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History is kind of the opposite. When someone says they like history I'll get excited and ask what period is their favorite. If they say "Romans" without any qualifiers like Early Republic or Late Eastern Empire, I get a bad feeling and they usually follow up with "and WWII"
my answer is "mesopotamian" because I like their goofy little sculptures
archeology is cool, humans are just little goblins that really like to live on hills for some reasonThem dudes is wild though! They achieved so many recorded firsts and shaped so much of our culture that we often don't even recognize how huge they were!
I still yearn for the day we can move to a sexagesimal nubering system.
When you can dig cave homes on the hills, like in the case of Petra and early people in current day Turkey, growing a beard becomes mandatory. 🪨 ⛏
Curious what is says about me that my answer has always been "the Cold War."
... Other than the fact that history feels far too present these days.
Cold War spy stories are the best. It was a rare period of superpower vs. superpower and with enough technology to make it interesting. (I might be wrong, but I don't think a spy story where you had to communicate using carrier pigeons and spy by simply listening over walls would be as interesting.)
For sure! I love the whole gadgetry aspect, especially how it bled into pop culture with things like Get Smart and Spy vs Spy.
And, of course, the whole Bond franchise.
you grew up during The Cold War? That’s about it unless you get more specific for example Im interested in the decline of the USSR and the rise of the CIS.
I was actually born at the "end" of it. I generally am interested in US-Soviet relations and how the Cold War/Communism became a major factor in political campaigns after WWII, specifically the Dewey-Truman upset.
It's funny, all through college I had either older people looking askance at me about why I'd be interested in "ancient" history or peers teasing me about being a Russian asset just for the interest... I just never thought the Cold War actually ended, and when I was in college in the late 2000s, that was a wild take to have lmao
My professor for a class on Soviet intelligence was ex-KGB stationed in East Germany who was a spy for MI-5. He pointed out in 1998 that all his colleagues were still very angry about the decline and that most former Soviet citizens were not doing well and would want revenge. I believe this is it.
When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble. There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it's no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years.
I recommend anyone interested in the topic checking out how the German reunification worked out. It was quite a mess that they plowed through.
The truth is that every soviet country was already in deep economic trouble, that's what caused the collapse. There was also a ton of corruption before the fall of the USSR. The only difference was that during the cold war, the USSR wanted to pretend that their way of life was as good or better than the capitalist west. That meant that there was a ton of propaganda making things seem better than they were, and a ton of censorship about how it was in the west. It meant that the corruption was kept relatively quiet so that it didn't embarrass the government so that it looked weak compared to the west.
As soon as the USSR collapsed, they stopped putting all the effort in to censor the west and make the USSR seem great through propaganda. That resulted in people thinking that the economy had collapsed after the USSR, when the truth is that the actual economy was simply finally revealed to them.
how the German reunification worked out. It was quite a mess that they plowed through.
Well, I'm not sure if you can really say that reunification was ever properly completed.
"When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble."
An economic collapse of your system will do that.
"There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it’s no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years."
This was true for the nomenklatura in the USSR. The Soviet nations weren't any less corrupt or any more competent than anyone else has been.
interesting. I'm most interested in the Khruschev era, during de-Stalinization and when the USSR was at its peak, and the satellite countries (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, etc.) the collapse just makes me sad.
I graduated high school in 1993. The fall was happening while I was in school. I was interested in how an empire falls apart as I believed it could happen to the USA as well. I wouldn’t have predicted it would be in my lifetime though
That just means you grew up in the 90s with the History Channel
What if they said WW1?
Outside of modern history I think my interest is more into technology and way of living than about governments and cultures though. Like what tools did they use, what did they eat, what sort of alcohol did they drink. How did they make it, can I have a recipe.
In college I was drawn towards feminist takes on historical periods I was familiar with as they rarely engaged in great man theories of history and focused more on the day to day lives of people.
Yup, same here. I don't give a fuck about the heroic deeds of X king, or which country fought who. I'm really interested in how people lived and got by. I'm interested in war history too, but I'm interested in the experiences of the people who had to fight in those wars and the civilians who survived them, not in the actions of X nations.
WWI is super interesting since it set the stage for so much of the current geopolitical landscape. My main issue with "I watched History Channel as a kid" types is that they really just think guns and swords are cool (which they are) and don't care much about the story of how people ended up in a war.
Also, I know what you mean about how interesting the day to day things from the past can be. I got really into preindustrial economies and how we used to make everything by hand. It's fun to go into old buildings and seeing the tool marks on the wood and guessing how they made it
The trench warfare of WWI is super boring / horrifying. But, the world just before WWI is so interesting. So many places that no longer exist: the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, etc. Also, everything being an empire or a kingdom.
I also like the weird technological quirks, like how the very early WWI tanks had a little hole so the tankers could release a pigeon to communicate.
I stayed somewhere build around the 1400s before, restored using the same methods used at the time. Though not likely an accurate depiction of how a normal person would have lived as the normal people houses are all gone and we just keep the impressive ones.
I like ww2 but not Romans (that whole period is overrated and mid), how racist do I have to be now?
"Yes." Regarding historical periods is my answer. Particularly, a series of history books called "The Cartoon History of the Universe". Each volume has at least 300 pages, and they are quite large. There is about five books in the mainline series, plus another dedicated to American history.
They were what taught me to enjoy history in general. Humorous, lewd, bloody, with interesting trivia. The only downside is that scientific facts tend to be dated, on account of the series being started in the late 80's or early 90's.
What about ancient Egypt without qualifying Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom or New Kingdom? (I just think they're all neat.)
Idk. You're not trying to establish a divine monarchy characterized by inbreeding and a shadow government of priests, are you?
Well, no... I'm more trying to use those methods to destroy extant governments... is that not okay?
Out of curiosity are any of mine red flags. Early bronze age steppe peoples, the Late Bronze age collapse, the " Viking age" my interests are namely to do with Charlemagne and his influence on it, and pre-columbian European trade in the Americas namely the Greenland colony and the possibility that the Irish and Scots may have been fishing around Newfoundland.
Mainly the viking age, except for the fact that you know who Charlemagne is.
Fair enough also I put it into qoutes for a reason, while the raids and shit are interesting I'm far more fascinated by the expansion of trade networks from Scandinavia to the Near East via the Rus. Though my favorite historical figures are Harald Hadrada and Erik the Red, mostly because of their stories as individuals. Also like I said how Charlemagne put pressure on the Danes during his genocide of the Saxons causing the creation of the Danevirke and possibly riling up the Norse as a whole eventually leading to Lindisfarne and the Viking age. Though this seems to just be a thing Scandinavians do, kinda like hordes invading from the Steppe.
But yeah the Viking age has a lot of Nazis obsessed with it, I just happen to have Norman and Gaelo-Norse ancestors so I became interested in how they came to be.
Also colonization of North America with Vinland, integration into the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and possible contact with China. For as relatively small as their population was, they sure explored a lot and went interesting places. Possibly because their home was unpleasantly cold.
It may have actually been the opposite, the medieval warm period overlaps quite well with the Viking age meaning it's entirely possible that the longer growing period caused a population surplus and overflow. I actually have a hypothesis that the same thing happened in antiquity causing the Germanic migration out of Scandinavia. Same thing possibly caused the Nordic Bronze age.
I don't think I have a "favorite period" anymore, but the classical period is super interesting to me mostly with regards to the "losers" like Bactria (current day Afghanistan, conquered by Alexander the Great), Phoenicia/Carthage, Persia (several empires that "annoyed" the yuropeeans).
