Most things I find don't go farther than the 1800's. I am kabayli myself, and aside from the stories passed down from my grandparents to my parents, and then to me, there's not much else I can find. And even if I do find something, it's typically extremely biased...

I would appreciate if someone could refer me to some authentic/reputable sources, books, or even a youtube video. Lol, i'll take anything. I just wanna learn more about my history and the impacts of phonecians, romans, ottoman turks, etc.

In the current territory of England the Barbarian Invaders genocided and completely replaced the local population, while the same did not occur in the Mediterranean. Why?

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ps: The term "Barbarian Invader" is used by historians in Mediterranean countries and is not considered pejorative. And I also don't know what other term to use since "migrants" obviously doesn't fit.

We hear almost exclusively about the European expeditions and conquest of the New World after its discovery. Was there any such expeditions done by Asians or Africans?

It seems an odd thing to ban only color tv and not tv as a whole. Were there any materials useful for the war effort used in color tvs? I'd also be interested if there were any other production bans i am not aware of as this is the first i have learned about.

I remember reading in college that one survey found that something like 50% of soldiers in World War II couldn't bring themselves to fire on the enemy in their first combat situation. Unfortunately, this was give-or-take 10 years ago, so I don't remember what source this was from, though I know it was a Gender Studies class text book. I believe we were looking at where gender stereotypes don't hold up. Like how masculinity has traditionally been seen as a de facto component of military competency, and therefore masculinity should equate to military efficacy.

In light of Uvalde, I wanted to know if this factoid in my flawed memory held up or not? Certainly not to defend anything about recent events, but rather that, if that is true, then of course valorizing police departments in an idea that they "defend" their communities every day makes the tragic failure of that department sort of inevitable.

I'm thinking beyond hieroglyphics, and beyond a portrait stamped on a coin. A reasonably accurate visual depiction like a contemporaneous painting, drawing, or sculpture where we can actually observe a reasonably accurate visual depiction.

This question may have a slight UKcentric slant to it because I’m trying to find a decent online newspaper archive service for The Times (& Sunday Times), The Daily Telegraph & The Guardian.

Is there one service that can offer all of them? Or will I need to subscribe to multiple products? What are the costs? Will they be text searchable?

I’m not part of a university so I can’t use anyone else’s archive licences

Whenever I browse this subreddit, and particularly when reading threads about topics of which I have more than passing knowledge, I am always struck by the profound lack of perspective present. What I mean by that is quality scholarship almost always acknowledges, and more often than not addresses, the fact that on any given issue of historical significance there are invariably multiple, contested viewpoints. On /r/askhistorians, however, I rarely if ever see even the most well-respected users draw from the scholarly diversity that they must know is at the core of their own fields of study (because they had to pass their PhD examinations like anyone else). Humility, a trait my own academic mentors have always emphasized, is cast aside in favor of an almost categorical certainty.

Users should be very aware - much more aware than they are currently - of just how curated the content they consume on this platform is. And /r/askhistorians is, or should be, no exception to that rule. Sadly, I think too many of us programmatically conflate long walls of text and hefty lists of sources with a nuanced examination the past. Form over content, and the content here is often a poison pill all too willingly swallowed.

EDIT: Damn the whole mod team rolled through to hit me with their walls of text. I'll respond individually to each one out of consideration though certainly don't feel obliged to respond back. I'm glad this has led to some generative discussion.

Obviously, a portion of Northern Africa is Islamic, so I understand that probably plays somewhat of a role, but I'm curious if anyone has any elaborate and substantial reasons why this occurred.

Something that really puzzled me is that pre-decolonization, there were many parallels between British South Africa and French Algeria. Both had relatively high percentage European populations for Africa (about 1/6 for each), power was concentrated in the hands of the whites, and both systematically put down their native populations. However, when the colonial period came to an end, white South Africans were able to consolidate power, while white Algerians were forced into a diaspora around the Francophone world by the native Algerian population. Why were the white South Africans able to maintain control over the larger number of black South Africans for so long, while white Europeans were not able to over Muslim Algerians? I would understand not being able to control guerrilla forces in the Sahara, but you would think they would have been able to maintain control along the coast like in Algiers or Oran.

In his book on the American land speculator, politician and pioneer William Cooper, Alan Taylor discusses (pg 120-122) plans to export American maple sugar to Britain. This is around 1789. In particular he wanted to sell it to abolitionists, on the grounds that it was not made by slave labor. Like a lot of Cooper's plans this did not pan out.

My question is about the British abolitionists. Did they reject sugar and other products made with slave labor? Did they try and convince others to do the same? If so how effective was this? I know that today lots of people are bothered by consumer goods that have been unethically produced. Were the abolitionists the start of this, like they were the start of so many other things?

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Taylor, Alan. William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1996.

On various historical maps of Poland, the PLC is often depicted in its entirety, without any internal separation into Poland and Lithuania, implying that Lithuania was subordinate to Poland. Was Lithuania really an equal partner in the relationship, as the name PLC suggests, or should it be viewed as a vassal state under Polish control?

I've heard that most of South Africa was fairly empty before colonization and that most of the current non-European inhabitants migrated there after colonization began. Is this accurate?

In an episode of the historical drama series 1883, a German immigrant is asked if he and his fellow European immigrants could swim. His reply was that it was illegal to swim in his home country and that the bodies of drowning victims were flogged before burial. Is this historically accurate? If so, what was the reasoning behind the swimming ban, was it effective and wouldn’t it have been more effective to reach people how to swim then to ban them from entering the water?

Going down a German history rabbit hole recently and the Hohenstaufens are definitely my favorite of the German dynasties so far but reading about good old Fred the Red I can't help but feel that his legend outweighs his accomplishments, for a ruler that lost a lot, and whose dynasty died out only 3 generations after him he sure has a lot of presence in the German historical narrative, being one of Germany's greatest mythical heroes, having more statues or portraits than any other medieval German ruler, and was even chosen as the namesake of the largest invasion in history by the Nazis, presumably inspired from their own sick and twisted imagining of German history.