What's the most cringeworthy common historical misconception you can think of that continues to persist?

>napoleon was a war monger

If you were a peasant of course it was. You actually think those serfs could afford fancy dies and fabrics?
Now if you were noble your life was practically Technicolor.

...

All of us came from Africa

creationism

b-but they waged a shit load of war like glorified mongols!!

Hitler was racist

the """"Islamic"""" Golden Age, specifically as an example of how cultured and scientific the muslim world at the time was.

this

But the "Islam" part was pretty important for that age being possible. The Caliphates ended major fighting in the regions they held which led to a Pax Islamica of sorts if you will. Allowing that to happen

Also calling it "Persian" shits on the Greeks, Egyptians, North Africans, Iberians, Turkics, Anatolian, and -yes- Arabs who were fucking involved in the sciences n shiet.

>WWI was caused by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand

The only people that don't believe in the Islamic Golden Age are edgy /pol/tards and people who know fuck all about history. Anyone with a shred of historical literacy will recognise that the Muslims made some massive advances in science and mathematics and reached a high point in culture, literature and architecture across the Middle East and into Spain and Persia.

The parties """"""""switched"""""""""

WW1 was nothing but sitting in trenches for one hundred years, getting hit by artillery every day, and getting shot immediately after leaving the trench.

Oh, and no one cared that men got mowed down by machine gun fire in their millions by calmly walking into it because of honour.

Do you consider the Macedonian Empire, the Roman Empire and the First French Empire as seperate from humanity? Because I'm pretty sure they each got a lot out of those deals.

I bet you get all your information from John Green videos.

>he thinks there have only been two parties
>he thinks that the parties were ideological and not sectional for most of history
>he doesn't realize that there was a shift of liberals into the Democratic Party and conservatives into the Republican Party as a result of Democrats adopting a pro-civil rights platform, and the Republicans courting Dixiecrats with dog whistle politics

You fail US history forever.

>he doesn't realize only one single segregationist democrat switched parties
>he doesn't realize that for 30 years democrats had the KKK and civil rights activists on the same platform
>he doesn't realize that there are still dixiecrats around even today
>he doesn't realize african americans are the most cucked demographic on the planet

The Islamic Golden Age is a term 1800's scholars coined. By Europeans no less.

As for Muslims they simply called it...the Age of the Caliphates. And it was a fondly remembered age of Muslim Unity that was the basis of the Imperalist dreams of latter Muslim empires like teh Ottomans.

Western front was sitting in trenches after march to the sea failed hipster

...okay?

Nonetheless, you have the historical insight of the average John Green fan. I hope you realize that.

Ever heard of the Mutazilites? Hard mode : no googling

Someone once called me an anti-semitic holocaust denier because I pointed out that bergen-belsen was a concentration camp and not a death camp, and half the inmate deaths there occured after it was 'liberated' by the British.

Like, these are historical facts uncontested by either side, and I got called an anti-semite for pointing it out.

It should be called the Arab golden age since it was fueled by Syriac-speaking christians who translated Greek texts into Arabic. It had nothing to do with Islam as a religion.

Well maybe you shouldn't discuss the Holocaust with people who have no knowledge of it other than what they learned in 8th grade then.

I love the meme how the European monarchies were the ones who attacked France when in reality it was the French who declared war and fired the first shot.

Also love the one about backwards and stubborn Russian empire that just refused to industrialize even though Nicholas and Witte were industrializing the country at an unreal pace, often even to the detriment of Russian people.

The myth that history has some kind of purpose or ultimate goal that it's working towards. You'd be surprised how common this one is. Pretty much every religion and ideology has it at the core of their ideology, despite that it's based on absolutely nothing

my favourite misconception is that reactionary monarchies in Europe did nothing wrong and were good boys who only wanted to help their people but naughty little revolutionaries got in the way of their glorious, aristocratic reform.

Well /pol/'d

>believing in "golden" or "dark" ages of any sort
>treating history like a fairy tale with good guys and bad guys.

That's not even a hard question, you learn about this in CK2
Also what makes you think the other guy has limited historical insight? He didn't say anything wrong

hang yourself with a blue rope m8

linear history is really only seen in abrahamic religions and their irreligious offshoots.

Cyclical views of time are dominant everywhere else, from the pagan Romans to modern hindus.

It had troubles either way, man.

They've ruled over some Serbs, Italians and Romanians, all of which had their own countries elsewhere. Also over Poles and Ukrainians who had their compatriots in Russian Empire and Germany.
Even if they'd transform into federation they'd have to deal with the former wanting to secede and the latter pushing for war with one/two neighbour great powers.

It would just postpone the inevitable.

