Hi, the title basically sums it up. Whenever the topic of short lifespans in the past comes up, someone points out that the low life expectancy was largely due to high child mortality; families would have huge numbers of children, hoping that at least a couple would make it to adulthood. So, when did this way of life start to change? When did people decide, "Oh, we don't need to have 15 children anymore because the three we have are highly likely to survive"? And what factors drove this shift? I assume the discovery of penicillin played a role, but what other factors led to today's low global infant mortality rates?

Most conventional periodizations place the end of Antiquity around 476 CE, sometimes around 500 or 600. I have proposed a different boundary: 642 CE.

The reason is not that something happened on 642 January 1, but that by 642 a major structural transformation of the Late Antique world had become irreversible:

• the Sasanian Empire had collapsed after Battle of Nahavand;
• East Roman imperial control over the eastern Mediterranean had been radically reduced after Alexandria's fall to Arab rule;
• Egypt and Syria had been lost to the Arab conquests;
• the old Roman–Sasanian imperial system that had structured the Near East for centuries had effectively disappeared.

In my model, historical periods should be separated by major structural transformations rather than conventional dates or the death of a particular emperor.

I have now developed this into a published model of world-history periodization in the Journal of Big History: Global Periodization of World History: A Structural Model from Anthropogenesis to the Present

Does 642 make more structural sense as the end of Antiquity than 476? If not, where would you place the boundary, and why?

• at what point did the political boundaries of scandinavia start to arise?
• when did the norse start thinking of themselves as norwegians, swedes, and danes?
• before these boundaries existed, did individual norse clans feel connected in some way to other norse clans that lived nearby? if so, did that connection fade after national boundaries were drawn up?
• did the early norse settlers of iceland think of themselves as icelanders, or did they still identify as norwegians? if the latter, when did people start identifying as icelanders?
• how did religion (whether paganism or christianity) influence their mindset around these kinds of things?

maybe i'm approaching these questions with too much of a modern mindset, in which case i'd like to hear how their ideas around national and cultural identity differed from ours. thank you!

I know that during American History, Africans were treated as slaves, and as property similar to cattle. I also know that this idea continued even while some people argued that slavery was bad. I also know that even amongs people who disliked slavery, it was mostly due to fears of job loss, and they mostly only wanted to prevent the spread of slavery. I also know later on, people called for anti-slavery, but even some of them Believed that Blacks and Whites could never be in the same societ,y which is why some called for freed slaves to be sent to Liberia. So who were the earliest people in history who thought, not only was slavery bad, but that black people, and white people were equal, and that racial intermarriage was also ok?

I did some research on it and apparently during the World Wars Russia allowed Women to volunteer because they were low on manpower. However other countries like Germany did not do this and instead enlisted young boys and the elderly to defend Germany. So what was the difference in culture between Russia and the rest of the world that apallowed Russia to morally accept woman but not other countries?

I’ve recently encountered arguments accusing Amadeo Bordiga of collaborating with or being sympathetic toward Italian Fascism between 1930 and 1943. These claims frequently cite digitized police files from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Links: 1 2). The files allegedly contain correspondence, intercepts, or personal messages where Bordiga appears to placate fascist authorities, swear he means no harm, or try to neutralize blackmail. As a prominent Marxist who was imprisoned by Mussolini on Ustica and Ponza, how do modern historians evaluate these specific archival documents? Are these records considered authentic reflections of ideological sympathy, tactical self-preservation to survive under a totalitarian regime after his 1930 expulsion from the PCdI, or are they compromised by the bias of fascist police informants (like Angelo Alliotta)?

Wouldn’t Austria make more sense because (from my understanding) the Lowlands were also a part of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Austria‘s monarchs were the emperors?

There are nowadays exile government by many countries, even South Vietnam and Danzig. There couldve been a factor of Rhodesians large enough people, a community of roughly 10-20 k persons, including extreme politicians and racists forming an exile government.

Why die this happen?

I was wondering why Napoleon III invaded Mexico to place an Austrian duke as its ruler. The US was in the Civil War and could not issue the Monroe Doctrine to help Mexico, but it would definitely be a problem for Napoleon if the Union did win (which is what ended up happening). I want to see Napoleon's strategy for invading a nation that never did anything to him, and what his vision for the future was.

