istoryworld
Salisbury, Chamberlain and empire
The imperial conference held at the time of the queen's Diamond Jubilee, in 1897, is a much more weighty affair than its predecessor ten years earlier. This time the prime ministers of the colonies have made the long journey to attend the festivities in person. And the colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain (appointed to this office in 1895), is a man with a passionate commitment to strengthening the commercial and political ties between the increasingly self-governing colonies.His prime minister, Lord Salisbury, is a less ardent imperialist. ...
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Cranach and Holbein
On this first occasion Holbein stays only two years in England, but he paints a great many portraits during his visit - including the large series of coloured drawings now in Windsor castle. In 1528 he returns to Basel, but he is back in England by 1532. On this second visit, lasting till his death in 1543, he is frequently employed by Henry VIII.The most familiar image of the self-indulgent tyrant is Holbein's sturdy portrait of him. The future Edward VI is familiar too, as ...
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Ravenna
The town of Ravenna becomes a place of importance early in the 5th century when the western emperor, Honorius, moves his capital there from Rome to escape the advancing Huns. Well fortified and with a safe harbour, it remains until 751 the place from which Byzantines and barbarians in turn administer Italy. The Byzantine rulers and the greatest of the barbarians, Theodoric, decorate the holy buildings of Ravenna in glittering mosaic, the medium which by now almost symbolizes the might of Christian rule within the ...
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The architecture of empire
As well as setting in place the administrative structure of the empire (and adopting Zoroastrianism as the state religion), Darius proves himself the greatest builder of the Achaemenid dynasty. In 521 he moves his capital to Susa, building there an audience hall and a palace. An inscription found at Susa reveals his pride in his far-flung empire of craftsmen. In 518 he moves them all - stone cutters, masons, carpenters, sculptors - some 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast, to start work on an ...
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Thus spake Zarathustra
Zoroaster (the Greek name by which the Iranian prophet Zarathustra has become known) is traditionally believed to have lived and taught in the early part of the 6th century BC. His home is probably in the region to the east of the Caspian Sea. The main theme of Zoroaster's teaching is to replace the numerous ahuras or gods of the traditional Indo-Iranian religion with just one ahura, the supreme God or 'Wise Lord', Ahura Mazda.
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Timur's conquests
Home is Samarkand, the city closest to his birthplace. Timur is busy turning it into a great centre of Muslim architecture and art. Together with the Indian elephants come the best craftsmen of Delhi, who will be set to work in Samarkand - where they join, in 1399, a community of skilled captives from previous expeditions. This is connoisseurship of an unusually violent kind, but it is a genuine passion. Inherited by Timur's descendants, in less rapacious form, it results in a great Timurid tradition ...
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Michelangelo the painter
Michelangelo's concept for the ceiling of the chapel is as bold as his execution of the figures. An elaborate architectural perspective draws the eye up past alcoves, in which huge figures sit, to ever-receding panels which eventually display a series of narrative scenes. These vast but distant-seeming panels along the centre of the ceiling (each about 10 by 18 feet) tell the story at the start of Genesis - from God's creation of the universe to the famous spark of life (from the Creator's finger ...
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Pacific islands
The islanders also soon attract the eager attention of another very different group of Europeans - a new breed of English missionaries, committed to taking the Protestant faith to savages as yet unaware of the truth. _x000b_ _x000b_A spate of missionary societies are founded in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first to arrive in the Pacific is the London Missionary Society, with an expedition to Tahiti in 1797. The islands become a favourite region for gospel work, well before the ...
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Kakiemon porcelain
In the following century Japan makes another major contribution to the history of ceramics. In about 1644 Sakada Kakiemon, a member of a family of potters with kilns at Arita in northwest Kyushu, introduces to Japan the Chinese system of overglaze painting. In the 1670s his two sons, known as Kakiemon II and Kakiemon III, are producing exquisite wares of milky white porcelain, often square or hexagonal in shape, decorated with elegant and brightly coloured motifs of plants and birds. The decoration, covering relatively little ...
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Ashur and the Assyrians
Since about 2000 BC the Assyrians, a Semitic group, have worshipped their god Ashur at a shrine on the Tigris known by his name. The city of Ashur has had periods of influence, trading and conquering westwards into Turkey, but the Assyrians have also often been subject to more powerful groups from those regions, such as the Hittites. And they have tended to be overshadowed by their great neighbour to the south, Babylon. The balance changes markedly in Ashur's favour with the accession, in 883, ...
