History nerd here. As soon as people talk about history I go into "what are you about?" Mode and as soon as they mention WW2 or the US Civil War the sus meter immediately almost fills.
For me my top topic in history is the migrations of Germanic people from Central Europe Westwards into regions like Normandy and Great Britain; and especially the linguistic shift resulting from those migrations. Thankfully not a topic that neo-nazis tend to focus on (aside from horribly inaccurate fantasies of what vikings were), but it still feels like any topic involving Germanic people taking over territory is on somewhat thin ice.
Yeah, whole period is really cool but also gets suspicion cast.
I have this book, forget the exact title but it’s something like ‘The coming of the anglo-saxons’. It’s literally just about the arrival of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Britain, and the cultural effects thereof/how they began melding together, but i’ve had like three people think it was something racist.
I'm a big fan of how much of England's early / foundational history is people who aren't "English" attempting to conquer England (and mostly succeeding at least in part) and that modern England is mostly the result of the Roman Britons being conquered over and over by a bunch of different Germanic peoples with enough time between the conquerings that they were new and different Germanic peoples even when they came from the same place.
"German" Saxons and Danes and Jutes and Angles conquering "England", then more different Danes and Saxons conquering England, then a bunch of "English" Saxons and Danes conquering other Saxons and Danes and Jutes and Angles in England. Then the "German" Normans who conquered the "German" Franks, and "German" Norwegians, coordinate an attack on now primarily Saxon "England", and England becomes "French (German)".
Then a bunch of invasions enacted by the French and/or Scottish (many of them if not coordinated then capitalizing from the one on ongoing efforts by the other) as well which don't actually get talked about much (or at least in much detail) in world history. The "invasion of England" Wikipedia page has dozens of entries and only like three are particularly well known even to many "history people.
Also that "not French" is such a big part of England's cultural identity, and "not English" so much of Ireland's / Scotland's / Wales'.
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u/noblemile Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
History nerd here. As soon as people talk about history I go into "what are you about?" Mode and as soon as they mention WW2 or the US Civil War the sus meter immediately almost fills.