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So, the first question is what kind of relationship "counts" as being part of the Raj? If purely administrative structures are enough, then Aden and the British territories in the Persian Gulf can be added to your list as they were governed as subdivisions of the Raj until 1937 and 1947...

The Salish Wool Dog. An extremely interesting breed of dog that the Salish peoples in the Pacific Northwest bred specifically as a wool animal. They deliberately kept the population separated from their other dog breeds and carefully bred the dogs to select for desired characteristics of the...

Delhi, and other cities in it's general region lie at the northern tip of the Gangetic plain, roughly where it approaches the plain of the Indus river. Thus, that region is well suited for the capital of a state which is either dominant in, or seeking to dominate, northern India and the Gangetic...

I'm taking "part of the Home Islands" to mean that the territory in question is governed as and considered an integral part of Japan. It's really quite easy to have Taiwan considered part of the home islands. IOTL, Taiwan was governed with a the goal of integration into the rest of Japan for at...

The Twin Cities light rail system is excellent for moving between the two downtowns and the Mall of America. Or to a destination directly along the lines. But, it's a terrible option for more varied use or for actually commuting because it just isn't terribly practical to and from the train...

I think you're right that the loss of an SSBN or a carrier group leads to escalation. As you say, both of those are counterforce strikes that directly harm the nation's ability to prosecute a war as well as harming the deterrent capacity. The assets are just too important. That said, I think an...

I think you could probably see nuclear depth charges and nuclear tipped interceptor missiles used without necessarily provoking a nuclear response. More specifically, I think that in those applications the fact that the weapon used was nuclear doesn't inherently escalate the situation any more...

I think the role of foreign involvement is critical here. While the Ottoman empire certainly had issues with nationalism amongst the component ethnic groups, I don't think it's quite right to say that the Ottoman's crashed and burned in nationalist rebellions insofar as that implies that it was...

IIRC there was such a thing as a 'Rum' (Roman) identity in the Ottoman empire. It was associated with urban residents and with those who were relatively well educated and involved in commerce. Essentially, it seems to have been an identity used by those who were not truly part of the empire's...

The name the state uses for itslef is going to depend on how, exactly, the state concieves of itself and how it came to be. Why is it a republic? Which, if any, ethnic group is dominant? If the Sultan was overthrown by groups more aligned with the state's Turkish identity (Republican Young Turks...

Something that's worth noting is that while the geography of certain areas makes them appealing locations for cities and will tend to elevate any city built there, many of these locations, though of course not all, are big enough that you could build a significant city on multiple sites within...

The key question on this subject is what happens between Greece and Turkey. It’s been discussed before, which isn’t to say that it won’t be fun and constructive to talk about it again, and the problem with understanding the ramifications is that everything depends on how Greece and Turkey act...

This seems the most likely option to me. Historically we can see a lot of places with distinctions between upper and lower forms of nobility, with the specifics varying between circumstances. IIRC Poland in particular is known for having a remarkably large lower nobility and for the conflict for...

There are a lot of ways to achieve this. The earliest, and probably the best, is having a successful Antigonus. At the end, he controlled Anatolia, Syria, the Levant, and parts of Greece under his son Demetrius who was actively engaged with Cassander (and in suppressing rebellious Greek cities...

Only in the geographic sense, though. There are plenty of Iranian peoples, cultures, and languages that never existed in the geographic area of Iran/Persia. Likewise there are groups that are Iranian but not Persian in terms of both nationality and ethnicity. Ah, thank you, that clears it up.

Honestly geography is as big an issue for Zoroastrianism fulfilling this challenge as islamic expansion is. I mean, the whole modern population of the middle east doesn't even get you halfway to the goal. To me, the best way to get Zoroastrianism to that level would essentially be to have the...

So, this falls into the same trap that an awful lot of theories about why <insert country> fought WW1 in that it tries to ascribe a single overarching motivation to what was, on all sides, a deeply complex set of motivations. Now, I'll freely admit to preferring certain interpretations of WW1 in...

Just a bit on the Deng Xiaoping equivalent. I wouldn’t worry too hard about finding someone as a direct equivalent- as I understand it Deng path was very specific to the circumstances of Maoist China as was his arrival at policies of economic liberalization. He didn’t necessarily start out in...

With regard to silphium it is important to note that we don’t actually know if it worked as a contraceptive. We know that the Romans thought it worked as one, but we don’t really know if it’s true. People have tried experiments with asafoetida, which was considered a similar but inferior...

You'd probably take the route from the Elbe to the Rhine then follow the river until you could cut across to the Rhone. I'd guess that the fastest way would be to follow the Elbe up to whichever port got you closest to the Main, then take that until it joins up with the Rhine, then follow that...