I apologize if this is not the right sub to ask this. Just out of curiosity I was looking at Yale’s PhD requirements and it gave a list of all the languages students would be expected to know based on their area of study. For example students of Ancient History are expected to know French, German, Latin, and Greek. My question is, do they (or any grad program in general) expect that you know all these before getting there? Did you learn most of the languages you needed as a grad student or as an undergrad? Thanks!

I've tried to do some Google sleuthing on the subject but I'm afraid I may have to search for specific wars rather than the general term.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of any sources that look at the philosophy of war, common tropes of why wars being, the "powder kegs" of history, or similar? I'm not concerned with religious war because those reasons are pretty obvious. I'm looking for like some in-depth studies on why medieval or ancient societies would have wages wars with neighbors that go beyond "well, Side A had x-resource so Side B decided 'hey, we want that!' and went to war."

Maybe the War of the Roses is a good candidate for possibly getting a good idea for how relations sour and escalation with certain events cause a string of events to unfold? It seems that a wide variety of events happened that kept the war up for 4 decades. I'm looking for like an analysis of the escalation; not necessarily for this war, but how escalations lead to one side declaring war on another. Maybe what I'm looking for are specific wars that had complex reasons for beginning? I know feudal Japan and China had some conflicts like this.

Maybe I'm shooting for the moon and this doesn't exist...

We generally break history up into ages like the bronze age, iron age, classical, ect have people thought like this through history? Would say somone in the European middle ages have the concept of previous ages where society and technology were different?

I have plenty of books on the Early Middle Ages (400-1000) and the High Middle Ages (1000-1250). Are there any academic (or, begrudgingly, popular) history books on the Late Middle Ages (1250-1500). Nothing specific, but I would prefer a history of Europe in the same vein as the penguin history of Europe. It seems there's a gap between their volume on the High Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance.

Before roads and footpaths were paved, and when long skirts have been fashionable, how did women possibly wear them without being covered in mud and dirt? I saw someone's wedding dress after a farm-based wedding wedding recently and it was full of mud and hay. Was it socially acceptable to just hoick it up? Or to just be filthy? I guess the time period I'm picturing is Victorian Britain, but I'd be interested to hear about any time and place.

As a 24y South American, I often notice that in many american movies and even here at reddit, it is kinda natural to leave your parents when you're around 18, and I would like to know where does this culture come from.

Thank you!

I'm in a class focusing on bereavement and we've learned a little bit about death 'festivals', there's the Day of the Dead in Mexico, but also O-Bon in Japan, and Pchum Ben in Cambodia, or for diasporic Buddhist.* I also know about Sukkot in jewish traditions.

As a WASP, it got me wondering if there was anything if was a historical festival of death, or specific cultural remembrances for the dead, beyond more individualized funeral services?
*My apologies if anything isn't exactly right, it's a small part of the class!

Is the WIB during WW1 a Socialist Policy? It seems that having government set production quotas, control resources, even during wartime implies somewhat of a socialist leaning. Especially interesting to view it in the light of the upcoming Red Scare less than 10 years later...

It seems like without the cooperation between Britain, US and Soviet forces there was no way to stop the Axis leaders. Not only did Russia/Soviet forces join the allied sides for WW1 but also WW2 through their own changes and even revolution on the Soviet side. Was Communism alone the only reason for the deteriorating the relationship between the two super powers leading to the cold war or were there other factors as well?

I'm looking for books about Japanese history from 1200s to the to the early 1900s to add to my collection. Bonus points if its written by someone from that period. The books can be anything from teachings written a samurai, about politics, or just about anything. I wanna get my grubby hands on them.

Okay this one is weird. There is this anime I love called "The legend of the galactic heroes" SPOILERS near the end the Alliance of Planets is conquered by the Galactic Empire and there are several scenes of the conquerors trying to establish order but low level public servants refuse over and over to hand over documents, make decrees, or in general recognize the conquering government as legitimate.

That sequence ends with one of the main characters saying that if those people had been the ones leading this nation, and not the corrupt politicians at the top, then probably they would not have been conquered.

Then I heard somewhere that the writer of the show pretty much stole this from Chinese history. I remember reading somewhere that this is exactly what public servants of a previous dynasty would do when their government fell, and that this was seen as heroic in a sense.

I know this is super vague, but if it is true, I want to know more about this trope and I want to know about individual examples if we know about them

Alternate phrasing: have West Africans ever agitated for or supported the return of freed slaves or their descendants to West Africa? Or has Back-to-Africa sentiment only been present in Black American and white abolitionist communities?

I hope the use of "West Africans" isn't too broad — I'm trying to avoid falling into the portrayal of Africa as a single monolith, but, because European slave traders were active all across the West African coast, I feel this is the best I can do in this context.

I also want to say, I'm aware of Ghana's recent Year of Return 2019 and Right of Return policy, but for one, that's well on the near side of the 20 year rule, and for another, I want to know more about the rhetorical history in addition to the political, I suppose.

I recently had the realization that the swastika was originally a cultural Indian symbol and Aryan was the term used to describe Indo-Iranians, so why did Hitler use these terms and symbols, especially since he was against a lot of different cultures?

I know this is a debated topic, however what theories are there about the native Britons and their presence when/if there was an Anglo Saxon invasion.

With the emergence of DNA and population genetics, what can DNA tell us about it as well?

Hello all,

I am a writer currently doing research on the Ottoman Empire, with the intent of creating either historical fiction or a historical drama based on Mehmed the Conqueror or, potentially, one of the sultans before him.

I’ve been reading large histories of the Empire up until now and that has been great, but to make the setting come alive I need information on daily life, religion, culture, society, architecture, et al.

What I’m hoping you all could point me to, then, are books and/or other resources detailing the above. I’d prefer sources pertaining to the 14th to 16th centuries but am open to all suggestions.

Thank you for your help.

As a French-Peruvian, the depiction of "ancient times" differs greatly between my cultures.

While the French clearly have an "Ancient" period of time (Antiquity - although the Merovingian dynasty is so sparsely documented that it sometimes "feels" more ancient than the Roman Empire !) in Peru, the "ancient" concept is way more generous: one could argue that the Incan Empire already counts as "ancient history", even thought it is contemporary with Joan of Arc!

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Clearly, something counts as "Ancient" once historical recordings become more sparse.

This led me to wonder, how did the concept of "Ancient" evolve over time?

How did Ancient Egyptians imagine the "ancient" past (surely not as a cavemen, heh, but some proto-historical civilization?)?

Did the Unified Roman Empire feel less "ancient" to the Byzantines than to the Franks?

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Has there been any studies about this subject?

I read that it's due to historical reasons, but I wasn't able to find any details. Does anybody know why?

I know it's barely 20 years ago but his inauguration was in 2000, so I thought this was the place.