This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.
So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!
Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:
Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.
We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.
We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!
Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.
I’m Dan Snow and I am re-examining some of Tudor England's most infamous stories in my new series ‘How The Tudors Lost Their Heads’ on National Geographic.
Along with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, we will be investigating the lives, power struggles and down fall of some of Tudor England’s most controversial, notorious and misunderstood figures..
The Tudors have always fascinated us, not just because of their power and pageantry, but because life at court could be as dangerous as it was glamourous. In this series, we return to the evidence with fresh eyes to ask whether these extraordinary executions were inevitable tragedies, political necessities or something far more calculated. It’s history at its most human, dramatic and brutal.
Travelling across Europe, we investigate each story through letters, paintings, official records, archaeological discoveries, privileged access to historic buildings and archives and newly examined evidence and explore a different Tudor figure revealing the ambition, betrayal, propaganda and political intrigue that ultimately sealed their fate.
After last week’s Madam Tinubu thread, I went back through J.B. Losi’s History of Lagos (1914) — the handbook everyone cites in school but almost nobody could find until recently — and here's what stood out to me.
Every witchcraft accusation in the whole book is against a wealthy woman. Three women. Three reigns. Same outcome: "get her out!".
Here is what John B. Losi actually prints across the publication — not Twitter, not oral folkore.
Disclaimer — slaves: The women below built power in a Lagos that ran on enslaved people. Losi counts Yeye at 1,400+ slaves and Madam Tinubu at so many she "hardly knew the number." He does not moralize, does not call anyone a hero, and does not use the label "slave trader" — he records the economy plain. I am not defending these figures. I am posting what the 1914 handbook prints.
│ This woman on account of her riches was falsely accused of witchcraft and was therefore requested to leave the town.
Her pet is killed. The Ọlọfin mocks her. She goes to the King of Benin. A War follows.
01-aina-witchcraft-banishment.png
────────────────────────────────────────
2.Princess Ọpọ-Olu a.k.a. “Yeye” — 1,400 slaves(Oba Oluwọle, Dec 1833)
Before Madam Tinubu walked to Lagos, another woman already held more slaves than the palace could ignore:
│ …this woman possessed great wealth, her slaves numbering over 1400.
Losi’s dedicated chapter adds: her influence almost surpassed the then reigning King.
02-yeye-1400-slaves.png
────────────────────────────────────────
3. Opo-Olu, again — cleared three times, banished anyway
King Oluwọle and the Eletu accuse her of witchcraft — blame her for their children’s deaths. Losi says they took her to fortune-tellers three different times.
She was found innocent each time.
│ Never-the-less, she was forbidden to return to Lagos.
Kosọkọ’s faction raises war. She spends her life at Ibesẹ.
03-yeye-innocent-forbidden
────────────────────────────────────────
4.Madam Tinubu— same slave economy, different charge(Oba Dósùnmú, 15 April 1856)
No witchcraft charge this time. Losi still counts her wealth in slaves — “hardly knew the number.”
He names politics instead: she issued orders only the king should give; she reported Lagos affairs to the King of Dahomey; Dósùnmú complained to Consul Campbell, got authority to banish her, and Campbell sent policemen.
Her slaves wanted to fight. She stopped them. Losi records what she said — that she had walked to Lagos, that God blessed her — and that she left the same day.
04-tinubu-expulsion-cause.png
────────────────────────────────────────
5. Asi — Lagos almost had a queen(bonus)
When Akitoye died, his daughter Asi was made sovereign by the chiefs. The English Consul chose her brother Dosunmu instead.
Powerful woman sidelined — no witchcraft needed.
05-asi-almost-queen
────────────────────────────────────────
Losi is not hagiography. He prints slave counts and expulsions plain.
Were you taught Yeye and her 1,400 slaves — or only Tinubu Square?
One note on today: the witchcraft charge did not die. BBC reporting (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct67tv) and human-rights groups document accusations still costing lives — more often against elderly women, widows, and children than against palace rivals.
Losi’s Lagos shows the charge used against wealthy women the Oba could not control. The accusation rhymes. The targets have shifted. Nigerian law criminalizes the accuser, not the accused — but enforcement has been slow.
