Hi,

So I've been on a WW1 spree lately and I wanted to get some suggestions on books about it. Which books according to you are helpful to get a clear understanding about WW1? Preferably your top 3.

Thanks in advance. :)

It seems like in the last decades, pets have gone from being mere pets to being “children” or “fur babies”, with all kinds of accompanying services, from pet-sitting, to hair salons for pets, etc. People mark their pets’ birthdays, give them gifts, bring them on holiday, and refer to them as their children, often expecting others to treat them as if they were, indeed, human children.

Is this a completely recent phenomenon or have any cultures treated pets or animals this way in the past?

Note: I do not mean to ask if some cultures revered animals as sacred but, rather, if they treated any animals as if they were human offspring or family members.

Under what circumstances would a duel like this have happened, would it have been a formal arrangement or just the two commanders happening to meet on the battlefield? And when one commander won, what did that mean for the battle as a whole?

Simple question really: famously allied code breakers managed to “break” various German and Japanese codes, a critical advantage throughout the war. Howerver I’ve not heard of us using the deciphering capability “in reverse” to possibly trick opponent leaders into making terrible decisions through false orders or intelligence.

Was this ever performed? Or were there technical cryptographic hurdles allowing us only to read and not encrypt messages? Or other reasons that would actually by a bad idea?

Dear historians,

I hear that one of the most objective source for the history is records kept by previous civilizations. Why did they keep these records, did they foresee that we would need these to write the history?

Do we have archives for every major empire of the history, or only the recent ones?

What are some of the best useful archives we have today?

Thanks!

I've been thinking on and off for a long time about weapons caches, especially those in Europe. During the late stages of WWII and well into the cold war, security agencies hid many caches of weapons (Finland/Winter War, late war Germany, and Operation Gladio come to mind) in Europe; these staches were never really used, so I was thinking that at some point some malcontents might stumble upon a stash of military hardware and use it for crime or something.

Is there an instance of this happening? I'm especially thinking about situations like the Italian Years of Lead, Brabant Killers, and just generally postwar organized crime

Hi all, I'm looking to get a feel for the political/intellectual history of the modern Russian state, about from the reforms of Peter the Great all the way through the fall of the Soviet Union. It can be a big door stopper like the Spence book referenced in the title, or perhaps a list of titles, or maybe even a series like the Oxford Series on U.S. History. Thanks!

Specifically, does any documented evidence exist suggesting this was either a clever way to influence public opinion, or rather coming from a deeper sense of ethical principles?

I recently read a pop-history book called "Humankind: A Hopeful History" by Rutger Bregman; one of the central claims he makes is that humans have a fairly strong aversion to killing, especially the closer one must be to do so. He cites literature claiming that, for example, at the battles of Waterloo and the Somme, less than 1% of all casualties were by bayonet. A cursory Google search seems to support this psychological phenomenon: it's incredibly hard to stab or otherwise kill another human being with a blade.

Which brings me to the question: how did this psychological aversion to close-up killing play out in ancient and medieval warfare? Especially given the much lower level of training for your average premodern soldier which could desensitize them to killing. Were there just ridiculously low casualty rates as a result of this? How might a soldier with a bladed weapon get out of using it (since they can't shoot high, as one could with a ranged weapon, or double/triple/etc load it like muskets could be to avoid shooting)? If they did use bladed weapons to kill in warfare more easily than modern people, how did they overcome this psychological aversion without conditioning?

Re-watching the 13th Warrior, where Ahmed turns the sword he is given into a curved scimitar. Could this really be done with early medieval smithing?

I'm aware of the presence of East Africans in the Indian Ocean Trade for instance, but I don't know if they, or Africans from West or Central Africa, actually resided in different lands.

In hindsight, both campaigns bear striking similarities from a layman's perspective:

Both times an overconfident army commanded by an autocrat at the height of his power marched into Russia, severly underestimating the opponent.

Both did not properly consider the size of Russia nor the weather, both overstretch their supply lines in trying to take Moscow, and both times the Russians first retreat, employ scorched earth tactics, and then crush the invasion on the counteroffensive.

Did really no one in the German high command consider that their campaign might take a similar course? Or did they consider it and dismissed it for... reasons?

Looking to write the essay on the subject, based around specific themes/factors that led the colonists to act in the way that they did. Are there any good books that provide a comprehensive overview of the causes - not just a narrative of the important events, but the factors e.g economic, political etc.

With ships I'm mainly thinking about warships, but commercial ships aren't necessarily excluded.

My mind can't really think when this change happened: shups made of wood go from ancient times to Middle Ages and more, while iron ships from at least 1900. But between the 18th and the 19th century I have some doubts. I would guess the division is more less in the second half of the 1800's but I'm not sure whether it is a specific point in time or a long process. I'm sure it changes from place to place, that's why I'm focusing in Europe-Mediterranean as my region.

It's common to see statements like "1 Roman denarius at time X was equal to $Y in modern US dollars." The problems with this type of comparison are obvious (all the money in Rome couldn't buy you a toilet, let alone a smartphone). On the other hand, I can see how certain things like food or water are of inherent value in any time or place.

I'm interested in any information about how these sorts of things are calculated and how they should or shouldn't be used. But if I had to narrow it down to a single question:

As a historian, if you're reading about an unfamiliar place or era, what do you do (or avoid doing) with this type of information?

Many people say, "we were born in the most advanced age in history", but I was thinking that, for any person that is born, regardless of when in history, they were born in their respective "most advanced age" in their respective era. Were there ever any periods in time where, whether it was due to some natural disaster or a change in ideology, in which humanity actually LOST significant portions of what deemed it to be "advancing/advanced", or in which you could have been born in "not the most advanced age in history"?

It seems like stealing and killing is looked down upon in our society(US), but yet when we look at history some of the greatest men were blatant conquerors. Looting, robbing, stealing, and murdering for resources. Don't those seem at odds a little bit? Just look at Genghis Khan or Julius Ceasar

If its a lie you are just gonna surround your kids with a nation of wimps and make them prone to being conquered by other nations