I understand that even after the fall of the West people of Italy still considered themselves to be Romans. But when did it stop?

I am a big fan of the "Dandelion Dynasty" series of silkpunk fantasy novels by Ken Liu. I recently learned that the first book, The Grace of Kings, is apparently a nearly beat-for-beat retelling of the Chu-Han Contention. As historical fiction, the book would be excellent, but of course some elements are fantastical and unreal. I feel like I managed to learn a lot of ancient Chinese history without realizing it, but now I would like to know what is based in real history and what is not. Sadly, my education was slanted heavily Eurocentric and so I am pretty ignorant of Chinese history.

​

How can I learn more? Are there books (straight history or historical fiction) that are accessible to a complete beginner? Any suggestions are most appreciated (and I hope this question is properly formatted for the rules of this sub)

If this has been posted previously my apologiies. My most likely reason is the boats was purposed elsewhere. My logic for using them is the Kriegsmarine did not employ a significant screening force where commerce raiders were concerned. Thanknyou in adavnve for your responses.

Does anybody knows for works (articles, books) that are trying to combine theoretical perspectives and problems of historiography, with methods and theoris of computational social science/digital humanities? I am thinking along the lines of methods like natural language processing, social network analysis or agent based modeling. For example using computer simulations (agent based modeling) to test counterfactual hypothesis about some historical event or process.

I've recently become acquainted with the work of Tommaso Tesei, Gabriel Said Reynolds, Andreas Kalpony and Nicolai Sinai, who from my non-specialist perspective appear to be credible scholars in Qur'anic studies. These authors have recently made arguments for a model of multiple authorship for the Qur'an, either as a redaction of pre-canonical written texts from different authors (as postulated by Reynolds) or as containing a core that goes back to the historical Muhammad, that was later expanded by people in a different sociohistorical context after his death (although Sinai appears to believe the Qur'an is still primarily the work of one author, whereas Tesei is much more skeptical). This is in contrast to what many of these scholars note has been the prevailing scholarly consensus, namely that the Qur'an has a single author.

What has the scholarly reaction to these arguments been? What have the recent counterarguments, questions, and rebuttals from experts been about the issue?

Traditionally at least in my experience, anything to do with money is thought of as more men's work. But I did google and I did see things like classes in household economizing for women in the 50s? Does the tradition go back further than that though?

So, I just entered a Turkish university, and will be studying history. Lectures are mostly on the Ottomans, and to be honest, I'm not that interested in the Ottomans. So, I need books that will get me interested in them. I'm a native speaker, and live in Turkey, so books in Turkish would probably be better, since they're easier to obtain and digest. But English is fine too.

This is certainly a broader question than any one particular person, but an example I think of is the Roman emperor Hadrian in part because the consensus is pretty solid that he was in fact gay, but even he was still subject to Greco-Roman cultural norms which were different from our own regarding sexuality.

How do historians make the case of whether a person from history was gay, bi, or straight, or are these terms themselves not useful for looking at sexual orientation in the deep past? And how much evidence is needed to make the case one way or the other?

I'm trying to figure out if he took a personal servant or if the other marines waited on him. Who shaved him in the morning and stood behind his chair at dinner? Or did he actually look after himself? Did officers have personal servants in the Royal Marines in 1788?

Apologies if this question would be more fit for r/HistoryWhatIf—I'm expecting higher-quality answers here is all, and I'm particularly interested in the legal considerations of my question.

The question's a fairly simple one—couldn't have the legal grey area Russia was put in as a result of being both a seceding member of the USSR as well as the Union's sole successor been avoided by naming the Commonwealth of Independent States, explicitly stated to be the successor organisation to the Soviet Union in the Belovezh Accords, the inheritor of Soviet Union's place within the UN Security Council instead of Russia? If not, why?

This is an oddly specific one, I know, but I thought it would be worth asking as I've been Googling and searching every database available to me and I'm not coming up on any useful or sourced answers!

I am writing an MA dissertation on travel writers in the long-eighteenth century. One of the lesser-known writers I'm using as a case study travelled exclusively on horseback, and it would be useful to one of my points of argument/speculation to know how much this might have cost her - preferably with any sources possible as obviously I can't use reddit as a source in my dissertation!

Thank you in advance to anyone who could possibly try to help me with this.

Hello,

I reside in Athens and recently I heard from podcast about Antigonus Gonatas which he studied in Athens and he was very close to philosophers and on the podcast I heard that they are still some tablets for him. So I called the epigrafiko museum in Athens and they want a source to find the tablet unfortunely they don't have it in public to search via internet. Is there anyone here which knows where I can found a reference to ask for this tablet/epigrafi to see it on the museum.

thank you in advance

A common trope of fantasy games like D&D are armorers; you just walk in their shops and they have weapons and armors on display that anyone with the money can buy.

Was this ever a thing? From my understanding, armors were prohibitively expensive so I can’t imagine someone just setting up shop and selling stuff to the average joe. Additionally, full suits were often custom fitted and couldn’t just be worn by anybody.

I've read that rye was vastly more common than wheat in Scandinavia throughout the middle ages, while wheat prevailed in most of modern-day Germany and all throughout France. Were wheat flour and wheat bread unheard-of among the Vikings and their descendants, or would these products be imported from the European continent like red wine was? When did wheat become accessible in Scandinavia, and what was the grain situation of Iceland throughout the middle ages?

I'm in the middle of reading War and Peace and just encountered a passage that was really perplexing. Several of the major characters are at an opera in Moscow and Tolstoy keeps describing how one of the female characters in the audience is nude. First he says she was "completely undressed" and then later he says "her bosom was completely bare."

I must be misunderstanding. Surely women in circa 1810 Russia didn't get undressed as they watched the opera?