including headings Colonial period, Independence, ...
including headings Charles the Great, King of the Lombards, Conversion of the Saxons, A brief crusade into Spain, Holy Roman Emperor, ...
Charles V is known as Charles the Wise, a title earned as much by his statecraft as by his love of learning. He is indeed a friend of scholars and a passionate collector of books, building up an impressive royal library...
After asserting his rule over the traditional territories of the Frankish realm, Charles wages long campaigns against the pagan Germanic tribes who constantly raid his northern and eastern borders - Frisians, Saxons and...
The regions north and south of the Hindu Kush, approximating to modern Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, form an indeterminate part of the empire of Genghis Khan. They are inherited by descendants of his son Chagatai, but the...
In December 1994, in the Ardèche region of southern France, three expert potholers decide to explore a small cavity (only about 30 inches high and 10 inches wide) among the vegetation high on a hillside. A little...
Speculative trading enterprises in the Middle Ages are undertaken by individual merchants, operating in family groups or partnerships but acting essentially on their own behalf. Some, such as as the Polo family, are enti...
The plains of north India are in a politically unsettled state when Alexander the Great marches into the subcontinent in 327 BC. But it is the dissatisfaction of his own soldiers, rather than any defeat at Indian hands,...
From 1965 each part of the union has only one political party, but they are different parties - TANU in Tanganyika and ASP (Afro-Shirazi Party) in Zanzibar. In 1977 they merge as the CCM or Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Revolutio...
Bernadotte arrives in Sweden in October 1810, having adopted the Lutheran faith and a pair of Swedish names - Carl Johan. The existing king is feeble and often ill, so from the start Bernadotte acts in effect as regent....
The bold device of the Reduction is not immediately effective, since Charles X spends most of his short reign conducting military campaigns abroad. But the same policy is followed - and even made more rigorous in the lev...
On the accession of a new monarch it has been conventional for parliament to vote the right to tonnage and poundage (the nation's basic tax, levied on the import of goods) for the entire reign. Now, in 1625, the members...
The early centuries of Indian influence see several royal dynasties, some Hindu and some Buddhist, rivalling each other for power and territory in southeast Asia. The Cham establish themselves in a region which becomes k...
In 1367 one of four new 'yeomen of the chamber' in the household of Edward III is Geoffrey Chaucer, then aged about twenty-seven. The young man's wife, Philippa, is already a lady-in-waiting to the queen. A few...
The purpose of the journey of Zhang Qian is political (sent by the emperor Wudi to find allies in the west against the marauding Xiongnu), but his discoveries give him the status of an explorer. In 138 BC he set...
