In one discord that I have with some mates there is a notable "hate" from "amateur" historians towards cultures considered in pop culture as notable warrior cultures (such as Sparta, Japan or the "Vikings"). As this last groups is quite popular nowadays, they tend a lot to post articles stating how poor where the vikings in combat compared to their European counterparts, stating that where only good fighters against civilian population. Still, I'm a bit reluctant to this idea, as for me it makes sense that a bunch of warmonger raiders should be militarily superior to non professional armies, also, they seemed quite effective, giving that they were close to conquering England, they formed the Varangian guard, the Kievan Russ, and that the Normans seemed to be excellent combat wise.

So, in summary my question is, according to sources. Do you expect a force formed by vikings to be superior or inferior in field battle to a similar size army formed by either saxons, hispanic muslims, franks, germans, italians, etc...? I know is extremely hard to predict the result of a battle without taking into accounts factors such as composition (ratio of men at arms/levies), generalship and a lot more factors but, still, if it is possible to guess, given what we know about tactics, strategy, equipment combat experience and etc... What would be your answer to the title of this post.

Thanks to anyone that shares knowledge and sources to this question.

I frequently hear that the Versailles treaty was pretty harsh against Germany in particular and I'm trying to put it into context. How bad was it compared to others treaties before it?

One comparison I'm particularly interested in would be the treaty of Paris, 1814 ending the napoleonic wars but I'll take anything you got.

This is a repost of a question that I asked two months ago but didn't get any answers, sadly.

This question came to my mind when reading the amazing book “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. They write in a footnote:

The British historian Keith Thomas, for instance, compiled a whole list of casual rejections of Christianity from medieval and Renaissance English sources. ‘The Bishop of Exeter complained in 1600 that in his diocese it was “a matter very common to dispute whether there be a God or not”…In Essex a husband-man of Bradwell-near-the-Sea was said to “hold his opinion that all things cometh by nature, and does affirm this as an atheist”…At Wing, Rutland, in 1633 Richard Sharpe was accused of saying “there is no God and that he hath no soul to save”. From Durham in 1635 came the case of Brian Walker who, when asked if he did not fear God, retorted that, “I do not believe there is either God or Devil; neither will I believe anything but what I see”: as an alternative to the Bible he commended “the book called Chaucer”’ (1978: 202).”

If people in the 16th and 1`7th centuries in England could freely discuss and dismiss belief in a god, how was France different?

Leaving it vague, to allow for a variety of approaches from around the world. Were we all just resigned to uncorrectable poor vision until people could create glass?

I've had this itch for a long time that makes me question that these countries allow their subjects to have ideas against their rule. Notable individuals such as Ho Chi Minh, Jose Rizal, Mahatma Gandhi, & Simon Bolivar have been educated in Europe and were inspired by ideals that paved the way for their respective countries' independence from colonial rule. Were they not aware on how this will affect the status quo?

In the 2013 movie Jimi: All Is by My Side Jimi gets the band to play Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. One of the band members says to Jimi "the Beatles are in the audience it would be disrespectful" and Hendrix replies with "only if we f it up". I understand where Hendrix's point comes from but what is the historic reason for the band members perspective.

I'm not super picky about length or accessibility, just something that would prove a good comprehensive view of Europe in the 19th century.

As the title states, many Hong Kong martial arts movies, particularly those by Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung, depict or allude to the destruction of the (Southern) Shaolin Temple by Qing forces, resulting in the dispersal of its disciples and the foundation of various schools of martial arts. However, I also read that there is no evidence substantiating either this temple or the sack ever existing. But the English language sources on this topic that I see on Google are non-academic. So I'm wondering if there's any scholarly examinations on where this myth of the Shaolin Temple came from? What role it played in the development of Chinese martial arts? Why it became so prominent in martial arts movies?

I was watching 1917 and I remember reading about PTSD and mental issues from vets after the war. Was there suicide in the trenches? I would think that 4 years of trench warfare and having access to guns would lead to a high suicide rate or something along those lines. Just asking out of morbid curiousity. Thanks!

From my understanding, English speakers referred to all continental West Germanic speakers as "Dutch" across the middle ages and early modern period. German and Dutch-speaking settlers of the United States were given the same ethnonym across the colonial period and up until the 19th century, which still lingers in the form of Pennsylvania Dutch. Did "German" supplant "Dutch" sometime after the beginning of English colonization but before the emergence of German nationalism? How did this happen?

I understand their diets were pretty bland for the most part but let’s say a commoner were to spend some good money at a local market on food. What would some of their top options be? How common are regular fruits? Vegetables? I would assume the “top options” would be better with a better social class- how much different would a kings top choice be as opposed to a commoners? What about spices?

