At the very least it's underrepresented in Western popular history.
I really enjoyed Peter Wilson's one volume history of the HRE, but that's not a popular history book, and then I'm the sort of person who enjoys massive one volume history books.
The problem is that it's not a subject that takes well to singular histories? It's confused and muddled and different enough that a unitary focus can, unless done really, really well, take away from it.
Which is to say that of course popular history has no idea what to do about it.
Well it kinda depends on what you're looking for. IMO, Japanese history is more interesting than Chinese history for the same reason Greek history is more interesting than Persian history: Big empires are boring
Persian history is only less interesting insofar as the Greek were the only ones writing anything down at the time (that we know of, anyways. It's hard to say how much Persian culture was lost in the millennia of it being used as a stomping ground by everyone from Alexander to Timur).
And really that mostly comes down to their writers and philosophers. Actual Greek society was not that interesting in my opinion.
Yeah. I mean, I only learned about the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth when visiting Vilnius. Like, there never was a single word about Eastern medieval history in school !
Persian history is only less interesting insofar as the Greek were the only ones writing anything down at the time (that we know of, anyways. It's hard to say how much Persian culture was lost in the millennia of it being used as a stomping ground by everyone from Alexander to Timur).
And really that mostly comes down to their writers and philosophers. Actual Greek society was not that interesting in my opinion.
Persia wasn't a stomping ground from roughly 100 years after the death of Alexander to the Arab conquest. The Neo-Persian (Sassanid) era, which occurred centuries after the death of Alexander and ended with the Arab conquest, was a cultural golden age for Iran comparable to the Achaemenid. The only difference was, that the Neo-Persian (Sassanid) empire was far smaller than the Achaemenid empire. The negative impact of Alexander on Persian civilization is vastly overrated. Alexander was considered too fond of Persian civilization by his Macedonian generals.
The main issues of discussing the HRE is discussing the various states that make it up in a coherent fashion while still managing to discuss the empire as a whole. However, when people do bother to discuss the HRE, they get a pretty complex and fascinating political history that is the perfect setting for Early modern political fiction.
well, the Western Europeans have an odd hate boner of Slavs, so they tend to overlook the vast, ancient history of Eastern Europe. Remember kids, racism also ruins history.
Persian history is only less interesting insofar as the Greek were the only ones writing anything down at the time (that we know of, anyways. It's hard to say how much Persian culture was lost in the millennia of it being used as a stomping ground by everyone from Alexander to Timur).
And really that mostly comes down to their writers and philosophers. Actual Greek society was not that interesting in my opinion.
don't forget the other parts of the Iranic world, like Bactria or Sogdia. Or steppe groups like Scythians. Or later day states like Khwarezm. i think its a bit sad that achaemenid/sassanid Persia and modern state of Iran overshadow the other Iranian groups. To point most people dont even know that the Kurdish, Pashton, Tajik, Baluchi peoples are also Iranian.
don't forget the other parts of the Iranic world, like Bactria or Sogdia. Or steppe groups like Scythians. Or later day states like Khwarezm. i think its a bit sad that achaemenid/sassanid Persia and modern state of Iran overshadow the other Iranian groups. To point most people dont even know that the Kurdish, Pashton, Tajik, Baluchi peoples are also Iranian.
2 of the 4 pre-Islamic Iranic empires were non-Persian: The Median empire and the Parthian empire. The Medes were a Kurdish tribe, and Parthia was a region in northeastern Iran. Median and Parthian were both Northwestern Iranic languages like Kurdish is, while Farsi, Old Persian and Middle Persian are Southwestern Iranic languages.
2 of the 4 pre-Islamic Iranic empires were non-Persian: The Median empire and the Parthian empire. The Medes were a Kurdish tribe, and Parthia was a region in northeastern Iran. Median and Parthian were both Northwestern Iranic languages like Kurdish is, while Farsi, Old Persian and Middle Persian are Southwestern Iranic languages.
