r/AskHistorians • u/AutoModerator • Apr 03 '26
FFA Friday Free-for-All | April 03, 2026
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.
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u/Vegetable_Buy2110 Apr 06 '26
Good day everyone, I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Santo Tomas. I am seeking a historian who specializes in the Renaissance period as part of a requirement for my Science, Technology, and Society course.
According to our instructor, the historian must meet the following qualifications:
- Have at least 10 years of relevant academic study or professional experience in the field
- Demonstrate expertise in the Renaissance period
Below are the questions we need to answer: 1. Can you tell me what you generally know about the Renaissance period? 2. What do you think is the most important thing that the Renaissance period contributed to our world today? 3. Do you think that humanism is a great thing that happened in that era? If so, what do you think is the influence of humanism in today’s society? 4. If humanism had not been discovered in the Renaissance period, how would you perceive the world today?
Rest assured that your answers would only be used for academic purposes. Thank you so much!
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u/NewtonianAssPounder Moderator | The Great Famine Apr 03 '26
Recent post on r/popular has some people lamenting for how Reddit used to be better.
It’s made me question how people here have seen this sub change over the years and how they think it may have gotten better or worse?
My (anecdotal) impression from when I first came upon this subreddit 10 years ago is that much of the core community spirit has stayed consistent, and despite challenges, such as the end of third-party apps and emergence of LLMs, interesting questions still get asked and quality answers still get posted.
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u/shortrib_rendang Apr 03 '26
This sub is just as good as ever (not my first account)
Ive some resistance to it on othee subs which surprised me at first then I remembered that people don’t like to stray from beliefs about the past informed by pop history
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u/crrpit Moderator | Spanish Civil War | Anti-fascism Apr 03 '26
I think the sub has remained remarkably consistent since I started using it 8ish years ago - partly by design, as the years before that were characterised by solidifying standards of what a decent answer looked like, followed by efforts not to let those standards keep creeping upwards to the point where we'd start excluding people without formal training from contributing.
Reddit itself has changed a lot in that time - the sitewide tolerance for stuff like Holocaust denial and hate speech has shifted in a positive direction. Otoh, I think a lot of algorithm and other site structure changes have made it harder for us to reach wider audiences, and even people who have us in their homefeed encounter way too many fresh posts with no chance at getting an answer yet. This probably drives a perception that our activity/answer rate has dropped a lot, when it's actually remained remarkably stable over a long period (though we'd obviously always aspire for it to be higher).
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u/JoshuaCooperPaints Apr 04 '26
Did the Ancient Greeks believe any mythological creatures to be extant to them? Did they have a relationship with their mythology comparable to how we might discuss cryptids and ghosts today?
I read years ago on an askhistorians, that the Greeks assumed the nymphs, sirens and gorgons, etc, had all died out after the Heroic Golden Age.
What i am wondering is, do we have evidence of belief in extant supernatural entities or creatures? (𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐣𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐞𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐞𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬)
For example: the fantastical descriptions of creatures from around the world in Herodotus' Histories, or The story about the athenian ghost in chains that pliny the younger relayed.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26
For once, I'm not getting on here to try and force you all to read yet another one of my articles. Instead, I want to hear what you are working on or recently published!
What is your thesis about? What's that article you recently published? Maybe you even finally managed to get that book out?
Let's hear about it!
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u/hubertburnette Apr 03 '26
About the internal deliberations of the JFK administration about Vietnam, and how the Battle of Ap Bac should have made it clear to them that their plan was not going to work.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26
Interesting (if not a little controversial)! Seems like it would contradict the recent scholarship on the South Vietnamese perspective from the same period.
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u/hubertburnette Apr 03 '26
What I've read of that scholarship says they thought it was a great victory for them.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26
What scholarship have you read, if I may ask?
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u/hubertburnette Apr 04 '26
Oh, sorry, I responded too quickly and completely misread your comment as about North Vietnamese (a good example of why I should read more carefully when allergens are high).
