They do, but to continue the river analogy, one is a lot more salty than the other.
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i’m more invested in contemporary military history myself, like 18th-century onwards
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I actually used to hate any history from the Renaissance onward, but in the past three years or so I’ve gradually become interested more and more to the point where I became engaged with the present, and even the future. I like military history from any point in time, but for civilian history I’m mostly interested in the turn of the 20th century period and into the 20s.
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Vastly prefer civilian history, which kinda sucks because most recorded history tends to be military. I feel that understanding the reasons behind the wars is much more important than the wars themselves. In order to understand the reasons, you need to understand the people. Plus looking at civilians allows us to relate to their humanity, and thus emphasize more with them. Basically,
As an aside, you’re leaving out an important branch of history: political history. I know it often follows alongside military history, but it’s important to understand what type of government it was, how it functioned, and why it functioned.
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I include that in civilian history. But, that is an important distinction. Do you prefer reading the history of commoners or nobility?
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Not really leaving out, more that I forgot to mention it. I love political history as well!
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This was too obvious not to make.
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Now I disagree with that line of thinking. It seems like you’re very quick to throw things into two camps; military, or non-military,
commoners, or nobility. The thing about history is that it isn’t black and white, it’s a whole spectrum of colors. It’s hard to put these sorts of things into an either-or situation because it’s not two options. There’s economic history, social history, cultural history, etc, and to simply lump everything together into “SHOOT OR NOT SHOOT” seems kinda demeaning. Likewise, sure you can generally sum every person in the world into vague terms like “commoners” and “nobility”. But that’s like summing every person into camps of “has brown hair” and “doesn’t have brown hair.” It works, but it tells you literally nothing about the individuals. Adolf Hitler and Takuma both fall into the former camp, but one is significantly more historically interesting than the other.
It’s also hard to make broad choices like that over the entirety of human history without narrowing it down to a time period. A term like “nobility” has a very different context in 17th century Japan versus 3100 BC Egypt versus 20th century America. WWII is vastly different than the Third Punic War, or the Crimean War, or the Peloponnesian Wars. There are some nobles who I would find fascinating, others who would bore me to death.
tl;dr context matters and broad categories don’t really work
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I am, because as you already put:
I was just trying to simplify my question to start a conversation, not make a statement about anything specific. It’d be kind of odd to say “do you prefer military history or the history of the wind instruments in Tang Dynasty?”
Also, there’s a lot of subcategories of military history as well. Just looking at the lives of the generals/officers is drastically different then the life of the average soldier.
I’m not holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to pick. I asked an open ended question. It was broad, yes, but there’s no reason people can’t elaborate with their answer. I tried to elaborate a bit for you with my response, but I guess you’re not having it.
I’ve always had an interest in military history, although in a geeky “Spartans are cool!” way. I doubt I could carry on an in depth conversation about it for too long.
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I like political/civilian history, while military seems to be cool, there’s nearly an intrigue to the former. Though if I were to choose a preferred era that I know most about it’d be the cold war, followed by the classical period
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I like war history
Which is odd, because I’m typically a mellow kinda guy.
Oh, well.
Anyways, I’m a huge nerd about WWI and WWII.
I know a lot of weapons and vehicles, as well as a few tactics and a couple of major events.
My favorite part of history is the mongul empire tbh
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ooh, that was a cool time as well.
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I probably am one of the biggest history nerds on this site.
Like, really.
People around me keep asking me why I went forward on the human branch of my high-school (aka languages, psychology, logics, philosophy, etc), instead of going for math or something.
My one word answer: history.
And this passion for history was very spontan too. It pop out of nowhere and completely took over all of my systems.
it also spawned my extremely strong political virtues, but we are not talking about those
My favourite political historic entity (aside for like every single Romanian one) was definitely the Roman Empire, and I definitely believe that Trajanus was its best emperor.
No, it’s definitely not because he Latinised us
I also really like the XXth century. Like, the antebellum, the Balkans Wars, the WWs, the interbellum, the Cold War. Perfect story. I could ramble on and on about them and their context.
And it also surprises me how different the western view of the WWs is compared to ours, the easterner view.
also Russia is underrated
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Well, that is something I’d be up to debate, considering I am also a history major at the moment. 
Just make sure it’s not a phase and make sure to not get too caught up on political arguments on history. Historical figures need to be represented by the time of their thinking and culture otherwise they will be misrepresented. It may have a Christian view of history (which not everyone will like) but John Fea’s Why Study History? is an excellent book that explains why historical study is crucial. It’s a good read.
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I do!
Another good one is World War II, and how it effects you today. by Richard J Maybury. It really changed my views on the World Wars, (there is one for WW1 as well), and how unnecessary the US’s involvement was in both WW2. America was powerful, but Britain and Russia could have easily handled Germany between them. In general, we in the US have a very skewed view on the WW’s, and one that can be unhealthy.
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One thing I love about history is the fact that there’s so much to learn. Plus, you almost never get a totally biased view unless you’re reading a very specific book with a very specific viewpoint. But even then, it’s fascinating to discover the different views of a single event.
I myself love learning about the various wars and battles in the world’s past. WWII and WWI are some of my favorites.
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Indeed! One of the many reasons I love history is that it is constantly evolving. For example, as I think I alluded to above, I’ve been working at a historical museum for over 3 years now. Our focus is the Pilgrims, the English people who settled in Plymouth in 1620. Even in just the three years that I have been working there, new archeological evidence is changing the way we talk about certain aspects of their lives!
Not entirely true. History is, by it’s nat-oh hold on,
But yeah, it’s kinda impossible to be unbiased about history because of worldview. Having said that, the fun of history is that, like you said, you can discover differing views on the same topic.
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Fight me. I dare you. I double dare you.
Although yes, in the last few month the line between politics and plain history kinda got blurred, especially in the 20th century (cause… you know… in 100 years we were kingdom and anarchy and authoritarian and fascist and communist and democratic, we were basically doing parkour everything, which really messed with our mentality over modern history), when it’s a historic debate I at least try to keep politics out of it.
I also went on the history path, although it isn’t only history, but I like my highschool profile.
Tho the biggest con is that I can’t see a job that would be supported entirely on history: becoming the owner of a museum, of a historic monument, or a historian in general requires a lot of effort, and I don’t want to be a museum guide or history teacher.
I mean the last one could do, but both of my parents are teachers and I see their everyday life.
So getting into politics is a needed evil, as a historian who understands politics, or a politician that understand history, is very valuable.