I just finished the manga by Tetsu Saiwai called The 14th Dalai Lama. It's a biography of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, who was chosen as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. The manga pictorially vividly describes the childhood of the Dalai Lama till the point where he sought refuge in India under Nehru's Government in India. But somehow, it feels as if the manga is very one dimensional and tells the story from only one perspective, although there is no doubt that the Chinese incursion did happen and people in Tibet did suffer then. Many took refuge in other countries including India. But, I'd like to read more to get a thorough corroborated history back then.

Can someone please refer me some unbiased books about this topic? Especially by authors who are not dissuaded by Buddhism and/or fans of the Dalai Lama and cite proper resources in their books?

PS. If the referenced any of the books have audiobooks as well, that'd be great! Thanks in advance!

As I understand it, the war was increasingly unpopular back in the English Parliament, with factions vying for pulling out of the conflict long before the final battle (and subsequent surrender) at Yorktown.

So let's say Cornwallis either escapes from Yorktown or successfully repels the attack and holds the city, how likely is it that the war would have been lost anyway?

is there an actual, provable link between Odin and Santa Claus, or is this a modern day invention? Because I've heard this claim being spread throughout the internet but I have to find any real proof for it. Also I read the claim that originally, it was Odin who would come in the night during Yule and leave treats for children but I've yet to find any source for this claim.

I have heard much about forces like the Portuguese marines being established hundreds of years ago yet since modern amphibious landing tech was no where even close to invented what role did the marines have other than just elite troops or sailors with guns?

And why wasn’t it reconstructed? Was this time a turning point of world history? What were humans doing at that time that was different than what we’ve been doing since?

I thought of this while watching a documentary. Bomber planes operated at night, while anti-aircraft guns and search lights tried to take them down. Would painting the planes black not have been good camouflage against the black night sky?

To what extent was she treated as what we would recognize as a prisoner?

What were her personal freedoms? Her meals? Her housing accommodations? Was she lonely? Did she paint? Was she content?

How did her quality of life compare to other ladies of similar status?

Thanks!

I've seen a lot of arguments between people (often ranging from Nazi sympathizers to American nationalists) whether the treatment that post-war Germany received was "too generous", "good", "acceptable", "bad" or even flat-out genocidal.

So, with all of these different values, numbers and other sources that were held in front of my nose, I truly found myself more than confused. Thus, I must ask;

How was Germany treated by the Western Allies after WW2?

Further key points of the question:

— Was food available in quantity, and average calorie intake good?

— Did the German industry suffer?

— Was the re-building of Germany made possible only with Allied help?

— What influence did the Morgenthau Plan have on Allied actions? Was the plan really as bad as often portrayed, and did Allied planners really sympathize themselves with the plan?

Any answer is, obviously, greatly appreciated.

This always made me confused when I had the chance to travel around ancient sites in the Mediterranean before covid-19. For to me, it seemed like both Greek or Roman the settlements had the same elements as agora or theatre. How one can distinguish them?

Dear r/AskHistorians you be so kind to share some resources on the subject to help me understand the transition in-between period and their development ?

I’m asking because I’m playing the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and many of the villages seem to organize themselves without the supervision/direction of a higher state, the only exceptions being when an occupying force comes to demand peasants for conscript labor or to be punished for betraying said occupying force. I was wondering if medieval villages actually governed themselves and how they went about it/what the process and structure of local medieval government was like, did the villagers elect officials amongst themselves etc or was there a village chief who appointed people to local positions etc? I’m mostly looking for information on English/Scottish and French villages from about 1100-1400, but information from Denmark/Norway/Sweden from 1100-1400 would also be interesting to me, seeing as I almost never hear about Scandinavia post-Viking Age.

I’m a Brazilian Jiu jitsu practitioner, and I’m interested in how/if the use of ground fighting techniques were used during ancient and medieval warfare. I’d imagine as two sides closed and got stuck in, some exchanges between combatants would go to the ground. Almost every group people that I can think of have some sort of traditional wrestling/grappling form. Jiu jitsu from Japan, wrestling forms in Greece, etc etc.

Would techniques be used once a fight between two individuals went to the ground or would who ever ended up on top just grab the first hard thing they could find and start bashing?

Lately I've been reading into the period of sub Roman Britain. I find it fascinating but rather frustrating due to the lack of information available. I'm finding it hard to understand why the Britons authority was so quickly displaced despite outnumbering the invaders. Another question I had was to how much Celtic indentity had been eroded during the Roman occupation. Was there any connection between pre-occupation Celtic Tribes and sub-Roman kingdoms? I know that the kingdoms originated from the collapsing political structures and many of the first Kings had Romanised names. It seems to me that the Roman occupation must have left the population significantly weakened in comparison with the ferocious resistance from the Britons at the beginning.

The specifics are really foggy in my head so this is going to be a terrible articulation.

Some group of allies, probably Americans because I live in the U.S.; probably soldiers, maybe high ranking military personnel, maybe even some sort of politician or diplomat sent over to help stabilize the nation, upon seeing the atrocities of a specific concentration camp publicly shames (by that I don't know, maybe speaking in a town square, maybe at a meeting of locals with new occupying forces) the citizens of a/the town nearest the concentration camp. He shames them and is really angry at them, saying something along the lines of "You can smell burning corpses in the air for miles and miles, all of you people knew of this and did nothing".

Googling doesn't help because of the near infinite amount of WW2 stories and it keeps showing Dachau, which is nowhere close to being the story I remember hearing.

Thank you for your comments.

When discussing China and its history in popular parlance, the term "Han" is thrown around so often that it seems to be a pre-supposed axiom. But surely this was not always the case?

China is rather big, and the "Han" cover an absolutely vast area, and essentially all of "China proper." Today, "Han" is of course the prevailing ethnic identity across this whole territory, but is projecting such a notion of homogeneity onto pre-modern China appropriate? There are for example, numerous subdivisions such as the Hakka, Min, Cantonese and Wu peoples, each with tens of millions of people belonging to them. Do these groups descend from ethnicities that were once seen as separate from the Han, or is the very notion of the "Han people" an abstraction?

In any case, when does this idea of the Han Chinese, and China as a political entity based around Han ethnicity and culture, emerge in Chinese history?

I know Imperial China has a very long period with many types of government. I'm looking at the period between Qin and Song Dynasty. The period between China first unifies and before it was first conquered by steppe nomads.

I'm just looking at the sense of who get to make decisions? Do matters have to be debated at all? I read an article that the Chinese Emperor was not an absolute monarch before the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty. For example, the Chinese Emperor had to get the Chancellor's to agree with him. The Chancellor can reject an Emperor's decision.

For example, if the Emperor receives a report of a flood somewhere, how would the situation be handled? Do the Emperor just hand it off to the "Minister of Floods".