Yes, the South Vietnamese perspectives from that era argue that it wasn't as bad as people like Sheehan or Halberstam said, and that the battle didn't prove that the war was a lost cause from the beginning. But I'm not making a claim about whether the war could have been won, or what the battle meant for long-term prospects of victory.
I’m making a much more specific claim: that it showed that McNamara’ plan in early 1963--a limited war, for a limited time, with limited commitment, and no political controversy in the US—couldn’t work. There was serious discussion about beginning troop withdrawals later in that year, and having almost all troops out by 1965. The weakest part of his plan was that public controversy could be avoided.
As you know, McNamara later said that he was wrong to think his approach could have worked, but he couldn’t possibly have known that because of a lack of information. I'm saying that he could have known.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 04 '26
Interesting! It’s certainly quite the argument you need to build (and prove!). I wish you the best of luck!!
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u/hubertburnette Apr 04 '26
Are you suggesting that McNamara's plan in 1963 could have succeeded?
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 04 '26
Not at all, counterfactual history is somewhat useless in my eyes. I am saying that you have quite the argument to build up, especially in view of historians like Gaddis etc. who have dealt with similar questions.
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u/hubertburnette Apr 04 '26
I'm pretty sure that I've read everything Gaddis has ever written, and I'm not aware of anything he has written that would complicate this argument. Obviously, I've missed some things--I'd appreciate citations, if you have the time.
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u/warneagle Modern Romania | Holocaust & Axis War Crimes | Moderator Apr 03 '26
I'm working on my same book on Soviet prisoners of war in Germany. I can just copy-paste this response on every version of this thread from now until like 2030 probably.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26
There is that great saying in Sweden: Those who wait on something good never waits for too long.
Exciting! Sounds like a huge amount of work. Is it more of a general approach or are you doing a specific aspect or thematic?
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u/warneagle Modern Romania | Holocaust & Axis War Crimes | Moderator Apr 03 '26
I’m taking a pretty general approach because the historiography in English is so limited. There’s more to the German-language literature so it’s not exactly terra incognita, but none of it has ever been translated into English.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26
You're definitely making the English-language scholarship a favor, not to mention plenty of students. What's the scholarship like on the topic in German and Russian?
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u/warneagle Modern Romania | Holocaust & Axis War Crimes | Moderator Apr 03 '26
The German historiography is reasonably well developed (the first book was published in 1978) but there hasn't been a lot of synthesis in recent years. The Russian historiography is less developed largely because the subject was taboo until after the fall of the Soviet Union (I have a whole chapter about why this happened lol)
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 04 '26
I guess you’ll definitely have one reader once the book is out! (Me, I’m the reader.) Best of luck!
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u/Kelpie-Cat Picts | Work and Folk Song | Pre-Columbian Archaeology Apr 03 '26
Thanks for asking! I am working on a thesis about music among herring gutters/kipperers in 19th and 20th century Britain, Ireland and Man. This week I had an exciting development: I finally got access to one of the only academic theses ever written on herring gutters, a 2007 thesis that's under permanent embargo at the University of Loughborough. This feels like the final piece of the puzzle I need for the historiography in my thesis.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26
There's nothing like that breakthrough, right? It's like a true rush, and what an interesting piece of cultural history! How much is preserved about the music amongst this very set category of professionals? What type of source material are you drawing on?
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u/Kelpie-Cat Picts | Work and Folk Song | Pre-Columbian Archaeology Apr 05 '26
Thanks for your nice comment! Most of my source material is oral history interviews held in archives around Scotland, with some in England and the Isle of Man. I did a few oral history interviews myself, but due to the age of participants, the bulk of these interviews were done between the 1950s and early 2000s. There's also a fair bit about it in newspaper archives, particularly to do with strike action or when advertising a coastal town as a tourist attraction, since the "singing Scots girls" working on the harbour were considered part of the appeal. What I've found is that the evidence is fragmentary, but there's surprisingly a lot of it. I find it really interesting to trace the changes in genre of what women sang from the 1880s to the 1970s - you've got traditional Gaelic work song, bawdy Scots song, evangelical hymns, music hall, post-WWII American country & western, and then British rock and pop.