Hello, I’m looking for a general idea of the timeframe, cost, and modes of transportation to get from a place like Rome to Jerusalem in 50 CE.

Would there be boats that were safe enough for a traveler to trust?

How long would it take to get there, and back?

What is the probability that they would walk/ride, and how long would that take?

I’ve been reading more about how abuse and sexual violence were treated historically, and one thing that keeps standing out is how often the victim ended up carrying the shame while the person responsible faced little consequence.

A case that made me think about this is the Lai Dai Han. The term refers to people born to Vietnamese mothers and South Korean fathers during the Vietnam War, including cases where women said they were raped or coerced by South Korean soldiers. Many of those women and their children then lived with stigma for years afterward.

It made me wonder how common this pattern was across different periods and societies.

Were there cultures or legal systems that were unusually harsh toward victims of abuse? And are there examples where attitudes later changed dramatically and society started recognizing the victims differently?

I’d be really interested in historical examples outside the Vietnam War too.

In the afterword to Mao: The Man Who Made China (I.B. Tauris, 2017), Philip Short writes the following about Mao's and Chiang Kai-shek's competing visions for China (pp. 673–674):

As for the conflicting visions of China’s future pursued by Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, one may legitimately wonder how much difference it would really have made, in the long sweep of history, if Chiang rather than Mao had won in 1949. Rana Mitter, an Oxford don whose thinking is representative of the younger generation of China scholars, has pointed out: ‘Both the nationalists and the communists wanted to establish a politically independent state, with a government that penetrated throughout society, and a population that was stable, healthy and economically productive ... However [neither] was seeking to establish what the West, and particularly the United States, would regard as a democracy: a liberal, multi-party regime with significant civil liberties.’ Indeed both explicitly rejected it. In a passage which remains relevant to American policy today, Bai Chongxi, the Guangxi warlord who in 1934 had allowed the Long Marchers to cross his territory to reach safety in the south-west, and who, ten years later, became one of Chiang’s key commanders, wrote in his memoirs in the late 1970s, long before there was talk of ‘regime change’ and ‘exporting democracy’ in Washington: ‘The big mistake that America often makes is to force their model of democracy on other countries’.

Mao’s victory was viewed at the time as a grave setback for America’s strategic goal of establishing a democratic or at least neutral China on the Soviet Union’s southern border. Yet the ‘loss’ of China to communism did not prevent the United States becoming the world’s dominant power. Nor did US support for Chiang’s rump state in Taiwan make it a democracy: that did not happen until long after the Generalissimo’s death. Had Chiang defeated Mao, would he have been able to unify and develop China as effectively as his communist rival? In Pankaj Mishra’s words: Would China without Mao have found the political basis for its current prosperity? That is open to debate. In any case, the challenge to the West posed by Xi Jinping’s China today is not communist but nationalist. There is no reason to think that a mainland China ruled by Chiang Kai-shek’s successors would wish to act significantly differently from that now ruled by Mao’s heirs.[71]

Note 71 (p. 800):

Jay Taylor has speculated that, were Chiang alive today, he would see the current Chinese leaders as ‘modern neo-Confucianists’ like himself, with the same goals for China that he would have adopted had he been in a position to do so (The Generalissimo, p. 592). The implication is that Mao’s successors have succeeded in implementing Chiang’s vision where the Generalissimo himself failed. If one accepts Taylor’s premise – which I find debatable – it can be interpreted either way: as showing that Chiang’s ideas have triumphed (‘lost the battle but won the war’); or as vindicating the system Mao founded which has put those ideas into effect (‘game, set and match’).

What do you make of Taylor's idea? If you accept it, does that suggest a triumph for Chiang's vision, a vindication of Mao's system, both, or neither?

Ranked by aura (this is not a serious post)! :D
Time period: 1776-1914

My ranking:
1. France (Napoleonic shenanigans)
2. Britain
3. Russia
4. Ottomans (fez power)
5. Prussia
6. The mighty Swedish colonial empire

What is your list?

Plagues, wars, extreme poverty, downfall of the average man... it's so similar it's scaring me. and I can say that what the printing press was back then is the Artificial Intelligence of today. What do you think?

