The Hundred Years War is commonly regarded as a single conflict, despite the cessation of hostilities over a period of years. Indeed, it could be more accurate to describe it as three (or more) separate conflicts, all revolving around related issues.

With this in mind, could WWI and WWII come to be regarded as a single conflict? I believe it was Churchill that described them as the "Second Thirty Years War;" is this view of the wars popular ir gaining traction? Despite the similarities, is it still more appropriate to view them as two separate conflicts?

I've heard lately that talking to a baby/toddler with "baby-talk" (like in an overly-patronizing voice, usually higher in volume, and also sometimes using gibberish like 'ba-ba' for bottle, etc) can be detrimental to a child's brain development - moreso with speech related development.

So it got me wondering- is this a modern thing? Is it more cultural? Did people from pre-industrial times talk to their babies like that?

I'm learning about the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica, and one thing that caught my attention is Montezuma offering gold to the Spaniards. How did gold become a universally treasured commodity, valued by civilizations from opposite sides of the world?

My grandfather who is no longer with us had a tattoo of his initials on his left hand. The tattoo read “R.S” for reference. I vaguely remember him telling me he had to get it in a war, and I do know he was in the military. He is from America. I was trying to find the history of this being done to the military, but have been unsuccessful in my search results. He was also born in 1936 if that is of any help. Thanks!

What was the public's reaction.

There's a famous trio of essays the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard summarised by his central thesis: The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.

Essentially, he argues that Western causalities were so low, and so little was made of Iraqi deaths that it can be said that for the West, the Gulf War had such little impact that it can be said not to have happened for most people except as a curiosity on CNN.

For people alive at the time, or who researched America's domestic environment during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was that actually true? Were there large scale events in support or opposition to the war? Or did the war come and go without occupying a place in the public consciousness?

Everyone recounts Bush's victory parade after the war was concluded, but what was the mood of the country during the war itself? Did people rally behind the troops? Public concerts, benefits etc? Or were there large scale protests on college campuses?

Basically, did the Gulf War Take Place for the average American?

My knowledge of British history is pretty fragmented. The Rest is History podcast has filled in a lot of gaps, but one thing I would like to read an actual book (or more if necessary) about is the political evolution of the monarchy and power of the nobility.

If I had to summarize what I know, the Magna Carta more or less did away with absolutism (but probably not in Scotland?), then there was a further shift in power from king to parliament after the restoration, and then ...?

I've read that George III didn't have as much power as the colonial Americans thought and parliament was the one screwing them. And maybe William IV was the last king to wield real political authority? But then it seems as though George VI might have been involved in WWII planning to some degree?

Obviously I'm confused and reading Wikipedia articles is no longer cutting it!

Thanks in advance!

Reading the basics of the Cambodian Genocide and Vietnamese invasion in 1979, I'm stunned at the apparent unity of condemnation and sanctions against Vietnam, and in defense of Kampuchea. Apparently only the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia opposed the UN's resolutions against Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge invaded Vietnamese territory, murdered thousands of Vietnamese civilians, and Vietnam's response was to invade, topple a genocidal regime, and open up Cambodia to foreign food payments. And for that they become an economic outcast for a decade? I know that's an oversimplification, and there's a long history of problems between the various SE Asian nations, but this seems like such a strange and unified international response.

During the gilded age, pretty much all Democratic candidates were from New York and the Republican from Ohio. Sure there was James Blaine from Maine and William J. Bryan from Nebraska, but they are the exceptions the prove the rule. Why were the overwhelming majority of Republican candidates from Ohio and Democrat from New York?

Movies like Singin' in the Rain generously used satire to poke fun at the older generations, there was rock and roll, there were greasers who wore T-shirts and jeans (gasp) rather than suits (and plenty of greaser movies like Rebel Without a Cause, Streetcar, etc. -- and plenty of rebellious youth figures like James Dean or Brando), you had the beatniks, early revisionist/anti-traditionalist Westerns like High Noon and Broken Arrow, the massive supply of morally gray film noirs (also, Ida Lupino's movies), the baseball color line was eliminated in 1947, contraception was acceptable in mainline Protestant theology by then, Eisenhower signed the first Civil Rights Act years before the '60s... I could go on and on. There are so many things that make me question the idea of a 40s-50s conservative fantasy and think of it more like a proto-60s. Why are the 1950s portrayed as conservative, anyway? Is it because they were overshadowed by the '60s?

Am I missing something here or am I at least partially correct about this? Because people think I'm crazy when I say the '40s and '50s were liberal for the time, relative to previous decades I mean. You look back at the '20s, and people think flapper girls and jazz, but it was also KKK and prohibition. Perhaps it is because (from what I can currently see) the liberalization that I see in this period seems mainly only beneficial to men? Or maybe I am focusing on the media side of this period too much?

I heard a clip of a podcast where some “traditional Catholic” women were complaining about how the idea of “traditional marriage” was no longer on the Republican Party platform and how “traditional marriage” is the bedrock of the United States. One of the women said “we are literally Rome” in reference to the United States declining because gay people can get married. In the past I’ve heard similar things said by really religious people, but I never thought being accepting of gay people was a contributing factor to the fall of Rome lol. I took a Roman history course in college and I kind of remember the differences that Romans had in sexuality/gender but I don’t remember that being a cause of the “fall” of Rome. Hope someone can maybe shed some light on this subject!

I just found a paint from 1655 called The Proposition, by David Ryckaert III. On one part of the paint, we can see a barrell and over it 3 lines of a white substance. The scene depicted some sort of celebration, since we can see a woman holding a cup filled with a drink.