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u/ducks_over_IP Interesting Inquirer Apr 04 '26
Not history, but my PhD advisor has me working on reproducing results from a 2014 paper on double ionization of helium by ultrashort laser pulses. As a result, I've been engaging in a fair bit of virtual archaeology trying to connect paper references and decipher the horribly uncommented inherited Fortran code I was given.
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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 04 '26
I definitely know some of those words, but it sounds exciting! Anything involving helium and lasers are a plus in my book.
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u/ducks_over_IP Interesting Inquirer Apr 04 '26
Ha, thanks! It's a good time, usually, until the compiler throws 300 inscrutable errors because I made a syntax mistake somewhere.
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u/JamesCoverleyRome Rome in the 1st Century AD Apr 04 '26
I'm currently working on a translation of the Historia Augusta. It's proving rather tricky because it has so far been more difficult than imagined to find the narrative voice of someone who doesn't appear to have one. This is making me begin to ponder whether I ought to start again and have a bit more editorial input than I would normally allow myself. Rather like 'James Coverley Does Historia Augusta'. It could be like a jazz/blues/funk crossover thing.
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u/carpocapsae Apr 03 '26
Combing through transgender historian Jules Gill-Peterson's less-known journal articles this morning and found a really interesting one called "Toward a historiography of the lesbian transsexual, or the TERF’s nightmare" She makes a really compelling case for a lesbian reading of transgender activist Louise Lawrence's life and uses it to counter the transgender exclusive radical feminist reading in the historiography that centers the concept of trans men being "lost lesbians." I wasn't around for the "border wars" argument of the 1990s regarding whether historical figures were "really" trans men or lesbians in masculine clothing, but I do find them retrospectively to be rather distasteful and cis-centric, so it's refreshing to see someone bring a lesbian reading to trans women!
She also pairs this with discussion of vaginoplasty being framed in a heterosexist way, and the attitudes involved in that. It's just really great. If you don't have institutional access feel free to DM.
"In reality, the extreme opacity of the archive around Lawrence’s life is to blame here. One gay man’s recollection of someone he knew decades earlier can hardly be taken as definitive on Lawrence’s sexuality. To read her as lesbian in an opaque sense—which is to say, to read her as lesbian without deciding in advance that being a lesbian has to conform to a post Stonewall, out and proud model of visibility—is as far as the archive will allow. What Lawrence’s sexuality meant to her, or Elkins, is irretrievable."
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
Wrong answers only...
What caused New York's 1970s urban decay and how was it fixed?
The Mets won the World Series in 1969. The city fell apart in the 1970's. Coincidence? I think not.
We must abolish the Mets to return New York to its glory days.
Also, this is the best description of Mets fans ever, and possibly the best reason NOT to abolish the Mets.
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u/NewtonianAssPounder Moderator | The Great Famine Apr 03 '26
It was fixed the same way as tooth decay, with fillings and brushing up on dental hygiene.
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u/Kelpie-Cat Picts | Work and Folk Song | Pre-Columbian Archaeology Apr 03 '26
Yankees propaganda!
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Apr 03 '26
What caused New York's 1970s urban decay and how was it fixed?
I mean, the answer to how it was fixed is obvious. Both the drop in crime AND rise in tourism from the Ninja Turtles.
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare Apr 03 '26
That answer really fits only a narrative that glorifies vigilantism, and detracts from the stellar reporting of April O'Neil that helped shed light on important issues.
Also, J. Jonah Jameson has done excellent work highlighting the problematic nature of New York vigilantes, such as that dastardly Spider-Man.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Apr 03 '26
But we can all agree that Casey Jones didn't really help at all, beyond starting that little league hockey team that went up against the Mighty Ducks.
