Contents

History

Prehistory

4.6 Ga Earth forms.

Precambrian eons:

539 Ma Phanerozoic eon: first plants and hard-shelled creatures

300 ka Homo sapiens evolves from H. heidelbergensis in the horn of Africa.

In the Stone Age (3.4 Ma to 7 ka), stone tools are widely used. It is divided into the paleolithic, mesolithic, and neolithic. Hunter-gatherers move in small migratory groups with temporary shelters.

The five technology modes:

20 ka Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age: microlithic tools, domestic dogs. Starts soon after the Last Glacial Maximum.

Neolithic Revolution

Society transitions to agriculture and settlement. Increased division of labor, free time, trade, and writing. Herding, textiles, timber longhouses, grand burial mounds. More abundant food, but less balanced diet and more disease.

8000 BC Netherlands canoe
5000 BC Copper age or Chalcolithic: copper smelting in Serbia.

Celts had kings, druid religious leaders, warriors, and bards.

North America
3500 BC Mound Builders of the Ohio River.
1200 BC Pueblo culture: irrigation systems.
1000 CE Viking explorers briefly land at Newfoundland.
1050 CE Cahokia settlement of 25,000 people in Mississippi.

Civilization originates in Egypt (4000 BC), Sumer (4000 BC), Caral-Supe in Peru (3500 BC), Indus valley (3300 BC), Erlitou (1750 BC), and Olmec in Mesoamerica (1600 BC). It leads to writing, urbanization, the state, social stratification, and taxation.

Asia

Geography

Oceania

Culture

Chinese food

1750 BC Erlitou civilization in the Yellow River valley. Chinese calendar 农历. Chinese ritual bronzes include ding 鼎 (tripod cauldrons) and gui 簋 (bowl with 2 or 4 handles).

The Xia dynasty is possibly the Erlitou.
chinese_mythology.md

1600 BC Shang dynasty 商. Concubine Daji was portrayed as a fox spirit who bewitches King Zhou.

1046 BC. Zhou dynasty 周. King Wu founds the Western Zhou and overthrows King Zhou at the Battle of Muye (present Henan). This is justified as the Mandate of Heaven 天命. The Western Zhou capitals are near Xi’an.

722 BC Spring and Autumn period. The Zhou dynasty devolves into warring lords. Jìn is a major state in modern Shanxi on the Yellow River, with Qin to its west (including modern Xi’an) and Qi to its east on the Bohai Sea. Chǔ is to its south on the Yangtze River. Wu is a minor state east of Chu on the East China Sea, with its capital near present Shanghai.

551 BC. Hundred Schools of Thought

Ping rules Chu from 528 BC and his son Zhao rules from 515 BC. Fei Wuji induces King Ping to marry the bride of Crown Prince Jian. Fei persuades King Ping to exile Prince Jian and kill his adviser Wu She. She’s son Wu Zixi escapes swearing vengeance. In 514 BC, Zixi helps Helü 阖闾 become king of Wu. Zixin recommends the assassin Zhuan Zhu, who kills king Liao with a dagger hidden in a fish. In 506 BC, Helü defeats Wu at the Battle of Boju, and Zixu exhumes and beats King Ping’s corpse.

496 BC. Goujian 句踐 rules Yue to 465 BC.

476 BC Warring States period begins with the partition of Jin into Han, Zhao, and Wei led by rival nobles.

221 BC Qin dynasty and unified Imperial China under Qin Shi Huang 秦始皇.

202 BC Han dynasty establishes a Pax Sinica 中华治世. Western Han is the older period.

220 Six Dynasties
220 Three Kingdoms: Emperor Xian abdicates in favor of Cao Wei, son of Cao Cao. In response 刘备 declares himself Emperor of Shu Han (Zhuge Liang), and 孙权 declares himself emperor of Eastern Wu.

618 Tang dynasty.

Art

907 Zhu Wen begins the 五代十国 period by overthrowing the Tang dynasty. He founds the Later Liang dynasty in northern China, which is quickly succeeded by four more dynasties. The last is the Later Zhou dynasty, which conquers most of the Southern Tang kingdom in 950. Meanwhile, southern China is divided into ten kingdoms.
916 Abaoji 阿保机 founds the Liao dynasty 辽朝 or Khitan Empire, north of the five dynasties. He was chief of the Yelü 耶律 or Yila 移剌 clan of the Khitan 契丹 people. In 938 he captures the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun 燕云十六州 including Youzhou (present Bejing) from the Later Jin dynasty.

960 Zhao Kuangyin founds the Northern Song dynasty by overthrowing the Later Zhou.

1271 Mongol Kublai Khan proclaims the Yuan dynasty 元朝. He conquers the Southern Song dynasty in the Battle of Yamen in 1279. He suspends the imperial exam.

1368 Han Ming dynasty conquers the Yuan dynasty including Manchuria. Mongols retreat to the rump Northern Yuan dynasty in the Mongolian Plateau.

Classic Chinese Novels 古典小说 四大奇書. The vernacular novel for a larger audience of women and merchants.

1636 Manchu Hong Taiji proclaims the Qing dynasty and conquers Joseon and the Mongolian Plateau. The British East India Company gradually dominates trade with China.
1644 Peasant revolts 明末民变 end the Ming dynasty. Li Zicheng captures Xi’an in 1643 and Beijing in 1644. Manchu regent Dorgon defeats him at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, the eastern end of the Great Wall near Beijing. In 1645 Dorgon goes south through Xi’an, and Manchu general Dodo terrorizes other cities to surrender by killing 200,000 people in the Yangzhou massacre. Meanwhile, peasant leader Zhang Xianzhong kills a million people in Sichuan.
Kangxi Dictionary (1716) by the Hanlin Academy is published in block prints.
Qianlong Emperor 乾隆帝 is the fifth emperor from 1735 and the longest reigning. The High Qing era marks its peak of prosperity.
1761 The Tiandihui is founded by Ming loyalists to resist the Manchu invasion and named after Water Margin (c. 1400). It eventually becomes the Triad.
1776 Siku Quanshu 四库全书 is the largest collection of books at 997 million words. Ordered by the Qianlong Emperor.

Japan

Japan is the third-largest Asian economy after China and India, and the closest US ally.

Japanese folklore: kami 神 are gods. seven generations of kami 神世七代 ending with Izanagi and Izanami. Sun goddess Amaterasu 天照大神 rules heaven 高天原. Siblings moon goddess Tsukuyomi and storm god Susanoo. Rice kami Inari.
Amaterasu’s grandson Ninigi-no-Mikoto is great-grandfather of Japan’s first emperor, Emperor Jimmu. Ninigi brought to earth the Imperial Regalia of Japan: the sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the mirror Yata no Kagami, and the magatama (curved bead) Yasakani no Magatama.

yokai 妖怪 or mononoke are spirits. Include vengeful spirits (onryo), dead spirits (shiryo), and live spirits (ikiryo). Fox kitsune, turtle kappa, and winged tengu. Oni are ogre spirits. Kijo or onibaba are hag spirits.

Shinto is a polytheistic and animistic belief in kami 神 spirits. torii gates mark the entrance of shinto shrines. All life has musubi. Miko shrine maidens wear a white kosode robe and red hakama trousers.

Beauty: wabi-sabi of austere beauty and beauty of patina and aging. Imperfection, serene melancholy, spiritual longing. Yugen 幽玄 profound.
Clothing: kimono 着物 robe, obi belt, tabi split-toed socks, and zori sandals.
Kaiseki is a meticulous, artful multi-course dinner. Each dish in its own bowl.

Japanese food

14,000 BC Jomon period. Complex hunter-gatherer cultures with limited agriculture.

1000 BC Yayoi period: rice paddies and better architecture.

Colonialism in Asia

1757 Canton System 一口通商 requires all trade to occur through Canton (now Guangzhou 广州). Chinese goods could only be bought with silver bullion, leading to European trade deficits. British East India Company sells India opium to China, reversing the balance of trade.
1790 Peking opera is founded when Hui opera Huiju 徽剧 from Anhui is introduced to Bejing during the Qianlong Emperor’s eightieth birthday celebration. It developed from zaju and uses highly stylized dance, arias, and drums with elaborate costumes and a bare stage.
1794 White Lotus Rebellion weakens the Qing government.
1807 Zheng Yi Sao is the most successful pirate in history, leading 400 ships with 40,000 pirates, and retiring peacefully.
1839 First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanjing begins the Century of humiliation 百年国耻. The unequal treaties grant extraterritorial concessions in treaty ports with free trade, travel, and evangelization.
1850 Taiping Rebellion kills over 20 million people and weakens the Qing dynasty. It is peasant-driven and led by a Christian Hakka who claimed to a brother of Jesus Christ.
1856 Second Opium War. The Self-Strengthening Movement acquires more modern weapons but is largely ineffective.

1853 Perry Expedition. The US Navy opens Japan with Black Ships and Dahlgren cannons. The shogun signs five unequal Ansei Treaties with the US, Britain, Russia, Netherlands, and France. The first is the Harris Treaty of Amity at the Convention of Kanagawa. Tokugawa Iesada is very ill. The Bakumatsu period destroys gold standard and leads to economic decline. Antiforeign backlash in the Sonnō jōi (“Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians”) movement.

1862 Japanese Embassy to Europe
1863 Emperor Kōmei issues the Order to expel barbarians. The Satsuma regent kills British trader Charles Lennox Richardson, leading to the brief Bombardment of Kagoshima and then reparations and friendly British-Satsuma relations. The Choshu clan attacks US, France, and Dutch ships. In the Shimonoseki campaign, British warships reopens the strait and imposes $3M in reparations.
1867 The shogun invites the British Tracey Mission and French military mission to Japan to modernize the Bakufu. These are interrupted by the Boshin War. The foreign powers agree to be neutral in the war, though the French unit remains until Imperial forces win the Battle of Ueno.
1868 Meiji Era. The Meiji Restoration of the Chrysanthemum Throne.

1864 Regent Heungseon Daewongun strengthens central authority and enforces isolationism. He destroys the US merchant ship General Sherman in 1866 and ignores the United States expedition to Korea. He executes seven French missionaries and repels the French expedition to Korea in 1866. In 1873, Queen Min forces Daewongun to resign in 1873 by allying with supporters of foreign trade, restoring King Gojong.
1876 Japan uses gunboat diplomacy to impose the unequal Japan-Korea Treaty.
1882 Korea signs the Joseon-United States Treaty.
1882 Imo Incident. Soldiers riot over corruption in paying wages, overruning the palace. Soldiers were resentful after King Gojong to modernize the army with Japanese military advisers. In response, Queen Min invites 4,500 Chinese troops to suppress the rebellion and signs the China-Korea Treaty of 1882 making Korea a tributary state.
1905 Japan colonizes Korea in the Japan-Korea Treaties. Japan bans the Korean language and commits the the Gando Massacre, Kantō Massacre, Jeamni massacre, and Shinano River incident.

1861 Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后 becomes regent. She enacts some mild reforms in the Tongzhi Restoration. She overrules the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898 by the Guangxu Emperor.
1884 Sino-French War. France conquers north Vietnam from China to promote Catholicism.
1895 First Sino-Japanese War. Japan wins, but in the Triple Intervention, Russia allies with Germany and France to force Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula.
1897 Russia leases the warm-water port of Port Arthur on the Liaodong Peninsula west of Korea. Vladivostok on the north shore of the sea of Japan is only ice-free in the summer.
1898 Germany leases the Shandong province as part of the Kiautschou Bay concession.
1899 The US calls for the Open Door Policy of equal trade and territorial integrity in China.
1900 Boxer Rebellion. Cixi supports a revolt by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists against imperialism and Christianity. The Eight-Nation Alliance suppresses the revolt. In the chaos, Russia occupies Manchuria. Cixi implements the late Qing reforms 晚清改革. Yuan Shikai makes the New Army 新军 or Beiyang Army the most powerful in China.

China

1911 Revolution or Xinhai Revolution. Sun Yat-sen overthrows the Qing dynasty. Sun founds the Revive China Society 兴中会 in 1894, the Tongmenghui anti-monarchist alliance in 1905, and the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1912. The revolution begins with the Wuchang Uprising in the New Army. Further uprisings force child emperor Puyi to abdicate.
1912 Yuan Shikai founds the Beiyang government. He bans the KMT in 1913.
1912 Anglo-Japanese alliance against Russian expansion in Manchuria.
1914 Japan and Britain capture Shandong in the Siege of Tsingtao.
1915 Japan makes 21 demands 二十一条 to extend their influence in China, sparking the urban populist New Culture Movement.
1915 Brief National Protection War after Yuan Shikai proclaims himself emperor.

