I'm talking names that come about nearly instantly when one culture finds another that doesn't seem to be a corruption over time. I could be wrong because I know nothing about this, but I have a hard time believing that the British who visited Mumbai for the first time heard it as "Bombay", or Arabs hearing "Ifriqiyya" out of the Roman "Africa".

This seems to be a general historical trend so I feel like this is the right subreddit for this question.

What accounts for these changes?

Is it considered to be a valid history of the background to the outbreak of WWI?

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I've got a few questions of my own regarding the topic. If there's anything else you'd like to add to these four paragraphs of currently pending questions, feel free to. I'm counting on you /r/sailing and /r/AskHistorians.

First, I'd like to know which model/type of ship would fare best in a storm. The ship I have in mind is a Galleon. The Galleon was large (often used as a warship) and had a great speed for its size. So I'm thinking being caught in the middle of a storm while sailing on one of these bad boys would be quite advantageous. However, that's just an assumption based off the top of my head with no factual evidence backing it.

Can someone elaborate on this quote for me, "If the situation were desperate, the pirates might throw cargo barrels or even cannons overboard to lighten the sloop." From what I've read, a heavier ship had a better chance at survival than a lighter one, so what advantages did lightening the ship bring forth and what exactly would that "desperate" situation be? Was the purpose for lightening the ship in order to gain extra speed to outrun the waves or something of the sort? If so, what else might you need to toss overboard in order to lighten the ship?

Which sails had to be furled during a storm and why? Did this differ depending on the model/type of ship? Would the furling of sails also depend on the class of the storm and wind force? Should battening down the hatches be first before anything? Also, what kind of things found loose aboard, aside from cannons should you tie down to keep from wrecking the ship while jibing (rocking) back and forth? Where would you tie these things down to?

Finally, say there was a whirlpool up ahead and the wind was pushing you towards it. What would you do then? Would you use the method "heave to" and toss out a sea anchor to possibly steer away from it? Next, say a massive wave was approaching you? Would shooting the waves with cannons do any significant damage to prevent the waves from enveloping the ship and swallowing it whole? Finally, say there were about 300 men aboard ship. What roles did everyone aboard play during such a crisis in order to survive a storm?

If you are not a sailor or a historian but have read books and articles, or even watched films and documentaries that deal with pirates and how they weathered storms, please refer me to them as well! Thanks!

I am writing this because I often hear the claim that the Catholic Church made it illegal for laypeople to own a Bible in the Middle Ages. Also, I have come across some who say that a layperson couldn't own a bible under penalty of death. Are any of these claims true?

Commissioner Lin of Qing China sent a letter to Queen Victoria stating, "Our celestial empire rules over ten thousand kingdoms!" In addition, I recall seeing a comment in an old post describing how China is the central kingdom but there are other Chinese kingdoms.

So, what do they mean by this? Did China have a system that incorporated and acknowledge separate kingdoms under their rule or are they describing foreign kingdoms that paid them tribute?

I took an AP World History multiple choice test today, and one of the questions asked this. The choices were bronze, silver, tin, and iron. Although I knew silver and iron were incorrect, I wasn't sure if the correct answer bronze or tin. I know that bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and since I already knew that the use of copper preceded bronze, I chose tin. I assumed that tin had to have been utilized alone at some point before they discovered how to make bronze. I asked a couple other people what they chose, and almost everyone said bronze, so I'm not very confident with my answer. Is my reasoning correct? Or is the correct answer bronze?

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I’m currently reading The German War by Nicholas Stargardt, in it the following passage appears;

“Even for ‘Aryan national comrades’, there was no simple, one-size-fits-all allocation, as there was in Britain, a country haunted by its own legacy of unfair and incompetent rationing in the First World War.”

Excerpt From The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–45 Stargardt, Nicholas

I’m not familiar with the problems that Britain suffered with regard to rationing, could someone expand on it please.

So like a lot of people I keep a journal. My hand writing is also just atrocious. Something I've thought about a lot is how do historians working on old documents figure out what's a typo/mistake, whats a regional difference and what's just what people actually called something?

This goes for pretty much every field, but as an example; If your reading the records written by a monk in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, all written in a cramped spidery hand writing, how do you separate mistakes from actual proper spelling/writing?

Hello!
I've been doing some digging lately and want to start reading the Oxford History of the United States series. I see that there are 2 more books to be published - American Origins by Peter Mancall followed by Imperial America by Andrew Clayton.

However, I can't seem to find any information on release dates. Does anyone have more information? Thank you!!!

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To my understanding, the USSR was very strong in promoting an anti-religion view, so it seems odd to respect a religious tradition like this, even for the dead.

The attacks on hiroshima and nagasaki are in my opinion so horrible because of the long term consequences. Around that time Edward Teller was apparently suggesting that nuclear weopons should be used for everything from war to road clearings. So when were the long term consequences discovered? And how long did it take for people to accept it? And what did the Japanese think was happening to them when their cancer rates skyrocketed?

I first heard about this in a song.

At some point, I know Roman citizens more or less stopped serving in the army and outsider groups increasingly filled that gap.

But were the institutions that would have molded these raw barbarian recruits into soldiers, and perhaps inculcated some Roman values and norms, still operational?

Were there no longer centurions - barbarian or otherwise - putting recruits through boot camps/training?

During the earlier days of the empire, even auxiliary troops were lead by Roman officers and equipped with Roman gear. Did this stop?

Were the troops just loosely controlled barbarian mercenaries serving under their own commanders and using their traditional training/tactics/gear?

What happend to make everything so (for lack of a better term) horrible? You look around and the buildings are so bland, tall glass towers or weird geometric shapes. Art is someone just someone spitting paint on canvas or drawing a line and calling it art. As opposed to say the streets of Florence streets or the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Things these days seem so talentless in contrast. .There must have been something that happend to change things.