Lucas Alaman's "History of Mexico" tomes I & II are now available on Amazon. They cover the Mexican struggle for independence from the overthrow of the Bourbons by Napoleon in 1808 to the reduction of the rebellion to parts of the south in 1819 amzn.to/4fzs7mZ

funny to read about how exact same problems & scandals appear in quite different political systems. The FBI's raid on Trump's Florida dacha for the classified documents there; as well as suppression of Soufan, Agee, Shaffer, Snepp, Crowley, & Marchetti memoirs come to mind.

The 1,408 men who followed Cortes & Narvaez into Mexico were a high fraction of the Spanish population of Cuba. The total population was only about 20,000 in 1602, so was likely under 10,000 or even 5,000 in 1519.

New ancient DNA paper in press by @HistArcDNA on Iron Age Mesopotamia! Read it here: link.springer.com/article/10…

Based on discharge inscriptions, the Roman army retired around 150 veterans per 5,000 soldiers, representing about 3% of its troops each year. The military would also lose another 2% to natural rates of adult mortality. However, since somewhat less than half of all soldiers lived to complete their 25 years of service, the actual rate of mortality among soldiers was likely higher, at around 3%-4%. This means that each year the military lost around 6%-7% of its manpower to retirement and mortality. With an imperial army size of around 400,000 legionaries and auxiliaries, the Roman military required 24,000–28,000 new recruits simply to maintain its size. Each decade, this massive and complex military machinery would need to recruit, train, and churn out 240,000–280,000 new soldiers to defend the empire, essentially replacing most of the soldiery each decade.

Rome's haphazard political system at end of 2nd century left it with many redundancies, ensuring its resilience but allowing centralization under harsh emperors like Severus. The newly centralized system's stakeholders (high officials) then deliberately backed weak emperors.

The Roman gentry of Africa (modern Tunisia) survived through both the Vandal & Byzantine periods. It wasn't until the 11th century that they were fully swept away in an act of spite by the Fatimids.

Part of a broader trend in MENA: women's literacy, internet use, & "relationship media" (for lack of a better description) are decreasing fertility.

Palabras del príncipe heredero Hirohito: «México y el Japón son hermanos de la misma madre (...) cumplen igual misión en distintos continentes; son los guardianes de una civilización altamente moral, los centinelas de dos razas contra las fuerzas de la barbarie».

The Balkans weren’t always this Slavic. Before the 6th century, the region was mostly Roman provinces with Latin-speaking populations mixed with Illyrians and Thracians. Then everything changed. Starting in the 500s, Slavic tribes began crossing the Danube. At first they came as raiders with the Avars, but soon entire families started settling. They moved into the mountains and depopulated countryside, avoiding the big coastal cities. Over the next 200 years, they slowly took over most of the inland Balkans. The locals who survived either retreated to the highlands or were gradually absorbed. By the early Middle Ages, much of the peninsula had become what the Byzantines called “Sclavinia” — Slavic land.