istoryworld
Victoria, Albert and the Great Exhi....
The best of the Victorian age is seen in the extraordinary event of 1851, the Great Exhibition. A brainchild of Prince Albert, its intention and scope is evident in its full title - The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations. This is to be a celebration of the new industrial era and of Britain's leading role in bringing it to pass.Astonishingly the first committee to discuss the proposal, chaired by Albert in January 1850, meets a mere sixteen months before the ...
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Rialto and St Mark's
Early in the 9th century the government of the lagoon is transferred to two adjacent islands where the land is a little higher above water level, though in Venice the distinction is a fine one. To either side of the intervening waterway is a rivo alto ('high bank'), from the which the name Rialto derives. The Rialto bridge subsequently joins these two banks. The growing town needs status. In the Christian Middle Ages status requires a distinguished patron saint and, if possible, the possession of ...
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The Troubles
It is inevitably a guerrilla war, and in the way of such wars the violence rapidly escalates. The authorities, confronted by terrorist acts, take drastic reprisals which are then seen as justifying the next retaliation.The ruthlessly talented leader on the republican side of the war is Michael Collins, who is influential at every level. He is a leading member of the Dáil (a body declared illegal by Britain in September 1919), as well as being the most powerful figure within both the public Irish Republican ...
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Water mills
In an even simpler version of a water mill, a horizontal water wheel in a stream can turn a millstone above by means of a fixed shaft. Water mills of one kind or the other are certainly known by the 1st century BC in the Hellenistic world. A poem of the time advises young girls that they can now let the nymphs of the stream do the hard work of milling. The Romans adopt the Greek water mill, and Vitruvius in the 1st century BC ...
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Carracks, galleons and galleys
From 1570 Hawkins experiments with a design in which the high forecastle is eliminated. He proves that a ship with high stern and relatively low bow is faster and more manoeuvrable. With an official post on the Navy Board, he is able to improve the English fleet dramatically before the encounter with the Spanish Armada in 1588 - when the agility of the English vessels wins the day. Hawkins' 'low-charged' design, which acquires the general name of galleon, becomes the standard form for all large ...
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Waterloo
With about 124,000 men Napoleon advances towards Brussels, hoping to take a position between Wellington's and Blücher's armies - with the intention of containing or driving off one of them while defeating the other. The way north is blocked by Wellington at Quatre Bras. On June 16 Napoleon leaves marshal Ney to assault this position while he tackles Blücher a few miles to the east, at Ligny. The engagement at Quatre Bras is indecisive. But Napoleon wins convincingly at Ligny, causing the Prussians to retreat ...
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Brunelleschi and the Duomo
Brunelleschi's greatest claim to fame in his own day is connected with a medieval rather than a Renaissance building. In his childhood Florence's cathedral (the Duomo, built during the 14th century) has had only a temporary covering over the central space where the nave and transepts cross. The intention has always been to build a dome, but the Florentines have been too eager to impress the world with the scale of their cathedral. The space to be spanned is 140 feet across, some 35 feet ...
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Inca architecture
To the north of Cuzco, on the open hillside, are the three vast polygonal ramparts of Saqsawaman - a structure once believed to be an Inca fortress, but more probably a temple to the sun and an arena for state rituals. Even more mysterious, in the jungle at the far end of the Urubamba valley, is the long-lost city of Machu Picchu. Its site is as dramatic as the story of its rediscovery (see discovery of Machu Picchu). High on an inaccessible peak in the ...
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Stone Age graves and temples
In a later stage of this deeply mysterious neolithic tradition the megaliths, previously hidden beneath the mounds of the tombs, emerge in their own right as great standing stones, often arranged in circles. The ritual purpose of such circles is not known. They too, in many cases, have a solar alignment, usually now relating to sunrise at the summer solstice. The most striking of these circles is Stonehenge, in England. The site is in ritual use over a very long period, from about 3000 to ...
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American sculpture
The sculpture of the American continent makes a powerful start. The style is primitive but the scale is monumental. Figures of this kind, introduced by America's first civilization (that of the Olmecs at San Lorenzo and La Venta) will have a lasting influence through 2000 years of central American culture.