Go meme somewhere else you fuckboys.

fpbp

I look back on my Grade 11 hyperfedora speech about Religion, in which I spent about half of the 5 minute speech talking about how Christianity ruined Europe during the dark ages among other things, with great shame

The inner ethnic conflict, Bosnian Serbs aside, is the single most overblown meme of Austria-Hungary.

You don't realise what you are talking about.

Czechs and Poles were running around in funny uniforms and pretending to be military before the war has started, with Poles literally treating Galicia as a platform to launch uprisings in Russian/German parts of Poland. Romania wasn't all for getting Transylvania only because they were weak, same goes for Italians. The only people who were absolutely happy with existing state of affairs were Germans, Slovenians and Hungarians with Hungarians being heavily against turning the country into federation.

And when the war has came, non-German and non-Hungarian units proved themselves to be useless, it's like they didn't want to fight for Habsburgs anymore.

There's a monumental difference between not being "perfectly happy" and launching into a secession.

>You don't realize what you're talking about

Lol, only if you knew

>Czechs
the majority of czechs (those politically active, obviously) literally wanted the empire to remain prior to ww1

>Czechs running around in funny uniforms and pretending to be military

Spotted the retard who gets his historical knowledge from Svejk

The modern GOP (U.S. Republican Party) is the Party of Lincoln

Rule 3. Reported.

Also why does Veeky Forums have the most people who post facebook memes

>Trump
>Not literally a modern Teddy Roosevelt-Andrew Jackson hybrid

Trump is fantastic.

Caesar created the calendar.

>Western Civilisation is evil and we all must "atone" for our crimes
>There has always been mass immigration, and it always "enriches" a country
>Without Christianity (muh dark ages) we would have mastered FTL travel and teleportation by now
>Galileo lived in the dark ages
>The "Golden Age" of Islam was comparable in greatness to European Civilisation
>Islam dindu nuffin
>History has a purpose

The North were assholes and should have let the South secede.

Crusaders were second sons that went to the Middle East for titles, since they were landless. Because obviously Frederick Barbarossa, Louis IX and Richard Plantagenet lacked lands.

That believe like this exist, is most cringeworthy.

If you think the Christian Dark Ages were anything but a shit-smearing contest by unwashed barbarians who believed to be the Vicar of God, you know nothing about ancient history.

You're a fucking idiot. Dyes and colored fabrics were not expensive as all fuck. Certain colors, yes. And if you had gilding and shit, yes. But it is not unreasonable that an average peasant would own a range of greens, reds, blues, etc. Look at any illuminated manuscript. Peasants are always displayed in colorful clothes dancing, singing, drinking, etc.
>le Middle Ages were evil and miserable and poor may may

>no sources to back you up

Excuse me, I can't hear you over the sound of you pulling facts out of your anal cavity!

Alexander the Great gave hellenic culture it's zenith due to Greeks being able to migrate to his conquered territories.

Julius Caesar gave us the Julian calendar.

Napoleon gave us civil law.

Please go be underaged somewhere else.

>There was an Armenian genocide

>implying there were no trench raids
>implying that units weren't rotated heavily, meaning that your average soldier spent most of the war away form the frontline
>implying there was not a resurgence of mobile warfare in 1918
>implying WWI consists entirely of the western front

>Fort Sumter shouldn't have gotten in the way of our cannon balls!
>The war was about state's rights! Now shut up and arrest those people for something which isn't even a crime in your state so we can get them back for picking cotton.
>We should have the right to secede! But fuck you union counties you can't secede from the confederacy get back in line.

Common knowledge doesn't need to be sourced retard

Oh how grey it was for the peasants!

No color for the peasants!

Poor bland peasants in their brown rags

Dumb peasants with NO color!

>medieval drawings are your only source

Well, I guess that settles it

>Depictions of peasants of the day don't count because I say so!
Get fucked redditor

When will this /pol/ tier mee-mee die?

The dark ages were brutish, uncivilized, and most certainly dark

You gave absolutely no background to the images you showed us. They could be depictions of fairy tales for all we know

Also, I don't browse Reddit

It had everything to do with Islam.

Islam ended The Catholic Church's dominance and oppression in the region, forcing it to become less shitty to compete with Islam. It also ended a shit ton of horrible pagan practices, and brought about an age of reason in the region, which encouraged the collection of books from East and West, which eventually made it's way into Europe and triggered the Englightenment.

It shouldn't be called the Arab golden age. The Arabs simply united everyone from North Africa/Spain to central Asia. Each region ruled itself, and used Arabic as the central language, much how English is the common language in Europe. But you'd be damned to call the contemporary period of Europe the "English Golden Age".

Most advances in the Islamic golden age came from Greater Syria, and Persia. Giving all the credit to the minority of Christians that were rich enough that they didn't have to convert to Islam and basically lived along the coast of the Mediterranean is classic /pol/ historical revisionism.

