3 Must Subscribe YouTube Channels if You Like History

The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future

Amar Desai
3 min readOct 20, 2020
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

This week we are changing up a little bit. Instead of sharing interesting websites, products, or tools, I am going to talk about some really interesting YouTube channels focusing on historical events and topics.

1. Kings and Generals

I consider myself a bit of a history nerd. If I had to pick a new career, I would love to be a historian. I guess other than me, only YouTube knows this about me, and based on my watching habits, it recommended a video on Mongols, which had a really good-looking thumbnail. So me being me without thinking clicked on the play button and am glad I did.

I was amazed at the production quality of the video starting from sound to illustrations to narration to animations. I got hooked and binged watched a few dozen videos that night.

By Kings & Generals

This channel mostly focuses on great empires of the past and some of the historic battles. They go into details of how, where, and why the battle took place, what strategies were implemented by different sides during, and before the battle. I really enjoyed their video on Asoka the great and Mauryan Empire.

2. The Cold War

I feel the current education system does a really good job of teaching kids about what happened during World War I and World War II. However, I feel the history ends there in the textbooks. We start with the Roman Empire and end at World War 2. Textbooks don't tell you what happened post world war 2. At least that was the case with the Indian education system.

For me, the era of the post-world war and post-Indian independence is like a blank space. On a high level, I knew the world was divided into two ideologies or groups and there was the Cold War which kept the world on the edge of their seat with the fear of an all-out nuclear war starting at any point. But I didn't know the details, didn’t know how many wars were fought, how some of the modern-day countries got formed which were under the colonial rule pre-world war 2, how allies divided the countries and administered them.

By The Cold War

If you also have similar questions and want to fill in these blanks then The Cold War is the channel for you. After watching their videos now I know how and why & how NATO was formed, how the Korean peninsula got divided into two separate countries. The production quality is amazing with great narration and animations.

3. UsefulCharts

This channel UsefulCharts uses an interesting method to explore & explain world history. They use family tree charts. They go through the entire family tree of an empire and try to explain how a particular Empire started and expanded. One common and interesting pattern that I have found after watching these videos is how some of the world’s most powerful dynasties, though geographically & culturally apart, have common ancestors. For example, Babur who established the Mughal empire in India came from the Timurid Empire established by Timur who came from the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan. One way to look at it is, how ruling the world had been a family affair and I guess it still is.

By UsefulCharts

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Amar Desai

A jack of all who what to do everything, to be everywhere, be everyone, but doesn’t know what he truly wants https://linktr.ee/amardesai