I am happy to finally announce the official publication of my book White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War, and Battlefield 1. It is the culmination of several years of research, inspired by /r/AskHistorians, and I am very excited for everyone to get a look.

The book is a study of historical memory and misuse of history. To summarize it in short, here's the book blurb:

The fall of 2016 saw the release of the widely popular First World War video game Battlefield 1. Upon the game's initial announcement and following its subsequent release, Battlefield 1 became the target of an online racist backlash that targeted the game's inclusion of soldiers of color. Across social media and online communities, players loudly proclaimed the historical inaccuracy of black soldiers in the game and called for changes to be made that correct what they considered to be a mistake that was influenced by a supposed political agenda. Through the introduction of the theoretical framework of the ‘White Mythic Space’, this book seeks to investigate the reasons behind the racist rejection of soldiers of color by Battlefield 1 players in order to answer the question: Why do individuals reject the presence of people of African descent in popular representations of history?

The book itself is expensive, as most academic monographs usually and unfortunately are, but I do hope that it will become more accessible in the future. In the mean time, be sure to request your local university library to purchase a copy!

What is a wildly historically-inaccurate piece of historical fiction that you can’t help but love anyway (either in your specific field or otherwise)?

For example, I am not a historian, but I am a physician. The show House is utter garbage, medically speaking. But it’s just so entertaining that I still love it.

Pertaining to history, I really enjoy learning and reading about Ancient Roman history. The film Gladiator is utter nonsense (Remember the time the Roman Empire became a republic again at the wish of Marcus Aurelius, after his secret hand-selected heir—who can ride a horse from Germania to Spain in a day—killed Commodus publicly in the Colosseum? Me neither!), but I absolutely love watching that movie.

When did we started to use the term "Aztecs" instead of "Mexicas"? Who came up with this name? Did it originate from the Aztecs themselves or Spaniards/Europeans?

Historians, what is your favorite academic slap fight, dispute or ravalry?

I ask because as a history buff but with a fair degree of skepticism, I often stumble across contradictory and often, poorly qualified statements about historical events, their importance and interpretation. When I read something that seems too strange, I'll try to find other academics to see if I can find confirmation of the events.

Occasionally I uncover a fun academic slap fight or rivalry between two (or more!) respected historians that can be both enlightening but also surprisingly juvenile, petty and entertaining. I enjoy the dueling opinions and the insight it gives on historiography in general. I'm primarily looking for disputes among qualified historians and not so much pop-historians.

If you have a favorite that you could share, I would love to hear about it.

What is the longest answer on this sub?

In 1514 the free city of Augsburg in todays Bavaria in southern Germany a tyrolean foreman was comissioned to create a new Night's Gate to the city. City Council ordered him to put the gate in the western flank of the city so the emperor Maximilian I. didn't have to ride all around the city when coming back from the hunt late at night - at least that's what the Chronicles say was the reason.

The foreman, Baltus Uhl, constructed some intricate mechanisms hidden in the basement and engaged with chains and levers, to give the gate a counterweight-drawbridge with no visible chains on the outside whatsoever. Inside the gatehouse he added levers and linkage so the roundabout three meters high and one-and-a-half meters wide doors could be operated from the upper floor. In the centuries to follow, the outer frontier of the city got reinforced even more, a small gate was added so no one would fall into the moat (a real danger, considering it was a night gate and there was no source of light outside the city apart from the ones you brought yourself), also a long bridge with another door at the end, that opened via a linked chain in the upper floor of the gatehouse, and in the 18th century even another rampart was put in front of the gatehouse, once more easily accessible only via a small gate that could be triggered from the gatehouses upper floor. When you passed through the gate, there was not a single person to be seen, as the rooms with guards in it were above the gate system itself, and communication was made possible via a room with a gallery, behind which guards could hide.

The gate became pretty famous in all of Europe, in 1580 Michel de Montaigne, the french philosopher, mentions that even the Queen of England wanted to know the mysteries behind the gates doors that seemingly opened magically and without a man in sight - to no avail. The city's council sent the people away that wanted to see the secrets of the "Einlass".

The gate was put out of duty for good in 1806 (being out of the night-gate services for several decades by then) and finally torn down in 1867 to make room for the city's new theatre.

Why did we start milking cows and goats, but not pigs. A quick google search tells me both cows and goats were domesticated around the same time.

First I thought its because the cow gives far more milk, but I'm guessing a pig could produce a lot of milk as well when it was selectively bred for 10 millennia. So does it have something to do with the pig having like 12 or so mammary glands or is it something else?

Feel like this is a history question, not sure though..

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From a conversation at the bar last night: Where did the coffee table originate?

Minor question about the Papacy. When did the Papacy move to anonymous ballot? I am including signed ballots (to not be able to vote for yourself) if they are intended to still allow anonymous voting.

