Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
My first book Why We Love Pirates: The Hunt for Captain Kidd and How He Changed Piracy Forever came out earlier this week!
My next book is a biography about the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read that will be published in 2022 by Pen & Sword.
I’m writing an academic paper on how people cope with pandemics and how they remember them. I want to compare how people talked about the Spanish flu and how people talk about COVID-19 now. For the latter I made a survey. So, I wanted to ask your permission, before posting, if I could ask the people on this sub to fill out my survey (which takes about 5-8 minutes) so that I have as big of a focus group as I can get.
Here’s the link to the survey if you‘re interested in helping me out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOwTmqDR3TNM4p9qmqANnCoLXvKXxOf7opfIfaW-i8JK5hkw/viewform?usp=sf_link
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, November 20 - Thursday, November 26
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 6,915 | 468 comments | [AMA] In the late 1930s, tens of thousands of people from across the world decided to fight in Spain. Why did they risk their lives for the sake of a country they'd never visited and a people they'd never met? I'm Dr Fraser Raeburn - AMA about war volunteering, anti-fascism and the Spanish Civil War! |
| 6,342 | 146 comments | What were electric eels called before electricity? |
| 5,724 | 130 comments | Why are Native American names usually translated into English while other names are not? |
| 5,398 | 114 comments | Popular culture depicts Britain as an isolated island in the Atlantic facing the might of fascist Europe alone after France's fall during WWII. But the UK was a huge empire with the manpower reserves, industry, and riches of India, Africa, Canada, and Australia. How overmatched was it really? |
| 5,297 | 87 comments | Did some Roman youth feel that they were “Born in the wrong generation?” In other words, did Romans idealize past cultural norms/fade/fashions/etc. from 40 or 60 years in the past like we do with the “80s”or “60s” (or others) in the United States? |
| 4,321 | 58 comments | [Great Question!] How did countries like Qin Dynasty China or the Ottoman Empire react to Charles Darwin’s Origin Of The Species? |
| 4,198 | 153 comments | [AMA] I am Gurinder Singh Mann, author of 'The British and the Sikhs: Discovery, Warfare and Friendship c1700-1900', here to answer your questions about Sikh History, Anglo Sikh Wars etc |
| 4,166 | 71 comments | (why) were there no Hitler statues in Nazi Germany? |
| 2,949 | 130 comments | Did China ever have slavery? |
| 757 | 22 comments | A Serbian acquaintance recently told me that up until the early 1900s, in the Carpathian mountains of Serbia, it was usual for the eldest son to take his elderly parents into the woods and kill them they got too old. I've heard the same thing about Montenegro. Is there any truth to this? Why do it? |
###Top 10 Comments
I submitted my biography for the contributors section of an edited collection. I also submitted an essay to a journal for a graduate student prize. I was among the final three, but I didn't win the prize. They did, however, "decide to take the unusual step" and asked me to revise and resubmit!
Hey, so I think I found out that the date of the second Persian Invasion of Greece is wrong, because the eclipse of Xerxes (as opposed to all commentary on it that I can find) actually exists. I wrote about it here: https://jcalebjones.com/2020/11/26/the-date-of-the-second-persian-invasion-of-greece-is-wrong/
Am I missing some scholarship on this topic that has already addressed this? Is there anything crazy wrong with it? And if not, what should I do next with this finding?
How many authentic Prussians are left in the world?
So I recently finished the Russian and Chinese revolutions by William Rosenberg and Marilyn Young and I'm wondering how it holds up 40 years after it was published.