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.
Hi all! I'm doing a talk for the International Federation for Public History on Imperialism and Disease in Egypt, next Thursday, March 11, at 4 PM Eastern. It's free and open to all, so please join if you're interested!
A terrifying disease with no known cure or prevention begins spreading around the world, infecting hundreds of thousands of people and causing untold economic damage. Not COVID-19, cholera -- the international scourge of the 19th century world, and the terror of the British empire. This talk will focus on Egypt, the meeting point of Europe, Africa, and Asia and the crossroads of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trading networks. What can the histories of health and medicine tell us about the everyday lives of Egyptians in the 19th and early 20th centuries? And why is this particularly interesting for public historians working in the digital age?
I got a couple of books for Christmas that I'm still working my way through, and though I haven’t finished them yet, I thought I'd share how much I'm enjoying:
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, February 26 - Thursday, March 04
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 5,509 | 159 comments | Why did the Nation of Islam reject Christianity as the religion of the colonizers, while embracing Islam as a “black” religion, when Islam was brought to Africa by Arab conquerors? |
| 4,017 | 141 comments | Would an Arabic speaker from today be able to at least somewhat communicate with an Arabic speaker from around 1200 AD? |
| 3,948 | 61 comments | Despite the Black Death starting in Asia, I've never seen any accounts describing it's impact on any Asian countries, yet there are plenty of records describing the impact of the outbreak in Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. Why is this? |
| 3,609 | 34 comments | Foot binding in China would have limited mobility for numbers of women and was practiced for centuries. Were there any changes in Chinese architecture or infrastructure to account for this? |
| 3,535 | 80 comments | How were iron WWII bunkers made? |
| 3,456 | 58 comments | I read that if Aztec slaves escaped from the master and stepped on excrement, it would grant freedom. During the escape, no one but the owner and his kin was allowed to chase the slave else they would be punished. Is any of this true and if so, was it a religious reason for these strange rules? |
| 3,276 | 34 comments | Pop history often presents Yugoslavia as a "nationalist time bomb" destined to blow, held together only by the force of strongman President Tito. But he died in 1980 and the first Yugoslav war began in 1991. What was really going on? |
| 3,063 | 46 comments | The history “bar talk” in Portugal/Brazil is that Portugal squandered its way out of remaining a global power by using Brazil’s gold to buy “British industrialised goods” and its elite refusing to industrialise the country. How much of this is true? |
| 2,593 | 73 comments | Do I have a completely inaccurate picture of mediaeval European modesty? |
| 2,100 | 50 comments | Did people ever worship Titans exclusively? |
###Top 10 Comments
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Can anyone tell me what this means from an 1873 newspaper?
notice is hereby given that in regular session the board of equalization added to the amounts assessed against the following persons or fixed property assed against them the sums opposite their names herin below mentioned and they are further notified that any person herein named may appear before the board of equalization on Friday august 1873 at 9am in which time the board will be in session and upon making affidavit that he had no knowledge of such increased valuation of his property he shall have a hearing and the determination shall be final-
G.A. Apalategui on 2 billards tables $500
I use Notion for most of my project management, but I'm trying out Obsidian for my actual notes. I cannot find a single "how i use obsidian"/"how do you structure your zettelkasten/make notes" for anyone in history or similar field that might also need to pull lots of quotes and biographical information and references, etc.
Anyone here use zettelkasten/obsidian for history research? And are willing to share how you do it? I would be omggg so grateful! (esp if you have screenshots, or otherwise visually share how your notes/etc work, bc it's much easier for my brain to process).
But in happier news, I'm doing all this while reviving a research project that I super love but it got shelved for a few years-- all about ~19th century(ish) utopian communes/societies. I love it. :D
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In Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, he implies that American imperialism and warmongering might be normalising violence, and therefore contributes to mass shootings and other murder sprees.
But if one were to accept this logic, wouldn't that mean that imperialism and warmongering inspired a lot of random murder sprees in the USSR, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany or Great Britain? Did a lot of random murder sprees happen in these nations?