The rabbit hole this post has taken me down means I am now trying to get confirmed numbers for how many industrially farmed pheasants are released in the UK every year so posh people can shoot them. Because the number that keeps coming up seems utterly mad.
![A report of the Battle of Poitiers composed by an anonymous Iberian Christian in 754 describes Charles Martel’s forces in Latin as Europeenses.[2] This is odd: use of the terms “Europe” and “European” was rare in this era. After the Persian Wars continents had been left for the most part to the geographers. As late as the first century BCE some Roman geographers were still unsure whether Europe and Africa were separate continents.[3] And in an empire that stretched across them all the concept was largely irrelevant.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lzlqyldh7nfc34pfffvd24ko/bafkreibn5l5fxui5w5lmsr2flo7zju7iqdbdmqjlnoxrwiqlvpurejjxz4)
![By now the Roman imperial economy depended heavily on African agriculture, manufacturing, and trade, much of which was in the hands of Africans themselves. At the same time, local landowners attained great power and status in Rome: by the 180s CE nearly a third of Roman senators were of African origin.[33] These were men like Septimius Severus,](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lzlqyldh7nfc34pfffvd24ko/bafkreihnug56wzczu6qvirzzepjtp7owp3tynpy2sqw6bset7o53w4zhbu)