The Islamic Golden age spanned many times, places, and people. wtf do the Mutazilites have to do with anything? they support the other guy's claims.

This is probably true. The people who contributed the most are probably anonymous inventors and artisans who developed new technology earlier than they likely would have been.

>cuckold meme
>expecting ANYONE to take you seriously

not even the guy you replied to

hey man why dont you FUCK OFF BACK TO /POL/, NIGGER

The "French aren't surrender monkeys and are actually the greatest military power" counter-meme.

well yeah, but Christianity didn't cause Europe to go into the toilet. The decline of rome and all the resulting shitfights did. Can't have scientific or cultural advancement if niggas be shivving eachother at the drop of a hat.

>Scots weren't colonisers

who were most likely funded by someone tied with those guys or someone who influenced them or were a predecessor.

Alexander the greats legacy still echoes into today's world. In Afghanistan and western India he's portrayed as the boogie man. His early death also had a huge impact as he didn't really have much of a plan for when he died, it just sort of left all his men strewed across his conquered empire and left there it sort of globalized the Greek world (in the known world of course)

Christopher Columbus 'discovered' the America's.

He brought the knowledge of the new world to the Europeans of his time. It's foolish to disregard his voyages.

That "golden age" means something else apart from this precise period being an age of zenith for the precise culture, religion or nation. Literally everyone can have a golden age, even the most shitiest as long as they have a period were they're a little less shitty.

For example the retarded discussions about the islamic golden age, and by retarded I mean in both sides. Those who deny that there was an islamic golden age, and those who believe that the islamic golden age existing means anything outside islam. Islamic golden age just fucking means the time period when islam was at it's best, and that's it.

yo but vikings n shit brah

skraelings

Some random viking expedition with no effects whatsoever apart from nice literature and some chinese who may or may not have traveled to America (since there's no proof) somehow deny the merits of Columbus travels allowing old and new world to meet each other again.

Right ...
And they took all those books not to preserve knowledge but to purge the books that were unworthy of Islam. Who knows what books were simply thrown away. Sure they brought somewhat peace, but there really wasn't peace at all. In order for them to keep the peace they had to consistently go out on Jihad.
There's a reason why the build up to the Crusades was so massive, because Christian Europe and surrounding areas were fed up with being attacked.

So, why did the crusades go to Jerusalem rather than, say, Spain, or North Africa? Surely they'd want to end roving pirate attacks or rebuff invaders of Spain if the Crusades were a punitive measure.

Not him but there were crusades in spain and north africa, user.

Gotta hit em where it matters. And Jerusalem was under Islamic control, plus it was the birth place of Christianity. And it was an important way point from the west to east, and north to south geographically speaking. I guess it just made sense.

>le war of northern aggression
>misconception

that's just an opinion, not really a misconception.

It was sooooo crummy. It just needed a push.

Which ones?

It didn't stop muslim raids, or the pressures on the Byzantines. Nor did the crusaders press on past that- within two hundred years, the crusader kingdoms folded up and fell, with barely any care from Christendom. Barbary pirates continued to menace the coastlines of Europe for centuries after that. If the crusades were a Christian attempt to end muslim aggression, their attempts seemed to be remarkably poorly aimed. Later, nations stepped up to the plate to end this on a nation by nation basis and with imperial aims, not in the name of god.

I generally think of people that shoot first as the aggressors, user.

The Reconquista was different matter entirely, and received a lot less attention from other Europeans.

There was no "Christian Europe". Catholics and Orthodoxes loathed each other, and Urban II was looking to expand Catholic influence by "re"taking the Holy Land. The Fourth Crusade has simply taken Constantinople.

And there was no "Muslim Empire" either. A military expedition to the Middle East would not effect the situation in Iberia or the Mediterrean the slightest.

Wait, I thought that it was like a boss fight, and all the muslims would combine in one giant voltron, and then you have to shoot it's weak point (the big flashing Jerusalem) until it died?

Several crusades targeted Egypt. The ill-fated 7th was exclusively Egyptian. The 8th exclusively against Tunis. There's also other minor expeditions that can be considered crusades against north african powers, like the crusade of Mahdia.

As for Spain, while the Reconquista itself cannot be considered a Crusade (because it cannot be considered a single armed conflict) several of the battles and campaigns were considered crusades. And by this I don't simply mean that the iberian christian kings justified with religion their wars (which they did) but also that they were helped by several foreign crusaders. The most famous example would be the foreigner crusaders in the Navas de Tolosa (although they did nothing of worth) but for example the conquest of the Balear islands was also explicitly a crusade.

Everything about the USSR

Shut up Dad