In Georgia we very often talk about our past monarchs or very famous Georgian historical figures like Ilia Chavchavadze and Akaki Wereteli. as time went on and I got more interested in my country’s history, I’ve learned that there are parts in our history that really aren’t mentioned. two of them that I currently know is the the first republic of Georgia which only gets mentioned when it first declared independence on may 26st 1918 and the invasion of Georgia by the Red army, nothing about how it worked and the stuff that went down in 3-4 years that it existed(this might be because the first republic was basically created by Marxists which today’s Georgians despise something like that). second is [the Gurian Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurian_Republic) which I randomly found a book written about it and was fascinated by how I NEVER heard it in my life atleast once even tho it was a minor thing.
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Do you mean a period of history interesting that is just never talked about for whatever reason, or not talked about because it’s shameful?
For the first one I’d say it’s the time a city in Ireland declared itself to be a [Soviet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_Soviet)
The second one was probably the IRA’s attempts to [collaborate](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army%E2%80%93Abwehr_collaboration)with the Nazis in WW2
Probably the 19th century or start of the 20th century. The Dutch republic up until the French invasion and defeat are imo the most talked about. Then in the 19th century the country became neutral and except for some industrialization and constitutional changes not much happened until the 1930’s. Due to the countries’ neutrality even WW1 is often an afterthought. Perhaps for political historians it is the most talked about, but I think 1581 – 1816 and 1930 – now are way more known and mentioned in ‘daily life’.
Romania had 3 dictatorships one after the other:
– king carols royal dictatorship
– legionary dictatorship (aka nazi)
– communist dictatorship
I feel that the 3rd one (ofc being the longest and most recent) is much more talked about than the other two. But i keep on seeing people being genuinely shocked when they hear how many jewish and roma people where killed within the few years when romania was led by nazis
We like to pretend that our colonization of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia almost didn’t exist, minimizing the damage that we did, posing ourselves as the “good guys” compared to other European colonizers like France, Britain or Belgium, saying that we “built infrastructure” there, etc.
In reality, we were just late to the party and got the scraps, proceeded to act exactly as shitty as the other colonizers, raped, killed, destroyed, and did so much damage that our actions prompted a whole RELIGION to exist (Rastafarianism).
i guess polish/slavic pre-christian times. IIRC even one of the ministers of culture or education said something along the lines “we know all what is to be known, there’s no point in searching” while cutting off funding for research in that area
In Switzerland the occupation by France, the disappearance of the Swiss Confederacy and the subsequent existence of the [Helvetic Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetic_Republic) between 1798 and 1803 are rarely mentioned. Maybe because it doesn’t fit well with the national image of strength through independence.
I think the history we had in far away places during the days of the Dutch East Indian Company. We often learn about our former colonies like Suriname or Indonesia and what happened there. However, I am often surprised so many small traces of our country are found in places I wouldn’t expect. For example, up to recent I didn’t knew our country was the sole trading partner for the Japanese between 1641 and 1853.
Iron age, which for Finland is up to 12th century. Main reason being that there is near to none knowledge about the era as writing came to Finland with the Swedes in the 12th century. All we know is thanks to archeological evidence and folk poetry that has been passed down the centuries.
Maybe the moment when our ancestors stopped being Carantanians and became the slavic speaking part of various germanic duchies, aka the Austrian Empire. This moment went on for a few centuries tho.
We don’t talk much about Carantania, since it is so long ago that we don’t know much about it and often falls in the hands of some far right dudes. Or the 11th century germanization of what is now Lower Austria, that cut Carantanians off from the Moravians in modern day Czechia and Slovakia – which is why our ancestors developed into an independent ethnic group, different from west slavs. We share a lot of history with Austria, the country today, being its slavic speaking underbelly since Vienna became the Capitol and till the end of the dual monarchy. Most of us today live in an area that was called Inner Austria in the Habsburg times, meaning mostly the regions of Carniola, Styria and Carinthia. This connection probably also had a lot to do with the 1920 Carinthian plebiscit, when a lot of slovene speaking people decided they would rather continue to live in Austria, than to become yugoslavs. This part of history and the fact that we are historically so close to a nation that in ww2 embraced nazism, is for some people a hard fact to swallow, especially in combination with the now old, yugoslav partisan propaganda, who really tried its best to erase our national identity and replace it with yugoslavism.
