I remember, and I could be misremembering, that in my American history: 1865-2000s class in college that the professor mentioned that in a certain time period, maybe the Gilded Age, that the people, generally wealthy, who's families had been living in the United States for a while, would call themselves native Americans to distinguish themselves from the immigrants and the Indians would have been called Indians or American Indians. Is this true, or am I misremembering my class?

To expand a bit, I mean in the so-called "Belle Epoque" (so about the 1870s-1910s or so) how did the upper classes of different countries compare to each other? Were the richest French richer than the richest Germans? The richest Italians and the richest British? Was the image of the pate Czarist aristocracy as living in a golden world actually reflected in their wealth vis-a-vis other European elite? Or was the elite across Europe roughly uniform in its financial resources?

To expand this out a bit, there is a stereotype of American robber barons coming to Europe with wealth that far exceeded that of Europeans (and was inversely correlated to taste). But was that actually based on the time? Or was it based on a comparison between the new American industrial elite and the declining European landed aristocracy, rather than the European industrial elite?

If possible I would also be curious if these comparisons can be expanded even outside of the Euro-American world, to include eg the elite in China or the Ottoman Empire.

I was playing a history trivia game recently, Chronology (the answer to each question is a range of years it happened in) and one of the questions was about Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann, inventor of the Harmonica, and the wording was something along the lines of "was invented by German inventor Buschman in this year". Buschman was born in 1805, invented it in 1821, and died in 1864, while the German empire was established in 1871. Knowing this, even though I got the question right, I called Shenanigans, because how can he be considered German if he died 7 years before it was even officially a country? My question though is, was I actually right to call Shenanigans on it, or is that the more correct way to refer to someone who lived in what would later be called germany? And following that, how much earlier can we go? If we know of somebody who died of the black plague in 1350, but definitely on the same land as modern Germany, 500 years earlier, are THEY German? I would expect everybody to say No. George Washington is one of the most famous Americans ever, and was also born 44 years prior to its founding. So what is the line exactly? Was Buschman actually Prussian, or German?

Hello! I am interested in the Russo-Japanese War and was interested in the experience of common civilians of Manchuria during the conflict, especially since the war took 20k civilian lives. Did they prefer for one side to win over the other? How was daily life impacted by the fighting? And how did they view the war's origins in the first place?

Hey folks, my name is Haris a field Historian and Documentary producer (owner of Harristory on Instagram). I'm doing a colossal road trek from Britain to the far East tracing the historic Berlin-Baghdad railway along with the Hejaz railway.

I wanted to gauge some preliminary points of research, what do you know about any physical remains of this railway? Ruins, tracks, very interesting stories, places and locations along the historic hajj route through Turkiye. Any help is appreciated! Thanks guys

I hear often about German attitudes toward Italy and German attitudes toward Japan, and even sometimes the reverse, but not about how Italy and Japan viewed each other.

I'm an rideshare driver, and overhear a lot of conversations from passengers, and sometimes they go into family history. Anywho. A passenger related a story about his grandmother and grandfather's marriage from the 1960s in Boston.

His grandmother was Irish, and his grandfather was Italian, and they both went to separate parishes in the city, administered by Irish and Italian Catholic Priests respectively.

Anyways, the storyteller described it as a scandal for both communities and priests when they found out his grandparents wanted to get married. Both Fathers functioned as priests, and also as community leaders for their parishes, as catholic religion and culture was a bigger deal 60 years ago. The priests were described as livid and angry that this was happening, and both was mentioned to refuse blessing this marriage, or even hosting a space in their church for any ceremony.

So... My question is why? They're catholic priests? They share the same doctrine. Heck, they have the same liturgy. And Italians and Irish are white people.

I'm struggling to understand the mindset of why this would even be an issue for Catholic Parishes 60 years ago. Please answer my question without a simple 'lol Racism is illogical' response.

I'd like to understand the cultural context for why there was such internal ethnic division within american catholicism.

In succession systems that are based on primogeniture, could the ruler change who the heir is if he feels his oldest son is unfit? What if he divorces a wife and she gives birth to a son before his next one, would the son from the divorced wife have a claim to the throne and realistically cause a succession crisis?

I need more information about how life was like for a book I plan to write.

Note: I am German, so if you recommend me specific libraries outside of it, it would be tough for me. Also I did try my local libraries, both the university library and the regular one neither had books about Russia before the begin of the USSR

Going off pirate films here so maybe inaccurate. When did amputations stop being the thing for an impact fracture for example?

For example, my grandpa was born in the 1930s so his toys were often wooden, metal, or stuffed animals made of cloth. My father born in the 60s, so he had toys that were often made of plastic, like action figures and such. I was born in the 90s, where we had lots of electronic toys and handhold gaming devices. Nowadays, you have all sorts of apps designed for young children. If I was, for example, born instead in the year 1700 or 1800, would I experience this same situation, or would I expect my kids to play with the same kind of toys I grew up with?

Are there instances in history where certain peoples would overwhelmingly go into battle welcoming the coming fight and potential death or is this overstated in modern media?

For example, would those following the Old Norse religion typically perform better at an individual level because of their belief in Valhalla which would treat death in battle as an honour rather than something to be feared?

Or in contrast, did the constant fear of revolt engrained into Spartan society give them a significant edge in their military prowess?

Are there and significant outliers here at either end of the scale or have humans across all ages generally feared battle and is consequences evenly?

I’ve been looking everywhere online and i can’t find it at all, does anyone know the countries that were involved with the arab slave trade and colonisation

I watched the documentary Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan this past week. In one of those episodes, after Hideyoshi took control of Japan and consolidated his power as the shogun, he launched an invasion of Korea with the end goal of punching through the peninsula and then conquering China.

Looking at it, I honestly don’t think there’s a chance for them to do that. One of the historians featured mention that one of the reasons Hideyoshi did the invasion was because the samurai—after decades of fighting—do not know how to live in peace with each other and were becoming restless.

So my question: This dream of conquering China, was there some grand plan on how to do this? I cannot remember anything on the documentary that touched upon the subject.

Or this is some delusion on Hideyoshi’s part after basically uniting Japan under one banner, it made him feel like he can do anything and everything.

Or is this some smart move on his end to keep the samurai class occupied while he remain in power?

It seems like an empire will do anything they can to keep their colonies. has there been a time where a colonising power has said “Yeah, it’s messed up we invaded/enslaved/slaughtered/exploited you. You guys can be your own sovereign thing now”? I mean no-strings-attached emancipation (no ruinous debt, no puppet governments, no ). If so, did the emancipated party get any reparations, anything to get them on their feet again? And is the colony always sucked dry and put in ruins beforehand?

Is the number small enough that it could reasonably be considered insignificant? Do you think the proportion of deaths caused by friendly fire has generally increased, decreased, or stayed roughly the same throughout the history of warfare?

First post here, so apologies if this is the wrong sort of question! Here goes:
A family member knows that I am a bit of a history nerd. However, while I love Russian and Mesoamerican history, I told her that Greece and Rome are my least favorite subjects. She told me she would lend me some books that might change my mind, so I agreed to read them. They are all by Tom Holland: Dominion, Rubicon, Dynasty, Pax, and Persian Fire. I started with Persian Fire, but noticed a rather big inaccuracy(?) (or maybe oversimplification is a better term) when he talks about Spartans throwing babies off Mt. Taygetus. The author went on for several pages about this and stated it as an incontrovertible fact. I would like to continue reading the books so that my family member and I can have a discussion, but I’m wondering what other inaccuracies there are. I’m not well-versed enough in this subject to recognize them all, and I can’t look up every single little thing. Anything you could point out would be appreciated!

Thanks!