1916 Warlord Era of civil war after Yuan dies. Premier Duan Qirui leads the dominant Anhui clique. Relations deteriorate with President Feng Guozhang’s Zhili clique.
1917 Duan enters WWI allied with Japan against Russia. Japan funds his civil war against rivals with Nishihara Loans. In 1918, he signs the Sino-Japanese Joint Defence Agreement giving Japan wide influence in Manchuria, leading to student protests.
1919 Treaty of Versailles transfers German territory in Shandong to Japan, sparking the May Fourth Movement 五四运动 protest in Tiananmen Square.
1920 Zhili-Anhui War. Feng’s Zhili clique destroys Qirui’s Anhui clique. The US and Europe generally recognizes the Zhili clique.
1924 First United Front or KMT-CCP Alliance. Sun needed Soviet aid for his unification effort, and the Soviets broker the Sun-Joffe Manifesto. The CCP has around 1,000 urban intellectuals. Sun, Chiang Kai-shek, and Soviets found the Whampoa Military Academy (now ROC Military Academy). Premier Zhou Enlai is a political instructor at the Academy, and PLA head Lin Biao graduated from the Academy.
1925 Sun Yat-sen dies, treasurer Liao Zhongkai is assassinated, and Hu Hanmin is arrested as a suspect.
1926 Canton Coup. Chiang Kai-shek leads a purge of communists in the KMT after Wang Jingwei made an abortive coup attempt against him.
1926 Chiang’s Northern Expedition reunifies China. However, corruption and economic stagnation continues, leading to the Chinese Communist Revolution.
1926 Japan Showa era of Emperor Hirohito. Development of the big 4 wartime zaibatsu conglomerates.

1927 First Kuomintang-Communist Civil War 十年内战 begins with the Nanchang uprising on August 1 八一. The CCP establishes the Red Army 红军 and captures Wuhan, the capital of Hubei. The CCP is also strong in Hunan and Jiangxi. Mao’s Hunan Report (1927) advocates a peasant revolution, saying “revolution is not a dinner party” 革命不是请客吃饭.
1927 Shanghai Massacre. KMT general Bai Chongxi executes hundreds of communists allied with the Soviets.
1927 CCP military lead Zhou Enlai and his deputy Zhu De lead a failed Nanchang uprising and retreat in the Little Long March. Mao leads a failed Autumn Harvest Uprising and retreats with 1,000 people. They join up in the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi and Fujian, which in 1931 becomes the Jiangxi Soviet 闽赣苏区 of the Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR).
1928 Zhang Xueliang leads Manchuria after Japan assassinates his father Fengtian clique leader Zhang Zuolin in the Huanggutun incident. Zhang issues the Northeast Flag Replacement 东北易帜 accepting KMT rule.
1929 Chiang suppresses the Central Plains War.
1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Chiang prioritizes defeating the CCP and compromises with Japan, which is unpopular.
1934 Long March. The Red Army escapes to Shaanxi during the fifth KMT encirclement campaign, killing landlords and recruiting peasants. Mao Zedong becomes CCP chairman, with Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping as vice chairs.
1938 People’s war 人民战争 doctrine. Mao delivers On Protracted War which fights state power using broad popular support and guerilla warfare 游击战 in hostile countryside instead of decisive positional warfare 阵地战. Establishes a revolutionary base area 革命根據地 in a remote mountainous or forested area, spreads throughout the surrounding countryside on land reform policies, and then captures cities with mobile warfare 运动战.

1936 The Second United Front forms in the Xi’an Incident. Generals Chang Hsüeh-liang and Yang Hucheng kidnap Chiang and forces him to stop attacking the CCP. Japan severely weakens the KMT. The CCP adopts popular guerrilla tactics and controls most of the countryside. The Red Army grows to 1.3 million members and its militia grows to 2.6 million members.
1939 Emperor Hirohito leads Japan into World War II.
1940 Hundred Regiments Offensive is a CCP offensive against Japan.
1941 New Fourth Army incident. KMT forces ambush the New Fourth Army.
1942 Japan executes 250,000 civilians in the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign.
1944 Operation Ichi-Go is the last Japanese offensive against the KMT.
1945 Soviet invades Manchuria and deny access to the KMT. The Japanese Kwantung Army of 700,000 surrenders.
1945 US occupies Japan, forming the State of Japan. The Reverse Course shifts from demilitarization and democratization to economic reconstruction and remilitarization in support of U.S. Cold War objectives in Asia. The Red Purge removes alleged communists from desirable jobs.

1945 Second Kuomintang-Communist Civil War 解放战争. The CCP captures Japanese weapons and wins the Shangdang Campaign, capturing 35,000 KMT troops. The US and Soviet Union tries to negotiate a peace in the Double Tenth Agreement, which fails.
1948 Liaoshen campaign 辽沈会战. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 解放军 captures Manchuria and 500,000 KMT soldiers in the Siege of Changchun.
1948 Pingjin campaign 平津战役 captures Beijing and Tianjin.
1949 Huaihai campaign 徐蚌会战. The PLA destroys the KMT army and reaches the Yangtze river.
1949 Yangtze River Crossing campaign 渡江战役 captures the KMT capital at Nanjing. The KMT retreats to Guangzhou (Canton), Chongqing, Chengdu, and Taiwan, finally winning the Battle of Guningtou to defend Kinmen 金门 island.

1949 Mao Zedong proclaims the People’s Republic of China (PRC). China continues the Uyghur genocide.
1949 China overvalues the renminbi to enable cheap machinery imports for import substitution.
1950 Land Reform Movement 土改 and the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries 镇压反革命运动 kills 1 million landlords, sends another million to labor camps 劳动改造, and decreases inequality.
1951 China annexes Tibet in the Seventeen Point Agreement. The 14th Dalai Lama flees to India after the 1959 Tibetan uprising.
1953 China’s first five-year plan expands state control of industry.
1956 Hundred Flowers Campaign 百花齐放 briefly allows criticism.
1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign 反右运动 transforms China to fascism.
1958 Great Leap Forward 大跃进. Mao tries to industrialize China by mandating people’s communes. The Four Pests campaign targets rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Locust swarms destroy rice fields.
1959 The Lushan Conference purges defense minister Peng Dehuai for opposing the Great Leap Forward.
1959 The Great Chinese Famine 三年大饥荒 kills 40 million.
1959 PLA suppresses the Tibetan uprising. The 14th Dalai Lama flees to India.
1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference 七千人大会. President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping promote market reform 三自一包.
1964 Mao develops Third Front secret industrial and military facilities in the rugged interior of the country in case of US invasion.
1966 The Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 restores Mao to power beginning with Red August.

1978 Deng Xiaoping is the “Architect of Modern China”, promoting economic reform 改革开放, Boluan Fanzheng 拨乱反正, socialism with Chinese characteristics 中国特色社会主义, and Deng Xiaoping Theory 邓小平理论.

Jiang Zemin is third leader from 1989 to 2002. He says that the CCP has Three Represents 三个代表, representing development, culture, and the people. He is initially conservative. In 2000 he promotes a Go Out strategy 走出去战略 for domestic companies to enter foreign markets. He served as mayor of Shanghai, building the Shanghai clique 上海帮.
In 1992, Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour promotes continued economic liberalization. He says:

Hu Jintao is fourth leader from 2002 to 2012, chosen by Deng Xiaoping. He promotes a technocratic and more balanced Scientific Outlook on Development 科学发展观 and a more just Harmonious Society 和谐社会. Hu led the Communist Youth League of China and built the Tuanpai 团派, a populist faction of humble backgrounds, more education, and more concern about inequality, including Li Keqiang.

Xi Jinping 习近平 is fifth leader from 2012. He directs an anti-corruption campaign led by Wang Qishan that targets political rivals including the Jiang faction. He is a Princeling 太子党. His allies include Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning.

Modern Asia

Four Asian Tigers are Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

1945. GHQ (General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) occupies Japan. Royal family pays 90% tax.

Japanese economic miracle.

San Francisco System: US pursues bilateral agreements over multilateral organizations. Asian nations did not have shared democratic values or a common threat. Mutual defense treaties with Japan (1951), Philippines (1951), South Korea (1953). Thanat–Rusk communiqué with Thailand (1962).

1959 Lee Kuan Yew becomes the first prime minister of Singapore. He promotes export-oriented industrialisation and favorable conditions for foreign direct investment, increasing life expectancy by ten years. He builds public housing. However, he also suppresses free speech and labor movements, and inequality increases.
1963 Malaysia and Singapore become independent from Britain.
1965 Singapore becomes independent.

1800 The Dutch nationalize the Dutch East India Company, creating the Dutch East Indies.
1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty. The Dutch cede Malacca to Britain.
1945 Indonesia wins independence with Sukarno as president. In 1966, the economy collapses with 600% inflation.
1967 Suharto becomes a military dictator. The Berkeley Mafia economists help control inflation by promoting free markets and reversing many progressive economic reforms, leading to strong economic growth but also vast corruption. Suharto gets Western support as an anti-communist.
1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor and a 24-year occupation kills 100,000 people.

1989 Heisei era of Emperor Akihito.
1997 Asian financial crisis
2019 Reiwa era of Emperor Naruhito.

Malacca Strait is the busiest in the world, carrying 25% of trade volume. Between Malaysia and Indonesia. Can be blockaded.

Belt and Road Initiative builds infrastructure through debt financing.

The South China sea is disputed between China, the Philippines, Malaysia. Taiwan and China both claim all of the Spratly Islands. A UN arbitration ruled that the Spratly Islands are rocks without a right to a 200 mile exclusive economic zone. China also seized Scarborough Shoal to the north near the Philippines. Japan controls the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands and the Anpo US-Japan defense treaty covers the islands. China’s Air Defense Identification Zone includes the Senkaku islands.

2016. Tsai Ing-wen becomes president of Taiwan and a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). She takes a harder stance against China.
2024. Lai Ching-te becomes president of Taiwan.

2014 Hong Kong protests

Umbrella movement

India

3300 BC Indus valley civilization in India lasts around 1000 years

1500 BC. Vedic age, including the Varna social classes: Brahmin priests and teachers, Kshatriya rulers and warriors, Vaishya farmers and merchants, and Shudra artisans and servants.

800 BC The second urbanisation.
600 BC The Mahajanapadas are sixteen kingdoms, which consolidate into four great powers of Magadha (furthest east), Kosala, Vatsa (center north), and Avanti (central).
322 BC Chandragupta founds the Maurya Empire in the Central Ganges Plain. It expands to all of India except southern India, which is ruled by the Tamil kings. It develops the Brahmi script.

1206 Delhi Sultanate is founded.
1526 Mughal Empire is founded by Babur invading from Afghanistan. As a gunpowder empire, its professional army consists of sepoys with muskets. Peasants are taxed at over 50%.

1757 British East India Company begins controlling territory. It replaces the Bengal ruler in the Battle of Plassey. It begins collecting taxes after the Battle of Buxar of 1764. In 1773, Governor-General Warren Hastings begins ruling Bengal.
1780 Britain monopolizes the salt trade and imposes a 250% salt tax.
1803 Britain conquers Odisha to maintain its salt monopoly.
1843 Britain builds the Inland Customs Line to avoid smuggling from the west.
1848 Second Anglo-Sikh war. Britain annexes Punjab.
1857 British Raj administered by the India Office after the Indian Rebellion is suppressed. The Raj standardizes and strictly enforces rigid caste listings to decide moral worth, job qualifications, tax rates, and criminal profiling.
1885 Indian National Congress.
1930 Dandi Salt March protests the salt tax. Led by Mahatma Gandhi.
1947 Indian independence.
1947 Partition of India and Pakistan in the Karachi Agreement. In the Kashmir conflict, India, Pakistan, and China claim Kashmir. Large-scale violence leaves 1 million dead and 10 million displaced. Mass migration of Muslims to Pakistan. Bengal splits into Bangladesh and West Bengal.
1962 Sino-Indian War preserves the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

1971 Bangladesh declares independence from Pakistan, and Pakistan kills around 400,000 people. Third India-Pakistan war establishes the line of control as the de facto border.
2009 Sheikh Hasina becomes PM. Grows authoritarian, reinstating a 30% quota in 2024, leading to the quota reform movement. Anti-discrimination Students Movement organizes the non-cooperation movement.

2012 Delhi gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern. India bans publishing a rape victim’s name so she was known as Nirbhaya (“fearless”).

2014 Narendra Modi is 14th prime minister of India.

Egypt

The Ennead are the nine gods worshipped at Heliopolis.
Atum primordial god, the evening sun. Merged with Ra, god of the Sun, a falcon head. Fights Apep, god of darkness, a snake.
Shu and Tefnut, children of Atum.
Nut and Geb, children of Shu, father of Osiris.
Osiris is the green god of rebirth and the underworld, Duat. Wears the atef, a hedjet flanked by ostrich feathers which curl down at the tip. Bears his son Horus. The Eye of Horus is a symbol of health and stability.

Neith is a prime creator goddess of the cosmos, sometimes wearing the red crown, having a shield symbol and archery.
Anubis, a canine, god of the underworld, weighs the heart against Maat, an ostrich feather. Ammit, a crocodile-lion-hippo god, devours the unworthy dead.
Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra, goddess of war and medicine.
Wadjet, a cobra ruler of Lower Egypt.
Bastet, an alabaster lioness or cat.
Amun, blue skin.
Ptah, god of craftsmen depicted with green skin, skintight shroud, divine beard, and holding an ankh-djed-was.
Thoth, god of wisdom, ibis head. Wife Maat, goddess of truth and balance, wears an ostrich feather. Daughter Seshat, scribe goddess of science, wears leopard skin.

