The UK is by no means a weak country, but it's nothing compared to the USA. And yes - size and population are in favor of the USA, but I doubt that's the sole answer of the question. I cannot think of any other country that was colonized and became such a big player on the world map. France was also a really really strong country and became somewhat-mid in terms of power nowadays. None of their colonies became particularly strong tho. So to sum up the question - why did the UK and France became weaker superpowers, while at the same time - the USA became the strongest superpower in the world?

I've been reading about 19th-century Mormon converts emigrating from tight-knit English parishes to the US, bringing localized surnames with them. While names like Nutter, Penfold, and Sudweeks remain pretty scarce in Great Britain, they expanded rapidly across Utah pioneer family trees.

Hi everyone,

I'm really interested in learning about the conquest of America, specifically about the situation in the territory before and after the arrival of the conquistadores.

This is the reading list I have so far:

• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
• Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
• The Broken Spears
• The Conquest of New Spain
• The Last Days of the Incas

What do you guys think? If you have any recommendations, know that I can read Spanish and English.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Maybe in context of Olympics, it is somewhat equal to wrestling and fencing, as well as judo and taekwondo. Outside of Olympics, it was undoubtedly the biggest. Everybody knows Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson but hardly anyone knows any wrestlers or fencers. Wrestling also didn't reach same spotlight despite being a college sport in the US.

Perhaps arguably it was superseded by MMA in recent decades but overall there are countless movies about boxing, etc.

I ask this because one generally associates antiquity or history with education, but it is known that teenagers have always been rebellious and free-spirited,But were they like that in ancient times too? Rebellious dreamers eager to do many things?How did teenagers or young people have fun in the past? Today we have bowling alleys and nightclubs, but what about before?

I work in a community club without its own kitchen that houses a Chinese restaurant instead. I fully understand all the business reasons we don't have our own kitchen and prefer to play host to a seperate restaurant; I'm responsible for making some of those decisions.

I also understand the general reasons for "ethnic" restaurants proliferation across western countries - the patterns of immigration and opportunities that lead to every small towm in Australia having a Chinese restaurant with an identical menu to all the other ones. I wouldn't mind more information on that topic because I'm far from an expert, but on a basic level I "get it".

What has been baffling me recently is why, if a community club hosts an outside restaurant, it's always a Chinese restaurant. If you go to a town that's too small to have a pub, but has a local bowlo and two local restaurants - say, Italian and Chinese (or anything and Chinese) - the Chinese will be in the bowlo and the other one won't. It's never the other way around.

And on the inverse side, if you go up to the huge community clubs on the central coast or similar areas that have several different independent restaurants in them, every single one has a Chinese place. They might have a bunch of other options, but they invariably start with Chinese and work outwards from there.

Why is that?

As the (apparently oft-repeated?) story goes, the piñata originated in China and arrived in Italy in the 14th century, where it became popular The Sino-Italian pignatta then spread to Spain, whose missionaries—upon arriving in the New World—happened upon indigenous traditions that involved breaking a clay vessel with a stick. The vessel was colorfully feathered in the Mexica version, and the stick-wielder was blindfolded in the Mayan one. The stage is set for more sycretism. Beset on all sides by proliferating proto-piñatas, the church decides to Christianize. Piñatas should have seven spikes, one per sin; they get associated with saints, then with birthdays and eventually are basically festive.

I feel like this story raises more questions than it answers while also failing to say much of anything about cultural geography of piñatas today. A list of complaints:

I haven't been able to find any information about the ritual context in which the Sino-Italian pignatta functioned, which is annoying because piñata-hood feels to me less like an intrinsic attribute of an object and more like a function it can assume in specific interactions (being smashed with a stick). If we're willing to be fuzzy about the materiality and construction and call non-papier-mache (and possibly even non-trinket-filled!) pointy clay jars "piñatas", then all we really have left is "thing you smash with a stick in a certain context".

• Is there actual evidence connecting the Chinese ox-striking ritual (which, to be fair, does sound very piñata-y) with the 14th-century Italian pignatta? If the Italians were copying the Chinese, how did they make and use their pignattas? When would one be smashed, by whom, and what did smashing it mean?

• If the Spanish were copying the Italians, why didn't it appeal to the French? Why did it skip into Iberia?

• If the Spanish carried it across the Atlantic, did comparable traditions appear in Guatemala, Peru, the Caribbean? If the answer is "people in those places didn't have an established tradition of breaking clay vessels with sticks while possibly being blindfolded"—ie, the Aztec and Mayan rituals were the secret sauce—then why not attribute the piñata to them?

