I understand that 2 divergent political economies was behind the divide causing the Civil War, namely the protectionist industrial north and the free trade export agricultural economy of the south. This came to a head when a candidate that was a free soiler in regards to the territories (Lincoln) won despite not even appearing on many southern ballots.

The proposed Corwin ammendment makes it clear that slavery was never threatened where it currently existed, so the conflict was over the restriction of the slave based political economy in regards to the future of federal government policy, the idea being that without the admission of new slave states the balance of power in congress would swing forever in the pro tariff party favor.

My question is why would new free states be assumed to support the protectionist tariffs? It seems that was the assumption but I don't fully understand what protectionist tariffs designed to improve the competitive viability of northeastern textile firms would be in the interest of western settlers, especially as it would likely raise the price of certain goods available to them. I understand why free farmers would be opposed to slavery, but since the future control of tariffs seems to be what really led to secession, why was it taken as a given that the new western free-soil states would also support the protectionist tariffs? What's in it for them?

I have eight Rubbermaid 3gal totes full of old family letters dating back to the 1800’s most are in the envelopes they were sent in.

I’d like to read and catalog them but I’m very worried about opening these brittle envelopes. Can anyone offer up some suggestions about storage and how I could go about opening them without causing reckless damage?

Sorry if this is not the right format for my question

Hello everyone, I have a course called Europe to the conquest of the world. This course is about how the Europeans conquered and dominated other parts of the world such as Asia, America and Africa... For this course I have to do a study about the Japanese society in the 15-16th century and the relationship between Japanese and Europeans. I'd like to ask anyone if they know about sources that can help me in my study. I am more fluent in French than English, but can still read it. Thank you for your help!

Basically, I've been diving down a rabbit hole about how Attack on Titan and its mangaka are pro-nazi, pro-nationalist, anti-korean, pro-eugenics, anti-jewish, yadda yadda it's not important to the question.

What IS important is that many people talking about these claims point to how a character from the series, Dot Pixis, is based directly on Akiyama Yoshifuru, a Japanese General from the time of the Port Arthur Massacre. They claim he was complicit to the event, if not directly responsible, and that his likeness being used for a character in the series is damning evidence.

Problem is, no matter where I look, I can't find any primary sources that support this claim. Granted, I'm VERY bad at looking for stuff like this, but from what I was able to find, General Yamaji Motoharu was reportedly responsible for this tragedy. The only link I can find between Akiyama and the massacre itself is in a Kotaku article and the bunch of tumblr posts, all of whom seem to loop back into each other?

So, what's the truth here? I have no real stake on all those allegations, but as long as I'm familiar with it, I want to know what the truth is. Thank you!

The passage in particular:

However, as Lawrence knew, Britain also signed the secret “Sykes-Picot” treaty with France and Russia to divide the spoils of the Ottoman Empire between themselves allotting the region around Damascus to France. Farther east, the campaign in the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul— the Mesopotamia campaign in present- day Iraq— likewise betrayed its promises of liberation with an enormous Indian- style occupation regime.

Much ink has been spilled on the validity of British promises about the postwar disposition of the Middle East.

She then further holds the British responsible for destroying an otherwise peaceful Middle East and birthing Islamism.

I was reading about the Normans in Sicily yesterday and that led me to wondering how many people from Sicily getting 23andme et al tests are distant descendants of those Scandinavian-through-France settlers that would seemingly have been intermingling with the locals for hundreds of years of general Norman dominance of the area. But apparently nobody in Sicily seems to have whatever the genetic markers for “Northern Europeans 1000 years ago” would be. That led me to some assumptions/questions:

1: Maybe DNA of a Scandinavian-French guy in the Mediterranean from 1000 years ago may be so watered down it just doesn’t show up anymore in a person’s results?

2: Maybe Sicily was a lot less of a “Norman settlement” than places like Normandy and Northern England at various times or the various islands that were all a lot closer to Scandinavia. Convincing the family to move from like Jutland to Northern France is probably a lot easier than having to go all the way around Europe deep into the Mediterranean. Is there any academic estimation or speculation on exactly how many Norman settlers and soldiers etc were actually in Sicily around the ~11th century?

3: How much of the Norman army was ever actually Norman? The story of Robert Guiscard says he left Normandy with 5 riders then built a “roving robber-band” in Italy until he married an Italian woman for her Italian army. He eventually got strong enough to fight and defeat one Pope and then be made Duke by another Pope. But it seems like pretty much all of his manpower was Italian. After he was made Duke was there a push to bring in Norman settlers and troops and administrators or was he happy with his generally Italian retinue and army?