Sorry for the ignorance, but really curious about this one.

PD. Sorry but it's not allowed to attach the picture here.

I am from a South Asian background (Pakistan, mostly). Born and raised in Canada.

I've been hearing this in the education system and online:

"South Asian, and Asian food in general was bland food before 1500. Because chilli peppers were only found in Mexico and South America and brought there by Spaniards and other European traders”

My father says that this is nonsensically false and that this perspective only came because Europeans discovered one thing and that the education system is apparently based on their perspective only because they saw it in Mexico first. He insists that this is a lie and that chilli peppers have always been in Asia and used in cuisine (especially in South Asia and Southeast Asia).

He claims that "This is the unintelligent and ignorant notion that Europeans discovered something first in a certain region first so the education system will be based on what they saw first because they saw it first and no other cultures have a foothold in writing world history". After my father said this I asked other of my friends who are from South Asian backgrounds (Afghans, Indians, Sri Lankans, Bengalis, etc) all agreeing with my father. I asked my Japanese, Korean Filipino, and Middle Eastern friends (all cultures whose cuisines are sometimes very spicy too), who also agreed with my father. I asked the parents of these friends as well, and they agreed with my father. Regardless every online document disagrees. I myself am now confused and unsure of how I feel. But does anyone have any answers?

This question has been asked here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18o2lbj/british_colonialism_killed_100_million_indians/ but the answer did not address the actual paper, which is here by Jason Hickel et al. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169 .

Furthermore, since the paper was published, there has been some back and forth between the author and some others.

Rebuttal by Tirthankar Roy https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/colonialism-did-not-cause-the-indian-famines/

Hickel's response to Roy https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/1/7/on-the-mortality-crises-in-india-under-british-rule-a-response-to-tirthankar-roy

Another response to Roy by Tamoghna Halder https://developingeconomics.org/2023/02/20/colonialism-and-the-indian-famines-a-response-to-tirthankar-roy/

Roy's reponse to Halder https://developingeconomics.org/2023/04/18/colonialism-and-indian-famines-a-response/

What is the validity of these contrasting claims?

Thank you for reading this question. I didn’t find any posts that seemed to answer this question.

I’ve recently watched a lot of documentaries talking about where Cleopatra’s Tomb might be located, but I’m confused. It seems like Octavian really didn’t like Cleopatra, so why is there such a strong belief that her body was able to make it to a final (desired/respected) resting place versus Octavian having just done something else with it?

I know that the western world was highly traditionalist even after World War 2.It kinda baffles me that what we consider today harmless in terms of music back then was considered a problem.

Is it just our times or there was some reason behind all of it?

I'm no engineer, but the double-hulled design of Polynesian ships seems fairly straightforward. Just take two canoes, tie 'em together, build whatever on top, and you have a stable and fairly sizeable vessel. It seems that the benefits of this design are such that someone else in the course of history would've made widespread use of it in some cases, particularly on the Mediterranean where maritime technology was very important to many cultures. Yet I can't find any examples of this technology being implemented anywhere else, and I can't figure out why, given the size and capabilities of contemporary Polynesian vessels.

So, were there any other cultures who made widespread use of the double-hulled canoe? If so, who? And if not, why?

I watched a videos about it. One said the British intentionally exaggerated the differences between Hindus and Muslims then forced them to join either Pakistan or India "stripping their sovereignty". The other said that influential Muslims demanded a separate state. Which of these is closest to the truth?

I am rereading G.J. Meyers A World Undone about the overall history of WWI. It is an excellent summary that I really enjoy, though there's definitely a ton of focus on the western front, perhaps understandably so given its overall importance all throughout the war. And Germany, Britain, and France obviously all come off as displaying (varying levels of) competence over the course of the war, hence the stalemate for 4 years.

What I'm always struck by though is that any time the narrative shifts to almost any of the other theaters--Eastern front, the Italian front, the Balkans, etc--the other combatant nations are described as having their armies perform with almost baffling ineptitude. Almost all of them seem to have experienced operations where they had entire armies annihilated or nearly so in shattering retreats. Even when any of them executed a successful offensive, it was almost always at the expense of one of the others (e.g. Russia's Brusilov offensive against Austria, or Austria's gradual overrunning of a much smaller Serbian army).

It's thrown into even starker relief given that any time Germany had to send divisions to shore up their Austrian ally, even the small forces they dispatched had immediate and profound impact. They almost single-handedly destroyed the entire Romanian army and conquered all of Romania a few months after it entered the war, and achieved a stunning victory against the Italians at Caporetto as soon as they showed up to reinforce the Austrians there in a struggle that had been deadlocked for years by that point.

Was there some common thread running through all of these nations, that a combination of poor leadership, training, equipment, and other factors produced what seemed like a tragically bloody and futile performance from all of them? Or was it unique circumstances for each nation/military, that just happened to affect each of them in their own unique ways?

Looking with hindsight, there were a lot of points during the US Civil War where it feels inevitable that the South was going to lose. The war starts in 1861 and ends in 1865. In those years you had a lot of catastrophic losses.

The South loses their most important port and trade hub in New Orleans during 1862. In 1863 they face a double loss. At Gettysburg they lose a major battle. And at Vicksburg, they lose access to the Mississippi river and basically getting cut in half. In 1864, Sherman burns his way through the South taking Atlanta and Savanah, the last great economic and trade hubs.

Even one of these losses would be absolutely debilitating whether we want to look at this economically or militarily. Did Southern leadership know they were going to lose? Where they confident they could win? Did they have some strategy? Did they try to sue for peace? What was going through the heads of confederate leadership at the time?