Believed in many parts of the soul: body, spirit, name, personality, vital essence, heart, shadow, power or form.

The uraeus, an upright cobra, represents Wadjet.
A nemes is a royal head cloth, striped across the forehead with large flappets hanging down to both shoulders behind the ears, and tied in the back.
The khat is a simple royal head cloth, hanging open at the back.
The pschent is the double crown of Egypt, combining the white hedjet of Upper Egypt and the red deshret of Lower Egypt. The front features the uraeus and a vulture representing Nekhbet.
The hedjet looks like a bowling pin.
The deshret is a narrow truncated spike, set towards the back on a large cylindrical base, with a tendril protruding from the front and curling up. It was typically woven from flax or other fiber.
The khepresh is the blue crown, curving back and flaring out from the sides.
The djed represents the spine of Osiris.
The was sceptre represents power and is topped with an abstract animal head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_philosophy

3400 BC. Gebelein predynastic mummies.

Early dynastic period (3150 BC). The First and Second Dynasties occur after King Menes aka Narmer unifies Upper and Lower Egypt. The capital of Memphis is the largest city in the world at 30,000 people. Burials at the royal necropolis of Umm el-Qa’ab in Abydos.

Old Kingdom (2686 BC), Third to Sixth Dynasties.
Imhotep is a high priest of the Third Dynasty. He builds the Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, the Necropolist of Memphis, a step pyramid that was the world’s tallest structure.
Sneferu (2613 BC) founds the Fourth Dynasty. He builds the Meidum (301’), the second pyramid in the world, the Bent Pyramid (344’), and the Red Pyramid (344’). The Red Pyramid is the first smooth-sided pyramid and the third-largest Egyptian pyramid.
Khufu (2589 BC) succeeds Sneferu and builds the Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest Egyptian pyramid at 481’.

First Intermediate Period (2181 BC), Seventh to Eleventh Dynasties.

Middle Kingdom (2061 BC), Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties. Capital at Thebes (modern-day Luxor), on the eastern bank of the Nile, containing the Karnak Temple Complex and Luxor Temple. The western bank contains the Theban Necropolis including the Valley of the Kings.

Second Intermediate Period (1705 BC), Fourteenth to Seventheeth Dynasties.

Egyptian Empire aka New Kingdom (1549 BC) spanning the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties are the peak of Egypt’s power.

Ahmose I founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, with the capital at Thebes.
Hatshepsut was the fifth pharoah as queen regnant, taking on masculine roles and depictions.
Thutmose III, the sixth pharaoh, is the greatest military pharoh, winning 17 campaigns over 53 years. Thebes (pop. 80,000) becomes the largest city in the world.
Amenhotep III is the ninth pharoah. His morturary temple is the largest in the world. It is flanked by the Colossi of Memnon, two massive statues of him.
Akhenaten, the tenth pharaoh, and his great royal wife Nefertiti introduced Atenism, an monotheistic religion, and built a new capital city, Amarna. The reforms were unpopular and wiped from history after his death. Thutmose crafts the colorful Nefertiti Bust.
Tutankhamun, the boy king, died from malaria or an infected broken leg. His aged uncle Ay ruled for four years, then the Commander of the Army Horemheb ruled for 14 years before appointing his vizier as successor. His tomb KV57 is unfinished.

Ramesses I founded the Nineteenth Dynasty.
Seti I, second pharaoh, reconquered territory in Canaan and Syria threatened by Hittites. His memorial contains the Abydos King List.
Ramesses II is the third and greatest pharoah. He won 15 campaigns and tied one, the Battle of Kadesh, over 34 years. Tomb KV5, the largest tomb with around 120 chambers, contains most of his children. He commissions a massive statue, which inspires the poem Ozymandias, after his Greek name.
Ramesses III is buried in Tomb KV11. A wide corridor framed by squat columns featuring large human figures. A stairwell descending to an underground corridor densely inscribed with columns of sparse hieroglyphs, with thin inset square arches at intervals. A massive open space with a rounded ceiling, flanked by large recessed columns, featuring a broken rock sarcophagus.

Third Intermediate aka Libyan Period (1069 BC), Dynasties 21-25.

Late Period (672 BC), Dynasties 26-31

Hellenistic or Ptolemaic Kingdom (332 BC), Dynasties 32-33. Alexander the Great founds Alexandria and dies. Ptolemy founds the Mouseion and the Library of Alexandria. He is a bodyguard of Alexander. Hipparchus and Eratosthenes lived at the Library.

Roman Egypt (30 BC) rules until the Arab conquest in 641. Coptic is an Egyptian dialect with Greek influence.

Middle East

Geography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamian_mythology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_near_eastern_cosmology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C5%ABma_Eli%C5%A1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_hoe

Sumerian and ancient Semitic religion

The Bedouin are desert nomads who herd camels, sheep, and goats.

Keffiyeh, ghutrah, or shemagh is a square cotton scarf worn on as a headdress, often checkered or white. Secured with an agal, a doubled black cord ring of goat hair.

Cuisine

6400 BC Pottery Neolithic: Yarmukian culture in the Levant. Halaf (northwest), Samarra (central), Ubaid (southeast) cultures.

4000 BC Sumer civilization in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. The Sumerian language is an isolate. Pictographic proto-cuneiform develops around 3500 BC as attested by the Kish tablet.

2400 BC Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia lasts 200 years. The Semitic Akkadian language replaces Sumerian. Semitic also includes Arabic and Ethiopian languages like Amharic. Founded by Sargon of Akkad.

1750 BC Hittite kingdom in Anatolia speaking the extinct Anatolian language, first evidence of iron smelting. It is annexed by the Middle Assyrian Empire. The Mitanni kingdom is founded around 1600 BC on its southern border, speaking the Hurrian language. Both kingdoms splinter during the Bronze Age collapse.
900 BC King Gordias founds the Phyrigian kingdom at Gordion in Anatolia. King Midas rules from around 740 BC, making a vain prayer to have a golden touch. In 696 BC, the Cimmerian invasion of Phrygia by Iranian equestrian nomads in the Pontic-Caspian steppe sack.

700 BC Scytho-Siberian world of the Eurasian Steppe includes the Scythian, Sauromatian, and Sarmatian cultures of Eastern Europe, the Saka-Massagetae and Tasmola cultures of Central Asia, and the Aldy-Bel, Pazyryk and Tagar cultures of south Siberia.

1200 BC Phoenician city-states of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos in the Levant. Semitic languages: Aramaic and Canaanite (Phoenician, Ammonite, Hebrew, Moabite, Edmoite, Phillistine). First alphabet with a consistent writing direction (right to left). Maritime.
930 BC Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south, with the capital in Jerusalem. Neighbored by the kingdoms of Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Aram Damascus. Allegedly Jeroboam’s Revolt of ten tribes split a united kingdom.
747 BC Nabonassar becomes king of Babylon after 23 years. First listed in the Canon of Kings used by astronomers.
720 BC Assyrian captivity. The Assyrian Empire conquers the Kingdom of Israel and its capital Samaria, sieges Jerusalem, and forcibly relocates the Ten Lost Tribes inland.
700 BC. Median Empire in Persia (Iran) conquers the Urartu kingdom in the Armenian highlands (present Turkey).
612 BC Neo-Babylonian Empire overthrows the Assyrian Empire in the Battle of Nineveh.
589 BC The Kingdom of Judah’s revolts against Babylon are crushed in the siege of Jerusalem, which destroys Solomon’s Temple and relocates the Jews to Babylon in the Babylonian captivity.

Achaemenid Persian Empire

331 BC Alexander the Great conquers the Achaemenid Empire.

Seleucid Empire

Judea.

237 BC. Persian Parthian Empire reaches its peak in 94 BC under Mithridates II, conquering parts of the Seleucid Empire.

30. Kujula Kadphises founds the Kushan empire (modern Afghanistan) by uniting the Yuezhi tribes in Bactria.
127. Kanishka rules the peak of the Kushan empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations

Islam

622 Muhammad unifies Arab tribes, conquers the Arabian Peninsula, and dies.

632 Rashidun Caliphate conquers Sasanian Persia, the Levant (including Jerusalem and Syria) and Egypt in 641, and northern Africa from the Eastern Roman Empire. Jews are allowed back in Jerusalem. The first four caliphs all get assassinated: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali.

661 Umayyad Caliphate takes power in the First Fitna civil war, enforcing Arabic in Persia, Egypt, Azerbaijan.

750 Sunni Abbasid Caliphate

1071. Seljuk Empire in Turkey and Azerbaijan defeats the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert, capturing Jerusalem in 1073.

1099. The Kingdom of Jerusalem is founded in the First Crusade, which established four Crusader states (Outremer) in the Levant. In 1119, the Knights Templar sect is founded at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

1189. Saladin founds the Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt after capturing Jerusalem in 1187. The True Cross goes missing.

1206 Genghis Khan founds the Mongol Empire. He conquers Turkey in the Battle of Köse Dağ of 1243.
1241 Mongol invasion of Europe defeats the Hungarian army at the Battle of Muhi.
1258 Mongol Siege of Baghdad.

Ottoman Empire and oil

Persia

1501. Safavid Persian Empire founded by Shia Ismail I in Iran and the Caucasus, one of the Muslim Gunpowder Empires. Many Ottoman-Persian Wars.

The Sunni Ottoman Empire controlled Turkey, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula, which borders the Red Sea. Persia (present Iran) was its eastern neighbor on the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan is east of Iran. The grand vizier is head of government.

The Great Game is the British and Russian rivalry in Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet. Britain aims to secure neutral buffers to protect India, while Russia seeks to expand its empire.

Second Constitutional Era.

  1. The Young Turk Revolution forced the sultan to restore the constitution and elections. Turkey loses control of Bulgaria in the Balkan wars.

1913 The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) stages a coup, enters WWI, and commits genocide against minorities. The CUP kills 1 million Armenians, 200,000 Greeks, and 200,000 Assyrians.

The Arab Revolt of 1916 aimed to establish an independent Arab State, and allied with Britain to defeat the Ottoman Empire. The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence supported the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottoman Empire and promised a large Arab nation.

After losing World War I, the Ottoman Empire is partitioned by Britain and France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. The League of Nations mandate system formalizes French control of Lebanon and British control of Palestine and Iraq. France controlled southeastern Turkey, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon, while Britain controlled Israel and Palestine, Jordan, southern Iraq. Italy received Anatolia.

1924. Second Hellenic Republic replaces the Kingdom of Greece. In 1935, a military coup restores the Kingdom of Greece. In the 1946 Greek Civil War, the Kingdom defeats a communist revolt.
1967. Right-wing Greek junta overthrows the Kingdom. In 1974, Ioannidis briefly rules.
1974. Metapolitefsi (“regime change”). Karamanlis founds the democratic Third Hellenic Republic and legalizes the Communist Party.

1960. Cyprus gains independence from the UK. Greeks take over after intercommunal violence in 1963.
1974. Greek nationalists staged a coup with help from the Greek army. Turkey invades the northern third and sets up a puppet government without international recognition.

1919. Greco-Turkish War. Turkey wins independence in 1923 from the colonized Ottoman Empire and holds Eastern Thrace and Western Anatolia. The Treaty of Lausanne drops provisions for a Kurdish state and includes a population exchange where Greek orthodox peoples move to Greece and Muslims move to Turkey.
1955. Turkish government helps organize a pogrom against the Greek community in Istanbul. Power struggles over eastern Mediterranean sea and Aegean sea.
1960. Military coup executes left-leaning elected prime minister Menderes and retires 3,000 officers. President Demirel is elected in 1965. Far-left students attack US soldiers, and far-right Grey Wolves attack professors.
1971. Military coup by memorandum removes Demirel, but violence continues.
1980. Military coup arrests 500,000 people. In 1983, Turkey partially returns to democracy.
2004. Islamist Erdogan becomes prime minister.
2015. European migrant crisis increases polarization. Turkey hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Merkel accepts over a million refugees: wir schaffen das (“we can manage this”). In 2016, groups of African men sexually assault 1,000 German women on New Year’s Eve. Right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) gains 12%. Barcelona Volem acollir (“we want to welcome”) pro-refugee protest in 2017 is the largest at 200,000.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek-Turkish_earthquake_diplomacy

Kurds inhabit the Kurdistan region, a mountainous region around the Tigris river, consisting of southeastern Turkey, western Iran, northern Iraq, and northwestern Syria. Iraqi Kurdistan has been an autonomous region of Iraq since 1970, with a well-equipped militia, the pesh merga. Turkey consistently repressed the Kurds. Since 1978, has been in armed conflict with Turkey.