[META] At what point does a follow-up question that provides reasons for doubting an answer become considered an attempt at an answer (and one that likely doesn't meet AH's standards, due to not having an answer to the question)?

For example, if someone says that there were more apples than oranges in the world because of all the different varieties of apple, can I question that by saying "that doesn't make sense because there could easily be far more specimens of one orange variety than the most popular apple variety, how do you explain that?"? Can I question it by saying "here's a few sources that say that most apple varieties don't have many specimens, how do you explain that?"?

The mod team is unresponsive to my question about this.

In 799, Charlemagne was deemed "pater Europæ" by the court poet Angilbert, inscribing into history and creating the myth that notoriously first papal-crowned emperor Charlemagne was the father of Europe -- and with that came the understanding that uniting a substantial amount of people through religion (read: killing entire villages if they refused to convert to catholicism) throughout a vast part of Europe was the first stone to Europe's foundation, and especially its catholic roots. Except... not entirely, no.

From a historical standpoint, I feel that it's fair to assume that Europe (and by Europe, I understand the modern european project) has always been catholic while never having real religious roots. The papal states after the collapse of the Roman empire and its separation into two different entities saw the conquest and reconquest of Rome by different empires or states. With Charles Martel successfully stopping the muslim conquest of now France in 732, the papal states saw a figure of power to rely on, and tied the knot for an alliance that would benefit both parties: the Carolingien empire would have a spiritual power to justify their conquest of territories, and the Pope would have a military power to rely on and count on if in need of defense. This interdependance led to many forceful convertions and a real empowerement of the Frankish kingdom. So while religion helped strenghten and expand Charlemagne's kingdom, the conquests were not in the ideal of catholicism, nor was it in the interests of a "united" Europe¹, since it was only united by force.

I would argue that any other religion that wasn't judaism or Islam would have known the same fate as catholicism in Europe if it had been adopted by the Frankish kingdom. But in a way, it shows how the Frankish kingdom and in a larger view Europe has been defined by religion; mostly the ones it opposed (crusades!), and definitely not out of spiritual concern in its early days. Charlemagne wasn't a catholic father of Europe, he was a somewhat catholic father of an Empire (standing on european soil), broken in thirds by his son and further complexified by his grandsons.

It makes sense to think that Europe has catholic roots: so many kingdoms, empires, eras and people were defined by catholicism and its branches. But it is definitely interesting that a part of why catholicism outgrew other beliefs in Europe is a game of alliances and forceful convertions, that ironically happened in predominantly catholic countries today.

I cannot and won't argue about what it entails for the future of Europe now, because it's not what this subreddit is for. It is however interesting to see that while the first foundation stone for our modern and actual Europe wasn't Charlemagne, it was a foundation stone for a Europe back then, and only catholic in the ways that as a kid you promise your friend you'll help build their art school project if you get candy in the end. We can also argue that Charlemagne never tried to build a union of people. He only tried to reign more. So religion wasn't the leitmotiv for Europe, which is an assumption that I often see; neither was the idea of uniting peoples through religion. The impact of Charlemagne was substantial, yes, and it fooled some of our modern "Europe fathers", notably Victor Hugo, into believing that a religious king was the first figure to take as the founder of Europe. Which is true, in a way, but only when you look at the Carolingien empire as "a large territorial entity comprised of multiple ethnic groups". It has now virtually no ties to our modern european project.

In fact, the idea of Europe was based on multiple ideals: religious opposition (if we take the numerous crusades that somewhat made european monarchs band together against muslims), culture (with the humanism current and the will to establish a common culture), and then mostly peace because of the WW, and economic reasons, since the ECSC was all about fair-trade.

So yes, Europe has catholic roots without really having some (at the start!), and no, Charlemagne isn't the first father of our modern Europe.

And as a fun fact, the court poet, Angilbert, that gave Charlemagne that oh-so-mighty title? He was Charlemagne's son-in-law. Which means seeking the approbation of a father-in-law is responsible for historical mishaps!

¹Europe back then was only the name the Greeks initially took from Assyria. So the title of "pater Europæ" is really to be understood as the father and king of a large chunk of territory, not a union of people.

I'm on my 3-4th day of learning Chinese, and I've skimmed a bit about the 1st simplication, and the (retracted) 2nd simplification.

I also saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHskrqMqII which has me thinking even more about this topic. And has me wondering if it's really in my interests to learn Chinese (thinking about a future of every young/then old person using pocket supercomputers to write in pinyin).

Leaning towards returning to Russian/ASL, though I've been having a lot of fun with Chinese characters and history and so on. No friends to talk to yet (in any case I only have a couple phrases/characters under my belt.)

1. Do you think another simplification effort is on the horizon?

2. Do you have any perspective for a new learner who's a little discouraged by this line of thinking? Either to encourage or further discourage.