Both ships found themselves in situations where they couldn't outmaneuver, outrun, or fight off their pursuers, yet they both seemed to fight until they went under, with terrible loss of life.

Wouldn't the British have allowed them to surrender, and possibly save the crew? Why wouldn't that have been a preferable outcome for their commanders?

Clergy in Protestantism, Judaism and Islam are allowed allowed to marry, so the Catholic rule seems like an aberration. Given how intertwined the Catholic Church was with politics, it makes sense that there would be a secular reason as to why priests couldn't marry. Didn't it have something to do with preventing church positions from becoming hereditary? I feel like the Investiture Controversy rings a bell.

Additionally, getting away from the official and administrative side of things, how have the people of Monmouthshire historically identified? Did everyone already see themselves as Welsh by 1974? Had they always considered themselves Welsh?

Napoleon annexed many terrtories within the "natural borders of france" and parts of italy. But he also directly annexed dalmatia. Why did he do this and how did the people there react?

It seems to be a fairly common idea in modern scholarship that the Marian Reforms led to Roman Soldiers being loyal to generals rather than the state, eventually leading to the fall of the republic. Are there any ancient sources that directly support this theory, or does is this idea just inferred from other information?

I don't know anything on the topic, I assume even if most people consider themselves han today atleast in China's early history there would be a lot of distinct tribes. How was their relationship with the empire? Were they autonomous vassals largely or were they assimilated quick by the central bureaucracy?

Hello historians! Can you recommend any books that focus on "everyday life" in Ancient Rome (or secondarily Ancient Greece)? I love reading about the period, but over the years I feel like I've become saturated with books about the military and especially political history of the era, and I'm becoming more interested in what everyday life was like in that period: family life, the gymnasium, social life, work/career, religion, etc. I'm interested in the intimate details of ordinary life. :)

Does such a book exist that would be accessible to a non-historian like me?

I read the book list in the FAQ but did not see exactly what I was looking for. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer!

I’m reading Chernow’s grant and there’s a quote showing that Grant hated the entire Adams family “Grant wrote that “I confess to a repugnance to the appointment of an Adams,” and in another he protested that the family did “not possess one noble trait of character that I ever heard of, from old John Adams down to the last of all of them” (page 679) but why did he feel this way? I feel like ideologically if they were alive at the same time they would have supported each other. What am I missing here?

Should we blame Chamberlain if his delaying tactic bought the allies time to rearm?

I've been reading Charles C. Mann's 1491 and I've found it to be a fascinating book so far. I've just finished with the first of three discrete sections and had some questions about the material. Specifically, the author makes two general claims that I was hoping to place in the current academic context.

First, he claims that pre-Columbian American populations were much larger than we generally understand, possibly even much larger than contemporary European populations. The arguments he makes are compelling, but since he's working from the position of a journalist rather than a historian I was hoping to understand if this position is as well regarded and supported as he lets on. The focus of his discussion about the opposition is a book called Numbers From Nowhere and a statistical critique by Rudolph Zambardino. The claims made by these authors, according to Mann, is that the revisionist account relies on unlikely events (larger "virgin soil" death rates than typical for diseases and wildfire virus spreads between relatively disparate civilizations) and large margins of error while also being incredibly sensitive to small changes in the base assumptions (a 1% change in expected death rates changing the predicted population size by millions). While these are strong critiques they seem fairly well refuted in the book through a combination of primary sources and genetic immune system research. Is this a fair statement of the actual academic opposition and their critiques?

Second, the author argues that a combination of lacking prior exposure and a higher genetic vulnerability to disease among American Indian populations was responsible for an unprecedentedly severe disease spread in the New World. The subtext of this claim, later made actual text at the end of the section, is that while Europeans perpetrated later acts of outward hostility towards American Indians, the primary cause of the decimation of New World populations and culture was largely outside European's control. Basically, that, at least during early contact, the European's primary moral failing was greedy negligence and military expansionism, not malicious racial warfare. He offers less academic support for this claim, making it more an emergent theme of the section rather than a hard and fast claim. My question here is roughly the same though, is this a fair appraisal of the current academic historical understanding?

