I am doing some research for myself for a potential upcoming novel I want to write and part of the story revolves around a gun. Form my basic research so far I have found gunpowder was invented around the 9th century in China and didn't enter in to warfare until 1000 AD. Go wikipedia.

Now, what I have not been able to find but know there should be some answers to, is what where the limitations of various civilizations from them being utilized for guns? Research? Imagination? Metallurgy? Not broke don't fix it(warfare)?

From gunpowder there are many weapons that have arisen and culminated in cannons before hand held weapons. I can surmise the cannon worked because of the sheer amount of metal to house the explosion and am guessing the thinner metals would have exploded. I guess my question boils down to why?

Now, as this is going to be in a novel, I can skip a lot of intervening time but don't want to hand wave something that I can adequately explain. Right now I don't know if I am in the right ball park or if I need to think about this from a different angle.

To the basic question, if dealing with China, why did they not have guns in 1000 AD? Why did it take until the 1500's (?) for Europe to have firearms? (I think that date is off) Why were blackpowder weapons so prevalent and why did it take so long for cartridge and bullet style guns to be the norm. Hopefully the question makes sense somewhat is not overly broad but I wanted the historical side of things so I can more accurately develop and write a story with a better understanding of the history behind it.

Hey historians,

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Hope this is ok to ask here, but i recently came across a letter my Grandfather had written to his mother. The letter was dated 11/13/1944. It was your typical mom letter, saying things like "dont worry about me" and what packages they were sending back and forth to one another. He mentioned that he was in Marseille and he couldnt tell her what he was doing there but described it as "not being in a fox hole, but not exactly staying in a hotel either"

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Im not sure what exactly he did in the war, but he was in fox holes so im guess just regular old army infantry grunt? i wish i had more info to share but i didnt know him well and thats all i got. So yeah, what might have he been doing in France in 1944? hope this isnt a dumb question and i appreciate all your responses!

There are lots of information on why words for animals are Anglo-Saxon, while their corresponding meats are French in origin. The most prominent examples are cow vs beef and pig vs pork.

My very limited understanding of French is that while some animals have the same words for their flesh (pigeon, goat, sheep), cows and pigs (and deer?) have different words (vache vs boeuf and cochon vs porc). Please correct if I am wrong. Like I said, my understanding of French is very limited.

So why are there different words in French? (Also, squab is le pigeonneau in French, so where did the word squab come from?)

The reason behind English having different words is so intertwined with history, so it made me interested in finding out why this is also the case in French for certain words. I tried to find answers on my own, but I keep finding more articles about how there different words in English.

Edit. The word squab is Scandinavian in origin. I'm interested why this particular word is Scandinavian while other meat words are French. But that was really an add-on question. (Maybe I should make a seperate post?)

This thought has been in the back of my mind for quite a while due to the fact that throughout my time learning about history, I learned that things were not always what they seemed to be or were not how I was taught long ago like how Columbus never actually set foot on American soil and his reverence as an American hero came much later after the foundation of America as a nation (and it was done by Italian immigrants, not Americans), or how the stories of Nero during the great fire of Rome were probably exaggerated and sensationalist remarks of the tyrant that he was during that time to picture him in a bad image, or how I learned that the Greco-Persian war and the Peloponnesian War were not that black and white as I was told before, or how I once taught that the Roman Enpire actually ended after the fall of Rome during the 4th Century but actually still existed as the Byzantine Empire (at least the historians call it that because the Byzantines still called themselves Romans) till the 15th Century.

All of these were either the results of misinformation (whether intentional or not; possible bias or perhaps propaganda (like Herodotus, the father of history, is also known as the father of lies (at least, that was what he was known for at a time) becuase at was later found in the Histories, some connotations were either false or make-believe); or where some facts or evidence were re-arranged in a manner that people viewed as what was fit for them or how they saw it (like The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon where he glorified the legacies and the actions that the Western Roman Empire left behind that impacted Europe but completely neglected the Byzantine Empire); or where there are historical information that you find in plenty of books, articles and websites and are treated as fact or valid but later investigations or later insight of other perspectives of a certain event with say otherwise (like for example, there is a online comic that depicts as Nikola Tesla as a greatest and misunderstood genius who ever lived. I even believed that too until I encountered a detailed article (I think it was on reddit as well, I cannot remember) that debunked the whole article and treated it as rhetoric. Or another example is when later investigations found that the pyramids were probably built by paid workers, not by slaves)