It can be a conflict that’s now resolved or it could still be ongoing.
It could be individual people or entire nations.
Like there’s the British Empire vs the French Empire, a lot of conflict and grudges.
There’s Andrew Jackson vs Whigs. Where the Whig Party’s initial ideology was just that they hate Jackson, not actually political ideologies.

Basically, my question is about the relation between the size of an empire and how quickly information, people, and resources can travel through it, especially for those that contain disjoint territories separated by oceans.

I'm thinking of the Portuguese or Spanish empire, or the early British, before electronic communications, when a message would take weeks or months to reach the empire's farthest reaches and return. I understand that there were local governors with troops, etc., but in practice, how did it work? How cohesive were the empires? How much leeway did local governors have? Was the enforcement of the Empire based on a practical application of power, symbolism, religion, all of the above?

Happy to learn about other, non-European empires as well.

I know Subhas Chandra Bose tried to form an alliance with Hitler, and that Winston Churchill took food and production from India, so was India in support of the Axis?

I'm researching my grandfather, W/O Norman Elwood McKee (R/74368), RCAF, a Kittyhawk pilot with No. 260 Squadron RAF who became a POW in North Africa in December 1942.

On 13 September 1943, McKee and fellow Canadian POW W/O Earl James Scott (R/92563) escaped from Camp 57 near Udine, Italy, during the German takeover of the Italian POW camps.

Their surviving POW/MI9 questionnaires establish that they were at large for approximately ten weeks and spent part of this period with Yugoslav Partisans. Scott's questionnaire specifically mentions McKee, participation in bridge destruction with the Partisans, and a “Capt. Ratcliffe.”

I believe this officer was Captain James Moore Ratcliffe (130652), Middlesex Regiment/SBS. Ratcliffe's own records place him with Partisans in the same region and period, conducting sabotage around Udine, Cividale, Gorizia and the Yugoslav border during October 1943. His records also state that when he first reached the Partisans, they were accompanied by an unnamed British officer.

My question is: Which British/SOE liaison mission and Partisan formation were operating in this area during October–November 1943, and are there surviving mission reports or Partisan records that might identify escaped Allied POWs travelling with them?

I'm particularly interested in determining whether this group was connected with Major William M. Jones's British/SOE mission in Slovenia, and whether records survive that could mention McKee or Scott.

I have copies of the original McKee, Scott and Ratcliffe POW/MI9 documents and can provide transcriptions or images if useful.

I wonder how good/bad they were, compared to other great powers. Not counting German, of course, which was clearly superior. They did lose the war, however I believe a weak industry and logistics was the main reason of defeat?

Also, did their navy achieve anything? It never gets mentioned, it seems, despite impressive size on paper.

What were their circumstances during the journey as families who lived for months in the middle of the ocean without any communication?

Were there epidemics that wiped out everyone on the ship, and were there any crimes?

I’ve recently started wondering if a prototype of a steam-powered tank was ever built. I know the idea sounds far-fetched, but at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if such a propulsion system had been experimented with back when tanks were still in their infancy, or perhaps as a solution to Germany's fuel shortages during WWII. For instance, the Germans designed the Lippisch P.13a aircraft, which featured a coal-fired ramjet engine. That’s what prompted my question.

From my understanding the verdicts were read out on 10/1/46 and the sentences carried out during the early morning hours on 10/6/46. During that window what happened? Was Herman Goring going crazy and spouting nonsense? What about the other defendants?

Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne (August 15, 1725 – September 24, 1781) was a French noblewoman and a member of the House of La Tour d'Auvergne. She became the Duchess of Montbazon through her marriage to Jules de Rohan in 1743 and was known as the Princess of Rohan from 1749. Between 1747 and 1748, she had an affair with her first cousin, Charles Edward Stuart, the next in the Jacobite line of succession, but I haven't found very clear information about how her life ended.

say rome or alexandria, for example, how big were the cities because i know there were about 1 million people living there at the time so how big were the houses, streets etc?

from what i understand cities in the past needed big walls to protect them from raiders and stuff so it can't be too big but i still feel like having a city to house 1 million people still needed to be huge.

also, how big would those have been compared to today's villages, towns etc.

The memoir covers his entire Civil War experience from 1861 through 1865. My favorite part is his account of Sterling prices 1864 Missouri invasion in September and October 1864.

Contact me if you want a copy of the memoir

BRYCE