Kurds were privileged over Arabs in the French mandate, but were repressed after Syrian independence in 1946.
1978. Abdullah Öcalan founds the socialist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
1979. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad gives Ocalan refuge in exchange for helping with Syrian Kurdish relations.
1984. PKK insurgency in Turkey.
1998. Assad capitulated to Syria and Ocalan was imprisoned. After his capture, Ocalan changed to democratic confederalism. Ocalan’s reading list included Michel Foucault’s “Society Must Be Defended”, Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities”, and Murray Bookchin’s “The Ecology of Freedom” and “Urbanization Without Cities”.
2013. Two-year ceasefire.
2015. Erdogan loses his Parliament majority after the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and leader Demirtas wins 80 seats. Turkey is threatened by Rojava in Syria. War resumes. Turkey jails tens of thousands, destroys many Kurdish cities, displaces 350,000 people.

1744. Diriyah Pact is a mutual oath of allegiance (bay’ah) between Saud and Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The Saudi state and the Wahhabi religion ally to conquer Riyadh and the rest of the central region of Najd.

Zionism. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress starts a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing racial violence in Russia and Western Europe. Palestine was previously dominantly Muslim with just 5% Jews. Violence escalates in response to Jewish immigration and wealth disparities. The Jewish Rothschild dynasty was the wealthiest family in the world in 1900, financing the industrialization of Europe and Palestine settlements. In the WWI Battle of Beersheba of 1917, Britain captures Palestine and issued the Balfour Declaration supporting a home for Jews. The 1936 Arab Revolt causes thousands of deaths and the 1944 Jewish insurgency kills around 100 British people.

1947. UN approves the two-state UN Partition Plan. There were 0.6M Jews and 1.2M Arabs. The Gaza Strip bordering Egypt is 99% Arab (now 2M Arabs). The West Bank (East Jerusalem and hilly land bordering Jordan) was 99% Arab, and has 3M Arabs today. Galilee in the north bordering Lebanon was mostly Arab (now 50%). Today, 4M Israelis live in the coastal plain, including Tel Aviv and Haifa (north of Tel Aviv). The Plan also gave Israel most of the Negev desert (now 75% Israeli). Arab militias escalate a civil war against Jewish militias.

1948. First Arab-Israeli War begins when Britain ends the Mandate. Israel declares independence and the Arab League invades. Israel takes West Jerusalem.
1949. Armistice Agreement establishes a ceasefire at the Green Line, with less Arab territory: Jordan occupies the West Bank and Egypt occupies Gaza.

1952. Egyptian Revolution ends an elected but corrupt government.
1956. Suez Crisis. President Nasser of Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal, owned by France and Britain. Israel, Britain, and France invade but are forced to withdraw.

The UAE includes Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It is the sixth-largest oil exporter, the most diversified Gulf state, and an authoritarian monarchy federation without freedom of speech.

1967. Six-Day War. Israel takes Gaza and the West Bank, the Golan Heights in the northeast from Syria, and the Sinai peninsula from Egypt. Egypt closes the Suez Canal for eight years.

1946. Lebanon and Syria win independence from France.
1946. Jordan gains independence from Britain. Hussein bin Talal is king from 1953. Abdullah II is king from 1999.
1971. Qatar gains independence from Britain.

Lebanon

Iraq and Iran

1979 Soviet-Afghan War. The Soviet Union occupies Afghanistan for ten years to support their puppet government.

2001 9/11. Al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden destroy the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, killing 3,000 people. They also hit the Pentagon and hijack a fourth plane which crashes in rural Pennsylvania after a passenger revolt. Anwar al-Awlaki dies via drone strike in 2011.

2001 War on Terror. Bush frames an axis of evil of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, undermining efforts to support democracy and human rights.

2001 War in Afghanistan. Bush tries to capture Al Qaeda leaders, who flee into Pakistan. Taliban offered to surrender if bin Laden could return, but Bush installs a centralized democratic government that is plagued by corruption.

2003 Iraq war. Iraq is the third-largest oil exporter and is majority Shia. Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein developed illegal biological and chemical weapons. Murdoch supported the war to decrease the price of oil. The US invades from Kuwait in the south, fueling the growth of the Islamic State.

Modern Middle East

2011 Arab Spring

2011 Syrian civil war. Kurds rebel against Assad and the Syrian Arab Republic, causing 500,000 deaths and millions of refugees. Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah support the regime. In the Battle of Aleppo (2012-2016), Assad recaptures the largest city in Syria with 30,000 killed. In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria. In 2019, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is killed via drone strike.

Rojava is the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. It is founded as a democracy upholding gender and racial equality. The Democratic Union Party PYD is a leading political party in Rojava. Rojava also deported Arab villages, though Assad built Arab villages to divide Kurdistan, and the Arabs were accused of being ISIS allies. It has a major oil field around Rmelan producing 15,000 barrels of oil a day. The Kurdish militia (People’s Protection Units YPG) and other Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) ally with America and Iraq to defeat ISIS. In the Battle of Khasham, 500 Syrian soldiers and Russian Wagner mercenaries attack an SDF base hosting US soldiers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-hell.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/syrian-kurds-are-winning/
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/opinion/the-kurds-democratic-experiment.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/rojava_is_a_radical_experiment_in_democracy_in_northern_syria_american_leftists.html
https://www.geoexpro.com/articles/2014/02/how-much-oil-in-the-middle-east

Europe

Geography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Europe_topics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincer_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interior_lines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suing_for_peace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Greek_cuisine

Classical mythology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Hercules_media

Greek Gods can have ouranic (Olympic) and chthonic characteristics. Animal sacrifices to Olympic gods are roasted and eaten during the day in high altars, with incense and wine as a libation. Cthonic gods are associated with mortals and the underworld, as well as planting and growing crops. The animal sacrifice is a holocaust (burnt offering) in an earthen pit in a cave outside city walls.

Hesiod writes the Theogeny (birth of gods) around 750 BC and Works and Days (700 BC), a farmer’s almanac. Chaos bears Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (night). Nyx bears Thantaos (death) and the three Fates. Clotho (“spinner” or Nona) spins the thread of mortal life, Lachesis (“allotter” or Decima) measures the thread, and Atropos (“inexorable” or Morta) cuts the thread with shears. Nyx also bears Aether (upper sky) and Hemera (day) by Erebus.

Gaia (mother Earth) bears Uranus (Sky) and Pontus (Sea). From Uranus Gaia bears the Titans, three Cyclopes, and three Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers). Uranus hates his monstrous children and imprisons them. The Titans are Kronus and Rhea; Oceanus and Tethys who bear the river gods and the Oceanids; Coeus and Phoebe who bear Leto; Hyperion and Theia who bear Helios, Selene, and Eos; Iapetus, father of Atlas and Prometheus; Themis, god of justice; Mnemosyne. The Oceanids include the seven Pleiades nymphs. Helios (Sol or Hyperion) rides a fiery chariot across the sky with a radiant crown.

Kronus castrate Uranus with an adamant sickle from Gaia. Aphrodite (Venus) is born from sea foam from Uranus’s genitals. The giants, the Erinyes (avenging furies), and the Meliae (ash tree nymphs) are born from his blood. Kronus and Rhea bear Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon (Neptune), and Zeus. Demeter (Ceres) is the goddess of agriculture and fertility. Hestia (Vesta) is goddess of the hearth and fire. Kronus devours all his children, but Rhea replaces Zeus with the Omphalos stone.

Zeus (Jupiter or Jove) leads the Olympian gods, who overthrow the Titans in the Titanomachy. The Olympians frees the Hundred-Handers and imprisons the Titans in Tartarus guarded by Hundred-Handers. The Cyclopes make Zeus’s thunderbolt, Poseidon’s trident, and the cap of Hades, which grants invisibility. Prometheus steals fire from the Olympians. Zeus ties him to a rock, and each day an eagle eats his liver (believed to be the seat of human emotions), which then grows back overnight. Zeus and Heracles suppress the Gigantomachy revolt.

Zeus marries Hera (Juno), fathering Ares (Mars) and Hephaestus (Vulcan).
Athena (Minerva) springs from Zeus’ forehead after he swallows his consort Metis.
Hermes (Mercury) is the messenger god and wears winged sandals. He is the father of Pan, rustic god of nature with goat horns and legs.
Apollo is the god of archery and music. Artemis (Diana) is the virgin goddess of the hunt accompanied by nymphs. Jealous Hera ordered all the lands to shun their mother Leto, forcing her to give birth on the island of Delos.
Dionysus (Bacchus) is the god of wine, festivity, and theatre. He is accompanied by satyrs, ribald nature spirits.
The nine Muses are children of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory): Calliope (poetry), Clio (history); Euterpe (lyric poetry); Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymn), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy).
Morpheus is the god of dreams.
Every individual has a genius (male) or Juno spirit. Places have genius loci.
Mortals Alcyone and Ceyx called each other Zeus and Hera, so Zeus kills Ceyx. The gods change them into kingfishers and are given halcyon days (days without storms in winter) to nurture young nestlings.

Hades rules the underworld. He abducts Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. By eating a pomegranate seed, Persephone must spend a third of the year with Hades, causing winter. The dead enter by paying Charon an obolus coin to ferry across the river Styx (hate). Styx has children: Nike (“victory”), Zelus (“zeal”), Kratos (“power”), Bia (“might”). Other rivers include Acheron (woe), Cocytus (lament), Phlegethon (fire), and Lethe (oblivion). The dead are judged by kings Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus. The blameless are sent to Elysium, the common are sent to the Fields of Asphodel, and the evil are sent to Tartarus. Cerberus is the three-headed guard dog. Hecate is the goddess of witchcraft.

Tantalus tries to trick the gods into eating his son Pelops as a sacrifice. He is punished in Tartarus: whenever he reaches for fruit, the branches lift away, and whenever he bends to drink, the water recedes.

Sisyphus is punished for killing his guests. He cheats death by asking how the chains work and trapping death in the chains instead. As a result, no one dies, which annoys Ares enough to intervene. Sisyphus also has his wife disrespect his corpse, persuading Persephone to allow him to return to the upper world to schold his wife. He refuses to return and makes Hermes drag him back. Hades makes him to roll a boulder endlessly up a hill.

Orpheus visits Hades, who agrees to let his dead wife Eurydice return with him as long as they do not look back before reaching the upper world. He reaches the upper world first and looks back, losing Eurydice.

King Minos of Crete keeps the beautiful Cretan bull that he promised to sacrifice to Poseidon. In revenge, Poseidon makes Minos’s wife Pasiphaë fall in love with the bull, bearing the ferocious man-eating Minotaur. The Oracle at Delphi has Daedalus construct a labyrinth under the palace to hold the Minotaur. Every nine years, Minos forces King Aegeus of Athens to send seven boys and seven girls to be eaten. Hoping to have a son, Aegeus visits the Oracle of Delphi, who tells him “Do not loosen the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, lest you die of grief”. He visits King Pittheus of Troezen to interpret the prophecy. Troezen gets Aegeus drunk to bed Aethra, who bears his son Theseus. Aegeus returns to Athens but leaves his sword and sandals for Theseus. Theseus performs six labors to return to Athens, including Procrustes the Stretcher. Theseus volunteers to kill the minotaur. Princess Ariadne falls in love with him and gives him a ball of yarn for him to follow back, along with Daedalus’ instructions to go forwards and down. He returns with Ariadne and Phaedra and abandons Ariadne at Nexos. He forgets to put up white sails, causing King Aegeus to jump off a cliff in grief. The ship of Theseus was maintained down generations until each timber had been replaced, giving rise to a philosophical question of identity. Daedalus and his son Icarus escape from King Minos with wings made with beeswax. Icarus flies too close to the sun, melting his wings and drowning.

Inachus is the first god-king of Argos. His daughter Io is seduced by Zeus and bears the child King Epaphus of Egypt. Epaphus’s daughter Libya is seduced by Poseidon and bears King Belus of Egypt and King Agenor of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia.

Agenor’s son Cadmus founds Thebes. The Oracle at Delphi tells him to follow a cow with a half-moon on her flank. He sows dragon’s teeth which grow into fierce spartoi (“sown”). He throws a stone, causing them to fight until just five survive. The gods give him Harmonia, and he is succeeded by Polydorus, Labdacus, Laius, and Oedipus.

Oedipus is prophecied to kill his father and murder his mother. Laius sends a servant to expose Oedipus, but instead the servant gives him to King Polybus of Corinth. Trying to avoid the prophecy, Oedipus leaves for Thebes, killing his father in a quarrel on the way. He then answers the riddle of the Sphinx and marries his mother. Upon learning the truth, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself.

King Belus fathers King Danaus of Libya and King Aegyptus of Egypt. Danaus flees Aegyptus and becomes king of Argos, and is succeeded by his son Lynceus, grandson Abas, and great-grandson Acrisius. The Oracle at Delphi tells King Acrisius of Argos that his grandson would kill him, so Acrisius imprisons his daughter Danaë atop a bronze tower. Zeus visits her in a shower of gold and she gives birth to Perseus. Acrisius tosses them into the sea, and they wash ashore on the island of Serifos. where he is raised by the fisherman Dictys (“fishing net”) until King Polydectes lusts after Danaë and sends Perseus away.

