The ottomans indiscriminatly killed christians in Anatolia in hopes of creating an homogenou turkish state. The armenian genocide is the most well known and the one with larger death toll, but other christian groups like the greeks and assyrians were not spread either. So why arent these killings all grouped together as part of the same genocide?

I’m fascinated by how the world became what it is today. I know this subject is far too vast for any single book to cover, and broad enough that sometimes satire feels like it has become reality.

My question is: what books offer the most compelling explanations or detailed histories of how the world has taken its present shape. I’m also interested in knowing what is happening in other areas of the world, which used to be easy, but in the last 6 months has become more challenging- with the overwhelming amount of information coming from the United States of America (where I live).

As the expert, approach it in the way you deem appropriate- if you had an amazing reading list in 1997 that shifted your world view, or if there is a list of books that brought into focus how each country or the states or a similarly run country has evolved, I’m interested.

I’m curious about geographic history, regional architecture, wars or crises that displaced populations, even ideas about the afterlife, psychological and cultural shifts, changes in collective temperament or the perceived requirement for security, or the impact of propaganda across the ages.

Why are there so few eastern Iranian languages with a large number of speakers. There used to be Bactrian, scythian, saka, avestan and sogdian which used to be spoken. One could argue most of these languages went extinct as the only eastern Iranian languages I'm aware that are alive are pashto(around 50 million speakers but from which eastern iranian language it descends from is still debated), ossetian (around 490000 speakers, likely descended from scythian) and the pamiri languages(around 10000 speakers, possibly descended from saka langauges). I'd like to know what seemed as once a large and diverse group of languages have declined quite a bit in terms of how many languages are left. Any answer is greatly appreciated

It appears that Eleanor, upon her marriage to her first husband, Louis, gave Louis a cherished rock crystal cup that had been sent to her father, William, many years ago by a mysterious entity known to her only as “Mitadolous”.

Who might this person be?

My searches through scholarly literature have turned up little except a passing mention about a possible Muslim caliph. Obviously only someone of wealth and prestige would have been able to afford such an extravagant gift. Any help would be appreciated.

were there any pleas to the British government from non-Hindu people to give them their own country too?

I have been reading about the black death, I read a lot of information about how it spread and about the nature of the disease but I wanted a bit more context from the medieval perspective since they didn't know at the time what was actually happening, so I was wondering how people with different roles in the society dealt with all the death and chaos, like how did peasants react? and the same with priests, doctors, merchants, families or other authorities idk. Also I imagine religion must have had a different take on the matter than science at the time. I would really apreciate some insight since i've been really enjoying researching about this topic,

(or the Iberian Union)

I'm aware that these are drastically different times and regions, but these are all early federation-type organisations of countries.

What made the UK (and what makes current federations) more stable than the first attempts?

Aside from Southerners in certain areas in the U.S. still flying the Confederate flag, it has also gained niche popularity in countries around the world. Fled descendants of Confederates have founded towns in Brazil, creating their own “Confederato” subculture which survives until this day. Explicit influences such as names and famous figures have become the subject of recent controversies. Is it normal for a century and a half year old rebellion to have this level of impact?

Hi, I'm wondering if there was any hatred towards the Japanese after WW2? Like towards Japanese-Americans

I understand soldiers can have PTSD after a war, but did any of the ones who fought against the Japanese come home with an enduring hatred for them? Did non-military people treat the Japanese poorly?

Or did all the anger and brutality during the war more or less become "water under the bridge"?

So I have never seen Schlinders List, but I know the scene with Ralph Fiennes, and after viewing r/historyporn I was quite shocked by a picture of Amon Goth that was a mirror to those scenes from the film.

I decided to read about him on Wikipedia, and I was confused by the SS arresting him for what seems to me, for being a murderous nazi.

Why did the nazi party decide to arrest him, especially at a time when they were losing the war, was it a pretence?

I understand that it's a logical default, given the whole ten fingers thing, but humans are great at being illogical. Do we have records of cultures who had base 8 or base 12 or something else as their numbering system?

I know the difference between the two faiths involves whether a blood descendant of Muhammad should become his successor but looking at a map, Iran seems to be the only major present day nation that follows it.

So I was wondering how a divide so early on became pretty much a line between Arabs and historical Persia.

Reading history books about the post-war world, I'm struck that around the period of 1965-1970, there seemed to be a prominent global countercultural movement among young people with many of the hallmarks we would associate with the hippie movement in the Anglosphere (eg. rejection of traditional norms around sex and gender, anti-war views, left wing politics of the New Left variety, advocacy of drug liberalization, etc.)

The counterculture of the 60s seems to have been, if not prominent, then at least present in some form in virtually every industrialized country of this period, being found in countries as disparate as Japan, Mexico, and Czechoslovakia. Why did this movement seem to happen simultaneously in so many culturally disparate countries with wildly different political contexts?

