It is said that by the 16th century, guns had mostly supplanted bows and crossbows in Europe, but whenever I have seen people saying that, they always present sources about military usage. However, if I understand correctly, firearms in this time period were still rather inaccurate and had a long loading time, and could be unreliable to fire when needed in poor conditions. Which I imagine would make them rather poor hunting weapons. So when did guns become the standard weapon for hunting rather than bows and the like in Europe, and was it any later than their ubiquitisation on the battlefield?

It's known that when British settlers came to America, they brought foreign diseases with them that the Natives had no immunity to, causing epidemics. What I want to know is if the reverse happened. How did the settlers deal with Native American diseases?

So i'm Australian a bit of a history nerd, I recently heard that Australia and some other commonwealth nations got dragged into WW1 and automatically declared war on germany when the British did, Is this true? If so were the commonwealth nations consulted before Britain declared?

It’s seems almost universal that the warrior/soldier and the sword are emblematic of each other and a lot of world cultures hold the sword in high, almost mythical, esteem.

This seems a little odd to me since, from what I understand, the sword is primarily a side arm and weapons like bows, spears and pikes were used more on the battlefield since they were more effective against armor from chain mail on to full plate and were cheaper to produce compared to swords.

In modern culture every associates knights with swords and samurai with katanas when those warriors used more pikes and bows in battle.

Hi all, I've been pretty interested in the events of 1848 for a while now, and I was hoping that some of you guys might be able to help recommend a book on them that would be accessible to a layman. I checked the booklist but there was nothing there with a primary focus on the revolutions. I'm not an academic historian (obviously) so nothing too dense, but I do have some background knowledge. Thanks a ton

So with being locked down and being home a fair bit more these days, I seem to have fallen down a bit of a hole with legends and folk lore stuff.

I've been reading books about finding ancient lost treasures like the grail, ark of the covenant or places like Atlantis, El durado.

I understand that alot of this stuff is just that, legend and myth, but surly there is some truth to some of it?

Or, where did these storys start, are there any factual books or stoires where there is a tomb that is trapped with deathtraps or and old scarp of paper that point the way to a long lost city?

I've tried looking myself, but all I can find is rubbish conspiracy videos / podcasts

It would be nice to read some sort of report or book that is backed by real history.

Thanks all

This is worded kinda confusedly, so what I mean is, “There was a 67th Army in the Soviet Union during WWII. Were there really that many Soviet armies?

I’ve seen Guns, Germs, & Steel get absolutely trashed by historians many times (not the least of which have been on this subreddit), but environmental determinism doesn’t seem to be dead sooooo… what happened to it? Are there any contemporary historians trying to address some of the issues with the paradigm? Have any of the problems with the former historians’ methodologies been rectified? Have any intellectuals defended environmental determinism, and if so, what have been their claims? Alternatively, has the field just moved on from environmental determinism entirely? If so, what have they moved on to?

Whenever a show set in medieval Europe features black people, there is always a significant outcry about how it "doesn't make sense" and there were "no black people in Europe" back then.

But... Is this true? Even if we read this as hyperbole, I imagine that Europe would have had significant populations of non-europeans living there, since a lot of them would have moved there and settled down back when Rom rules everything

In the Noma guide to fermentation, author Rene Red Redzepi suggests the possibility that south East asain fish sauces may have evolved from the Roman garum saying that there aren’t any mentions of fish sauce before ~600 AD and that it’s possible it was brought to asain by the romans over the Silk Road

Do food historians have any opinions on the origins of fish sauce?

Ever since I joined this subreddit, I notice that my general feed gets posts from this subreddit with more than 1 comment usually. Only to my disappointment, when I open the posts there is only a bot comment visible or all the user comments have been removed. I'm not gaining anything from being here.

Has there ever been any thought given to adding mod-generated flair to questions asked? I'm thinking specifically of something like r/whatisthisthing does, where questions are either "open" or "solved." Casual readers (and questions) would be able sort by flair for "answered" questions that interest them, without the possibility of clicking on a post with a dozen comments only to find they have all been removed for not meeting community standards. Historians would be able to sort by flair for "open" questions they might be interested in answering. Possibly an "answer in progress" flair, so multiple people don't start researching or considering an answer to the same question-- a way of calling dibs. Though this last might need to be reset to "open" after a few days if no response is posted, which would create more work for the mods.

While watching a Chinese historical drama, I noticed titles of nobility were translated into Western titles - i.e. Duke, Marquis, Count, etc.

Obviously, Chinese and other non-western titles of nobility have no relation to the system of European nobility. But they have been translated into Western "equivalents"?

Why was that choice made, and how was it done? I'm most interested in ancient Chinese titles, but I'd also be interested in how and why this was done for other systems of nobility.

How aware were the common people of the Holocaust and also how aware were the elite? If they were not did they become aware as soon as the war was over?

How many shirts would the average person own in the 1870s American West? How many pairs of boots? Or pants? I’m very interested in knowing how many items they owned.

And, when travelling for a few weeks/months, would they just take everything with them?

In my attempts to cultivate a productive, yet healthy reading habit, I started wondering how much a historian actually reads in a specified time. I realize that there's always crazy performers who read tons of books in a short-time, but for myself I've found that reading more, or faster, simply makes me forget what I read at an alarming rate. So in my attempt to cultivate this reading habit I'd like to hear from you historians of reddit:

• How many books do you read in a year? (Both on-topic history and perhaps fiction for leisure)
• How many pages do you read in a day?
• How much time do you dedicate to reading every week? every day?
• What do you think is a healthy average an aspiring historian should live up to?