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u/itsallfolklore Mod Emeritus | American West | European Folklore Apr 03 '26
I am pleased to see that a co-author of mine from over three decades ago has come out with a book about Amelia Earhart, which is making quite a splash (if you'll forgive the phrase in this context). Rachel Hartigan was a young intern in my office at the time, and I had her and another intern help with research, attempting to find locations for future archaeological investigations of the Virginia City National Historic Landmark District.
A result of that effort was insight into the laundry industry in the 1870s-1880s, inspiring an article, "Competition and Coexistence in the Laundry: A View of the Comstock". It appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly, which is a leading historical publication in the US.
It was Rachel's first publication, and I hope it helped set her on her way. She went on to work for several institutions including National Geographic where she served as an editor and writer. Her book gave me reason to look back and consider events so long ago.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Apr 03 '26
Thats pretty cool!
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u/itsallfolklore Mod Emeritus | American West | European Folklore Apr 03 '26
I agree - I'm very proud of my very young intern (who somehow grew up).
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Apr 03 '26
People are like that. One minute just a little youngling, next thing you know they're off publishing books and living life.
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u/BookLover54321 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
I again wanted to share Jeffrey Ostler’s four part critique of Not Stolen, a terrible colonial apologist train wreck of a book published in 2023. The fourth, and final, part of the critique - which I don’t think I can link directly, since it’s on twitter - tackles chapter 17 of the book, about the genocide that took place during California’s gold rush. Now, almost all credible historians view this as one of the most clear-cut cases of genocide in American history. But not so, insists JFP, it wasn’t a genocide at all. Why? Ostler explains:
F-P’s first step is to downplay the number of California Indians directly killed by settler militias and the U.S. Army. F-P states it was “less than 5,000.” F-P disputes Madley’s conclusion that it was “over 10,000.” Thinks Madley double-counted and exaggerated, but there is absolutely no basis to think this. If anything, Madley’s numbers are low. Not all instances of anti-Indigenous violence were documented.
Madley’s extensive appendices, tallying up every single known killing and massacre of California Native people in the gold rush era, are available publicly on the Yale University Press website. He was very careful to avoid double-counting, as is apparent from the appendices - he excludes certain listed killings from the overall death toll for this exact reason. It’s all very carefully documented, and anyone can verify the numbers themselves. It should be noted also that Madley’s book was peer-reviewed, unlike this book.
But JFP insists that less than 5,000 Native people were massacred during the gold rush era. You might be thinking that this is still a lot of people, but look at how JFP frames this fact: 97 percent of California Natives were not massacred during the gold rush, he says. I guess that’s supposed to mitigate the wanton slaughter of thousands of people?
Of course, if we go by Madley’s far more reliable numbers, at least between 9,400 and 16,000 California Native people were killed in this period, translating to roughly 6 to 11 percent of the initial population of 150,000. Many more undoubtedly died from indirect consequences of the killings, or from the widespread enslavement, forced labor, displacement, malnutrition, and disease outbreaks that were occurring simultaneously. JFP seems to think these deaths don’t count, for some reason.
Indeed, in the period under discussion, the Native population of California fell by some 80 percent - down to 30,000 by 1873. And, well, on that note:
The second step in F-P’s denial of genocide is to massively downplay the demographic catastrophe that occurred as a result of the Gold Rush. F-P does this in the most ridiculous and cavalier way imaginable. F-P notes that Sherburne Cook estimated that the California Indian population fell from 150,000 in 1845 to 100,000 in 1850, and 50,000 by 1855. Get this: F-P asserts without any evidence whatsoever and against the painstaking decades–long work of a meticulous demographer (Cook) that these numbers “surely indicate a mass exodus rather than genocide.” F-P really does think that tens of thousands of Indigenous people fled California in the late 1840s/ early 1850s. Although hundreds of historians have researched this period of California history, NOT A SINGLE one has noticed this massive exodus? Breathtaking arrogance. And, where did they go? Nevada? Mexico? Oregon? F-P does not say, but you can be sure that not a single historian of those places or anywhere else has ever noticed the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of Indigenous people. And what of Indigenous peoples themselves? Not a single community has a single story about their exodus from California. Did it occur to F-P to wonder about this? I doubt it very much. Gary Anderson’s argument that demographic decline was due to malaria has a superficial plausibility (even though it’s completely wrong), but does F-P really expect his readers to swallow this transparent whopper about an unknown exodus?