Yugoslavism in the early days is also not talked about very much, it was a bit different than the socialist version which was less focused on promoting that all the south slavs were of one blood and one nation, etc. It was also very much anti german and would not tolerate any germanic languages being spoken inside the territories of Yugoslavia. Same with the local alpine culture that was seen as germanic. The early 20th century was a bit crazy, probably everywhere.
Probably the middle ages and more specifically the Kalmar Union. It’s only ever really mentioned in passing to provide context for the Swedish war of independence after which the modern history of Sweden really begins. On a related note the rise and fall of pan-scandinavianism as a whole is also rarely talked about.
Most people don’t actually know much about the period in the 20th and 21st centuries when terrorism was commonplace in the Basque Country, and, to a lesser extent, Spain. Most people have only heard of the “famous ETA murders”, and many people don’t know anything at all. It makes me upset because it’s a crucial part of our history, but it receives very little attention. (No, a PP politician from Madrid using ETA victims as a way to make political points is not helpful at all.)
The end of Roman rule and the first century of “Barbarian” rule. The Goths get very little attention themselves because they aren’t politically correct these days, but at least children get taught in school that they were here between the Romans and the Muslims. But basically nobody knows that the Suevi controlled [almost the entire Peninsula](https://i0.wp.com/www.lahistoriaespana.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Mapa-de-Hispania-anos-430-455.png?resize=744%2C620&ssl=1at) at one point and that one of the last Western Roman major campaigns was launched to try to kick them out. The only people that give the Suevi any thought are Galician nationalists; I think not even the Portuguese care.
Scotland’s role in fighting for British imperialism is now starting to get recognized. But there was one little episode when Scotland tried small time thuggery on their own which I only found out about from exploring Scandinavian music: the Battle of Kringen in 1612. The invading Scottish force was nearly wiped out by Norwegian peasants throwing rocks down a cliff.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kringen
The Scottish leader had led a school revolt in Edinburgh in 1595 and (because of his family connections) got away with shooting a city official dead:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sinclair_(mercenary)
The Norwegians later produced a 90-verse ballad about bashing the Scots:
https://youtu.be/DXN1c11ZyqI
The American Revolution is not anywhere near as prominent in the national memory as any of Britain’s other wars. It’s strange because it was a global conflict with Britain fighting French, Spanish, and Dutch forces on top of trying to regain control of the Thirteen Colonies.
I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily due to the UK losing the war. We lost the Hundred Years War against France and we still remember the more famous battles that we won (Agincourt, Crecy, etc). We also lost all of our possessions in France bar Calais.
It was very closely followed by the French Revolution which was much closer to home and much more frightening to the British establishment. In the new United States, the political class in the former colonies were still in power but they weren’t subordinate to the British. In France, the whole system was violently dismantled.
Not European but would like to add my own to the discussion.
The period between the the first colonies and the revolt isn’t even briefly covered. In 1585, the Roanoke colony was established. In 1607, Jamestown was founded. In 1620, the Mayflower landed and created the Plymouth colony. In 1776 the United States was born.
Not my country, but Germany likes to actively ignore the Herero and Namaqua genocide when they wanted to colonise parts of the world too. It was extremely brutal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide
There is a great german-speaking podcast “Geschichten aus der Geschichte” that made an episode on this topic of German colonialism: https://www.geschichte.fm/podcast/zs138/
And here the extended version: https://www.geschichte.fm/podcast/zs138-extra/
I’d say the Algerian War (1954-62), the surrounding political crises and coup d’etats (1958 and 1961), and the exile of French Algerians from the colony.
I guess the fact that our current political regime was set up thanks to a military putsch or the fact that our army was engaged in torture and mass killings of civilians doesn’t make the country look great (and I’m not saying that Algerian killings were justified either). Nobody got punished too, we just ignore that and do as if nothing happened.
In school the Algerian War came up in the last two weeks of June when nobody even goes to school because it’s not graded or they have exams
I think it’s the ~20 year period after the fall of house Árpád. They had a bad habit of gifting land to their loyalists, fast forward a few decades of that and some noble families owned land, armies and wealth on par with the king.
When the last king died without heir the country immediately collapsed into infighting between the bigger houses, each trying to rally lesser noble houses to their cause and take over the rest of the country. It’s a complicated web of alliances and backstabbing with cameos of kings from neighbouring countries trying to exploit the chaos.