Today,pastors and local communitiesoften use the same charge againstpeople who can’t fight back— elderly women, widows, children. The accusation survived. Thetargetsand theinstitutionschanged.
If you want more passages from the handbook in this format, upvote or comment.
(Disclosure: Our foundation recently acquired the copyright to restore a 2026 print edition of Losi’s handbook — 224 pp, illustrated
Experts have long debated the meaning of Stonehenge, the prehistoric stone circle in the south-west of England. They have speculated that the mysterious monument might have been a place to commemorate the dead, a sacrificial altar, or a site of other religious ceremonies. But in August 1966, a Boston astronomy professor, Gerald Hawkins, told the BBC's Chronicle programme that he'd solved the puzzle thanks to a peculiar configuration of numbers – and an early IBM computer.
Hawkins' theory formed the basis of his popular and influential 1965 book Stonehenge Decoded. The British-born scientist suggested to the BBC that alignments of the huge slabs and archways meant that "circles at Stonehenge could have been used as a computer to follow the Moon, and predict eclipses". Eclipses, such as those witnessed around the world this month, could have been accurately foretold by ancient Britons – more than 4,500 years ago.
“At noon on Feb. 13, 1788, huge crowds gathered outside Parliament to witness members of the House of Lords process into Westminster Hall,” William Dalrymple, the author of multiple books on the East India Company, writes in a guest essay for Times Opinion. “They were there to impeach the man who ran much of India as the East India Company’s governor general of Bengal. This was the moment when the British state finally flexed its muscles to take on the greatest corporate oligarch of his day, the Elon Musk of 18th-century London.”
While the original focus of the East India Company “was the spice trade and then the export of Indian textiles, it was authorized from the start by its charter to found and run colonies and wage war,” he says. “From its maiden voyage in 1601, it used violence to conduct its business and enhance its profits. By 1788, it was not just Britain’s biggest corporation and largest employer; it was the company that had conquered what was then the richest country on earth: Mughal India, whose bejeweled loot helped power Britain into the Industrial Revolution.”
“All that made the East India Company the most powerful corporation in history — until now,” he continues. “For in the past decade, Big Tech has, too, begun to take on the attributes of sovereign states, and in many ways is now as powerful as the East India Company at its height.”
“The question today,” William asks, ”is: Does America have the appetite and the ability to check the power of the tech companies, or will they increasingly operate without limits or boundaries, just like the East India Company before them?”
Read the full piece here, for free, even without a Times subscription.
We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.
We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!
Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.
This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.
So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!
Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:
Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.
For decades, an influential theory blamed the Rapanui for their own downfall—a story made famous by Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. New evidence tells a different tale.
Archaeology, ancient DNA and aerial survey data now challenge the claim that the Rapanui suffered a self-inflicted collapse before Europeans arrived. The emerging picture is of a small society that sustained itself for centuries by adapting its farming methods and water management to one of the most isolated places on Earth. The catastrophe that reduced the Rapanui to a remnant came later, after European ships brought disease, slave raiding, forced labor, annexation and confinement.
We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.
We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!
Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.
This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.
So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!
Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:
Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.
correct me if I’m wrong, but historically I believe the consensus is that the Amazon did not have large “cities” and civilizations that were lost, and accounts like Carvajals were seen as fictional or exaggeration. Serious incursions into the Amazon after Carvajal only happened decades after the initial excursion by orellana and carvajal in 1541. By the time europeans came back, those Amazonian populations had been wiped out and the forest had grown over the cities.
however, recent LiDAR findings have shown that Amazon arguably housed millions of people with densely populated areas and several structures and archeology and roads have been discovered with LiDar:
”On the basis of both existing data and our LiDAR documentation, we show that this cultural area alone contains as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia. We also propose that the total human population of the area in 100–300 AD was 1.25–3 million people. If similar results are found elsewhere in Amazonia, the total precolonial population density and its effect on the current Amazonian soil and forest structure, biodiversity and even some modelling of the global climate should be re-evaluated.”
We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.
We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!
Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.
