As US forces moved closer to Baghdad, a crucial deception plan paid off when a large number of Iraqi troops were moved north of Baghdad on 2 April to protect it from a supposed US attack from Turkey. The Iraqi troops were moved from the strategically important Karbala gap between... More
Following a lengthy build up of political support for the invasion of Iraq within the US, and mixed support amongst its western allies, some 100,000 US troops were deployed to Kuwait in mid-February 2003. The invasion was launched in earnest on 20 March following preliminary airstrikes against Iraqi observation positions... More
In 1978, a coup by left-wing army officers overthrew the Afghan government. With Soviet support, a coalition of Communist factions assumed power and began a sweeping programme of land reform, fiercely opposed by the devoutly Muslim majority of the population. Tribal mujahideen (fighters for jihad) rebelled across the country, and,... More
In c. 2350 BCE the Semite Sargon, reputed to be the adopted son of a Kish gardener, conquered Lugalzagesi’s kingdom and became ruler of his coalition of Sumerian cities. Taking Akkad as his capital, he turned the region into the heart of an empire which would encapsulate ‘the four quarters... More
Algeria was classified as part of the French state, with (from 1947) French citizenship available to all of its subjects. Suppression of non-violent political movements seeking independence led to the formation of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) which, emboldened by French defeat in Indochina, launched Toussaint Rouge, a coordinated... More
In September 1775, 1,700 rebel militia, under General Richard Montgomery, launched an offensive, taking Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in northern New York. They then advanced along Lake Champlain into the Province of Quebec, where they captured St Johns, followed by Montreal on 13 November, and headed on to Québec... More
For the Angevin Empire inheritance and marriage were the primary means of acquiring territory. Before becoming king of England, Henry II (r. 1154–89) acquired Normandy through his mother and Brittany through his father. Marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (1152) brought the duchy of Aquitaine, as well as Poitou, Gascony and... More
Rory O’ Connor, former High King of Ireland, died in his eighties in peaceful retirement at Cong Abbey (1198). Rory had inadvertently sparked the Norman invasion when he crushed Dermot MacMurragh of Leinster in battle. MacMurragh enlisted Norman support to regain his lands, making Richard Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke his... More
Under the Anglo-Irish treaty, the Irish Free State was established as a semi-independent territory under the British Crown. It comprised 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties, with the remaining six counties (which were predominantly nationalist) part of the United Kingdom. Sinn Féin, the Irish Republicans, wanted full independence and repudiated the... More
In autumn 1862, General Buell’s Army of the Ohio pursued Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army into Kentucky. Sterling Price’s Confederate Army of the West was mobilized to block Ulysses S. Grant’s Armies of the Mississippi and Tennessee from reinforcing Buell. Price fixed upon the small town of Iuka to make his... More
Since the 1956 Suez Crisis, a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) had been stationed in Sinai to safeguard the Israeli-Egyptian border zone agreed at the end of the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli War. By spring 1967, tensions were escalating. In response to repeated guerrilla incursions, Israel had clashed with Jordan, killing 18... More
In November 1947, a United Nations (UN) resolution agreed partition of British Palestine into separate, independent Jewish and Arab states. It was further specified that the area of paramount religious significance – the environs of Jerusalem – would be placed under UN control. Arab states, and the Palestinian Arabs, violently... More