Random History Thread

Forostar said:
Do you have a "favourite" emperor ?
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Good question. I've always loved reading about the loonies, especially Caligula and Commodus, and followed the scholarly debate on them. By now I think I've read most of what was written on them and is accessible to me. Granted, their impact on popular culture has played a role there. I used to be a big fan of Traian's, but the book I recently read has opened my eyes quite a bit for the workings of Roman propaganda and how a "bad" emperor can be turned into a "good" one in historical memory just by one or two pieces of writing.
So the first answer to your question is that pretty much every emperor between Augustus and Constantine has something about him that fascinates me. And the second answer is Caligula.

LooseCannon said:
Perun has modeled his entire life around Elagabalus.
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Yeah, if I did that these days it would just be a privileged transgender biography.
 
Perun said:
Good question. I've always loved reading about the loonies, especially Caligula and Commodus, and followed the scholarly debate on them. By now I think I've read most of what was written on them and is accessible to me. Granted, their impact on popular culture has played a role there. I used to be a big fan of Traian's, but the book I recently read has opened my eyes quite a bit for the workings of Roman propaganda and how a "bad" emperor can be turned into a "good" one in historical memory just by one or two pieces of writing.
So the first answer to your question is that pretty much every emperor between Augustus and Constantine has something about him that fascinates me. And the second answer is Caligula.



Yeah, if I did that these days it would just be a privileged transgender biography.
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Do you have a favorite non-loon? It's like asking someone who is their favorite football player and the answers being a variant on, "Messi, Ronaldo, Pele, Maradona." Therefore, is there a more obscure or relatively obscure emperor/ruler that gets a reaction from you, either love or hate and therefore just a fascination in general?
 
That would probably be Traian for the paradoxical way he is treated in historical memory as the greatest emperor of all when he actually nearly brought the empire to its fall.
 
This is not exactly random(!) history, so no offense meant, but I wanted to show you this website:

Slave Voyages

Drawing on extensive archival records, this digital memorial allows analysis of the ships, traders, and captives in the Atlantic slave trade. The three databases below provide details of 36,000 trans-Atlantic slave voyages, 10,000 intra-American ventures, names and personal information. You can...
www.slavevoyages.org www.slavevoyages.org

Which is a special website and database. I haven't fully checked it out yet, but here you can find a lot (of numbers and info) about national carriers (flags), embarkation and disembarkation regions in relation to the eras when all this happened.

EXPLORE THE DISPERSAL OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC WORLD​

This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.

Timeline of estimates of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (number of captives embarked and disembarked):

Estimates

Drawing on extensive archival records, this digital memorial allows analysis of the ships, traders, and captives in the Atlantic slave trade. The three databases below provide details of 36,000 trans-Atlantic slave voyages, 10,000 intra-American ventures, names and personal information. You can...
www.slavevoyages.org www.slavevoyages.org

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View Timelapse (view the movement of slaveships across the Atlantic on an interactive map; from the main site you can also find a spoken introduction to this feature):

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - Database

Drawing on extensive archival records, this digital memorial allows analysis of the ships, traders, and captives in the Atlantic slave trade. The three databases below provide details of 36,000 trans-Atlantic slave voyages, 10,000 intra-American ventures, names and personal information. You can...
www.slavevoyages.org www.slavevoyages.org



Map 6: Countries and regions in the Atlantic World where slave voyages were organized, by share of captives carried off from Africa
Slave voyages were organized and left from all major Atlantic ports at some point over the nearly four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Nevertheless, vessels from the largest seven ports, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Liverpool, London, Nantes, Bristol, and Pernambuco carried off almost three-quarters of all captives removed from Africa via the Atlantic Ocean. There was a major shift in the organization of slaving voyages first from the Iberian peninsular to Northern Europe, and then later back again to ports in southern Europe. A similar, but less pronounced shift may be observed in the Americas from South to North and then back again.

Total documented embarkations: 8,973,701 captives
Percent of estimated embarkations: 72.1%
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More maps: https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/maps#introductory-
 
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Not just history but also interesting for people into current musea / African art (from a Dutch news source):

'114 objects that the British stole in Nigeria in Dutch museums'

Dutch museums have 114 objects that the British stole from modern-day Nigeria at the end of the nineteenth century. This is evident from a study that Trouw (newspaper) has in hand.