King Perseus of Tiryns and Mycenae founds the Perseid dynasty. He beheads Medusa, a Gorgon with a petrifying gaze and a hair of snakes. Poseidon’s son Pegasus springs from her neck. Perseus rescues his future wife Andromeda from a serpent after Queen Cassiopeia of Ethiopia angered Poseidon. Perseus accidentally kills his grandfather with a quoit discus at a funeral games in Larissa. His sons include Electryon and Alcaeus. Alcaeus’s son Amphitryon accidentally kills King Electryon and flees to Thebes. Amphitryon’s wife Alcmene raises Heracles after being raped by Zeus.

Heracles. Jealous Hera sends two snakes to infant Heracles, who strangles and plays with them. Hera induces a madness that makes him kill his wife and children, and Pythia advises him to serve King Eurystheus of Mycenae for many years. Eurystheus sets the twelve Labours of Heracles: slay the Nemean lion and the Lernaean Hydra, capture the Ceryneian Hind and the Erymanthian Boar. Clean the Augean stables. Slay the Stymphalian birds. Capture the Cretan Bull. Steal the Mares of Diomedes. Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazon. Obtain the cattle of Geryon the giant. Steal three golden apples of the Hesperides. Capture Cerberus.

King Atreus of Mycenae founds the Atreid dynasty. He is the son of Pelops. His sons Agamemnon and Menelaus marry the daughters Clytemnestra and Helen of King Tyndareus of Sparta.

The Iliad and Odyssey (800 BC) mythologize the Trojan War. They are attributed to Homer, though they were composed by different authors after a long history of oral transmission.

The Judgement of Paris sparks the Trojan War. Hermes stops Eris, goddess of discord, from attending the wedding of Peleus and Thetis uninvited. Eris throws the golden apple of discord inscribed “to the fairest”. Zeus has Hermes lead Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite to the Trojan prince Paris. Paris was raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida after he is prophesied to destroy Troy. The goddesses bribe him with power, wisdom, or Helen. Helen is born after Zeus seduces Queen Leda of Sparta in the guise of a swan. Paris chooses Helen and takes her back to Troy after Cupid shoots her with an arrow. Unfortunately, all of Helen’s suitors swore an oath to defend her marriage. The oath was proposed by Odysseus to secure King Tyndareus’s support for his marriage for Penelope.

King Agamemnon of Mycenae, brother of Helen’s wife Menelaus, sails with a thousand ships described in the Iliad’s Catalogue of Ships. The prophet Calchas says that Artemis is blocking the fleet because Agamemnon had killed one of her sacred stags, so the troops force him to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Calchas prophesies that the first Achaean to land would be the first to die, so Odysseus protects himself by jumping on his shield.

Agamemnon sieges Troy for ten years. Agamemnon takes Chryseis as his concubine, and insults her father Chryses when he asks for her return. Chryses prays to Apollo, who sends a plague on the Achaeans. Agamemnon returns Chryseis and takes Achilles’ concubine Briseis, so Achilles stops fighting. Achilles lends his armor to his friend Patroclus, who is killed by Hector. In revenge, Achilles kills Hector and drags his body from his chariot. Zeus weighs the fate of Achilles and Memnon, and Memnon’s weight sinks. The gods decide that Achilles must die for killing too many of their children, and Paris shoots him in the Achilles heel with a poisoned arrow. Ajax kills himself after Odysseus wins Achilles’ armor forged by Hephaestus. (Vulcan)Philoctetes kills Paris with the bow of Heracles.

The Trojan Horse causes the fall of Troy. King Priam’s daughter Cassandra tries to warn the city but Apollo cursed her to never be believed. The Achaeans massacre the city and desecrate the temples, angering the gods. Nestor did not loot the city and is spared by the gods. Ajax the Lesser rapes Cassandra in the temple of Athena, who wrecks his ship before Poseidon kills him for insulting the sea. Agamemnon captures Cassandra. Clytemnestra kills him and replaces him with her lover Aegisthus, and she is in turn killed by her son Orestes. Odysseus captures Hecuba, Queen of Troy.

The Odyssey follows Odysseus’s ten-year journey home to Ithaca. His men forget themselves after eating with the lotus-eaters, but Odysseus drags them to the ship. The cyclops Polyphemus seals the crew in a cave with a giant boulder, but Odysseus blinds him and the crew sneaks out by hiding on the underbellies of sheep. But in pride Odysseus identifies himself, and Polyphemus prays and asks Poseidon to curse Odysseus to wander for ten years. While Odysseus slept, his crew opened his bag of winds from Aeolus, god of the wind. Circe turns the crew to pigs with drugged cheese and wine and seduces Odysseus. He listens to the Sirens while tied to the mast. They pass between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. His men hunt the sacred cattle of Helios and drown. The nymph Calypso keeps Odysseus for seven years as her lover until Athena complains. In Ithaca, Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar. His slave and swineherd Eumaeus treats him well, while Penelope’s suitors ridicule him. Odysseus kills all the suitors.

Greece

2000 BC The Minoan civilization is the first in Europe. They build enormous multistory buildings with courtyards on Crete and a few Greek islands, decorated with energetic art. They speak the unknown Minoan language and write Cretan hieroglyphs and Linear A. Bull-leaping is nonviolent bull fighting.

600 BC Aeolic verse is written in the Aeolic dialect of the island of Lesbos in Anatolia.

Greece is surrounded by the Aegean Sea in the east, the Sea of Crete in the south, and the Ionian Sea in the west.
The western coast of Anatolia (Asia Minor) is divided into Aeolia in the north, Ionia in the middle, and the region around the island of Rhodes in the south.
Counterclockwise around the Aegean Sea: Aeolia, Thrace, Macedon in northeast Greece, Thessaly in eastern central Greece, Delphi further inland, Thebes, the Attica peninsula including Athens, the Cyclades islands, and Ionia.
Counterclockwise around the Sea of Crete: Rhodes in Anatolia, Cyclades islands, Attica peninsula, the Isthmus of Corinth, Peloponnese peninsula, and Crete island. Corith is a populous trade city with ornate art and architecture.

Greece comprises three dialects: Ionian, Dorian, and Aeolian. Aeolian is spoken in Aeolia and Thessaly. Ionian (East Greek) is spoken around the Aegean Sea, including Athens. Dorian (West Greek) is spoken on the Peloponnese peninsula, including the Achaean tribe in the north. Dorian Sparta dominates the Laconia region in the southwest.

Sparta is an austere military diarchy. Spartiates are full citizens of the polis, while Perioikoi lived in the surrounding territory, and helots are slaves. Young men train in the agoge in three stages: paides (7-14), paidiskoi (15-19), and hebontes (20-29). Pederasty is a romance between an older erastes and a teenage eromenos. There are five villages. The gerousia (Spartan senate) consists of 28 men over 60 who serve for life, and the two kings. The gerousia judge the criminal court and proposes motions. The ecclesia is the citizens assembly, which votes on motions and elects the ephors and the gerousia by shouting. The ephors control foreign relations and judge the civil court. The ephors (one per village) are elected annually and cannot serve repeat terms. Ephors control the crypteia, a group of exemplary hebontes who repress and cull helots. The policy of Xenelasia generally bans foreigners to live in the area. Leon of Sparta and Agasicles are kings.

750 BC The diarchy forms from the merger of two villages (synoecism): two Agiad villages (Pitana and Mesoa, founded by Agis I c. 900 BC), and two Eurypontid villages (Limnai and Kynosoura). Lycurgus establishes the Great Rhetra, reforming society around the military.
724 BC First Messenian War. Sparta expands, enslaving the Achaeans.
650 BC Second Messenian War is a failed helot revolt.
The hippeus is the King’s guard. The ephors choose three hippagretai, who would each choose 100 hebontes.
300 BC Apollonius writes the Argonautica about Jason and the Argonauts’ quest for the Golden Fleece.
215 BC Spartan King Lycurgus abolishes the diarchy.

622 BC. Athens has its first written code, the Draconian constitution. Instead of arbitrary rule, citizens could appeal to the Areopagus (ruling council). The rules were harsh, imposing the death penalty for minor theft and allowing debt slavery. It distinguishes involuntary homicide, which is punished by exile.
594 BC. Archon Solon introduces the Solonian constitution. All landowners could serve in the boule, which ran daily affairs and proposed motionsAll citizens can participate in the ecclesia (assembly), which nominates archons and votes on motions. Solon also enacts the Seisachtheia abolishing all debt and freeing the hectemoroi (“one-sixth workers” or serfs). The social classes are thetes, zeugitae, hippeis, and pentacosiomedimni.
A periplus lists ports and coastal landmarks with their distances along a shore.

508 BC. Athenian Revolution. In 510 BC, Sparta tries to install an oligarchy of aristocrats sympathetic to Sparta. The people revolt and Cleisthenes introduces Athens democracy, with equal rights for free men. He replaces the four clans with ten tribes based on deme (area of residence). He introduces sortition for government positions. Parmenides and Heraclitus. Citizens can be ostracised or expelled from the city via a vote using ostracon, shards of pottery. The kalos kagathos (“good”) ideal of aristocratic gentleman includes otium, leisure time for writing and contemplation.

814 BC Carthage (in present Tunisia) is settled by Phoenician colonists from Tyre (in present Lebanon).
580 BC Sicilian Wars or Greco-Punic Wars.
540 BC. Naval Battle of Alalia. Greek Phocaean ships defeat a Punic-Etruscan fleet.
474 BC. Naval Battle of Cumae. Syracuse defeats the Etruscans.

508 BC Classical Greece spans the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian Wars, and Theban hegemony.

490 BC Greco-Persian Wars.
Prelude

492 BC First Persian invasion of Greece conquers Thrace and Macedon. Darius tries to punish Athens and Eretria for supporting the Ionian Revolt, but is defeated by Athens at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Hoplites (soldiers) use the phalanx formation and often wear the Vergina Sun symbol. Sparta led the Hellenic League but arrived too late because Spartan law forbid military action during the festival of Carneia.

480 BC. King Xerxes leads a failed second Persian invasion of Greece. Athenian general Themistocles plans a defense at Thermopylae and Artemisium.

431 BC Peloponnesian War.

335 BC. Aristotelianism includes deductive logic (the Organon), induction of first principles, and virtue ethics. Aristotle founds the Peripatetic school of philosophy at the Lyceum.

371 BC Theban hegemony begins with their victory at the Battle of Leuctra in the Theban-Spartan War.

Macedonian Empire.
359 BC. King Philip II expands Macedonia. He makes peace, reforms the army, and creates the Macedonian phalanx.

336 BC. Alexander the Great becomes King of Macedon. Thessaly and Athens rebel then surrender.
335 BC. Balkan campaign pacificies Thrace up to the Danube river.
335 BC. Battle of Thebes. Alexander destroys Thebes.
332 BC. Macedon conquers the Achaemenid Empire in the Battle of Gaugamela and He founds Alexandria in Egypt. The conquest creates Koine Greek which fuses Ionian with the Attic dialect of Athens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_of_Alexander
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_(2004_film)

323 BC. Hellenistic period after Alexander dies. The empire splits into Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Seleucid Empire. General Perdiccas agrees to lead as regent for Alexander’s son, but then assumes full control by murdering Meleager. He carries out the Partition of Babylon among his supporters, which devolves into the convoluted Wars of the Diadochi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(architecture)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_7_Wonders_of_the_World

Rome

Romans could legally kill slaves, who were conquered subjects, debtors, and children of slaves. Freed slaves wore the pileus, a brimless felt cap.
The pater familias (“father of the family”) held full power (potestas) over the household. Women could not vote or participate in politics.
Peregrini (foreign subjects) were not citizens.
Plebeians, laborers and serfs, had fewer rights than patricians, and wealthier citizens controlled the government. Patrician develops into the name Patrick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Roman_Republic#Assemblies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles#Greek_and_Persian_history

753 BC The Roman Kingdom is founded with Latin, Sabine (northwest of Rome), and Etruscan (northeast) peoples. The unwritten constitution includes the aristocratic Roman Senate as the advisory council and the Curiate Assembly, which expressed popular opinion and served as a court. Latin is stressed, but Classical Latin poets used Greek verse forms and quantitative meter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Greek_and_Latin_metre

In mythology, King Numitor of Alba Longa descends from the Trojan hero Aeneas and King Latinus of Latium. Numitor’s brother Amulius kills the king and makes his daughter Rhea Silvia a Vestal virgin, a priestess of the goddess of the hearth and home. Mars fathers Romulus and Remus with Rhea Silvia. Amulius has the twins left to die on Palatine Hill, but they are suckled by a she-wolf and raised by a shepherd. Romulus founds Rome after killing his brother. Etruscan priests guide him to an auspicious day, a new moon; the settlers give sacrifices in a pit (mundus); and Romulus plows the sulcus primigenius (“initial furrow”) marking the course of the city walls. Romulus then orchestrates the rape of the Sabine women, leading to the Battle of the Lacus Curtius. The Vestal Virgin Tarpeia opens the gates of the citadel (arx) to the Sabines, and they crush her with their shields and throw her off the Tarpeian Rock at Capitoline Hill. The Sabine women intervene and join the families in one community jointly ruled by Romulus and Sabine king Titus Tatius.

