what is the period of history that interests you most?

[Pingu]

pretty much as it says in the title.

what period of history interests you most and why?


for me its currently the UK dark ages (850-1100 ish) and in particular the hiberno norse side of things. its a fascinating period of history - very fluid with peoples migrating for various reasons and it sets the basis for the UK going forward. My interest is helped by my living in Hiberno Norse central for the UK and hving a connection via the name ofthe place where i live.

it also helps that i like to hit people with axes and spears and my interest in the period melds nicely with this other interest of mine and i get to do living reseaerch (so to speak) by spending time living as someone from the period (albeit with the knowledge that McDonalds is just down the road if it gets too hard).

 

[Argonia]

I specialised in modern totalitarian regimes whilst at university.

 

[bi0boy]

most of them really

Palaeolithic - what kind of societies did we have before farming??
Neolithic - stones circles and shit
Then all the successive invasions and migrations, how did they affect the normal folks, the average farm workers?
The Romans - obviously Boudica went ape shit but some tribes formed alliances with the Romans before their forces even reached them, such as the Dobunni...as the Romans faded how much of their pre-Roman identity did the Romano-British Cary with them to face the Saxons et al.
The rest is much better documented, Alfred and the Vikings and the Normans and things, always interested in how these things affected the proles and how many fucks they gave once the lootings were over.
The Black Death I've read a lot about, it sounds like a headfuck a third of the population dying but they were probably quite used to more minor pestilences and famines and stuff...
The whole Catholic/Protestant thing is rather dull for me, I tend to skip that and find the industrial revolution is the next big thing of interest.
Then there's the wars, particularly interested in how the state organised the home front in WW2, from agricultural committees to the special repair service flying squads.

 

[Pickman's model]

Tbh it has varied greatly, from the ancient world to the last century but atm nineteenth century British Isles, esp Ireland / Irish diaspora

Also Spanish America

But there are no dull periods of history

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

At the moment it's Russian history; also England at the time of the Hundred Years' War. Also Europe 1930 - 1950, but a little less of that as of late.

 

[editor]

Victorian era. Everything changed and quickly.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Victorian era. Everything changed and quickly.

I'm also very interested in the Victorian era; so many parallels with today (particularly in how we can look at how and why technological change affected society in retrospect, with huge amounts of documentation) but also so many differences and so much abiding mythology about the time. So it tells us about ourselves both from how things happened then and how we've reacted to them and pretend they were different.

Apart from that, I wish I knew more about African history generally; not so much a specific period (it would cover centuries). It's another area where mythology in the West has overridden reality. I know that the idea promoted by colonialists and exploiters that there was no real culture before they arrived is bullshit; what I don't know is much about what really _was_ there.

 

[dessiato]

I'm very interested in the Spanish civil war. Here at least, it's not talked about much despite the town being just behind the front line for much of it. It also seems that where ever you go around here there was some event, and few seem to know or be interested. You can literally see the history all around.

 

[boohoo]

Women's history, London History. Usually modern. Although I have an interest in prehistoric history.

Currently very interested in 17th century UK history (due to work).

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I guess classical civilisations of the Mediterranean but that's a huge period in itself

 

[Idris2002]

A few years back I was mad for the Canadian October crisis of 1970.

 

[kebabking]

i have an over-riding interest in transitions - so its how the Iron age folk who lived where i live dealt with/adjusted to the Romans arriving, and then the reverse when the Romans left - i've got the same thing with the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses and the emergence of the Tudor Dynasty, how Yorkists muddled through and accomodated the Tudors.

we tend to think of history in distinct lumps, but its much more in streaks that merge and overlap - for example Mary I, when she was considering who to marry (Grand-Daughter of the first Tudor king, 70+ years after the death of the last Yorkist king) seriously considered a member of the old Yorkist nobility to cement her legitimacy. her sister, Elizabeth I, who was seriously ill with Smallpox in the 1560's and did not expect to survive, named another member of the old Yorkist nobility as her successor, not her cousins in the Tudor-Stewart dynasty who would eventually replace her..

