It's an incredibly broad scope. For the sake of argument let's just say, Europe, 1000-1500 or so.

I'm reading Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, treatise on nationalism. One of the passages stood out to me.

Auerbach gives an unforgettable sketch of this form of consciousness:

"If an occurrence like the sacrifice of Isaac is interpreted as prefiguring the sacrifice of Christ, so that in the former the latter is as it were announced and promised and the latter 'fulfills'... the former, then a connection is established between two events which are linked neither temporally nor causally-a connection which it is impossible to establish by reason in the horizontal dimension... It can be established only if both occurrences are vertically linked to Divine Providence, which alone is able to devise such a plan of history and supply the key to its understanding ... the here and now is no longer a mere link in an earthly chain of events, it is simultaneously something which has always been, and will be fulfilled in the future; and strictly, in the eyes of God, it is something eternal, something omnitemporal, something already consummated in the realm of fragmentary earthly event.

He rightly stresses that such an idea of simultaneity is wholly alien to our own. It views time as something close to what Benjamin calls Messianic time, a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present.33 In such a view of things, the word 'meanwhile' cannot be of real significance.

Our own conception of simultaneity has been a long time in the making, and its emergence is certainly connected, in ways that have yet to be well studied, with the development of the secular sciences. But it is a conception of such fundamental importance that, without taking it fully into account, we will find it difficult to probe the obscure genesis of nationalism. What has come to take the place of the mediaeval conception of simultaneity-along-time is, to borrow again from Benjamin, an idea of 'homogeneous, empty time,' in which simultaneity is, as it were, transverse, cross-time, marked not by prefiguring and fulfilment, but by temporal coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar.

So from what I'm understanding, at some point nearing the modern era (he was very vague on the time period) people became aware of time as a linear construct as opposed to living in their own isolated little individual timelines, that the history of the world was one as opposed to existing in different realms.. or something.

Anyone care to comment? I'm not even sure if I'm understanding this passage correctly or if I'm even asking the correct question lol

E.g. the god Chronos. Do the actions of Chronos reflect the thinking about time held by the author, and was there a conscious attempt to channel the author's idea of what time is to the people?

Hi AskHistorians!

So I'm working on assignment but I need assistance in a particular queston. "What was used before the use of Digital Media?"

Most instruments look exactly the same and they all play the same way. But i cant imagine that flute makers in different parts of the world would of had a standardized design for the flute, even if they made the same sound.

I think that pretty much every European would recognize a few Russian folk songs, like 'Kalinka', or 'Korobeiniki'. The only country that somewhat comes close in famous folk songs is maybe Germany. So, why are there so many Russian folk songs and/or how did they get so well-known?

Or did they use another title to claim themselves rightful successor to him?

I'm doing an assignment on ww2, and my topic is...well, in the question title itself. My teacher has requested that I use primary sources, but I can't seem to find any. Can you point me in a general direction, or help?

If I look at maps of Ancient Greece I see Greek cities throughout the Mediterranean to places as far as India. What happened to the Greek culture in those regions? Are their still remnants of the Hellenistic culture in places like Persia, India and Egypt today? If not what happened to it?

In other words, we have a Highborn, rich, upper class, land owning Lord.

We also have a poor, lower class, landless Lowborn.

In conversation, the Lowborn addresses the Lord through, "My Lord."

The Lord tells the Lowborn to address Lords with, "Milord," due to their lower class. Whereas if a Lord was speaking to another Lord, they would use, "My Lord," since both Lords are upper class.

Was this an actual social courtesy during medieval times?

Were phrase distinctions like these common then? What other phrases were specific to certain classes?

I'm doing some research on the Treaty of Versailles and the ability of the German state to pay the reparations placed on them in 1918. I need a good source of raw economic data(for examination) for this period. Do you guys have any suggestions? Thank you.

My guess is that the last organized pagan communities would have lived somewhere in the Baltic region before the northern crusades, but were there others? Were there records of "underground" groups that continued to practice pagan traditions in Christianized nations?

I know it's always a part of war, but I've never heard it talked about.

I realize they would be in their 70's so not fighting, but were there any civil war veterans in official military positions in WW1?

By historical importance, I mean outside of importance in terms of the film industry or in cultural trends. Birth of a Nation is said to have been a primary reason that the second Ku Klux Klan developed. And while not a film, I remember reading that a television event series based off of the Mahabharata in India in the 1988 ended up leading to a Hindu nationalist resurgence that culminates with the destruction of the mosque in Ayodha in 1992 (said to have been a temple marking the birthplace of Rama destroyed by the Mughals), leading to communal violence killing thousands (I read that in Ramachandra Guha's "India After Gandhi").

Any other films out there that have had sparked something much bigger (I imagine) then the filmmakers and studios thought would happen?

Hey all, I randomly remembered that in one of my world history classes in high school we were discussing pre-European contact African societies and Great Zimbabwe naturally came up. While going over this topic, my teacher offhandedly mentions that British anthropologists couldn't accept an African society had built something like that due to prevailing racist notions at the time, so they concocted a theory that it was some wayward Persians that had developed the site, or that they had local Africans build it.

Is there any truth to this myth? Did British scholars make up false explanations for sites that indicated a level of African development that contradicted their prevailing beliefs on the Africans' lack of reasoning and ability to create civilization?

After WWII, why wasn't Italy divided up into 4 sectors like Germany?

Also, why doesn't Italy have a large US military presence like Germany and Italy?

also, what is this saying from?