What was the role of peasants in the administration of their own villages? I'm asking especially for England, but over regions would be interesting, too!

Most of what I know about the eugenics fad of the early 20th Century is that it involved the involuntarily sterilization of 'undesirables' to theoretically improve the genetic health of the population. 'We can raise the average by removing the bottom 20%'

While all that attention was put to remove or reduce 'negative' traits, was anyone else actively trying to increase or create 'positive' traits? Did people arrange marriages into families with 'good genes' to try to selectively breed humans for certain qualities?

Hiya.
I'm taking a class on gender in Victorian Britain and I'm overwhelmed by the ingenious methods historians have used (alongside others of different disciplines) to peak at ideas of masculinity, femininity, and gay and lesbian histories.

I just wanna ask what sources are deemed fair game to be used, and how do they become available for the historical record? In a contemporary sense, what books, novels, pieces of media etc would classify as definitive enough for their inclusion in a historical paper 20 years later? What can be reasonably defined as "popular/significant enough" to count?

I just feel in finding sources for my own paper (and dying in the attempt) I don't know if I have something that's like historically significant perse, and I've always wondered at how letters, diaries etc from the time have been preserved and if similar mechanisms exist today.

After lurking in a few Late Antiquity threads, I've seen the theory tossed around that the loss of Africa to the Vandals was the real nail in the coffin for the Western Romans due to the significant loss of revenue. This leads me to two questions:

1. Did Romans at the time recognize the severity of this loss? Not in the sense of predicting the fall of the Empire, but recognizing the gravity of the loss of not only a significant revenue-generating area, but also just a generally core part of the Republic as well

2. Did any of the myriad of efforts to retake the region stand a realistic chance of retaking the region? (Battle of Cape Bon in 468, Majorian's planned conquests, others I'm sure I'm not familiar with, etc)

I seem to remember some media information, maybe in the 80's, about the relocating of the great Sphinx of Giza, because of the rise of Nile's water.

This even comes up as a Google question, but only smaller sphinxes appear in the results, and mostly more recent events.

So, I found no reference to this. Did it happen?

I've been reading about 19th century metallurgical mines recently. And union actions, of course. I have a (very basic) idea on what at least some of what miners did and what miners were paid and what they wanted to be paid via reading about Cripple Creek and Leadville.

But what were some other jobs associated with the mining - specifically those that would be hired by the mining companies, not just jobs that sprang up to support miners. What did they do, who was hired for them (demographically), and what did they pay? That's what I'm interested.

I can read all day about the various non-miner jobs in coal mines (especially those done by children), but finding specific info for metallurgical mines is more difficult, and I have no idea how much overlap there is.

As someone who is very pale I know how important it is to use sunscreen, but what did people used to use, if anything at all? Did they use some kind of cream or something else? Did anyone even know the damage sun burn could do (I mean like 150+ years ago)?

There's clearly a difference between "I'll just man through a few chilly days a year Rome gets" and "our legion will spend this winter stationed in Germania"...

Considering evidence from ancient and prehistoric times of female warrior and hunter graves, queens who ruled alone, etc. Where did the modern stereotypical belief that for 'thousands of years' women's role was in the home' originate? And historically, when did women start taking on that protected role?

I believe Bill Clinton did a similar thing too?

Surely as the one person in power you would do everything to keep that power?

I would have expected educational degrees to be like currencies-- different in every country, with huge international reforms like those that preceeded the Euro being necessary to bring about any kind of conformity. Yet it's roughly the same the world over. How did that come to be?

Hi guys am planning to learn history by myself can anyone suggest good sources such as an open course or curriculum to learn history. Btw am interested in world history.

One of the cliches is that Europe conquered the world because European superpowers had mastered the art of turning local tribes against each other and choosing the right local allies to aid them when they used European armies to hold territory. From the French allying with local Arabs to defeat the Tuareg in Algeria to the Dutch selling weapons to multiple clans in Indonesia to make a profit and wait for the local clans to weaken each other before they come in to take over the various islands and the British building up alliances in South Asia between the most powerful Muslim and Hindu empires to avoid unnecessary destructive fighting and so they could invade and take over weaker Indian empires, its a common cliche that a major factor in colonized people being subjugated was that they couldn't unite together to fight back the far superior European forces.