Finally, are there any academic reviews of this book which are particularly interesting? The reviews I've seen from journalists are all pretty breathless. Which isn't really surprising considering the book's source and subject matter. I think it's really excellent so far, and narratively I've had a great time reading it. I just want to make sure that I'm doing so with the proper context. Thanks for any help y'all can provide!

There is a list of books about ancient civilizations that I am planning to start reading and collecting. I want to ask here as it's been difficult to find information about some of these books. The list is this one (And my question is below the list):

Empires of the Nile by Derek A. Welsby
The Anglo-Saxons by James Campbell
The Aztecs by Nigel Davies
The Aztecs by Richard F. Townsend
The Babylonians by H. W. F. Saggs
The Celts by Nora Chadwick
The Egyptians by Alan Gardiner
The Hittites by O. R. Gurney
The Incas by Nigel Davies
The Maya by Norman Hammond
The Minoans by J. Lesley Fitton
The Mycenaeans / The Decipherment of Linear B by Lord William Taylor
The Normans by David C. Douglas
The Persians by J. M. Cook
The Phoenicians by Glenn E. Markoe

I've read on the internet that some of them are better than others when it comes to content. The Celts by Nora Chadwick is a bit outdated at best for example, or so I've read. If so, is it outdated enough that is not worth reading? or is it good enough for somebody who enjoys history but is not a historian?

All in all, I would like to ask the community if these are worth reading or not. Some might be more outdated than others, but I guess that this kind of book get always outdated with time

Please forgive any ignorance in my question, it is not intended, and a lot of my knowledge is quite surface level.

I am playing the video game Warriors Orochi 4 which is an action game using alternate reality Three Kingdoms China and Sengoku samurai period Japan going through a time and dimension portal and meeting each other. There is a suggestion that the Japanese samurai know of prominent figures like Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu, which got me wondering if in real life 16th century Japan had knowledge of 3rd century China.

If Im not mistaken, there seem to be a lot of similarities in hierarchy, the countries structure, and the ways of war, and considering how close geographically they are to each other I am interested to know if China's military history reached across the sea in those 1300 years, or if as suspected, a video game is not a good barometer for true history...

Thank you in advance for any insight or resources provided!

Edit: Only just realised that Romance of the Three Kingdoms was published in the 14th century, I presumed it was written much closer to the actual period it is set in, so is it possible that 16th century Japan would have had copies of the semi historical novel?

Edit 2: Records of the Three Kingdoms WAS contemporary to the time and is what Romance is based on, but I would presume would be less likely to be translated and read by the Japanese than a novel written closer to the 16th century

Hi all! I hope I can get a good conversation going, please let me know if I can be more specific. I am doing research for something I'm writing and I'm hitting a dead end. I work in Anti Money Laundering but while I understand modern Laundering, and the origins of that, I have a blind spot regarding older financial crime. I believe i can figure out enough about the economy of the time to invent potential crimes, but I would like to know more specific information.

To that effect, what can you tell me about financial crime at the time, and if it was affected by the invention of printing in Europe?

A female Tsar of Russia wasn't unheard of before and the Tsar was second only to God in Russia from an authority standpoint. So if he just one day decided to make his eldest daughter his official heir, could anyone even question him?

After seeing the turmoil the quest for a male heir, and the subsequent issues with Alexei which played a part in the crumbling of the Royal family with the whole Rasputin thing, it seems like he could have avoided a lot of trouble if he just changed the rule.

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For this round, let’s look at: Pacific & Oceania! Kia ora! This week's theme is the Pacific & Oceania. Covering more than 155 million square miles, the Pacific and the land around it includes a diverse collection of societies, histories, cultures, and people. Use this week's thread to share cool things you know about the steamiest places on earth!