The wave of social unrest that swept Russia in the late 1640s was triggered by a government decision to consolidate a plethora of small levies into a single, and universal, salt tax. Merchants and nobility were generally able to concoct exemptions, so the burden fell disproportionately upon serfs and the... More
Solomon ruled over a united kingdom of Israel, with Judah having its own political authority and special privileges. David, Solomon’s father and predecessor, had turned Edom and Moab into Israelite vassal states. After David’s death, they became rebellious and difficult to control. The core territories were the twelve provinces of... More
Solomon became ruler c. 967 BCE of an empire that stretched from the River Euphrates to Egypt in the south. Solomon had great wealth and controlled the trade routes on all his borders, enabling him to tax all movement of goods. He welcomed the South Arabian Queen of Sheba to... More
The capital ships (battleships) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau left from Wilhelmshaven on 21 November for the strait between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, with the intention of sinking British patrol vessels. Following a spell of bad weather, on 23 November the British armed merchant ship HMS Rawalpindi was sighted on patrol... More
In the second half of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company supported the development of its South African colony with the importation of slaves from Angola and Guinea. In 1700 the company permitted grazing cattle outside the settlement, which led to growth of the itinerant farmer, or Trekboer,... More
The Cape switched between Dutch and British hands during the Napoleonic Wars until 1815, when British occupation was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna. The already pronounced unruliness and wanderlust of the Dutch colonists was aggravated by the outlawing of the Dutch language (1806), and abolition of slavery (1838), on... More
The South African political landscape from 1854 onwards was characterized by diverse constantly changing borders. European colonial settlement, mainly by the British and Dutch, had created a plethora of small colonies of varying size and degrees of autonomy that existed alongside pre-existing indigenous kingdoms. The largest state in the region... More
In the mid-19th century the British tolerated the independent Boer republics by agreeing to a boundary between the Natal colony and Zululand. However, the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1867 changed their policy. First, they annexed West Griqualand where the diamond mines were located, then proposed the Boer republics... More
The kingdom of Mwenemutapa grew explosively during the course of the 15th century through empire building techniques without precedent in southern Africa. These included voluntary enrolment of member states, who were rewarded with representation on the kingdom’s Great Council and buttressed by well-trained armies and an organized priesthood. Their power... More
While the Dutch East India Company repeatedly attempted to set boundaries for the Trekboer expansion, its oppressive bureaucracy and excessive taxation hardened their determination to expand. This brought them into conflict with the Xhosa, who often retaliated fiercely to these Boer incursions. In 1795 Napoleon took the Netherlands, and the... More
The Great Trek is the name given to the exodus of 12,000–14,000 Boers from British Cape Colony. Frustrated by the colony’s Anglicization policies, restrictions on slave labour and population pressures intensified by drought and increasing inward migration, they chose to look for better grazing pastures elsewhere. After crossing the Orange... More
Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka share a common history of British colonial rule, and have experienced missionary activities from Christians that date back many centuries. A Muslim majority is found in Pakistan (95%) and Bangladesh (89.5%), while Hinduism is the dominant religion in India (80.5%) and Buddhism in Sri Lanka... More