Sometimes perceptions of historical events have influenced other areas like works of art like the story of Nazi Germany and WW2 have influenced the moulding of the archetype of the crazy army and fanatical dictator stereotype that wants to conquer the world for the sake of world domination or fanaticism regardless of the history that led to it or the factors that influenced in the background that led to it. Or how current perceptions of history can influence how we view historical events from the current 21st century perspective which can hinder us from fully understanding how it was at that time like for example our views towards imperialism vs how imperialism was practiced beforehand and why;, or how certain civilisations get more attention over others (this is something that puzzles me actually) while the others are neglected and their legacies and influences are hindered from being recognised, explored or even given the attention for whatever secrets they may hold (like for example Damascus steel or the Nazca lines of Peru)

There are plenty of people involved here - historians who have to examine the perspectives of the people who wrote these histories, whether it is from other books, letters, drawings, diaries and so on; then you have the people themselves who even wrote these stories in the beginning which could differ in context, description, accuracy or exaggeration; then you have the authors of the history books, the academic articles, the websites and the forums online, and then you have the teachers and the students who learn and teach what they know and spread the message along.

So obviously, then it comes to histography and passing those histories along, there is a possibility that errors might come up, perhaps a person understood the story in a different way, or when passing the story by word of mouth could lead ommission/addition/change of certain details, translations from different languages can lead to possible inaccurate mistranslations as different language may not have the exact word of every word from another language or certain words or phrases could interpreted differently, and so on and so forth.

It sounds like a big thought where I am probably jumping to conclusions without knowing the answers but it is something that makes me think and sometimes even worry when misinformation is spread around treated as valid or factual

Some say 1453 and others say 1492 I'm not sure which one to believe

I'm reading a book where it says in 1664 the British had 4000 high seas ships and the Dutch had 16000 (!), whereas France only had 400. There are a lot of forests in France, some of which were planted just for that, but I know there wasn't much in England or Netherlands. Did they build ships with timber from the colonies ? Is it possible as early ? Thank you for your answers.

I often hear people say that Arabs and Latinos look alike because Latinos have a small amount of Arabic ancestry because Spain was conquered by North African Arab people back in the late middle ages. I'm just curious if there's any truth to that or if its just that Meztisos look kind of like Arabs from separate ancestry pools.

Any great books/articles on the subject? Any in relation of archaeological findings?

I hope I worded the question clearly. I was watching a documentary that delved into the Futhark runes and there didn't seem to be any debate as to what the multipurpose symbols were called and how they were said. I'd love to know how they know this!

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I guess this is a question of how America fought in this time period versus Europe. Going through the wiki page for the War of 1870, one can see cavalry depicted in paintings, even some depicting mass cavalry charges in combat, from which my recollection never happened in a large-scale in the American Civil War. So why did the role of cavalry differ between the regions, and were the infantry style of fighting in the two (ex. US: lines with moderately-accurate rifles) similar?

I’m developing a budding interest on the history of Imperial China, and one thing in particular that caught my attention has been the Qing overthrow of the Ming. I want to learn about the factors that lead to Ming’s decline, but I don’t really know what books and authors are good and reliable. I’ve been trying to use google to find a good book, but haven’t really been able to tell which book I should get. What’s a good, comprehensive book that really covers all the factors that lead to Ming’s fall?

I’ve noticed many pictures of bars in the late 1800s/early 1900s were filled with entirely men. Why was this? Was it abnormal to have mixed gender events or friendships?

I understand there may have been an independent line of Jewish Kings with many subjects ruling in what is today Ethiopia, making it one of the few places on earth where Jews managed to establish an independent jewish state. How could this situation come to pass?

What is the history behind this, why do you/they do this. It is so over reaching it feels like to me?

Listening to the Rex Factor podcast it's striking how easily Anglo-Saxon Kings seemed to be able to change wives when they wanted to. Was this true for non-kings as well? If so, do we know anything about how the process worked?