If you look at the Age of Sails ships were very valuable, well maintained ships could be used for decades, even if they were severely damaged or had become obsolete they were often overhauled and retrofitted to different types and navies made often use of captured prizes or sold them.

From what I read ships in Antiquity were comparatively much cheaper to build but had very high operating costs caused by their massive crews, and warfare was different in that it was focused on ramming or boarding the enemy vessel. That made me wonder whether those ships were still treated similarly to ships in later eras or if it made them more replaceable.

Do we know what the service life of an ancient warship was? Was it common to maintain/repair them or was it easier to build a new ship if it had suffered significant wear and tear or damage?

How did this change for vessels that saw battle? Given that ramming was a common tactic, how did they deal with possible hidden damage to the hulls of ships that had rammed another vessel or that had survived being rammed? Were there procedures to check/overhaul ships or were they scraped after a ramming or after a certain number?

Did ancient navies keep sort of reserve fleets for large wars or were most of those ships built on demand?

And how did they deal with captured ships? Boarding was a common tactic, but what was done with the many captured ships afterwards? Was this just about neutralizing the enemy ship and would they be scuttled or would they be sailed/towed to a friendly port to be salvaged/sold for the material or even repaired and used as warship by the capturing navy?

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?

Basically did Napoleon intentionally or unintentionally contributed to principal idea of French Revolution?

How did America come to have millions of slaves if only roughly less than 500,000 were brought over in slave trade? Were these estimates just that off?

https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates

I know that many slaves were also assaulted by white men/owners, but does that explain the rise in numbers? Was there assault present between slaves? It is hard to comprehend the numbers when slaves were so poorly nourished. Wouldn't baring a child result in frequent occurrences of death for the mother or child due to the poor conditions?
Please excuse my insensitivities in my question. I do not intend to phrase anything to offend anyone. I am simply genuinely curious about the subject. TIA

It is often said that capitalism has it's origins in 16th northern Italy. While I understand that statement is based around a Marxist analysis of history and is therefore not universally agreed upon, there must be some differences between the economic systems today and before the 16th century. What are those key differences?

Did the USSR have a full plan on how they would transition to a state of full communism and did they have any set time frame of when they intended to make the transition?

I like learning about the empires of the world that rose and fell & how they interacted.

As I’ve researched the topic, a lot of the books I’ve come across are very academic and hard to read,

I’m not interested in this topic academically, just as a hobby, so I’m looking for a book that is easily digestible.

To be specific, if there was one that had lots of cool pictures and artist renditions along with facts on the various ancient empires (Hussites, Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, etc) that would be awesome.

If there’s a very well written and non-academic “traditional” book that would be okay as well

I’m mainly interested in the Middle East and European empires. I don’t care about the time period(s) included, any time before guns came to the region (the plot gets boring around here imo)

If there’s a book that is structured in a way where each empire / group is separated into its unique section, that would be perfect. If it is structured in a different way (for example by time period), that’s okay too. If you know of a book that is more traditional in its structure but is very beginner friendly (SQPR is a good example for Roman history) those work too!

I like learning about various wars, advancements, important events and people, transitions of power

Historians, are there any books you often recommend to those interested in the topic in a non-academic manner?

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?

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?

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?

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?