• Finally, this crazy tale manages not to explain how the piñata become so strongly associated with Mexico specifically. I know Mexico is not the only place where people do piñata-y stuff, but it seems to be the only place where the piñata is a national icon.

• Does the China-Italy-Spain-AztecsandMayans-Mexico chain actually come as a result of tracing historical transmission, or is it more "if you look at history through modern-piñata-colored lenses then a bunch of disparate breaking-stuff rituals start to look connected"? It almost feels like the answer has to be one of those more-recent-than-you-think ones ("the true origins of the piñata as we know it today trace back to the Mexican Revolution and Mexican nationalism...").

tl;dr: What does the historiography actually say about the piñata's origins and its eventual identification with Mexico?

I was reading about the First Punic War and how the Spartan mercenary Xanthippus basically saved Carthage at the Battle of Tunis. He took a demoralized army and crushed the Romans by perfectly combining a phalanx with cavalry and around 100 war elephants.
What bugs me is: Sparta itself was pretty much in ruins geopolitically by the mid-3rd century BCE. Plus, traditional Spartan warfare was all about hoplite shield-walls, not elephants or complex tactical maneuvering.
So how did a guy from a fading polis get his hands on this kind of cutting-edge military expertise? Do we know anything about his career before Carthage? Did he serve under Pyrrhus or the Ptolemies where elephants were actually used, or was it just a case of Spartan military education being incredibly adaptable?

I used AI to help translate this and it nails exactly what I wanted to ask. Hope nobody minds.

Just curious as I can’t find much sources

Hi! For the purpose of building a science fantasy setting, I would like to know what different peoples used to believe about the Solar System during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Particularly the populations of the Ottoman Empire and China.

Broadly speaking, what did those two (and the important players in Europe, such as Spain, England, Italy, etc.) use to believe about the habitability of celestial bodies and their potential inhabitants?

No need for super detailed explanations, a brief overview would be a tremendous help already.

Thanks in advance!

In 1978 Cambodia had about 5.5 million people (a result of the Khmer Rouge genocide) and Vietnam had about 51 million people. I understand some of the reasons "why" Khmer Rouge didnt like Vietnam / wanted to fight them.

But my question is what made Pol Pot think they had any chance winning that war? The Vietnamese Army had just defeated some of the World's Superpowers and was a much larger, extremely experienced military.

Was it simply that Pol Pot being a madman? Did he think being aligned to China would be enough for China to save them? It seems like he was the aggressor of that war...he attacked a country that would easily roll them...and if he wanted to keep power you would think he would be trying to appease them instead.

As an enthusiastic bread maker who puts his hand to making pretty much anything, I have made plenty of flat breads (roti, naan, pita etc.), loaves (with both sourdough, fresh yeast and dried yeast) and griddle cakes (pancakes and English muffins).

Comfortably the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to turn flour into edible bread is the flat bread. You can make a roti from scratch in 30 minutes with 3 ingredients (flour, water, salt) and an open fire. Meanwhile a sourdough loaf requires the careful maintenance of a mother dough, considerably more time and skill, plus access to an oven, which many homes would not have had historically.

Most regions of the world seem to have a staple flat bread, presumably because it is a relatively easy thing to produce domestically - even southern Europe has pizza and fougasse. So how did the loaf become so dominant in England? Was there a historic flat bread that died out? Was there a point where the leavened loaf gained a prestige advantage over other styles of bread?

Years ago, I asked if sny of the remaining relatives of the Hawaiian Royal Family had responded to the attacks on Pearl Harbor. I thought this could be decolonization related so, with the theme week, I thought it worth asking again.

The overthrow of Hawaii and it becoming a territory would have been in living memory at the time of the Pearl Hatbor attacks, and I would think it would garner a syrong but possibly muted response.

Today, younger people are often assumed to be more technologically competent than older people because they have grown up with technologies that their parents and grandparents had to learn later in life. But this seems like a historically specific phenomenon: for much of human history, older people may have been more knowledgeable about tools and techniques simply because of their accumulated experience.

When did this relationship begin to change? Was there a particular period, technological revolution, or type of technology that first created a widespread perception that younger generations were better equipped to understand and use new technologies than older ones? For example, did this begin with the Industrial Revolution, with the spread of electricity and automobiles, or much later with computers and digital technology?

I’m particularly interested in whether historians have identified a point at which this became a recognizable generational phenomenon, rather than just the occasional case of an individual struggling to adapt to a new invention.

Hello. My name is Paul Chrystal, a relatively prolific published author (see www.pauchrystal.com) on all things ancient world: I have two cracking books for you today:

The Romans: A People’s History, published October 2026, and Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece & Rome,  published in fall 2025 to great acclaim. Please ask me anything you like on one or the other, or both, and I’ll get back to you.