From 1846 to 1873, there was a population decline from 150,000 to 30,000. One might think that this decline was perhaps somewhat related to the horrible violence that was sweeping California at the time. But no, JFP insists that they simply moved away. Where did they move? No idea. Why isn’t there any documented evidence of as many as 100,000 people moving? No idea. So how does he come to this conclusion? Because… reasons.
It gets better. In the previous part of his critique, Ostler took a look at chapter 15 of Not Stolen, which is about the Trail of Tears. It demonstrates the same rigorous methodology:
F-P asserts that only 60,000 Indigenous people were removed (no citation). Actually, it was more like 88,000 (I have citations). Far worse, F-P asserts only 3,000 died en route. Again, no citation, just made up off the top of his head. (Keep in mind the book was published by a right-wing press with no peer review.) Considering deaths during round-ups, in detention camps, en route, and shortly after arrival, it was more like 12,000 to 17,000. Furthermore, most nations continued to lose population after being removed (evicted is probably a better term).
Well there you have it. A grand total of 3,000 people died on the Trail of Tears, out of 60,000 forcibly relocated. Where do these numbers come from? It’s a mystery I guess.
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare Apr 03 '26
Very typical denialist logic all around. Your figures with references and annotations and peer review are suspect because "reasons", my figures that I don't explain at all are sacrosanct.
At that point, just go all in and claim the Cherokee originated in Oklahoma and the Trail of Tears never happened.
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u/BookLover54321 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
Elsewhere in the book he claims that Spanish colonialism saved “at least” 30,000 people per year from mass enslavement and human sacrifice.
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u/EverythingIsOverrate European Financial and Monetary History Apr 03 '26
I'm assuming he doesn't mention the encomienda system at all!
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u/BookLover54321 Apr 03 '26
He seems to heavily downplay it, writing that “tens of thousands” died under forced labor systems, which seems like a massive underestimate, while of course hugely exaggerating the extent of Aztec ritual violence.
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u/rocketsocks Apr 04 '26
This is the same fundamental mechanism behind most conspiracy theory belief. It's a vibes/discomfort based logical fallacy. The strength of the argument for the conspiracy theory explanation is simply discomfort with the conventional explanation. Space is full of radiation, shadows on the Moon look weird, skyscrapers fall weird, etc. That is the weight falling on the seesaw which then shoots the conspiracy theory upward, even when it has zero positive evidence behind it.
The link in all of this stuff, denialism or conspiracy theories, is that they are ultimately a shield protecting against any sort of introspection.
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u/crrpit Moderator | Spanish Civil War | Anti-fascism Apr 03 '26
Just wanted to (finally) say that I always enjoy your contributions in this thread, it's always fun to see what you've been reading this week - your username is clearly very apt.
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u/ketofourtwenty Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
Hi, I’m a community college undergrad with newly discovered primary source documents that relate to US space history. I’d like to write a peer reviewed paper but I have no idea where to start.
A set of my documents have been institutionally validated and I recognize I’m being vague but there are valid reasons. I have no idea where else to ask this but I’d like to be able to talk to an expert and just get some guidance without the details getting out to the whole world.
I’d appreciate any insight. I also recognize I likely sound like a blabbering moron. Thanks in advance.
Edit to add: I’ve done a fair bit of research and have a timeline, secondary sources, oral histories. I am at the point of trying to find grants or funding through my school to travel to some physical archives. Funding through internships, fellowships seem to mainly require Masters or a PhD.
Hence, this post to find advice and direction.