The worst situation in an askhistorians context is when there is some concept you want to understand but because you don't understand it, you can't even ask about it. It's so hard to put into words. There are a lot of things like that in history in particular, where there is so much context and cultural assumption that we don't share that it can be very easy to misunderstand, to look through modern eyes and therefore fundamentally misread, etc. Whether it's the Bible or the Constitution of the United States, you can quote it verbatim and be completely misrepresenting what it says, because both you and your listener hear the modern meaning of words in a modern context instead of what was actually meant by the author. For a weird meta example, I read The Whig Interpretation of History and this very topic seemed to me to be what Butterfield was talking about, and I am continually astonished by credentialed historians acting like it only talks about "the assumption of human progress" like you see in Sid Meier's Civilization video games.

Anyway I was trying to formulate some kind of question, which butts up against the canard you read here that "feudalism doesn't exist" -- I have absolutely no idea what that means -- I wanted to try to understand what "absolutism" was, because I think for a lot of us naive laymen, we think like the questioner here that an absolute monarch simply does everything him-or-herself, which is clearly not true and never has been true in any era, but that is so weirdly confusing. Or the Meiji Restoration, so-called, making "the emperor", so-called, the absolute monarch of Japan, who is at the same time nearly a powerless figurehead by some accounts at least, and certainly in any case not someone who made all decisions like, again, the player of a videogame would. Or, another thing I can never quite grasp the whys and wherefores of, why the various departments of the Executive Branch here in the USA exist, why when Congress creates something like that they say "the President shall have the power to" blah blah blah instead of just doing it themselves, since neither the President nor the Congressmen will actually have anything to do with it; it makes the President a strange middleman for no reason I can put my finger on, and I think the reason may lie in history rather than "logic" or legal philosophy.

I mean I think I see that the Emperor of Japan and the President of the United States, like Louis XIV, really means "the state" and not the human, and the absolutism is in the centralization and...clarity? of where power lies, instead of being multipolar and antagonistic, and based on legal structure instead of cultural norms of fidelity and service or whatever...except feudalism doesn't exist, so in contrast to what...

I am rambling, and do not expect anyone to understand what the hell I'm talking about because I don't myself and that is why I am rambling instead of formulating a neat and precise question. If anybody notices this, I expect probably the "you seem to be making some strange assumptions" treatment at best, which as a class of answer often does pretty well at revealing why those assumptions as wrong, but rarely actually help me (no doubt because I am dumb) actually grasp the truth my assumptions are clouding over. Not because they don't explain it, but because, as I said at the beginning, I find it so goddamn difficult to get outside the modern, liberal, capitalist frame of mind.

Bret Devereaux just posted a retrospective on his Sparta series, including responses to some of the comments made about it on this sub. May I post this even I don't have a specific question about it? I'd like to see people's responses.

Please help me! I swear to god that this summer either the NYT or the WaPo ran a very interesting interactive feature on historic photos of Native Americans, a critique and interrogation of their creation, use, distribution etc. It was fascinating. At the time I didn't know I'd be teaching APUSH this year but, surprise! I am! And I'd love to re-read it just for myself and perhaps share with my students. BUT although I have pretty good google-fu I CAN NOT FIND IT ANYWHERE! Clearly, no one posted it to Reddit because that would make it easier to find.

Does anyone remember this? Geronimo was included but not the sole topic. I'm pretty sure it was the NYT but the search function on their site is notoriously bad and I can't find it.

Thank you!

Small bit of a splurge of thought, but how do you deal with a book being only available for reference in library in another city?

Current book I’m reading references a few books that are no longer published, I’ve made a note of one or two that I want to look into more and learn more about a topic.

Do you just go in, read what you need or make multiple trips to read through it?

Wikipedia Question:

Can someone tell me what the current consensus is among professors at the undergraduate and graduate level about accepting Wikipedia as a citation on a paper? Never? Once? Images only? Thanks!

Anyone got a good recommendation for a book about 19th/20th century Latin American history? Nothing too hefty I only have a week of free time.

What are the best historical movies set more than 30 years ago?

Hello everyone ! I need some book recommendations for pre-colonial and pre-Incan South American history, especially about cultures existing around the Stone Age and the ancient period.

Also, I would also like a book rec for the histories of tribes who lived/are living in and around the Amazon rainforests.

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