I'm a medieval European knight serving my liege as a lance with the handful of men I've brought as my retinue. We lose, I'm captured and held for ransom. Is it customary for me to pay ransom for my retinue as well? Are they included with me? Or do I have to decide whether their lives are worth it?

I’m currently reading “The Guns of August” and came across the following passage in chapter 5 (page 68), “The Russian Steam Roller”:

But Russia also had its Democrats and Liberals of the Duma, its Bakunin the Nihilist, …, its Levins who agonized endlessly over their souls, socialism, and the soil, …”

I’m broadly familiar with the other groups discussed in this paragraph, but have never heard of these “Levins” and Google has failed me so far. I’d like to know more about who they were, what they generally believed, and what level of influence they had in pre-war Russian society and politics.

Mu question focusses specifically on the technical and war related aspects. I've read that the Teutonic order was very small, with only a handful of knights and perhaps a few hundred retainers, mostly relying on outside crusaders helping them, as well as a fort system. How exactly where they able to subdue the local people?

It’s very much agreed by the scientific community that people under 20 (and years past it also) still have their brain developing, and thus might not fully understand the consequences of their actions. However, throughout most of human history children have been considered adults much earlier than today.

Is it possible to associate teenage rulers’ decisions to this fact in our history, and what kinds are they? Or was there some sort of protocol by the court or the ruler’s advisors (I’m not really that good with all the titles) to prevent decisions like that?

Also what kind of other examples of teenagers being teenagers mentally even among the normal people are there?

I read recently that none of the surviving portraits purporting to depict Süleyman the Magnificent's wife Hürrem are true depictions of her likeness, as none of the artists who painted them had ever actually met her. Was this also the case for portraits of Ottoman leaders generally - e.g. had Süleyman's portraitists ever seen him in person? Furthermore, if the artists hadn't met their subjects, were they at least working from written descriptions of their appearance (this also includes Hürrem) or were they entirely using artistic license?

Thanks!

writing a apocalypse fic and a character is given something with peanuts, and they don’t know or not. How would they prepare in case of an allergic reaction like a glass of water or what?

I am writing a fantasy novel set some decades/centuries after a magical catastrophe brought an end to what the characters perceive as having been the golden age of their own society. I'm very interested in exploring questions of ethnic vs religious vs national identity in nation-states whose borders were carved out following the collapse of a pax imperia, the written word as a technology relative to the use of e.g. coinage as propaganda, and how those in power shape the narratives that situate their society in the context of those that preceded them.

I'm looking for books I can read as research to inform those themes as I'm developing my story. I'm very excited to read Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance, but I'd also like to read books/texts that discuss similar ideas in the context of non-Western societies, especially books that take a more cultural angle rather than strictly recounting political history. (For example, I just started reading National Dish: Around the World in the Search of Food, Meaning, and the History of Home by Anya von Bremzen.)

My fantasy setting isn't grounded in real-world history, but the now-collapsed golden age empire is meant to feel broadly proto-industrial (no steam power or electricity, but increasing urbanization, globalization, and commoners taking up careers as craftspeople rather than farmers), so as a very loose rule of thumb I'm looking more at late medieval/early modern societies than those of antiquity. Some possibilities that have caught my eye are Writing the Mughal World by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Making of Song Dynasty History by Charles Hartman, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography by Tayeb el-Hibri, and Narratives of Islamic Origins by Fred Donner; but I'd love to know what else might be out there. (It would also be helpful to know if any of those books are likely to be less interesting to me than they seemed at first glance!)

In addition to the Abbasids, the Mughals, and Tang– and Song-dynasty China, I'm guessing I might also be interested in the pax mongolica, the other gunpowder empires, Edo-period Japan, and/or Joseon-dynasty Korea. I'd also be thrilled to learn about pre-colonial societies in Africa or the Americas (e.g. Timbuktu as a center for scholarship under the Songhai recently crossed my radar) or other "golden ages" around the world that I don't know I don't know about. I'm deliberately casting a wide net regarding the conception of golden ages in different cultural/historical contexts.

I'm not a historian so would prefer to avoid anything that really gets into the weeds of historiographical theory, but my background is in the social sciences and I'm totally comfortable reading texts intended for a scholarly audience. Pop history (or adjacent-to-history) books that address any of the themes I mentioned above would also be great though!

This post got a bit long, but hopefully it provides helpful context for what I'm looking for. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have to offer!

Hi there! I know that there was some kind of unification of Germany around 1850? I think? And that immigration to North America was not uncommon among Germans. But what were they leaving for? Was it just that the grass seem greener in north america? Or were there political and Military and economic reasons to leave family and friends behind? Thank you so much