Specifically, I'm referring to British doctrine around "infantry tanks," tanks designed to support infantry rather than fight other tanks or perform more mobile offensive actions. Infantry tanks seem to be only a thing the British tried, and it seems like they tried it for a long time, with many of the wholesale British tanks of the war being slow, thickly armored tanks, from the Matilda to the Cromwell to the Churchill.

Am I missing something, or was this just a bad doctrine? Maybe it made since in the interwar and Phoney War phase, where the allies expected a more static, WWI-esque war, but after the war began in earnest, why did the British keep investing in infantry tanks? While the Matilda was a famous part of the desert war, from what I understand it was so slow it couldn't keep up with the highly maneuverable nature of the North African campaign, and it seems like Shermans were just better in every regard, and is why the British and the French adopted them in such large numbers (in addition to there just being so many). But why did they keep building and designing new bulky, slow infantry tanks, rather than investing earlier in a medium tank with higher speed and bigger guns?

And it seems like post-war history also supports the idea that infantry tanks were just a bad bet, because after the war every adopted the American and Soviet medium-tank model, with the "main battle tank" being the, well, main feature of tanks, including the British Centurion and onward. Even Germany's heavy tank doctrine had its merits, and had a big influence on later tanks, but it really seems like infantry tanks were just a plain old mistake, and no part of tank history onwards made any use of them.

I'm watching Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960), and when Jack Lemmon's character picks up the phone, he dials 3 numbers, then tells and operator the name and location of the person he wants, who then connects them.

I've seen this in a bunch of old movies. Was the operator just a phone book service if you didn't know someones number? Did it cost extra? Did people not even have phone numbers? And at what point did operators cease to become a thing, and what did that transition look like?

Without radio how would have for example Horatio Nelson communicated between all of the ships how to attack and manoeuvre?

Wikipedia says the home address system was invented in Britain in the 1800s. Maybe OUR system was, but surely, in massive ancient cities like Nanjing (over 4 million people in year 400!), they must have had some sort of system? If you came to a new city how would you find your friend's house? How was postage addressed?

Between untamed wildlife, angry people, and natural hazards traveling seems kind of difficult. How did they do it?

I already read the "censored" version of her diary. And I am quite interested about its full contents. Can you pls elaborate the events? Just enlighten me the details that you think were censored from the version I read.

Howdy everyone. I had two questions I wished to ask about tonight, so I made back to back posts, didn't see anything in the subreddit rules about that so I hope it is alright. Anyways onto my question.

To the best of my knowledge, spears and polearms were generally considered superior to swords in ancient warfare. Their greater reach granted an advantage by letting soldiers attack the enemy from further away, as well as allowing them to attack from the safety of defensive formations like a shield wall.

Yet from all that I have seen in historical texts and representations it seems that the Romans heavily favored the use of swords, at least in their infantry. Even in times when their neighbors seemed to be relying totally on spears. What was the reason for this? Did the Romans have some form of specialized tactic that made swords a better choice in their warfare? Was it a cultural tradition that they maintained despite the disadvantage? Were swords considered to be "higher class" that a spear?

Alongside this, to my understanding the Romans were a dominant military force at the height of their empire. If swords are less effective than spears it would be strange that they could achieve this? I know that Roman legions were considered to be exceptionally disciplined. Was this the reason they were so successful with swords? Or is it something else? Perhaps superior numbers or greater supply lines?

As a follow up question, if I may and if this is not beyond the scope of this subreddit, what is it with swords that made them so popular? As far as I'm aware of spears/polearms were far more effective and used in greater quantity in Antiquity and the high/late Medieval eras than swords ever were. Yet it seems any work set in the past or in a fantasy setting has swords as the predominant weapon (eg Arthurian Myth, Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire). Is there a known reason why they seem to be over represented in western culture/media?

Recently I acquired the Second Edition of the Cambridge History of Warfare. It has been an enjoyable read so far and I'm quite enjoying it, but at first I chose to skip the intro and jump straight into the medieval era.

I have since gone back to read the earlier chapters. In the first, the book states that following the Greek Dark Age but before the Persian Invasions that most warfare between Greek City States was decided with a single battle. Battles that usually only included armies made up of heavy soldier Hopplites, who were not professional soldiers but rather farmers in bronze armor, who fought with each other for about an hour on battlefields chosen to be equal. Then whichever side had beaten the other was the winner of the war.

I found that to be strange but interesting so I mentioned it to a friend. That friend informed me that he thought he believed that was a myth. However he did not know for sure. My first instinct is to trust the book, but I'm well aware that texts on history do not always have totally accurate information, especially popular and well selling books.

So I thought it was best to ask here, is that really how the Greek city states warred with each other?

I understand why there was torture of intellectuals and group violence but it seems odd that this is one of the only times in History I've heard of where a country's population eat each other without a need for sustenance .

Were there specific officials ordering this?

Were people going hungry in the country at the time?

Are there more instances of nation wide cannibalism without famine across history?