Palmyra
The other great staging post on the route to Antioch is also an important site, and today a much more visible one. It is Palmyra, famous as one of the great ruined classical cities. From Doura-Europus, on the Euphrates, the caravans strike west through the desert to the Mediterranean coast. Palmyra is an oasis half way across this difficult terrain. Its wealth derives from its position on the east-west axis from Persia to the coast, in addition to being on the older routes up from ...
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Cyrus the Great
Cyrus dies in 530, campaigning against nomadic tribesmen in the northeast, near the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers. He is buried in the place which he has made his capital, Pasagardae. His tomb, massive but superbly simple, stands today as an impressive monument to the emperor - though now in parched surroundings where once everything was well watered, in an early version of a Persian garden. Its interior, in which the body lies in a gold sarcophagus on a gold couch, is broken into and stripped ...
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The unsettling and the settled
The regions bordering the Asian shores of the Mediterranean are where mankind appears first to have settled in villages and towns - a development requiring at least the beginnings of agriculture. Two of the earliest settlements to deserve the name of towns are Jericho in Palestine and Catal Huyuk in Anatolia. For the emergence of a more developed society, justifying the name of civilization, history suggests that there is one incomparable advantage, indeed almost a necessity - the proximity of a large river, flowing through ...
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Pacific islands
During the 18th century the maritime powers of northwest Europe make an increasingly coherent effort to discover which remote islands may be lurking in the middle of the vast Pacific. Dutch, French and English vessels undertake voyages of discovery, gradually filling in the map.Islands are regularly discovered during the century. Among the better known, Easter Island is reached by the Dutch in 1722, Tahiti by the English in 1767, the New Hebrides by the French in 1768, and New Caledonia and Hawaii by the English ...
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Venetian sunset
Canaletto lives in England from 1746 to 1755, painting views of the Thames in London and of his aristocratic patrons' country seats. His practice of painting large topographical views is continued by his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, who leaves Venice in 1747 and thereafter works mainly in Dresden and Vienna. In Venice, from about 1760, the demand of the tourists for views is met at a simpler and cheaper level by Francesco Guardi. His small canvases, more vague and informal than Canaletto's topographical studies, are notable ...
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Fatehpur Sikri
In 1571 Akbar decides to build a new palace and town at Sikri, close to the shrine of a Sufi saint who has impressed him by foretelling the birth of three sons. When two boys have duly appeared, Akbar's masons start work on what is to be called Fatehpur ('Victory') Sikri. A third boy is born in 1572. Akbar's palace, typically, is unlike anyone else's. It resembles a small town, made up of courtyards and exotic free-standing buildings. They are built in a linear Hindu ...
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The vaulted stone roof
Romanesque in the north tends to be more massive in style than the delicate arches of Vézelay. A good example is the interior of Durham cathedral - the glory of English Romanesque (often given the alternative name of Norman architecture). The chunky pillars of Durham, many of them decorated with deeply incised patterns, support a vaulted stone roof over the nave - a significant Romanesque innovation of this period. The construction of Durham begins in 1093, a few decades before the nave of Vézelay.
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Angkor and Pagan
In Cambodia the Khmer dynasty makes its capital, from the 9th century, in the city of Angkor. A series of huge Hindu temples culminates in the great 12th-century Angkor Wat. The temples are engulfed by the jungle, after the fall of the city first to Chams from the east (in 1177) and then to Thais from the west (in 1431). Angkor is rediscovered in the 1860s, to become one of the wonders of the world. To the west, the new Burmese dynasty has its capital ...
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The Knights of St John
As they grow in power, the Knights of St John become an important part of the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem, fighting battles against the Muslims while also maintaining their charitable function in the care of the sick. It is a measure of their power that the great castle of Krak des Chevaliers is one of their strongholds - a hospital with thicker walls than most. In their militant role the knights are matched by the other great 12th-century order, that of the Templars. ...
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Destruction of the Persian empire
Within a mere eighteen months Alexander has cleared the Persians out of Anatolia, which they have held for two centuries. The conqueror now moves south along the coast through present-day Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The ports here are the home bases of the Persian fleet in the Mediterranean. By occupying them he intends to cripple the fleet and deprive it of contact with the cities of the empire, including Persepolis. Most of the Phoenician towns open their gates to him. The exception is the greatest ...
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