Published on 12, July, 2020
Please share your interest to me through these questions. Feel free to answer as you wish but use the questions as a guide please.
Now, I am definitely more interested in your interests than mine but wanted to share my own as a warmup.
I am so happy to read what passion you have in your life, how it came to you and how it reveals itself.
I think that it would be essentially impossible to have a unique interest, what ever the subject there is bound to be at least one other person in the world with the same fixation. My obscure or unusual interests include: Napoleonic period cavalry, the Byzantine Empire in the Komnenian period (1080-1185), vintage and antique pocket watches, and their chains.
What interests you about that specific period of the Byzantine Empire?
It is a period of fight-back by the Empire from a nadir of military defeats and the loss of territory to the Normans in southern Italy, the Hungarians in the western Balkans, and, worst of all, the loss of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks. It was also dominated by relations with Western Europe, particularly through interactions with the Crusades. The period was overseen by three generations of exceptionally talented rulers, Alexios I, John II and Manuel I of the Komnenos dynasty. It is also quite well covered by contemporary histories written by well-placed witnesses: Anna Komnene (daughter of Alexios I), her husband Nikephoros Bryennios, John Kinnamos (probably a military secretary of Manuel I) and Niketas Choniates (a prominent bureaucrat). Therefore, there is quite a considerable amount of historical detail available.
I was really talking about the Chinese government's interaction with Uigurs, Tibetans, Mongols, Tai etc. minorities within China. Empires are multi-ethic states with one ethnicity, or possibly two ethnicities (e.g. Italic and Greek in the Roman Empire) effectively calling the shots, culturally overwhelming and ruling the others. Imperialism does not have to involve Africa at all.