During the Renaissance, most art was commissioned and paid for by wealthy individuals, civic institutions, the Church, or rulers. Renaissance artists were constrained by the desires and directives of their patrons, and their works was subject to contracts, which stipulated timescales, costs, materials and so on. For the patrons commissioning... More
Increasingly, Russia’s rulers realized that the condition of serfdom needed to be addressed. Catherine the Great introduced prosecution for mistreatment of serfs by landowners, in the wake of the Pugachev revolt (1773–75). Paul I limited barshchina (service owed to the landowner) to three days a week, and Alexander I introduced... More
In order to dominate the trade routes with southern Italy and Sicily, Athens backed Corcyra in a dispute with Corinth. Corinth enlisted Sparta’s help against Athens, and supported a Thessalian city-state revolt against Athens (432 BCE). Athens’ leader, Pericles, isolated Corinth by refusing to trade with Megara, a Spartan ally.... More
Charles Fox Parham’s Bethel Bible College at Topeka in Kansas, was the source of the Pentecostal movement. It was here that Parham’s students began to speak in ‘tongues’ – ecstatic speech or glossolalia. Initially met with disbelief and ridicule, Parham’s espousal of the practice of faith healing also became a... More
Nearly all Pentecostal denominations trace their origins to the Azusa Street Revival, in Los Angeles (1906–10). In 1914 several small Pentecostal groups in Hot Springs, Arkansas, formed the intensely mission-conscious Assemblies of God, which combined foreign missions with domestic outreach amongst urban populations, on Indian reservations and in prisons. They... More
In the run-up to the 1918 election, the British government acted as Sinn Féin’s most effective recruiting sergeant. The Irish public had been alienated by the draconian response to the Easter Rising. The Home Rule negotiations at the Irish Convention were botched. Finally, attempts by Lloyd George to link Home... More
According to the Department of Labor, in 1900 women over the age of 16 constituted 18.3 per cent of the US labour force. 1900 was the early industrial era and there was a gradual movement away from agricultural trades into manufacturing. Domestic and personal services were still the dominant employment... More
The Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great had a number of capitals, in part, because the Achaemenids rotated their court between regional centres according to the season, but also because certain locations became functionally specialized. Ecbatana was the favoured summer residence, Susa for Spring, while Babylon was the commercial... More
In 1501 Ismail I, a regional Sufi leader established the Safavid dynasty with the support of tribes of the Sufi Qizibash movement. He became the shah of Azerbaijan and thereafter Persia. Before Ismail united Persia, its rule had been split amongst a number of regional leaders following the disintegration of... More
By the middle of the 5th century, Persian Armenia had maintained a rather precarious independence for four centuries in the border zones of competing empires, first Rome and Parthia, later the Byzantines and Sassanids. Their kingdom converted to Christianity in 301 but, in 428, accepted the suzerainty of the Zoroastrian... More
The Persian Achaemenid dynasty ruled an empire which, at is peak, stretched from the Indus Valley to the Black Sea and West Asia. Three successive Persian emperors, Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius, had ambitions to expand westwards, and extended their control over western Asia Minor, Thrace and Macedonia, which became a... More
Angered by their defeat at the Battle of Marathon, the Persians, under their new king, Xerxes I, were determined to subjugate Greece. Greece comprised a series of city-states, with Athens and Sparta the most powerful. In spring 480 BCE the Persians launched a combined land and sea invasion. The Persian... More