First off The Romans: A People’s History

‘Here is a welcome innovation – a book about ancient Rome that foregrounds the person in the street rather than the over-entitled and over-discussed nobleman. A thoroughly satisfying read.’ — Anthony Everitt, author of The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World’s Greatest Empire

‘Paul Chrystal has an eye for the quirky and unusual. His highly readable style and solid scholarship combine to make this book an engrossing read.’ — Philip Matyszak, author of A Walk Through Ancient Rome

How is it the cliché goes ? ‘The victors get to write the histories of their times’ , or something like that. Livy, Caesar, Sallust and Augustus  would all agree with that. However, it’s not only the losers who struggle to find a voice, it’s the lower orders and the women too who have also  been more or less gagged into an interminable historiographical  silence.  Livy and his colleagues do, of course, reference the lower orders, the plebeian class, the plebs but it is usually in the context of a threat to the hegemony of the  ruling class to which, the Roman historian naturally belongs; the long-lasting  Conflict of the Orders and the disputatious brothers Gracchi are good early examples.  But there is much more to Roman military, political and social history than Livy’s foundational, sometimes half legendary,  chronicles or Caesar’s propagandist war correspondence.  I was taught on a diet of Cary, then Cary and Scullard, Cicero’s correspondence and speeches and Sallust’s  Bellum Jugurthinum and Tacitus’ Agricola,  so little wonder that the hitherto obscure existence  of 90 plus per cent  of the Roman people came as a surprise when I started making my own reading choices.

The massed extras in Ben Hur and in the Gladiator franchise have helped but the  hugely popular ‘I Claudius’ and ‘Claudius the God’ were  largely limited to the antics of  the imperial households.  Latterly,  Mary Beard has presented television programs where the common  man and woman  take centre stage, but still the posh and privileged prevail.

Increasingly frequent archaeological excavations at sites such as Pompeii and Herculaneum are also shedding new light on significant aspects of plebeian life but the time is  clearly ripe  for a much more plebeian-focused history of Rome…

Everyone  knows  that oft-repeated  question: ‘what did the Romans do for us ?’  Thank Monty Python’s Flying Circus  for that. And we all know the stock reply and its many variations: roads, bridges, ships for war and trade, aqueducts, wild and bloodthirsty  entertainment, the bread dole (panem et circenses) and - for a comfortable few - flushing toilets, high end baths, proper housing with sound roofs and underfloor  heating.

The Romans  also introduced us barbarians to the calendar, a global currency, to  Latin with it peerless literature; they showed us how to be politicians, lawyers, orators and bureaucrats, democrats, dictators and despots. Over time, we learned how  to prosecute a war, show clemency,  or commit the foulest of war crimes and atrocities. They could, at various times,  be  masters in  xenophobia and racism (especially when it came to the Greeks), they were prejudiced against, worried by and mistrustful of  women to the  point of misogyny, they mocked  and exploited the disabled,  and they were obsessed with class while oppressing  and suppressing  the underprivileged.  They perfected the vile business of  slavery although they did allow an escape  route for the talented; they were tolerant of most religions  but above all they were shrewd enough to assimilate the best aspects, practices and skills from the nations they subdued, traded  or allied with.

Much of this still resonates today as we struggle with much the same challenges and threats. So, why do we need yet another  book on the Romans and the ‘grandeur that was Rome ?’

In this book, literally a people’s history,  the man and woman in the street, at the games, on the game and in the markets and temples take that centre stage and  are allowed a  voice and given a  point of view. The lower order demographic continued to evolve as the   bestowal of Roman citizenship changed and expanded,  taking in more and more people from further afield.  Each of these new Romans has a story to tell and we endeavour to access that invaluable and ever-changing  melting pot as far as the evidence allows. 

This a history of the Romans through the eyes of the Roman common people – the plebeians.

And now: Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece & Rome

I’ll let the reviews do the talking, but again, please ask me whatever you want:

Paul Chrystal has an extraordinarily comprehensive knowledge of classical literature. As explained in the introduction, he sees his task as sifting through long dull passages and picking out the most interesting parts for the reader. He also has a stated mission to help modern societies to reflect on how they deal with some of the worst features of human behaviour, by studying the wisdom of ancient writers.

The Historian

 ‘Chrystal triumphs in terms of sources and detailed narratives, written in clear prose (no academic jargon) with gusto and humour . . . A breathtaking assembly of ancient sources, unlikely to be bettered.’