 

[pengaleng]

none of it. people are boring.

 

[weltweit]

The next 1,000 years..

 

[seventh bullet]

I specialised in modern totalitarian regimes whilst at university.

Which ones?

 

[oneflewover]

Late Georgian, I've done some Family History (pre computer databases - real page turning) and got stuck at a birth in 1788. A peoples history. When the whole of England was purported to be panicking about the French Revolution and then a few years later involved in the Napoleonic Wars my ancestors were stealing turnips and getting enlisted in some Landlords reservist troupe. All at the same time as losing land to the Enclosure Acts and living in one up - one down mud floored homes.

Very little written around the mass population.

 

[ringo]

European Iron Age - spent most of my archaeology degree and subsequent years digging trying to spend as much time as possible on that period, but ended up doing, and then enjoying everything else too.

Used to spend summers teaching students to dig in the Auvergne, looking for the site of the battle of Gergovia where Vercingetorix (the real Asterix) was defeated by the Romans.

Via music have a great interest in the cultural history and political/social change of Jamaica in the 70's and 80's.

 

[DotCommunist]

reformation

 

[Argonia]

Which ones?

Mussolini in Italy, the nazis, the soviet union, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal

 

[JimW]

Early Modern Britain and Ireland and Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Qin unification of China, high Song social and economic changes and the Republican/civil war early People's Republic too.

 

[seventh bullet]

Mussolini in Italy, the nazis, the soviet union, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal

So more the history of an idea than real-existing societies?

As for me, I have an interest in some of the most awful regimes ever erected in the name of socialism.

 

[kabbes]

The Enlightenment. The birth of modern humans, basically. The average person pre 1650 lived in a world almost unrecognisable to our own, with worldviews to match. I think, however, we could communicate with the average person from 1750 and find an awful lot in common in most regards. We would recognise their lives as being much like our own. That period was the birth of science, finance, literature and institutions much as we have them now.

 

[J Ed]

The Spanish Civil War, the Cold War in Lusophone Africa and Latin America, 20th Century Britain.

 

[DotCommunist]

been on more social history type stuff as well as 'human cost' war accnts recently. Find the american new left period, sds panthers etc quite interesting to, although I can't claim to be well up on any of the periods, its what I do read when in the mood for history along with inevitable ww2 stuff. brit-irish relationships over the years, conflicts.

 

[trabuquera]

all of it - people are endlessly fascinating. it just depends on how good the historian / mythmaker telling you the tale is. generally, because I can't be doing with too much minutiae and need a bit of human drama to get interested, am more interested in studies of material culture, society and social practices than (say) about intra-Party disputes or the precise military chronology of wars ... but always up for good explorations of how and why beliefs change as well. All slips down a bit more easily if there's some biographical or literary colour to fold in too.

 

[DotCommunist]

all of it - people are endlessly fascinating. it just depends on how good the historian / mythmaker telling you the tale is. generally, because I can't be doing with too much minutiae and need a bit of human drama to get interested, am more interested in studies of material culture, society and social practices than (say) about intra-Party disputes or the precise military chronology of wars ... but always up for good explorations of how and why beliefs change as well. All slips down a bit more easily if there's some biographical or literary colour to fold in too.

see thats the sort of history book I take the most from, direct accounts and researched figures with a narrative/interperative strand. Takes me ages to finish non fiction tho

 

[Stanley Edwards]

The Dark History for me. Like the Dark Ages.

The bit everyone forgot about.

Somebody else has probably mentioned this.

----------------- Q. by Luther Blissett ---------------------

Proper forgotten history.

Q (novel) - Wikipedia


-------------------- when exactly were the Dark Ages?

 

[Kaka Tim]

-------------------- when exactly were the Dark Ages?

Just starting i think...

 

[Riklet]

Spanish Civil War.
Spanish transition.
2007-2008 financial crash etc.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Social history from medieval times up to now.