However there is one thing that confuses me: Why couldn't European superpowers use this against each other? I mean as I read about European history I am surprised how many of the European superpowers that we know today such as the Netherlands once consisted of multiple different ethnicities who had their own cultures and customs and even own specific languages. In France alone there were the Vendees, the Normans, the Bretons, the Occitan, the Catalans, and the Basques. Furthermore much of the wars in the Medieval Ages were over a small city-state or specific kingdom conquering the rest of the territory that would become the modern states that we see today on the map. For example so many wars were fought in England as far as the 17th century alone just to see the country be united under a single dynasty. Prior to that England's multiple different regions were divided by ethnic lines and nobles fought each other in an attempt to unite the country.

So I am wondering why say the Spanish were unsuccessful at uniting with some Basque French and Vendees to use as allies during their wars with France? Why couldn't the Bavarians await for Prussia to be weakened from its wars with Russia and than attack to take over Northern Germany at the right moment? Or why couldn't the British stir up discontent in Sweden to create a civil war in which different local towns decide to revolt against the Swedish monarchy?

Its not just among superpowers in the region that I'm confused about. Even conquering quite weak small nations such as say Bulgaria and Moldova, I rarely see the divide and conquer policy working. Belgium for example is much smaller and weaker in comparison to even Netherlands but the Belgians had historically been difficult to divide. Romania was a divided nation yet the Ottomans had such difficulty conquering them that they had to settle for tributary state and negotiate with a favorable ruler. The Ottoman could not pick say the Wallachians or some other ethnic group or city state in the country to serve as a proxy conqueror and later puppet state. Despite being subjugated by the Ottomans, neither Austria nor Russia could create the conditions for Bulgarians to have vicious in-fighting that would leave Bulgaria as easy pickings.

Why is this? What makes Europe so much more difficult to use divide and conquer despite being arguably just as disunited as the rest of the world? Its even arguable that the same European superpowers had a harder time keeping their own nations united than say creating a colonial outposts in Mexico or putting a puppet government in China! I mean there were riots in parts of England in the 18th century as Britain was trying to buy off Indian empires and put a stabilize protectorate. Ditto with France in Haiti and Vietnam, where they also had to contend with the dissatisfaction of various factions of the French Revolution and the instable change in governments (not to mention invasions from other European superpowers). Even after Spain solidified its self as an empire overseas, there was always trouble with the ethnic regions in the country that often put a blow in colonial expeditions.

Yet despite all this Europe could never use the divide and conquer on itself. What makes it so difficult despite Europe at times being far more disorganized than say conquering Indochina (which the French could do with minimal intervention) or holding Egypt as a protectorate (which didn't even need a war since Egypt was already united by a puppet ruler who favored Britain)? I mean why couldn't Austria even repeat the successes the Ottomans had in holding regions with multiple ethnic groups that hate each other and was always a powder keg?

I mean with how disunited Europe was, its so surprising the Japanese couldn't see an opportunity to take the Philippines for themselves. Or that the organized Vietnamese nation states (who used gunpowder canons) couldn't attack isolated Dutch outposts in Indonesia for their taking. Or why Korea couldn't take over Siberia when Russia was too busy fighting wars in Europe to defend their border there.

I mean there are multiple organized North African states. Yet not one of them could convince Italian city states to ally up with them to take lands together and share the rewards. Its only the Ottomans who could successfully use divide and conquer on Europe (and ironically on regions that the European superpowers themselves had a difficult time stabilizing such as Yugoslavia).

Why is there such a paradox regarding Divide and Conquer, colonialism, and uniting Europe?

Hello, I am interested in learning about Austria during the period of (roughly) 1400 - 1700. What are some good books on the subject?

Who coined the term? What was to understood by "premature"? Did it sound as ludicrous to other contemporaries as it does now?

In many old games like Medal of Honor and the old WW2 Call of Duty's, every time you pick up a STEN, the character holds the magazine like a horizontal grip of some sort, however, in more recent games like Battlefield V and Call of Duty WW2, you never see a character doing that, so it got me questioning, why they didn't do the magazine holding thingy, cause it is way cooler than just holding the gun normally...