 – Fortean Times on Miracula

‘The tradition of paradoxography – writings about the unusual, the miraculous, and the absurd – runs back to Hellenistic Greece and beyond, including Aristotle, Callimachus, Cicero, and Pliny alongside lesser-known practitioners. In this connection the historian Chrystal’s new Miracula is both a continuation and a commentary, presenting oddities, trivia, and twice-told tales from the ancient world and contextualizing them for the reader. Here are marvels from pygmies to Polyphagus (Nero’s personal cannibal), the war-cats of Cambyses to the longest word in ancient Greece.’

 – The New Criterion on Miracula

‘A book full of astonishing facts and strange stories drawn from Ancient Greece and Rome – rarely retold in English – is a surprise and a delight . . . Paul Chrystal has upended the paradigm of sober history-telling to produce a potpourri of stranger things . . . When you’re not laughing aloud or cracking a smile, you may just be impressed by how much the ancients knew.’

 – InReview on Miracula

I am studying periodization, I would like to avoid making mistakes. Additionally, does it make sense of talking of caesurae for a period that spans from the 1850 to 1967?

I am new to the field of History and I am still struggling with the correct application of proper terminology!

In the country itself for the most part it’s thought to be over 1000 years old. Reading Russian and some old English scholarship from the turn of the century it seems that it was clearly written in the 18th century based on its language, description of events and peoples and setting yet has been backdated older and older in an effort to nation and myth build in Kyrgyzstan

Hello all,

I recently chimed in on this post about Joseph LaRoche, the only black passenger on Titanic. The LaRoche's had first class suites on La France but switched to Titanic due to the former's rules on children not being allowed to eat in the main dining rooms.

Despite it simply being a matter of their baby girls being too young to enjoy the fantastic children's spaces offered by La France, a few chimed in that the parents must have been terrified to let their children out of their sight.

While I stressed that we cant let the societal ills of 2026 America taint the past of 1912 France, I'm wondering what the social reality would have been for a mixed race couple with two children who we might today called "light skinned". Joseph LaRoche was en engineer from Haiti, married to a white French woman who was pregnant with their third child. They were free to sail higher classes on higher end ocean liners - all things which wouldn't be true if they were American.

But still - what might life have been like for them? Is there a possibility that the LaRoche's did have a twinge of hesitation about letting their children be cared for by the first class victualling team for an hour or two at meals due to their race? What would they have experienced had they landed in New York? What's the history of interracial marriage and children in France? Can we draw a parallel between our two worlds or are we putting something on this minor anecdote that doesn't belong there?

There are a lot of stories about married and single women alike killing themselves because they were raped, or to avoid rape. Likewise, in some societies, it was expected that if an unmarried woman or girl was raped, she would marry her rapist. And obviously marital rape is a relatively new concept. So my question is - if a married upper-class woman was raped by a man who was not her husband (I'll take any place or period but I am especially interested in Europe from the late 19th to the early 20th century), what would the social consequences be?

Have there been any famous cases of this? The ones I can think of is the husband of Evelyn Nesbit (who also abused her) shooting Stanford White, who drugged and raped her when she was sixteen, before she was married, and which resulted in "The Trial of the Century". And the case of Marguerite de Carrouges, which resulted in a trial by combat fought between her husband and her rapist.

Let us assume that there is no doubt about the rapist's guilt - he was caught in the act or shortly after. What would happen in the immediate aftermath? What punishment would he face? Would it become a society scandal? Would details be available to the public?

What would the social consequences be? Would either the wife or the husband be expected to stay out of society for a while? If so, when might they return? Would the husband be seen as having failed in his duty to protect his wife?

Would it be different depending on when the rape happened? For example, shortly after the wedding versus years in when they had children. If they had minor children, would the children be likely to find out? At what age, if so? Would boys be expected to find out earlier (through rumours at school or something like that) or later than girls? If it happened shortly after the wedding, would there be the possibility/risk of annulment or separation? Would it be different in Protestant vs Catholic countries?

Can you recommend any sources about this?

Thank you!

self explanatory. might be a stupid question, but I am genuinely curious. the brief research I did about the man was lacking about his relationship with his legitimate children.

and is it true that the man fathered at least 10 illegitimate children?

Dogs have been humanity's longest companions due to their usefulness. They had many roles from hunting to hearding that made our lives easier. However, when we look at all the dog breeds we find that a clear majority where developed in Europe. Sure, there are some exceptions (mostly in East Asia) like the Akita or Shiba Inu, but overall I think it would be accurate to say that it was mostly Europeans who saw value in dogs and dedicated themselves to breed them for specific characteristics. Why is that? What made other countries work without dogs?

I know this might be a very specific question, but I am really curious about it, so I'd appreciate any answer 😅