In history class we talk a decent amount about Charles Robert’s war of unification but other than briefly going over [this map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Oligarchs_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary_14th_century.svg/1280px-Oligarchs_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary_14th_century.svg.png) in a minute or two we never really learn about the regional lords and what their rules, family history and alliances looked like. People know this period happened but that’s about it, despite being a rather interesting time for the country. There’s probably good material in it for a Game of Thrones-like show.
> the the first republic of Georgia which only gets mentioned when it first declared independence on may 26st 1918 and the invasion of Georgia by the Red army, nothing about how it worked and the stuff that went down in 3-4 years that it existed
Fo Ukrainian Republics it was mostly done by Soviet Union history erasure, so you don’t get even a glimpse of idea that your country exists outside of USSR concepts.
A lot of stuff about 1917-1922 events are not being brough to light, like hometown of my father is now getting a memorial to their regiment of UNR and like that.
You might get more knowledge about that when you’ll go through de-russification period.
There’s already two good answers for Spain. One mentions our country’s reticence to cover recent traumatic events (ETA terrorism) and the other our tendency to speedrun the gothic part of our history.
I however found another elusion to be way more annoying. I know next to nothing about spanish america. It’s pretty impressive given that It lasted for 300 years and was the beating heart of the spanish economy.
I get they’re not Spain anymore, but It’s grotesque just how little It shows up in our curriculum. Basically: conquest of Mexico and Peru, (administrative changes in the 18th century), loss, loss of cuba.
It’s probably the most impactful part of our history and it’s just gleefuly overlooked.
I’d say Corfitz Ulfeldt, the betrayer of betrayers, during the 2nd northern war. Behind definitely one of the biggest acts of treason ever in the entire world history, and it’s hardly ever mentioned. A nobleman who rose to incredible power being the kings most trusted advisor, married a princess, (sister to the king at time of betrayal), he was governor of the capital, prime minister, decorated with the highest honours. Yet he embezzled enormeous sums from the country, and stole even more, these vast amounts of money he used to finance the Swedish invasion of Denmark. Later he tried to raise an army in Brandenburg to overthrow the danish king, between the two, he began plotting against the swedish king.
For Sweden i believe it is the Migration period 375AD to 550AD and the Vendel period 550AD to 793AD. It is a fundamental part of how Scandinavia is shaped and how Scandinavian influence integrated with the rest of Europe for the next 1000 years. Everything from how parts of the Goth tribe left Sweden and travelled to Volga in the East to Portugal in the West. It also gives context and backstory to how modern countries like Ukraine and UK was born. It is a period that often in Sweden are related to as the fairytale era but that with modern science today has a lot of solid new findings that gives a lot of new information. The corona pandemic contributed a lot to new findings since it meant that more expensive analytics methods where used since travelling was limited.
Might be a bit of a weird answer but schools here really need to start teaching about the cold war, italian history apparently stops at the end of WW2, the most important stuff to understand the current world is just not tought.
“Rozbicie Dzielnicowe” – The Feudal Breakup (my own translation since it doesn’t even have it’s own unique term in English)
It’s the period between early XII to early XIV century when Poland due to succession issues was split into smaller feudal states with a nominal central authority, which shortly after proceeded to be completely ignored by all of the states.
This meant that Poland de facto didn’t exist for 200 years during that period, instead it was in a small dark age with nobles constantly fighting eachother. (And other countries like Bohemia-Moravia which subjugated Silesia during that time)
Even most poles (if they bothered to listen in their history class) probably acknowledge its existence, but don’t really know anything about it.
It’s nearly 200 YEARS of our history and yet it’s completely forgotten about. So far i haven’t encountered anyone talking about this on the internet, despite the interest in similar situations in the history of countries like Spain, Germany or Italy.
Even in most of the polish history documentaries it’s skipped and they just go from the founding of Poland & early Piasts to Władysław Łokietek or Casimir the Great.
It’s been bothering me for a while now
I feel like the post-Roman period up until Portugal is established as a country isn’t explored in much depth. We’re taught that the after the fall of the Western Roman Empire that the Visigoths and Suebi come to the Iberian Peninsula and take over, until they’re conquered by the Moors, and then the Reconquista happens. Besides not learning much about these Germanic tribes, the history of the Moors in Portugal is very simplified. I don’t recall learning about the different kingdoms, they were just *the Moors* (maybe my textbooks stated they were Umayyads, I forget). There’s no complexity.
To be honest I feel like everything that happens before our first monarch is simplified, at least in the history lessons I had from 5th grade to 9th grade.