4: If there were a significant amount of Norman settlements and settlers in Sicily during Normal rule, did things go bad for them after the Germans took over? Did they fail to assimilate with the locals and eventually get wiped out/run out?

Considering how important the attack on Pearl Harbor was, Japan basically conceded that a failed attack on Pearl Harbor would mean they would lose the war before it even started, this doesn’t seem like a hindsight is 20/20 type question. They thought the entire war hung in the balance, yet they didn’t even plan an invasion this attack had to be a success, yet they didn’t even allocate enough resources for an invasion? It would have made sure that the attack was a success and the carriers would be taken care of(assuming the carriers were there like they thought). Heck, if they could overwhelm the base before the us troops knew what happened, they could even take the fleet for themselves, which would have completely changed the war in the pacific.

Liberals were one of the key political parties of the day and just a few years ago, formed both their own and coalition governments. In fact, they ran the government during the Great War and Churchill was a liberal then. Why weren’t they given prominent cabinet positions. Even Labour, which was a relatively new and until recently a small party, was given incredibly high ranking positions. Attlee was made Deputy PM even though many, even in his own party, saw him more as a peacekeeper. Sinclair had both experience as a military aide and an officer, yet he wasn’t included in any high ranking cabinet meetings. Why were the Liberals so marginalized in the Churchill Coalition?

Hi I am 17, and I am just starting to get into books. I have been drawn to non-fiction books, and I find myself kind of a information machine starting to learn things. Anyways, I want to learn about greek history cause i was always drawn to it. Maybe I also want to learn greek but I don't know yet lol.

It seems unlikely that this really occurred to nobody at all. It seems so obvious. So I'd imagine that this was brought up at various points but others would rationalize it away somehow saying things like "God wouldn't let that happen" or "a good person wouldn't lie just to stop pain" or coming up with ways of telling when confessions are fake based probably on some manner of superstition. Or if assuaging concerns about a specific person's confession bringing up points against their character.

But what I want to know is whether any sources referencing discourse or any writings or essays discuss the concern that torture could cause false confessions and especially anything where it shows others responding to those concerns with rationalizations in favor of torture.

Douglas had served on the Illinois Supreme Court and so would have been known as Judge Douglas. But once he became a US senator, shouldn't that title have superseded the judge title? Why then does Abraham Lincoln refer to Douglas, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates and elsewhere, as Judge?

I recently learned about the dominance of the Île-de-France over the rest of the country, and that into the 19th century less than a quarter of the population really spoke French.

But we never hear of the "Parisian Empire" or anything like that. My understanding of the term "empire" is that it purports to refer to civilizations with many disparate cultural groups under a singular central authority, like how the Romans ruled over the other Italians and Mediterranean peoples, or how the Ottomans ruled over the other Anatolians, Syrians, etc. Is this term used very arbitrarily or is this distinction mostly definite?

I know it's a super broad question but I'm writing a fantasy and I want to mix elements from these different places and time periods for the countries in my world and make a unique time period for the world. The idea being a couple of centuries after the collapse of an empire that once held the entire continent and forced everyone into their culture and afterwards there was a period of decentralized power but also the countries had a renaissance of their old cultures coming back and certain countries were more prosperous than others, some being split into smaller countries and a couple of empires forming. I'm looking for a few books for these places and time periods that could give me a good enough understanding about how people lived and the governments operated that I could actually get moving on this story. The only periods I'm even vaguely familiar with are Ancient Roman and Medieval England and France and I still know next to nothing.

The periods I'm looking for are:

Rome in the later stage of the Empire right around the collapse

Early Medieval England and France

Renaissance France

16th and 11th century BC in Egypt/The Middle East

1200-500 BC China

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I'm interested in government structures, culture, daily life and technology.

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Thanks for any info on any of these!

I'm currently considering writing an essay exploring why he's so respected and considered significant despite being a Marxist living in a different political context where capitalism is the norm. Is it his skill as a historian and methodology, or something else? Other Marx historians like Christopher Hill seemed to be denounced for their political views. My question is, what seperates Hobsbawm from the rest?

Thanks!

Side note: I'm a highschool student so I might ask for clarification on some concepts/terms etc.

In a couple medieval-ish fantasy novels I've read lately (WoT, ASOIAF), gravel is mentioned as a groundcover in castle courtyards. As far as I know, gravel is really, really labor intensive, even with modern machinery. Is this an accidental anachronism, or was gravel common before modern machines? How was it made?