Hello everyone! This is my first time making a thread here, hope some people like it and keep posting here.
This thread is for all students or enthusiasts of History in general. Anything you want to discuss, from what topics in History interest you the most, to controversies, to new discoveries or different ways to look at things, please share what you want. This thread is about sharing knowledge and experience. Any books or podcasts you'd like to recommend are great.
To start this up, I'm talking about my passion. I'm crazy for anything "Byzantine". Except the name. I know it kind of needs its distinction for practical reasons, but there are more correct ways to refer to it. Eastern Roman Empire, Medieval Roman Empire, Empire of Romania, etc. It's a shame that most of the time, this issue gets swiped under the rug and things just stay the same. But I digress. It all began when I was in my 7th grade. I was in History class, which, until that year, had all been nationally distorted narrative about my country (I suppose that's true for everywhere…). But then, we started learning a wider, European-wide (that's still narrow minded, but it was better, and makes sense) History. We learned about the rise and fall of Rome, the typical, super famous (and not very well told) story. I knew that, more or less. It's one of the most well known historical tales, after all. And then we turned to Medieval Europe. But when I looked at the post-fall of Rome maps, I saw something startling. The eastern half of the empire hadn't fallen at all. The map said "Eastern Roman Empire". "Wow, how could we be talking about the end of it, if only half of it was over!?", so I thought. And I asked my teacher about it. The answer I got was something like "Oh, that doesn't matter, it's not really the Roman Empire". And that was the end of it.
Skip to my boring 12th grade, I was looking to fill my free time and Wikipedia came to the rescue. Yes, I spent my free time on either World of Warcraft or Wikipedia. And it was then that, for some reason or another, that moment from 5 years before came back to me and I started researching about the Eastern Roman Empire. It's been 3 years and my interest keeps growing. I'm currently listening to "The History of Byzantium Podcast" by Robin Pierson. It's a fantastic podcast, with lots of well researched info, good commentary and insight, as well as giving lots of original sources and modern books about the subject. I'm also planning to buy "The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome" by Anthony Kaldellis, which defies the prevailing view of the empire as a theocratic/autocratic Greek institution and reveals a much more familiar populist Roman one. I guess this controversy of a post-Roman-but-still-existing-Roman Empire that existed since way before historians started arguing about it is what interests me the most. The continuation of that state, those people, how they kept on living, despite all the adversities they faced, coming back again and again, reinventing themselves... It's a fascinating topic in History.
I don't want to make this post much longer, so now I leave the discussion open. Comment, share your thoughts, your tastes, your reading/listening material! Talk about History, AP folks!
(here is the link to the amazing podcast! http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/)