The 114 objects are located in the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal and the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam. The museums carried out the research themselves, which took two years. Nigeria has been calling for a return of art for years.

The objects are part of the so-called Benin Bronzes, a collection of thousands of metal sculptures and plaques. They were stolen from the palace of the king of Benin City in 1897. That city is now located in Nigeria, but was then the capital of the Kingdom of Benin, not to be confused with the modern-day Republic of Benin.

Raid by British soldiers
At that time there was a British military campaign in Benin, Annette Schmidt - one of the researchers - explains in the NOS Radio 1 News. "The soldiers went to Benin City because they had a conflict with the king. When they got there, they ransacked the entire palace and took the things to England. There they were again sold to merchants."

Those pieces were very popular with European museums, says Schmidt. "Those pieces were very exceptional, because they were of exceptionally high quality. They were sold to museums and that is how they ended up in the Netherlands."

Germany also has objects from the collection. Last week, Germany announced that it was negotiating with Nigeria about the return of the sculptures. More than five hundred Benin Bronzes are present in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. The university in Aberdeen, Scotland, announced on Thursday that it would return a sculpture from the collection to Nigeria.

Special museum
The Dutch state owns most of the objects. In January, Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science sent a plan to the House of Representatives about the return of stolen art. A next cabinet will have to decide.

The museums were already discussing Nigeria in 2018. It was then agreed that a special museum should be built in Benin City to display the objects. The idea then was to only lend the objects to that museum.

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Liverpool has its Unesco world heritage status stripped. Liverpool's old harbour... is basically fucked up. Why?

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Say no more. What a bunch of tools and fools.

For a more nuanced view, here some articles about this waste:

www.theguardian.com

Unesco strips Liverpool of its world heritage status

UN body says years of development have caused ‘irreversible loss’ to historic value of Victorian docks
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
www.bbc.com

Liverpool stripped of Unesco World Heritage status

The city is deleted from the much-coveted Unesco list because of developments on the waterfront.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
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I've seen the discussion about it and the opinion of the locals is quite different.

They are not demolishing any of the old buildings, it's just development next to them is haram by UNESCO (which it should be). However in this case looks like locals are actualy preferring new development as opposed to protected zone.

If they want a fast, dynamic, modern part of the city there, then UNESCO is off. You can still have history heritage and no UNESCO protection. Developments in UNESCO zone are way more expensive and constrained. It adds a lot of bureaucracy and regulation (justifiably so), which is opposite of what 'land developers' want. The things are still cultural monuments of England/Britain. If UNESCO deal doesn't work for them, losing it due to bad interpolations in space is entirely different thing than neglect/destruction. They've lost it due to fucking up the main visura (e.g. the localized cityscape of those few buildings) by putting modern buildings close to them. Tommorow when people of Liverpool get tired with 24/7 party-on downtown they can just remove the modern buildings and have back the historic view.
 
Zare said:
.Tommorow when people of Liverpool get tired with 24/7 party-on downtown they can just remove the modern buildings and have back the historic view.
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Sure, that would be something. :--)

By the way I have never been in Liverpool but I'm clearly not a fan of such an approach. Blocking a good view seems indeed enough to be stripped. Showing cultural heritage in a good way is part of the respect for that past imo.
 
Well it is what it is.

Some time ago, people did not care about heritage per se. For instance, Austria, when it ruled these parts did not give a flying fuck about anything that isn't ancient/classic. They'd demolish a sequence of hundreds of years old gothic buildings next to the ancient structures, and then make a neo-classical palace because it "looks better", and it was their way of sucking into 'classic-mania'. It's the same issue why Athens does not have its landmark anymore, the Frankish Tower. However this stuff is now UNESCO protected including those abnormal interventions in space.

In the end Liverpool stuff is preserved. It would be hard to both satisfy UNESCO and will of the citizens (especially young ones). I think that going for that compromise would yield interpolations as the only possible way. Which can be a disaster.
 