The second king of Rome, Sabine Numa Pompilius, builds the Regia (“royal house”), the Temple of Vesta, and the House of the Vestal Virgins at the Roman Forum. He founds the College of Pontiffs (“Collegium Pontificum”) as royal advisers and appoints Numa Marcius as the first pontifex maximus.

616 BC Lucius Tarquinius Priscus is the fifth king of Rome and first Etruscan king. He builds the Cloaca Maxima sewer after a great flood, draining the swampy Velabrum valley to the Tiber. He also builds the Circus Maximus, the first and largest stadium in Rome, for chariot racing.

509 BC Roman Republic overthrows King Tarquin. A disputed story involves the rape of Lucretia by the king’s second son, Sextus Tarquinius.
The unwritten constitution includes the Curiate Assembly, the Centuriate Assembly, and the Tribal Assembly. The Centuriate Assembly could declare war and elects the curule magistrates, with equestrians and the wealthiest citizens having the majority of votes. The government is known as Senatus Populusque Romanus SPQR, the senate and people of Rome.

The curule magistrates hold imperium, executive power, and are ranked in the cursus honorum (“course of honors”): censor, consul, praetor, curule aedile, and quaestor.

494 BC The Conflict of the Orders between plebeians (commoners) and patricians (aristocrats). Plebeians stage the first secessio plebis, a general strike, and gain their first representation, the plebeian tribune, which can veto consul orders. The Sabines, Volsci, and Aequi stage failed revolts.

Roman expansion in Italy

Macedonian Wars

Julius Caesar

31 BC Augustus, also known as Octavian, founds the Roman Empire, the Principate government, and the Pax Romana. He divides Rome into 14 administrative regions with 265 villages (vicus).

14 CE Emperor Tiberius. He begins the Temple of Jupiter, the biggest temple in the world in Baalbek (in modern Lebanon).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejanus

37 CE Emperor Caligula rules at age 24 and is popular with lower classes and loves watching gladiators, chariot racing, and theater. He builds the Circus of Nero in present-day Vatican City. He despises the senate and gets assassinated by senators.

41 CE Emperor Claudius, Caligula’s uncle, begins the conquest of Britain in 43 CE. He wins the Battle of the Medway. He completes the great Aqua Claudia, delivering 180,000 cubic meters of water per day over 43 miles with ten miles of tall arches leading to the city. It includes the eastern Porta Maggiore gate of white travertine limestone.

54 CE Emperor Nero. He enjoys acting, playing lyre, and chariot racing.

69 CE Flavian dynasty of Vespasian and his two sons.

96. Five good Roman emperors.

180 Commodus becomes increasingly dictatorial and performs as a gladiator.
192 Year of the Five Emperors after a wrestler assassinates Commodus by drowning him in the bath.
300 Physiologus is an early Christian bestiary. Phoenix rising from its ashes is Christ-like. Unicorn can only be captured by a virgin.

235 Crisis of the Third Century. Emperor Severus Alexander is assassinated. Emperor Aurelian reunites the empire in 275 and builds the Aurelian Walls around Rome. In 286, Emperor Diocletian divides the empire into the Tetrarchy government, appointing Maximian as emperor over the Western Empire. He also stabilizes the empire by making taxation more standardized and equitable. The Diocletianic Persecution of 303 executes Christians, traditionally including Saint George.

312 Roman emperor Constantine the Great establishes the Dominate or late Roman Empire, winning civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius. He converts to Christianity, issues the Edict of Milan ending persecution of Christians, and persecutes pagans, converting temples to churches. In 325, he convenes the First Council of Nicaea which produces the Nicene Creed. He builds the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, the holiest site for Christians, containing the site of crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus. The Catholic Feast of the Cross celebrates Constantine’s mother Saint Helena’s finding of the True Cross. He adopts the laborum flag that depicts the chi ro symbolizing Christ. He introduces more bureaucracy and ends the Praetorian Guard, long known for palace intrigues. He moves the capital to Constantinople (modern Istanbul). He creates a secular administration in a hierarchy of praetorian prefectures, dioceses, and provinces.

400 Saint Augustine of Hippo writes The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions. His Rule of Saint Augustine, the oldest monastic document, founds the Augustinians. He is a Berber from Roman Maghreb or North Africa who moves to Italy.

Migration Period. Germanic tribes fleeing the Huns cause the fall of the Roman Empire.
Roman-Germanic wars
330 Constantine allows the Vandals to settle in Pannonia in northern Italy.
376 Gothic War. Tervingi Goths enter the Roman Empire. The Romans lose the Battle of Adrianople of 378. In 382, Emperor Theodosius allows Goth kingdoms to settle in return for military support. Theodosius defeats a rebellion by Eugenius in 394, then dies in 395.
395 The Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine empire speaks Greek and views themselves as Romans. The death of Theodosius splits the Roman empire between ministers of his two incompetent sons. The Western Roman Empire soon devolves into warring kingdoms.
406 Vandals, Alans, and other tribes cross the Rhine and destroy many Roman cities. The Vandals migrate to Iberia in 409.
410 Sack of Rome by Visigoth king Alaric. 415 Visigoth king Walha settles in Gallia Aquitania in southwest France. 418 Visigoths invade Iberia. The Visigothic Kingdom expands across modern Spain and France in the Battle of Deols in 469 and the Battle of Arles in 471. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii by Martianus Capella influences medieval teaching of the seven liberal arts. Macrobius compiles religious lore in the Saturnalia.
429 Emperor Theodosius II compiles the Theodosian Code. It exempts churches from taxes and bans homosexuality.
429 Vandal Kingdom (pop 800,000) established in North Africa after sailing from Iberia. Rome acknowledges them in 435. Vandals capture Carthage in 439.
455 Vandals sack Rome
476 Germanic officer Odoacer ends the Western Roman Empire by deposing child emperor Romulus Augustus with support from the Roman Senate.
484 King Theodoric the Great an Ostrogoth, founds the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. He kills Odoacer, allies with Zeno, and captures the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain. His sister is queen of the Vandal kingdom until she is killed by the new Catholic Vandal king.

Early Middle Ages, 500 - 1000

Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire. Landowners could grant a precarium or benefice (land tenure) on request or precarius (“prayer”). It is revocable or precarious. In feudalism, a fief is granted in fealty or “in fee” in return for feudal allegiance, services, or payments. In contrast, an allod is an estate in land that is owned and not bestowed.

Welsh and Irish mythology. In the Battle of Arfderydd of 573, King Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde kills King Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio of Brython, causing Gwenddoleu’s bard Myrddin Wyllt to become a madman in the Caledonian Forest. Romano-British Ambrosius Aurelianus wins a battle against Anglo-Saxon invaders. The Morrigan is a goddess of war and fate, often appearing as a crow or Bab. The banshee keens or wails to herald the death of a family member.

Norse mythology: Hávamál (1000), Prose Edda (1220), Ynglinga saga (1225), skaldic and Eddic alliterative poetry. The Nine Worlds flank the world tree Yggdrasil. The world is created from the flesh of the primordial being Ymir, and populated from the first humans Ask and Embla.
Odin the Allfather presides over Asgard as leader of the Aesir, the principal gods. He is a god of wisdom and poetry, master of runes, raven shapeshifter, wielder of the spear Gungnir. He welcomes dead warrors to his grand hall of Valhalla and leads the Wild Hunt, a procession of fallen warriors across the sky. His wife Frigg is a cunning and maternal seer in the wetland halls of Fensalir.
Thunder god Thor.
The Vanir, gods of fertility, wisdom, and precognition, reside in Vanaheimr. The Aesir-Vanir War unifies them with the Aesir.
Freyr is goddess of fertility, peace, and harvest. Her son Fjölnir is the king of Sweden’s Yngling dynasty. He dies by drowning in a vat of mead.
Frigg and her son Baldr dream of his death. Frigg makes every object vow not to hurt Baldr, except mistletoe. Loki makes a spear from mistletoe and tricks Baldr’s blind brother Höðr into killing Baldr. In response, Odin bears the god Vali who kills Höðr and binds Loki with the entrails of his son Narfi. Jormungandr is the world serpent which encircles the earth.
In the end battle Ragnorok, Jormungandr and Thor will kill each other, Loki and Heimdall will kill each other, and the wolf Fenrir will kill Odin and be killed by Víðarr. The world will be reborn in flame.
Jotunn are a family similar to gods, later depicted as giants. Trolls dwell around rocks. Elves include svartalfar or dwarves (swarthy mountain crafters), demonic dokkalfar (“dark elf”) and angelic ljosalfar (“light elf”).

British mythology

The Matter of Britain is popularized in the pseudohistory Historia Regum Britanniae (1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which draws from the Historia Brittonum (828). Welsh Mabinogion (1100) includes the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. Brutus of Troy founds Britain and descends from the Trojan hero Aeneas. Corineus founds Cornwall and defeats the giant Gogmagog. Merlin is a cambion magician born of a woman and an incubus. Merlin disguises King Uther Pendragon as his enemy Gorlois to sleep with Gorlois’ wife Lady Igraine, who bears King Arthur. Arthur pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone as the true son of Uther. The Lady of the Lake gives King Arthur a different sword Excalibur made in Avalon. Morgan le Fay is Arthur’s sister and magical protector, and Guinevere is his queen. Arthur and Mordred die at the Battle of Camlann. Mordred is the son of Arthur and Arthur’s half-sister Morgause, queen of Orkney. The Knights of the Round Table include Launcelot and Arthur’s nephew Gawain. They go on a quest for the Holy Grail. Later French romances describe Camelot as the legendary castle of King Arthur.

Robin Hood is a yeoman (commoner) and archer who robs the rich to give to the poor. He leads his Merry Men against the Sheriff of Nottingham.

383 Magnus Maximus, the Roman general in Britain, revolts. Theodosius defeats him in the Battle of Save in 388.
407 Constantine III revolts in Brittania and recalls all his Roman troops to Gaul.
410 The Romano-British expel British magistrates, leading to sub-Roman Britain amid Saxon, Pict, and Scot raids. The Anglo-Saxon settle in Britain to protect Britons from other Gauls, establishing the Heptarchy, seven kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxon speak Old English. They are briefly stopped at the Battle of Badon. The king appoints an ealdorman to lead each shire (county), with the thegn or thane as the third rank. A ceorl or churl is a common free man.
577 Battle of Deorham. Wessex, the Kingdom of the West Saxons, defeats the Britons.
597 Augustine of Canterbury becomes the first archbishop of Canterbury.
871 Alfred the Great is King of Wessex. He wins the Battle of Edington of 878 against the Vikings.
793 Viking Age. Norse Vikings raid Europe until they settled in Normandy and England. Place runestone and picture stone monuments. Around 1000, Scandinavian kings convert to Christianity.

France
507 The Merovingian dynasty rules the Franks in modern-day France.
Vandalic War of 533. Justinian I reconquers North Adrica with the battles of Ad Decimum and Tricamarum.
751 Pepin the Short founds the Carolingian dynasty. Pope Stephen II begins the Frankish Papacy by confirming Pepin as king. In 756, the donation of Pepin creates the Papal States in northern Italy. Lombard King Aistulf briefly captures remaining Byzantine land in Italy and demands submission from Rome until France intervenes.

Charlemagne is King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor. He centralizes the state and expands education, leading the Carolingian Renaissance. .

962 Otto the Great founds the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottonian Renaissance.

High Middle Ages, 1000 - 1300

1066 Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invades England in the Battle of Hastings. The Harrying of the North depopulates Northern England, which was rebellious. Depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.

England
The peerages are grand prince or archduke or grand duke, duke, marquess, earl or count, viscount, baron, lord.
1215. King John of England signs the Magna Carta to make peace with a group of barons. It was mythologized as guaranteeing individual rights, influencing the US Constitution, even though it was a typical charter that only granted rights to barons.
1259. Henry acknowledges French control of Normandy in the Treaty of Paris, creating an era of peace and increasing population.
1200. Aberdeen Bestiary.

Italy

Religious persecution. The Church forbade usury and controlled the guilds, so Jews were often lenders, an unpopular role. Jews were also accused of being against Christ and of committing ritual murder.

Renaissance of the 12th century.

Crisis of the Late Middle Ages, 1300

Eastern Europe

Romani nomads migrate from India to Europe.

1328 and 1357. Scotland wins the Wars of Scottish Independence against King Edward I, II, and III, inspiring the film Braveheart.

1358. Republic of Ragusa or Dubrovnik wins independence from Italy. An aristocratic maritime republic on the coast of Croatia. Annexed by Napoleonic Italy in 1808.

1337. Hundred Years’ War to 1453 between England and France.

1486. Malleus Maleficarum argues that witches and sorcery is heresy, punishable by burning alive at the stake. Inquisition theologians condemn the book as inconsistent with doctrine on demons.

