50% of ancestry in modern day Yugoslavs, 25% in Albanians, & 40% in Bulgarians comes from invaders from northern & eastern Europe who arrived 200-700 AD. Romanian origins complex, with 50% of their ancestry from same NE European invaders as well as Asiatics from steppe.
Roman Europe was very diverse at its height, with migrants from the more densely populated east settling in European cities. A sizable part of population of Viminacium in modern Serbia was of Middle Eastern origin, & they were wealthier than the locals.
Middle Eastern ancestry in Roman Balkans declined in 4th century AD. Sarmatians from the steppe and Germans from the north began to settle the Balkans, mixing with the pre-Roman populations who had held out in the relatively more homogenous countryside.
Slavic invasions of the Balkans in the Dark Ages formed the modern populations of former Yugoslavia. South Slavs of the 10th century AD are very similar in ancestry to modern South Slavs. Slavic ancestry was disproportionately (75%) from women.
Paper is one of several confirming what Juvenal, the Gracchi Brothers, Pliny the Elder observed - that the late Roman Republic's & early Roman Empire's eastern subjects comprised a noticeably high part of the Empire's European population. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
The decline & fall of the Roman Empire featured mass die offs, with the Easterners concentrated in the cities disappearing. The rural pre-Roman populations survived and mixed with their German & Slav conquerors, forming modern Europeans nations.
Thread with excerpts from "Hezbollah: A Short History" by Augustus Richard Norton
Shia birthrates in mid-20th century Lebanon were higher than those of Sunnis & Christians.
from 1950s to 1970s Lebanese Shia typically supported secular parties led by Christians - whether rightist or leftist. Growth of armed Palestinian formations in Lebanon in 1970s drove formation of both coalitional & oppositional Shia organizations.
Thread with excerpts from "Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic" by Michael Axworthy
one reason to find the Iranian Revolution interesting is that it proceeded to follow a non-Western path of development, much like India & China, rather than following the Western path.
Iranian Shia Islam is a more organized & disciplined force than Sunni Islam in most of the rest of the world as the result of an enduring clerical hierarchy (the Sunni Caliphate was dissolved in 1924).
Thread with excerpts from "A History of Myanmar Since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations" by Michael Aung-Thwin and Maitrii Aung-Thwin
Burma is a colonial era English name for Myanmar. In the Burmese language (Myanma Saga), the ethnicity & nationality of locals are not distinguished - such distinctions are made only in Western academia.
the authors take issue with the focus that Western anarchist academics like James C. Scott (& David Graeber?) place on the hill tribes of Myanmar, stating that their evidence is weak & that it was indeed the states of the region which drove pre-modern history. @ResonantPyre
Thread with excerpts from "The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of Africa's Middle Ages" by Francois-Xavier Fauvelle
Mansa Musa's rise to power is known only through a dictation written down by a secretary in Cairo.
the medieval contact zone between the Islamic world & sub-Saharan societies was unstable. There are archaeological sites with no Arabic language records, and Arabic language references to cities that have yet to be found - suggesting terrible wars now long forgotten.
Thread with excerpts from "The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution" by Natalya Vince
death toll in Algerian War is disputed, but census comparisons suggest it was about 350k-400k - about 3% of the population.
The populated parts of Algeria along the coast were not colonies - they were under direct French administration. Algerians were excluded from governance through laws that essentially required them to apostatize from Islam in order to obtain legal equality with Europeans.