"We are fighting for independence, not slavery" -Jefferson Davis and other quotes like those of Robert E. Lee where he expresses anti-slavery sentiment are used to defend the idea that the confederacy was not seeking to be pro-slavery. My question is, how valid are these quotes? On top of that, it has been said that the articles each state made for secession didn't all mention slavery.

Overall, given this, what really was the cause of secession and the civil war? Thank you, this is a tough topic for me.

For the second part, countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Mandatory Palestine and Israel, etc.

Thanks!

I understand that rifled muskets were not practical due to reload time and fouling, but breechloading, which has been experimented with for as long as rifling has been, largely negates these negative factors.

When the Dreyse Needle Gun was adopted, most countries that could quickly adopted their own breechloading rifles, and they did so in manufacturing quantities that massively outproduced previous muskets.

Around this time, armies also grew much larger in size, which leads me to believe it likely has to do with industrialization, but to me that’s just a word. I have no idea what actual industrial processes made it possible, and how did they differ from previous methods?

I wasn't sure what subreddit to post this, so feel free to redirect me if this isn't the right place to ask. I'm intrigued by the idea of reinventing society from scratch, similar to post-apocolyptic situations but you don't have the ruins of society to build from. I understand that you can create electricity from magnets and copper wire, but you have to insulate that wire, or it short circuits, becoming useless. So how did they insulate copper wire before modern chemical products? Sorry if any of this is naive, I'm a software engineer, not an electrician Jim!

I've got some books of Anthony Beevor (The second world War, the Ardennes and Stalingrad) and have the following questions:

How reliable is Anthony Beevor? What is his perspective, and potential bias? What do I have to have in the back of my head whilst reading his works?

I hope that this is not against the rules. It is not my intention to break them.

In "Debt:- The first 5000 years". David Graeber argues that during medieval ages economies operated a whole lot on credit relations. What is the veracity of this claim? Because as far as I know there is a lot a coinage available in medieval India. There was also an inflation due to Mohammad Tughluq's coinage experiments.

He further insinuates that in Islamic Caliphates slavery was minimized. Is he saying this only for debt bondage relations as he later states military-slavery-coinage system was still in place in caliphate?

He further hypothesizes that Jajmani/Balutedari systems in India came about being due to the credit relations. If this is true how and when did these systems came about being

While researching civil aviation intrusions and overflights, I stumbled on a site with an interesting beginning. Towards the end of 1944 a number of US B-29s were damaged in raids over Manchuria and ended up landing in the USSR (Vladivostok area). Since the Russians were not at war with Japan the crews were interred. The notes on the incidents say the “aircrews were allowed to escape to American-occupied Iran in January 1945”. Vladivostok is not exactly next door to Iran. I would like to learn more about this story, but don’t know where to look. Further information, links, or book recommendations appreciated.

Films and telly might portray members of the general public bowing and taking a knee in the presence of royalty, but how close to reality was this in an age when a country like England had several "kings" in several areas all vying for supremacy? If a king travelled at all, would he mingle with the hoi polloi or would he be removed to a castle or something?

One question that has often occurred to me is how many servants in a major European Early Modern household would reside there or sleep overnight? I know at least some servants and important household officials would have quarters or sleep on pallet beds in the masters' bedrooms like a spare mattress situation. However, in a household with a large number of servants would they all have quarters? Including the scullions or minor footmen? How was this situation in royal courts versus aristocrats and gentry? I get the impression servants with assigned quarters were most common at the royal court because of the giant-social-network aspect of it, the number of residences some monarchs had, the size and complexity of the building with many rooms, and the frequency of references to assigned chambers at court.

Everybody knows that Germany had to sign the treaty after their impending defeat which reduced the territorry of the German Empire, forced the Empire to pay reparations and limited the size of the German army to 100,000 men. My question is the following: Are there articles in the treaty that still affect Germany? Germany nowadays has on one hand an army with 250,000 men, but finished the reparation payments in the 90s.

In high school history class it has stuck with me the quote from my professor, that said that the Czechoslovak army in 1937-38 prior to Munich conference was the best equipped and trained in the world and had the allies not thrown Czechoslovakia to the wolves we would have held out for long enough for the allies to intervene.

By giving Hitler the Sudetenland where all the forts and bunkers were situated (and still are), forcing Slovakia to separate or be eaten up by Hungary (not that certain fascist elements in Slovakia were hard to convince), the would be obstacle was eliminated and a new attack vector to Poland was opened.

Now how valid was the claim about the preparedness of the Czechoslovak army in a defensive conflict with the wehrmacht and could Czechoslovakia hold its own against them? Certainly the defenses in the Sudetenland were formidable but was the army really "the best in the world"?

Additinal question - was the "Munich betrayal" as it is called here really that significant or, considering the allies had to bide for time and couldn't have helped Czechoslovakia anyway, just accelerating the inevitable?

Would crusaders or other civilians during the crusade face homophobia?

A little backstory. I come from an ex-USSR country and recently I had a zoom call with my grandfather and I said something along the lines "How nice that technology allows us to see each other while talking". And then he responded with: " You know, we had video call possibilities a long time ago."

According to him, the procedure was like this: Like any long-distance call, you had to go to the post office. At the post office, you could pick an option to call through a "videocall", he said that the option was only offered to major cities like Moscow or Leningrad. So, when you got your opportunity to make the video call, you had to go into this little booth, that had a small tv like screen and you could see the person you were talking to. He didn't remember the exact time when this was but said late 70s early 80s.

While my grandfather is old, he is surprisingly comprehensive, but I still seem to be skeptical of this possibility. Could this be true and would they even offer this to the general public?

I can't link the picture in this sub but if you look up Charles II infant it should be pretty apparent the one I'm talking about...

edit: I should have said painting sorry for the anachronism

I'm interested in an answer for Europe and the Americas, or perhaps even more regions

Even though, the borders were used to describe where one country (empire) begun & ended - the people could freely travel in past times.

When did it become as we know it today? With thourough checking and prison time or fines if you cross a border without papers/check.

in discussions of dropping the atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki, one argument i see a lot is that japan had an honor culture with a sort no surrender tenet. examples folks will bring up is stuff like kamikaze pilots and infamous cases of imperial soldiers remaining at their post alone on south pacific islands for decades. it always seemed like bs us propaganda used to justify atrocities - 'they wouldnt have surrendered anyway so all we could do was nuke them.' i know that that particular example is fraught because there was an internal debate over surrender in japan before hiroshima. but exactly how strong was the anti-surrender side? i found a wiki article about japanese pows and it seems like many were taken although many more killed - but again was that an actual thing or was it a useful excuse to dehumanize and execute people?

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i know this is working backwards but my intuition is that its mostly dehumanizing propaganda that relies on orientalist stereotypes of inscrutability but i suppose i dont know enough to argue one way or the other.

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so what are the facts? is there any data to support or refute the thesis? are there any primary sources of imperial soldiers saying "death before dishonor" or like "yo my CO is saying i should die for this dumb shit but fuck him i just want to live" or whatever?