Ottoman Empire, 1300-1700

1300. Osman I founds the Sunni Ottoman Empire.

1512 Sultan Selim I.


1520. Suleiman the Magnificent is sultan. He expands the Ottoman Empire into the Balkans and North Africa.

1566. Selim II is sultan.

1574. Murad III is sultan until 1595.

1648. Turhan Sultan is regent.

1683 Great Turkish War. Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I allies with Poland-Lithuania and Russia to defeat the Ottomans. Concurrent with the Nine Years’ War.

Ottoman Old Regime (1699-1789) is a period of decentralization.

Early modern period, 1500

Italy has a sophisticated network of Mediterranean trade, which expands to northern Europe via fast couriers through Alpine passes. Italian banks develop standardized letters of credit, bills of exchange, networks of contacts, a strong reputation, and sophisticated currency exchange.

1450. Italian Renaissance includes a revolution in art.

Balance of power leads to the stately quadrille (a shifting pattern of alliances) and devastating wars. The Holy Roman Empire spanned Austria, the Burgundy Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands), and northern Italy.

Conflict between Bourbon France and the Habsburg dynasty.

1479. King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile unite Spain by marriage as the Catholic Monarchs. Ferdinand’s Crown of Aragon is a maritime empire spanning Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia in eastern Spain, as well as Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia around Italy.

1312. Anjou King Charles I of Hungary and Croatia unifies the country after winning the bloody Battle of Rozgony. The country was divided the previous decade between warring magnates, members of the Upper House of the Diet of Hungary. Hungary mines around one-third of the world’s gold in Upper Hungary (present Slovakia), such as Banská Štiavnica and Kremnica.
1458. King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and Croatia rules over a golden age, emphasizing diplomacy.

1517. Protestant Reformation undermines the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic Church.

1519. Catholic Habsburg Charles V unites Spain and the Holy Roman Empire after his grandfather Maximilian dies. Threatens Bourbon France.

France

1618. Thirty Years’ War kills 8 million people.

1568. Eighty Years’ War or Dutch Revolt. Calvinist Dutch Republic wins independence from the Holy Roman Empire in the Peace of Münster of 1648. Southern Netherlands and Antwerp are Catholic and remain with Spain, losing population and trade.

1547. Ivan IV the Terrible becomes the first Tsar of Russia.

1485. The Tudor period begins with the reign of King Henry VII and continues through the Elizabethan era.

1509. King Henry VIII rules. He founds a permanent Royal Navy.

1558. Elizabethan era. Queen Elizabeth I rules until 1603.

1603. James VI and I is king of England and Ireland to 1625. He is the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. In the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, Catholics including Guy Fawkes try to blow up the House of Lords and kill James. In Ireland, the Protestant Ascendancy takes power and land from Catholics. The Flight of the Earls to Europe in 1607 marks the end of Gaelic Ireland.

1625. Charles I becomes king of Britain. He loses a civil war in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. In the Bishops’ Wars of 1640, Charles fails to impose a new prayer book on Scotland. He needs to raise taxes and convenes the Short Parliament, but dissolves it when it insisted on concessions. He then convened the Long Parliament, which lasts twenty years. The Parliamentarians win the first and second English civil wars against Charles and the royalist Cavalier faction. Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell forms the New Model Army and distributes The Souldiers Pocket Bible (1643). The Interregnum begins with Pride’s Purge in 1648, when the New Model Army prevents royalists from entering the House of Commons. This Rump Parliament executes Charles for tyranny and founds the Commonwealth of England in 1649. Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector in 1653. Trade rivalries lead to the Anglo-Dutch wars and the Anglo-Spanish War.

1660. Stuart Restoration. The Cavalier parliament restores King Charles II to the throne. The Clarendon Code are four early penal laws. The Corporation Act 1661 requires officials to take Anglican communion, excluding nonconformists from office. The Act of Uniformity 1662 leads to the Great Ejection of Church of England ministers who refused to conform to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Conventicle Act 1664 bans dissenters from meeting, and the Five Mile Act 1665 bans nonconformist ministers from towns. The Test Act 1673 requires an oath to hold office.

1650. Little Ice Age causes drought and disease.

1651. Catholic Louis XIV or Louis the Great makes France the leading power through many wars. Queen Anne and Cardinal Mazarin were his regents from 1643.

1715. Louis XV is king until 1774. Rococo architecture is highly ornamental.

Prussia

The Second Agricultural Revolution. Enclosure of land for scalable production pushes a wave of urban poor into factory work.

1749 Great Gypsy Round-up in Spain. Troops surround towns, close the gates, and arrest 10,000 Romani. Reversed within a few months after public outrage.

Catherine the Great rules Russia from 1762 to 1796. The Partitions of Poland include the Polish-Russian War of 1792 and the unsuccessful Polish Kościuszko Uprising of 1794. In the partitions, Catherine wins eastern Poland and Prussia and Austria win Western Poland from Poland-Lithuania. She also seizes land from the Ottoman Empire. This Pale of Settlement included large Jewish populations, resulting in oppressive laws and anti-Jewish pogroms.

1760 King George III. American War of Independence and the Anglo-French War (1778-1783).

Tory prime minister William Pitt the Younger creates the United Kingdom with the Acts of Union 1800. Pitt is progressive on managing government debt and passing an income tax. Pitt suppresses radical speech with the Treason Act 1795 and Seditious Meetings Act 1795.

1807. Slave Trade Act abolishes slavery in England, and Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolishes slavery in the UK.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Latin_forms_of_English_given_names
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Abbreviations_for_English_given_names

French Revolution, 1792

The Revolution suppresses the feudal system in favor of greater equality and property ownership.

The Kingdom of France or ancien régime was divided into the First Estate (clergy), the Second Estate (nobles), and the Third Estate (peasants and bourgeoisie). The nobles controlled the regional parlements (judicial courts), which had the task of recording royal edicts and laws. By the 16th century, the parlements had the right of remonstrance to the king (a statement of grievances) and could refuse to register laws until the king appeared in person in a lit de justice (“bed of justice”, the king’s seat).

France has high inequality, regressive taxes, and enormous debt. France spent 1.3 billion livres sending 10,000 men to fight in the American Revolution and loan interest reached half its revenue.

King Louis XVI wants to tax the nobles and eliminate guilds that restrict trade, but the Assembly of Notables and the parlements refuse to ratify his reforms. Louis calls the Estates General of 1789, elected as three estates by district from male landowners. However, the Third Estate wants double representation and swears the Tennis Court Oath not to disperse. Abbé Sieyès writes influential pamphlets, and there are popular demonstrations and mutinies in the king’s French Guards.

In June 1789, Louis reluctantly recognizes the National Assembly of the people, which soon renames itself as the National Constituent Assembly. The Assembly storms the Bastille, passes the August Decrees abolishing feudalism and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, confiscates all church property, and establishes a new constitution. Louis forms the Paris Commune to govern Paris and the National Guard as a police and military reserve. Centrists Sieyès and Lafayette restrict voting rights to “active citizens”, which is unpopular with sans-culottes (“without breeches”), the urban poor.

In June 1791, Louis tries to escape Paris towards Montmédy near Austria, but is captured at Varennes, damaging his popularity. Jacques Pierre Brissot writes a popular petition to remove the king. Lafayette orders the Champ de Mars massacre and suppresses radical clubs and newspapers. In 1792, leftists led by Brissot gain control of the Assembly. The War of the First Coalition begins as France declares war on Prussia and Austria and wins the Battle of Valmy. In the siege of Toulon in 1793, Napoleon wins fame by retaking a key naval base and driving away the Anglo-Spanish fleet.

The insurrection of 10 August 1792 replaces the monarchy with the First Republic, governed by a newly elected French Legislative Assembly. The Brissotins split between moderate Girondins and radical Montagnards, led by Robespierre and Marat. In 1793, the Assembly beheads Louis and Marie Antoinette by guillotine, and Britain and the Dutch Republic join the First Coalition. Girondins indict Marat, who is acquitted and grows more popular. Jacobin clubs and rising food prices lead to unrest.

In June 1793, Montagnards take over the Convention’s Committee of Public Safety. Their Reign of Terror kills around 20,000 suspects of counter-revolutionary activity. Robespierre executes Brissot, Vergniaud, and Danton, and claims to have a list of traitors.

In 1794, the Convention executes Robespierre, and the Thermidorian Reaction further persecutes Jacobin groups. The convention establishes a new constitution with executive power in a five-person French Directory, which begins ruling by force.

In the Coup of 18 Fructidor of 1797, Republicans use Napoleon’s Army of Italy to prevent a transfer of power to elected Royalists.

1798. Napoleon occupies Egypt and wins the War of the Second Coalition. He wins the Battle of the Pyramids with the divisional square, an infantry formation strong against Ottoman cavalry. In the Battle of the Nile, rear admiral Nelson defeats the French navy. In 1799, France attempts the failed siege of Acre. France also discovers the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts.
Spain is allied with France in the Anglo-Spanish War (1796-1808).

1799. Coup d’état of 18 Brumaire. Napoleon replaces the Directory with the French Consulate with the help of Sieyès and Talleyrand. He establishes the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor; signs the Louisiana Purchase; modernizes the administration; introduces the metric system; and abolishes Jewish ghettos. Napoleon conquers most of Italy by 1799, setting up temporary client republics. In 1804, Napoleon becomes Emperor of the French Empire, and raises La Grande Armée at 350,000 men. He forms the Kingdom of Italy in 1805.

1814. The Concert of Europe stabilizes the balance of power and political boundaries. In the Congress System, disputes are handled through summits, starting with the Congress of Vienna. The Holy Alliance of Austria (led by Metternich), Russia, and Prussia restores a Conservative Order of monarchy over civil rights. The Holy Roman Empire is replaced by the German Confederation mutual defense pact, which includes Austria and Prussia/Germany. Russia gains Congress Poland, formed from the Duchy of Warsaw that France took from Prussia and Austria.

Ottoman Tanzimat (1789-1876).

1791. Haitian Revolution is a successful slave revolt against France and Spain, winning independence in 1804.

Regency era

1850 Second Industrial Revolution. Steam and coal power, steel, and machine tools transform agriculture, manufacturing, and transport.

1837. Victorian Era marks a shift from rationalism to romanticism. Queen Victoria rules until 1901.

Great house

Politics

Spain

The French Revolution of 1848 or February Revolution.
The government bans the campagne des banquets, meetings where liberals criticized the government. Large protests force King Louis-Philippe to abdicate. In 1851, Philippe’s nephew Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president of the Second Republic, and the next year he declares himself Emperor Napoleon III of the Second French Empire.

The Other Revolutions of 1848 introduce democracy in the Netherlands and a constitution and parliament (Rigsdag) in Denmark.

1854 After losing the Crimean War, Emperor Alexander II abolishes serfdom in the emancipation reform of 1861, promotes local self-government, and puts down the January Uprising of 1863 in Poland.
1864 Russia wins the Caucasian War, which consists of the the Russo-Circassian War in the west and the conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan in the east. After the invasion of Circassia, Russia commits the Circassian genocide, killing 1 million people and sparing just 100,000. In 1859, the Caucasian Imamate surrenders to Russia.

Italian unification

1866 Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks’ War over the German question. Austria wants a unified state, but von Bismark allies with Italy to defeat Austria and establish Lesser Germany. Prussian minister Otto von Bismarck breaks up the German Confederation and creates the North German Confederation. Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder emphasizes concentrating forces only after battle begins: “March Divided, Fight United”. Mission command gives goal-based orders and delegates operational details down to unit level. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 establishes the diarchy of Austria and Hungary.

1870 Franco-Prussian War. Napoleon III invades Germany and is quickly defeated in the siege of Paris. The German Empire unifies the German states except Austria under emperor Wilhelm I of Prussia and chancellor von Bismarck, and various treaties keep a tenuous peace in La Belle Époque.

In 1873, von Bismarck creates the League of the Three Emperors with Russia and Austria-Hungary to isolate France. The league dissolves after Russia seeks more influence in the Balkans, threatening Austria-Hungary’s South Slavs, especially Serbs. Anglo-German naval rivalary pushes Britain to France.
In 1879, Germany and Austria enter into the Dual Alliance (Zweibund), followed by the Triple Alliance mutual defense treaty with Italy in 1882. The Triple Entente forms with Britain, Russia, and France.

Revolution of 1868. Liberal military oligarchs remove the unpopular Isabella II of Spain, leading to the Sexenio Democrático.

In the Dreyfus affair of 1894, a Jewish officer is wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment until public pressure leads to an eventual pardon.

Revolution of 1905 after the failed Russo-Japanese War. Tsar Nicholas II massacres protestors on Bloody Sunday. Stalin leads the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery killing 40 people.

Edwardian era is the reign of Edward VII from 1901 to 1910.

King George V rules from 1910 to his death in 1936. Edward III abdicates to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson, and his younger brother becomes King George VI.

World War I

Prelude. Allied and Axis powers build entangling alliances. The German policy of Lebensraum (“living space”) involves expansion into Poland.