Hate reading bad history online before my first coffee.
"Traian and Hadrian were Spanish emperors." No ffs, they weren't, stop saying that. They were born in the territory of modern-day Spain, but they were members of Italian aristocratic families and both were raised in the vicinity of Rome. Yes, they were the first emperors born outside Italy, but they were as Roman as you could fucking get. If you want "provincial" emperors, look at the Severeans.
 
Perun said:
Hate reading bad history online before my first coffee.
"Traian and Hadrian were Spanish emperors." No ffs, they weren't, stop saying that. They were born in the territory of modern-day Spain, but they were members of Italian aristocratic families and both were raised in the vicinity of Rome. Yes, they were the first emperors born outside Italy, but they were as Roman as you could fucking get. If you want "provincial" emperors, look at the Severeans.
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So, I guess Tolkien is then one of the greatest African writers, surely?
 
Night Prowler said:
What is this referring to?
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In short, in the late Bronze Age, the eastern Mediterranean was dominated by the four great cultures of Egypt, the Hittites, Cyprus and Mycenean Greece. There was a balance of power that facilitated trade and cultural exchange on a hitherto unseen level. A number of environmental factors eventually led to the instability of this balance. The Hittite and Greek domains were plagued by internal conflicts and the situation was exploited by a swarm of pirates collectively known as the Sea Peoples in c. 1200 BCE. They are believed to be responsible for the destruction of the Mycenean palaces, probably dealt the final blow to the Hittite Empire and conquered or destroyed the coastal areas of the Levant including Cyprus and the city of Ugarit, invaded Canaan where they founded the Philistine kingdoms (from which the name Palestine derives) before being defeated in a massive battle in Egypt under Ramesses III. He could prevent the invasion and looting of Egypt, but the overall geopolitical climate caused the collapse of Egyptian authority soon after nonetheless. This event is known as the "Bronze Age Collapse" and is the second catastrophic cultural upheaval in human history that we know of for certain. The area was plunged into a dark age which it took centuries to recover from, although the Biblical story of the kingdom of David portrays it as a golden age of Israel, something historical research has been unable to verify.
An inscription by Ramesses III and the archaeological investigations especially of Ugarit constitute the bulk of our knowledge of these invaders, and while some of the ethnic names of these Sea Peoples resemble known geographical locations (such as Shekelesh ~Sicily and Sherden ~Sardinia), it is unknown for certain where they came from, what exactly triggered their invasions and whether it was even one big, coordinated wave of attacks or just a really heavy phase of pirate activity. Some people believe the myth of the Trojan War in some way belongs to this historical background.
There is a pretty good book on the subject that avoids undue speculation and tells what is really known in a readable and entertaining way:
www.goodreads.com

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

From acclaimed archaeologist and bestselling author Eri…
www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com
 
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Also worth noting that although this story reads like a mystery the mystery is in the lack of archaeological proof that would point to a certain group of peoples. It most certainly is just Europeans raiding the east Mediterranean.
 
So I'm still on my project of progressively reading (modern, scholarly) Roman biographies. Availability forced me to skip a few people, but I've gone through Sulla, Pompey, Cicero and Caesar, the latter taking me ages because I came across a rather verbose and ambitious work that wasn't an easy read on the side. So I decided to tackle Cleopatra next and thought it would be good to find a book written by a female author. It just arrived and it's a bloody picture book illustrated with stills of Elizabeth Taylor and co-authored by a guy I've known to not be the most accurate of classicists. Not what I had in mind...
 
Perun said:
So I'm still on my project of progressively reading (modern, scholarly) Roman biographies. Availability forced me to skip a few people, but I've gone through Sulla, Pompey, Cicero and Caesar, the latter taking me ages because I came across a rather verbose and ambitious work that wasn't an easy read on the side. So I decided to tackle Cleopatra next and thought it would be good to find a book written by a female author. It just arrived and it's a bloody picture book illustrated with stills of Elizabeth Taylor and co-authored by a guy I've known to not be the most accurate of classicists. Not what I had in mind...
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Sometimes there are big fails in libraries and bookshops cataloging some stuff. Anyway all these biographies must be really interesting.
 
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