can non-cowboy politicians practice it? Is any use of military intervention indicative of cowboy diplomacy?

I am curious as to the form and manner in which works like Caesar's commentaries would have been printed and distributed at his time and where they would have been stored. Following the collapse of the western Roman empire, I am wondering what would have happened to works like this. Were there library-like buildings that were preserved from then until now? Were they "known" continuously or rediscovered at some point? Were the works recopied by scholars and scribes as old copies decayed? Did we uncover fragments of manuscripts more recently and piece things together?

Thanks!

I'm currently an intern and I'm at a loss for ideas in this unit. Grade is 10-11 in high school. Any ideas for building a unit? I'm also not religious at all so I'm currently doing a lot of research.

I figured this would be an appropriate day to ask this. So the various rebellions of the Irish and Scots against the English are fairly well known, but there seem to be no such events regarding the Welsh, at least not that are widely known. I know the Welsh and English alignment goes back a lot further than that with the Scots or Irish, but it seems hard to imagine there was never a large scale Welsh independence movement. So, was there ever any, and do the Welsh have their own versions of William Wallace and Wolfe Tone?

I search the faq and didn't really seem to find anything there.

From what I've been reading, the primary argument against a secession from Britain by the Scots is that the economies are very inter-dependent and that currency issues would destabilize trade.

My question is, looking back at India's decision to secede (definitely not trying to compare quality of life or other factors that are obviously different), what was their dependence / economic situation during the Partition? Were they more willing to give up some sort of promise of economic stability because they were starting from such a low base and had nothing to lose? Or did they already have a pretty a strong case for an independent economy?

Maybe it's just hindsight bias but I was thinking about the major wars the US has been involved in over the past century and most of them seem to have started from an "accident" at very convenient times. The sinking of the Maine and Lusitania. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 (this one might be too recent to talk about) Is this all just one big coincidence? Or am I just seeing things different from a 21st century education of the events.

And why is there still no /r/asketymology or /r/asketymologists?

Instances of the US coming across the camps are well documented but not so much by the Russians that I can find. Did the Russians do anything different? Did they behave appropriately? What happened to the prisoners immediately after discovery?