Today has been a pretty great day. I'm trying to get /r/African_History to be a bit livelier so I've posted a lot...but mostly about Rwanda because that's what I know about most. So I'm advertising the subreddit here. Frankly, there's only so much information online about (pre colonial) Rwanda that can be accessed without a subscription etc and I doubt posting excerpts of books about the symbolism of long horned cattle and how it has changed throughout history is really going to come over that well.

Hey /r/askhistorians!

I am interested in the Historicity of all religions, and see that this topic comes up a bit in /r/askhistorians. I respect the extremely relevant and well sourced information I find here, but the religious questions don't always get the spotlight I would hope for. I wanted a more specific place to talk about the subject, while also being a bit more relaxed with the rules, to foster a more amateur discussion environment.

I created /r/historicalreligion/ for this purpose, and wanted to introduce all the awesome people here to it and to hopefully get some good quality submissions in place. Anyone is welcome. Conversation will be casual, but friendly. Any historical discussions about any religious texts, people, places, or events are encouraged.

I look forward to seeing you there!

PS: I could use some moderators, so if anyone is interested in that, let me know. I will not have heavy moderation in place, but I will want friendly encouraging discussions, and no "religion bashing" type posts. Also, I'm sure several of you will have some experience distinguishing "low-quality" sources, and getting some tagging going that will indicate posts of this type will be great. I won't necessarily want to remove these posts, but a tag indicating so would be helpful.

One of the things that has fascinated me about US History has been our changing level of awareness of inequality. I'm talking about both academic historians and those who write for the general public. I suppose you might say the Consensus wiped them out, but in the 1920s and 30s there seem to have been a lot more people writing about wealth and -- dare I say it? -- class in America. Exposes like those of Ferdinand Lundberg and empirical studies like Berle and Means were pretty well known at the time, but are now better remembered by sociologists like Gerald F. Davis (Managed By the Markets) than they are by mainstream historians. SO, as I'm new (yesterday) to Reddit, my question is, is anyone interested in the history of inequality? Is there a subreddit I haven't found yet? Is it buried in /r/Occupy? Thx!

I've finally crawled out of the hole I dug for myself to write a blog post on the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (specifically, on how it seems to have stacked up compared to other decimal anniversaries, and how it affected NUKEMAP traffic, among other things). I admit that after all of the publicity from that week, I felt a little "over-exposed" and was happy to just not post very much for a few weeks. But now that I've got this out of the way I think I can go back to a regular update schedule.

It has been a very busy summer. I am actually very much looking forward to teaching again, which is good because classes start in 10 days!

Which historians's writing style is your favourite? Which writer can you not put down? Whose style of writing do you emulate?

The question came to my mind this morning, when I saw someone reading a Tom Holland book -- notorious for his bad history, but at the same time, having read his books, they are extremely readable. I think if I went back and reread them I'd still find them enjoyably written, though I don't think I can actually enjoy what those words say now that I know my history better.

A few of mine (focusing more on general, in some ways pop history-- unfortunately I don't have time to rediscover my favourite journal articles)--

Adam Zamoyski's a current favourite of mine. I read his History of Poland, devoured it, then tried to pick up Norman Davies right after and found his work dull in comparison (hopefully I'll find I was wrong the first time when I pick his book back up next time). Zamoyski had a chapter about Polish artistic/political expression in the 19th century which sticks with me as one of most engaging things I've read this year.

Adrian Goldsworthy is another favourite - the way he brings ancient Rome to life is what I hope to be able to do with my own interests some day.

Recently I picked up Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples and I appreciate his writing style way more than I did the first time I read it as a fresher at uni.

Maybe I just really like writers whose names start with A.

What's the deal with South Asian military history? The 19th century national armies of Europe seem to play enormous roles in the European cultural imagination--they are a kind of standard "old timey soldier"--and there seems to be so much written about them. However, the Indian armies at the same time seem to have fought far more actual campaigns. So what kind of historiography is there? And, more broadly, what place does the non-European world have in (European-dominated) military history?

Every professional field has certain buzzwords or cliched phrases that, when said, generally make eyes roll. In business and finance, for example, there are the words "incentivize" and "leverage". Using these words outside of a professional setting doesn't really show that someone is an experienced businessman or economist; it only shows that they have perhaps taken TV shows and movies like Entourage, Mad Men, and Wall Street too much to heart. We see the same thing with medical professionals, who sometimes use formal medical terms rather than the word understood by the general public. A doctor might say to a patient, "The tightness in your chest can be explained by a knot in your pectoralis major." What he means is: "There's a knot in your chest."

In other words, I see many professionals in many different fields try to establish their legitimacy through what can best be described as an appeal to verbiage. With that in mind, I have a question that will hopefully allow for some professional self-deprecation and introspection. What are some of the common words and phrases within the historical profession that you think have become abused by historians attempting to establish their bona fides?

I've written my first submission for /r/badhistory if anyone wants to give it a read.

So here is a bit of a weird question that has been stuck in my head: I did Model UN in high school, and some time around 2008 I went to one where the introductory speech was given by a former UN diplomat. The speaker made a joke about how uncharismatic Ban Ki-Moon was, and said something about how he didn't really remember any charismatic UN Secretary Generals--except one. He didn't specify who he was talking about, are there any ideas? Kofi Anan, maybe?

I was reading Tom Neil's Silver Spitfire book, and one of the anecdotes was of his tour to Burma, in which he observed a Gurkha parachute exercise. He described how the Gurkhas looked worried as the plane circled at 1000 ft, as they thought it too high. They got the pilot to drop to 500 ft, at which height they were more comfortable. Then Neil heard them laughing celebrating when they were briefed again. Apparently, they had thought they were to jump without a parachute at 1000 ft, but lower at 500 ft they were practically fine with! The celebrating was them realising they were allowed a parachute for the jump. Neil then went on to describe his admiration for the bravery of the Gurkhas.

I found this story amazing when I read it, and had to share. Tom Neil's books are well worth a read by the way, with 'Gun Button to Fire' dealing with his role in the Battle of Britain. I believe he is the last surviving ace from WW2 who was involved in the battle.

So just near my house, they've dug up an old streetcar track from the 1800s, the first in the city. I mentioned in my city's sub that people here have asked how cities sometimes come to have multiple levels, and thought this was kind of a nice reminder how even in more modern times, cities often just built right on top of the existing stuff instead of clearing it out and then building. While this certainly isn't along the same scale as say, Troy, they did dig through multiple layers of cobblestone, concrete, etc, as the road was continually built over instead if wholly replaced.

Again, it's not a particularly ground breaking find, with it being known the track was there all along and everything, but still just a reminder that we're not that different than some of our ancient forebears.

Hmm, I wonder if /r/askhistorians did automabile history? Currently looking for good books of Mercedes Benz W123.

In "A Few Good Men", Jack Nicholson's character, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, gives the "You can't handle the truth" speech where he insists that his harsh methodology is required for the defense of the nation.

I think this would seem out of place for a commander of a domestic military post (under very little threat) to say. So why does it seem fitting for Guantanamo? Was there a historical reason they chose it as the setting for this film? Was it ever under any threat, real or perceived, in the early 1990's or before (besides the Cuban Missile Crisis)?

I have a subreddit that has been active for a few months. /r/papyri, dedicated to ancient Egyptian/Roman/Greek documents. There hasn't been much activity so far.

I wonder, what would have happened to Europe if the Ottomans had managed to actually capture Vienna.