May 20, 2015

I just wanted to thank you for your devotion and research to open the minds of those that may have never taken a moment to think differently and live in reality.

TKS

Jan 6, 2015

Thank you for the wonderful site and content. Content is great, organization is intuitive and the sourcing is fantastic. Thank you!!

SW

Dec 23, 2014

I came across your website while reading the history about the Indian-Pakistan partition during 1948. The history was written so neat full , precise and in detailed that I would never find that length of coverage in such a beautifully described manner anywhere else so far.

I really thankful you for your such kind of a Nobel effort to put the history in the digital format which will be there to read by generations to come along the way.

Regards,
P.....

Jun 29, 2014

Respect and Honors to Frank Smitha,

I have no words but a heart full of respect, thanks and delight to you after visiting your website. I have not seen any of this sort of material flashing light into the history in a precise and easily observable manner.

Fantastic, mind blowing and hats off to your work. I wish the international historian community understands the importance of revealing the complete history to all the youngsters so that they know how the people in the past lived and evolution brought us the current generation into the kind of life we are in now and how responsible we should be for the generations to come.

"Reading history is spiritual too, world exists throughout the ages. People come and go and we too. World will exist in the futures to come but we may not."

Once again heart full of respect to your wonderful work. Peace, love and life.

Regards
Keshav

April 20 2014, from the UK:

Just wanted to say thank you for all the information, it's really been helpful and very useful in studying History.

Feb 17, 2014

Love your site. Thanks. Just enough for the big picture!

April 27, 2013

Thank you Frank for your really, really excellent and accurate description of Argentina during Peron's presidencies. I was born in Buenos Aires (but moved to Miami 12 years ago) so I am very familiar with many details you didn't spare. Great work.
Regards,
V.S.

 

February 22, 2013

Someone writes: "Please get rid of the ridiculous designation of BCE. There is no common era that is before anything. It is BC and AD. Please use them."

Response: BC and AD are Christian designations. Not everybody in the world is Christian. However much we respect Christianity let us leave others (including Jewish historians, archaeologists and other secularists) designations of their choice.

Mr Someone responds two days later: "I understand your position, I just do not understand why, after two thousand years, it is now necessary to obliterate any tacit acknowledgment of Christ. Seems like you're kind of reaching at straws. I'm not even that religious actually. It just pisses me off that people such as you feel this overwhelming need to knock Jesus down a peg or two. You may be satisfying some fundamental desire to balance your own little world, but while you are at it, you are insulting the hundreds of millions of Christians who created Western Civilization.

My edited response:

Sorry about your view of my motives, but thanks for taking the time to tell me about it.

I was first introduced to BCE (Before the Common Era) as an alternative to BC (Before Christ) by the Jewish historian and statesman Abba Eban. Christ is a Greek word meaning king. Jews as you know don't accept the idea that Jesus of Nazareth as Christ.

Your use of the word "insulting" reminds me that some devout people, Muslims included, would benefit from expecting and accepting that some others have opinions that differ from theirs. Your call not to insult strikes me as a call to be politically correct, a conformism that doesn't fit with good history methodology.

I have no desire to insult Muslims or to "knock Jesus down a peg or two." I see many who are Christian or Muslim and not troubled by a Middle Ages fanaticism as working their faith in accordance with their decent instincts.

But your comment about "hundreds of millions of Christians who created Western Civilization" I find interesting. It's a gigantic idea. Too big actually. Who contributed to historical change and who did not? And of those who did, how many were considered errant by Christianity's institutions?

I see a lot of tragedy in the creation of Western Civilization – as I do in the history of Islam. I try to describe it and in doing so upset some people. I'm really not very emotionally attached to the Common Era idea, no more than I am to the globalism of the metric system.

Reader response: First, let me apologize if anything I said could be misconstrued as casting aspersions on you or your character... I respect your reasons for your positions and am sorry if I "picked-a-fight. Like I said, BCE seems one more way for society to erase Jesus and Christianity and it really does piss me off. However, like you I have a passion for history; always have. Anyway, thanks for the response, I appreciate your taking the time.

 

January 16, 2013

Dear Mr. Smitha,

I just wanted to let you know that I have been using your site extensively to support my World History class.

I teach high school students at Ruamrudee International School in Bangkok, Thailand, and I have found that your writings are clear, nuanced, and yet far more detailed than any textbook. I appreciate the hard work that you have contributed to creating such a great history resource; it is noticed and appreciated by our learning community.

Thanks

 

September 12, 2012

Ed Darrell writes:

"Some guy named Frank Smitha has assembled a history of the world, claiming to be trying to avoid bias."

Actually I know that I write with bias, in other words a point of view, but I try to describe the past without distorting it with the biases in the cultural traditions of my parents and friends, and I try to avoid misshaping my perception of events or the ideas of others by jamming them into my own ideological framework. Like many others, I've been able to admit realities that have gone against my way of thinking. That's why I see the world a little differently from what I did fifty years ago.

I look forward to comments that are more critical than Mr. Darrell's. Good historians like good scientists need to remain open to criticism.

Ed Darrell is a learned gentleman and educator with a website: Millard Fillmore's Bathtub.

 

September 10, 2012

Thank you so much for creating this website and updating it regularly; I constantly refer to this for quick historical references and current statistics. I am currently a 10th grader attending the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in California, and reading Macrohistories over the summer has made me very well-prepared for the Modern World History class I am now taking. Your macrohistories present information in just the right quantities; it is much more detailed than the general historical overviews I've come across online but much more condensed than many other overwhelmingly extensive sources. I will definitely continue to refer to this site. Thank you!

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