This sounds interesting. I wasn't counting them, because I was only counting the pre-Islamic Iranic empires, which ruled Iran. I was pointing out the fact, that 2 of the 4 pre-Islamic Iranic empires, which ruled Iran, were non-Persian. That the Kushans used Indian elements, isn't surprising, because they ruled northern India in addition to Afghanistan. It is an interesting fact, that Afghanistan has often diverged from the rest of the Iranic world and has often been linked to India, while Kurdistan always was an integral part of Iran before the Arab conquest. In Afghanistan, Buddhism was widespread, while Kurdistan was solidly Zoroastrian. Ottoman rule made Kurdistan a distinct nation.
The problem is that it's not a subject that takes well to singular histories? It's confused and muddled and different enough that a unitary focus can, unless done really, really well, take away from it.
Which is to say that of course popular history has no idea what to do about it.
That map is quite confusing based on my knowledge of the HRE, since Sicily, unlike other neighboring territories, is highlighted I presume it is from the Staufer era, but:
1. Swabia is too fragmented, should've be a single stem suchy of Swabia until the collapse of the Staufers in 1268.
2. Which puts another inconsistence, Silesia only became part of the HRE (though the Lands of the Bohemian Crown) in 1335 far after the Hohenstaufens.
3. the Papal States are also too big, much of Marche and Romagna should be fragmented into self-governing communes not unlike the surrounding regions.
4. Same for Switzerland (that shouldn't even be "Switzerland" anyway but pedantry).
Of course, I could be totally wrong, but just my two cents.
Look, why are we arguing with @azadi anyway? It's obvious he just wants a monarch to, ahem, assert their royal prerogative over him. And while it's perfectly valid to have those sorts of tastes, it's generally considered to be basic politeness to keep them confined to the bedroom.
stopSo this is just a tad late, but this kind of lowbrow personal attack on @azadi is simply not acceptable, and is disruptive to thread. It is not reasonable to expect another user to be able to productively or substantively reply to this. Please do not do this again. You have received a standard infraction under Rule 3, and a short break from the thread.
The thing about the HRE is that it gets fractcally more fragmented the more you zoom in. Maps already have to abstract to contain the nearly non-euclidean border geometry of the HRE. What's more, borders are misleading, since the HRE preserves elements of feudalism. That means you can get several princes or counts or lords sharing different rights in a territory - jurisdiction of the higher courts, jurisdiction of the lower courts, tolls, customs, certain taxes - could all end up in different hands. Especially higher and lower courts got separated surprisingly often. This goes on to this very day: There is a territory that belongs to the German city of Constance, Constance is executing administrative tasks there - but the territory is in Switzerland, right across the border from "the German part" (and actual conurbation) of Constance.
So, using Hesse as an example while one zooms in:
This is the HRE in 1789
You might think that looks border gory, but you haven't seen nothing yet.
So we zoom in to North and Central Hesse
Looks already worse, with all the single lordships shown now... but even that has a comparable high abstraction. All the legally tiny independent knightly estates within the bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg have been omitted.
If you want to know how Würzburg and Bamberg really looked like, look at the upper part of the following map:
But we wanted to use Hesse as an example, so for a more detailed map of South and Central Hesse, there is that:
But even this is an abstraction and simplification because territories weren't divided up as smoothly as that. Even that maps evokes a territorial consistency that wasn't actually there.
Thus the whole of Hesse (now in 1550 instead of 1789) showing shared land rights:
And that - that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Holy Roman Empire was like!
This might not be controversial on this board.... but it certainly is amount ley people who don't know much about nazi germany beyond 'evil' and scary' so they must be powerful right?
The Nazi government not efficient in the least and they did not make the trains run on time, no in fact they wasted time infighting, wasted resources on projects that could never work, and quite frankly put more effort into selling the idea that they where competent than they did at actually being competent.
A controversial historical opinion: The territorial parts of the Versailles treaty were fair except for the cession of Eupen and Sankt Vith to Belgium, the detachment of Danzig from Germany and the prohibition of Austria voluntarily joining Germany.
The Brest-Litovsk Treaty was fair except for the detachment of Crimea from Russia, but Russia ought to have made a separate peace earlier in order to preserve the Tsardom.
The most unfair enforced post-WW1 treaty was the Treaty of Trianon.