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John I
The great Dominican abbey known variously as Batalha ('battle') or Santa Maria da Vitória ('St Mary of Victory') is the triumphal celebration of the battle of 1385, fought nearby at Aljubarrota, which secures the kingdom of Portugal for John I. The victory hastens the end of the war against his Castilian rival, four months after John has himself been acclaimed king by the Cortes in Coimbra. As a child of seven, John was appointed master of the Order of St Benedict of Avis, a Portuguese ...
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England sophisticated
By the time of Richard II the English kingdom can hold its own in learning and the arts. The university of Oxford, which earlier in the century has produced William of Ockham (one of the last great figures of medieval scholasticism), is now buzzing with the radical notions of John Wycliffe. He dies in 1384, but his writings have a profound influence in Europe during the build-up towards the Reformation. In art and literature there is the same excellence. Richard II commissions some of the ...
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Fall of Constantinople
A month after his twenty-first birthday, in April 1453, Mehmed II applies to Constantinople the stranglehold which has been a tacit threat for nearly a century, ever since the Ottoman capture of Adrianople (Edirne in its Turkish name) in 1362. He initiates a tight blockade of the city by both sea and land. The inhabitants, as often before, place their faith in their immensely strong city walls. Only on the harbour side are these walls vulnerable, and the harbour (the long creek known as the ...
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Straight walls with windows
One of the best preserved neolithic towns is Catal Huyuk, covering some 32 acres in southern Turkey. Here the houses are rectangular, with windows but no doors. They adjoin each other, like cells in a honeycomb, and the entrance to each is through the roof. The windows are a happy accident, made possible by the sloping site. Each house projects a little above its neighbour, providing space for the window. Not surprisingly, an idea as excellent as this catches on elsewhere and brings with it ...
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The Flavian emperors
Vespasian has the great advantage, on coming to power, of having two adult sons. The elder of the two, Titus, already has considerable military experience. For the first time, in almost a century since the beginning of the empire, the question of the succession need not be a pressing affair of state. In the event both sons follow Vespasian on the throne, the three of them being known (from their family name of Flavius) as the Flavian emperors. While frugal in his own life, and ...
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The age of Walpole
The thrust of his policy is lower taxation, increased trade and peace abroad - excellent intentions which Walpole does much to achieve. Late in his administration, and to his distress, he fails to prevent Britain going to war with Spain in 1739 after the dramatic episode of Jenkins' Ear (see the War of Jenkins' Ear). This conflict merges, in the following year, in the broader War of the Austrian Succession.Walpole resigns during the war, in 1742, and retires to Houghton Hall, the house which he ...
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Spanish Armada
The encounter between the Spanish Armada and the English fleet in the Channel in August 1588 is the first of a new kind of naval battle, and one in which the English tactics suggest the way forward. The Spanish have been accustomed to fighting at sea with galleys, as at Lepanto only seventeen years previously. A galley imposes a certain pattern on a battle. Guns can only point forward from the bow, where the main weapon, the ram, is also located. Assault consists in rowing ...
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Water mills
The emergence of the water mill is too gradual to be pinpointed. It is perhaps a development of a different form of water wheel. Once rotary power is available, a simple gear will transfer it to the shaft or axle of a wheel. And a vertical wheel, with jugs attached to its rim, will perform the useful function of raising water by scooping it up at the bottom and pouring it out at the top. Such water wheels, worked by oxen or camels, are in ...
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Magna Carta
Having accepted the document under duress, John immediately sends a request to the pope (now his ally) to have it annulled. Innocent III obliges in August of this same year, 1215. The result is a renewal of the civil war. The king's death in 1216, followed by the succession of his 9-year-old son as Henry III, brings a pause during which more moderate council prevails. When Henry comes of age, in 1225, archbishop Stephen Langton persuades him to reissue Magna Carta in a slightly modified ...
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Trial and execution of Charles I
Charles refuses to recognize the court and merely reiterates the doctrine of the divine right of kings. His accusers respond with arguments based upon the sovereignty of parliament. Thus the entire issue of the civil war is restated, with unflinching intransigence on each side, within the narrow confines of this historic hall.On January 27 the tribunal finds the king guilty of treason. A high scaffold is constructed in Whitehall. Three days later the king steps on to it from one of the large windows of ...
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