Western Front

On the Eastern front, Germany and Austria-Hungary fight Russia.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1aio2ky/ww1_western_front_every_day/

In total, 17 million die.

Lost Generation experience WWI and the Great Depression.

The League of Nations is founded to promote collective security and rule of law. The mandate system puts colonial administration under principles of non-annexation, non-exploitation, and international observation and courts. The US Senate votes not to join. Resolutions are difficult to enact, requiring a unanimous vote of fifteen Council members.
Britain constructs the Cenotaph at Whitehall as its primary war memorial.

Russian Revolution. Lenin founds the Soviet Union. Hammer and sickle.

The Revolutions of 1917–1923 follow.
German Revolution of 1918. President Friedrich Ebert founds the Weimar Republic in 1919 after Emperor Wilhelm II abdicates. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) allies with German military to suppress the communist Spartacist uprising.

1912. Home Rule Crisis.
1921. Ireland wins independence in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, with Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK. The Sinn Féin party and Irish Republican Army (IRA) rise to power after the brutal suppression of the Easter Rising of 1916.

The 1926 General Strike in the UK is a failed strike by 1.7 million workers over the collapse of coal wages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straperlo

Modern Europe

World War II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonisation_of_Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism

1952. European Communities are predecessors to the EU.

The Algerian crisis of 1958 leads to the Fifth Republic with a stronger presidency under the current Constitution of France.

Protests of 1968.

Queen Elizabeth II rules from 1952 to her death in 2022. Her children are King Charles III, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.

King Charles III marries Princess Diana Spencer in 1981, having two sons William and Harry, before divorcing in 1996. Diana dies in a car crash in 1997. In 2005, Charles marries Camilla Parker Bowles. William marries Princess Catherine of Wales. Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle.

Socialist François Mitterrand is president from 1981 to 1995.

1991 Yugoslav Wars were ethnic conflicts that broke Yugoslavia into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia.

1993. European Union founded in the Maastricht Treaty.

2007. Labour PM Gordon Brown.
2010. Conservative PM David Cameron. Ed Miliband becomes Labour leader.

2018. Yellow vests protests against economic inequality.

Ukraine
2004. Orange Revolution protests against pro-Putin president Yanukovych.
2014. Revolution of Dignity and the Euromaidan protests overthrow Yanukovych.
2014. Russia annexes the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, and the Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk.
2022. Russian invasion of Ukraine.

America

Geography

America

Western US

Midwest US

New York
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/5_Boroughs_Labels_New_York_City_Map.svg/600px-5_Boroughs_Labels_New_York_City_Map.svg.png]

Eastern US

Southern US

Canada

Mexico

South America

Antarctica

US Government

Federal republic

Federal government

State government

574 Indian tribes govern 326 Indian reservations.

Indigenous

3500 BC The Caral-Supe or Norte Chico civilization develops in coastal Peru. Quipu string-based records and flutes, but no pottery or visual art. 2250 BC Staff God carving. Followed by Andean civilizations.

3500 BC Valdivia culture in Ecuador.

1600 BC Olmec civilization in Mesoamerica.

800 BC Paracas culture in the Andes. Extensive irrigation.

800-1600 Mississippian culture built advanced urban settlements, with the largest at Cahokia.

Native Americans grow a post-scarcity culture. The Iroquois had “no poorhouses,” nor sheriffs nor jails. Families, clans, and villages lived together, farmed together, hunted together, and shared all they had. They met their needs and were content to eat well, sleep comfortably, live quietly, play with children, laugh and be merry. The idea of “female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society”. Husbands joined their wife’s family. When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband’s things outside the door.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas
Apotamkin

There were 45 million Indigenous people between Mexico, the Andes, and other parts of the Americas. There were around 3 million Indigenous people in the US.

Eastern Woodlands

Plains Indians: Blackfoot Confederacy (60k), Crow (50k), Comanche (40k), Osage (15k)

Southwest

Arctic people

Colonialism

In the 1400s, a calamity spreads across the world, known as the Age of Exploration or Age of Discovery. Competing feudal monarchies in Europe discover sailing and stocks. They enslave and decimate hundreds of cultures in pursuit of profit and power. In sub-Saharan Africa, Portugal enslaves hundreds of tribes in sugar plantations. To deter organized resistance, slavers obliterate the heritage of language, dress, custom, family and village relations. In 1652, the Dutch East India Company establishes the Dutch Cape Colony in the Cape of Good Hope, which is captured by the British in 1806. In the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti, Columbus enslaves and exterminates the Arawak Indians in search of gold. The East India Company strangles the Indian economy and fosters opium addiction in Asia. In Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spanish conquistadores massacre cities and whole civilizations in search of El Dorado (“the golden”). In the English colonies, Puritans raze village after village. “A depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams, and shadows of this vanishing life…” in need of wealth as if starving and dying of thirst. All the blood and money goes toward hiring more mercenaries to wage more war, and in the end the people are not richer.
In contrast, the enclosure of land in Europe for scalable production flooded the cities with vagrant poor. In response, rulers passed laws to whip the poor, imprison them in poorhouses, and send them out of the country. The system of class oppression metastasized to America. Merchants built fortunes from shipping out the poor to become indentured servants, landless serfs, and commodities of profit to the landed elite.
The elites feared frequent revolts by slaves, Indians, servants, and farmers, especially the potential for the oppressed to combine. The law was an instrument of power: people needed to show papers to prove that they were free men; striking workers were sentenced to lashes; etc. But racism and dehumanization was a more powerful tool of class control. To rule, the upper class bought the loyalty of the middle class with concessions and social acceptance, at the cost of the lower class. They emphasized racial purity to prevent the mixing of poor whites and blacks. And finally, they invent a new nation and new politics where “artisans and even laborers” can participate in the political process.
The Spanish treasure fleet steals mountains of precious goods, but all the wealth fuels massive destructive wars, and Spain does not end up richer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_wave_of_European_colonization

Colonial period 1607-1765

American Indian Wars

Mercantilism

Slavery

Seven Year’s War (1756-1763). Colonial rivalry between opposing alliances of Great Britain and France. The French and Indian War is the American theatre of the war. In the Treaty of Paris, France loses North America, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tobago to Great Britain. Great Britain ended up with around 200% debt-to-GDP, and taxes the colonies to help pay for British troops.

The Mayflower arrives in Portsmouth. Puritans have a high literacy rate because they believe that scripture is an individual journey.

1734. Great Awakening is an evangelical revival movement emphasizing religious piety and devotion. Congregational minister Jonathan Edwards preaches justification by faith alone in Northampton, Massachusetts. He delivers Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) with vivid imagery.

American Revolution

Ben Franklin publishes The Pennsylvania Gazette from 1729 and Poor Richard’s Almanack from 1732. Hundred dollar bill.

1765-1783

April 1775. The Revolutionary War begins with Battles of Lexington and Concord. 700 British regulars in Boston row to Cambridge and march to Concord to capture military supplies. They row from Boston to Cambridge, inspiring Henry Longfellow’s poem The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (“one if by land, two if by sea”). Lexington minutemen stand in formation by the road watching the British army. The British army confronts them without firing, until someone fires “the shot heard round the world”. In the return march, militiamen kill nearly 50 British soldiers from behind trees and walls.
The siege of Boston begins afterward. George Washington leads the Continental Army. Conneticut militia capture the largely undefended Fort Ticonderoga, and Colonel Henry Knox moves the heavy artillery to overlook Boston harbor, forcing the British to evacuate by ship to Nova Scotia.

In May 1775, the Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. It initially drafts the Olive Branch Petition which is rejected by King George.

Thomas Paine writes Common Sense (1776), which argues for independence and is wildly popular.

Johnny Appleseed is a kind missionary who grows over a thousand acres of apple nurseries in Pennsylvania and surrounding states.

1776. Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress.

General Howe occupies the Port of New York in the Battle of Long Island. The Continental Army retreats across the state, shrinking from desertions and poor morale. On Christmas Eve, Washington ambushes the Hessian camp in Trenton, capturing almost 1,000 Hessians and inspiring reenlistments and inspiring the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851). Hessians are German mercenaries hired by the British. Washington winters at Morristown.

1777. Articles of Confederation by the Continental Congress.

1777. Battle of Saratoga. General Burgoyne surrenders his army of 8,000, securing French entry into the war. He aimed to capture Albany. Instead of supporting Burgoyne, General Howe occupied Philadelphia after winning the Battle of Brandywine, the largest battle with 15,000 troops per side. Washington spends a harsh winter at Valley Forge. The British army moves back to New York City, with Washington raiding. The Battle of Monmouth ends in a draw.

1778. The British change to a southern strategy and capture Savannah. In the siege of Charleston of 1780, Britain captures all 6,000 US soldiers in the south. Benedict Arnold defects to the British in a failed plot to surrender the fort of West Point.

1781 Siege of Yorktown. General Cornwallis surrenders to Washington and Comte de Rochambeau, ending the war. The French navy under Comte de Grasse prevents the British fleet from reinforcing Cornwallis in the Battle of the Chesapeake. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ends the war.

Confederation Period. The federal government is very weak, requiring unanimous agreement to act. In Shays’ Rebellion of 1787, tax protestors occupy the courts and attempt to seize the federal Springfield Armory. The government cannot finance troops to restore order.

1780 First Industrial Revolution mechanizes the British textile industry with water power. Europe transitions from cottage industry and the domestic workshop or putting-out system to urban factories.

Westward Expansion

Constitutional Convention of 1787.

US Constitution (1789): ensures separation of powers and checks and balances between executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Bill of Rights

Federalists like Madison and Hamilton write the Federalist Papers, while Anti-Federalists oppose a strong central government.

First Party System, 1792-1824: Federalists promote a strong central bank, trade, and better relations with Britain, while Jeffersonians or Democratic-Republicans emphasize farmer interests and liberty and better relations with France.

George Washington is the first president from 1789 to 1797. Appears on the dollar bill and quarter.

Federalist John Adams is the second president from 1797 to 1801. He is an abolitionist and the only founding father not to own slaves. He is a Congregationalist. Abigail Adams pushes for women’s rights because men are “naturally tyrannical”. Thomas Jefferson is vice president.

Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson is the third president from 1801 to 1809. Two dollar bill and nickel.

War of 1812. During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain restricts US trade with France and impresses deserters on US ships into the Royal Navy.

James Madison is the fourth president from 1809 to 1817.

Democratic-Republican James Monroe is president from 1817 to 1825. He promotes national unity in an Era of Good Feelings, which is still highly factional.

Second Party System
Democratic-Republican John Quincy Adams is the sixth president from 1825 to 1829. Supported the Jay Treaty and left the Federalist Party.

Democrat Andrew Jackson is the seventh president from 1829 to 1837. Twenty dollar bill. Free Banking Era.

Democrat Martin van Buren is the eighth president from 1837 to 1841.

Whig John Tyler is the tenth president from 1841 to 1845.

Democrat James K. Polk is 11th president from 1845 to 1849, defeating Whig Henry Clay. Polk wins as a dark horse candidate on the popular platform of annexing Texas and Oregon. Van Buren was against annexation, and Whig Henry Clay was ambivalent.

Manifest Destiny is a belief that America is divinely ordained to bring democracy and civilization across the continent, as portrayed in American Progress (1872) by John Gast.

Whig Millard Fillmore is 13th president from 1850 to 1853. The Compromise of 1850 delays civil war:

Democrat Franklin Pierce is 14th president from 1853 to 1857.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repeals the Missouri Compromise, instead allowing states to decide slavery for themselves.

Democrat James Buchanan is 15th president from 1857 to 1861. He favors states’ rights.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) increases tensions. Scott sues for his freedom after living in free territories. The court holds that Black people are not citizens and thus lack standing to sue in federal court. It strikes down the Missouri Compromise arguing that Congress had no power to regulate slavery in the territories.

1858. Lincoln-Douglas debates. Lincoln runs against incumbent Stephen Douglas for Illinois senate. Douglas supports popular sovereignty.

Civil War, 1861 - 1865

Republican Abraham Lincoln is 16th president from November 1860 to 1865. He opposes the expansion of slavery into the western territories. In February 1861, eleven states secede and form the Confederacy. In his inaugural address in March, Lincoln says that he does not intend to invade Southern states but will use force to keep federal forts. Even in 1862, Lincoln emphasizes that his official duty is to save the Union, and not to save or to destroy Slavery.

1861. Battle of Fort Sumter. Lincoln sends an unarmed ship to resupply the fort. Confederate forces capture the fort, and Lincoln calls a Union army and blockades Confederate ports.

July 1862. First Battle of Bull Run. General Patterson failed to prevent Confederate reinforcements from arriving and routing the Union Army. Both sides prepare for a larger, longer conflict. Stonewall Jackson gets his name from breaking the Union attack. General McClellan replaces McDowell as army general.

Lincoln imposes martial law in Maryland, which had voted to close its rail lines to Union soldiers. West Virginia splits from Virginia to join the Union.

Kentucky declared neutrality, so the Union army staged in Ohio until Kentucky aligned with the Union.

Peninsula Campaign. McClellan slowly battles through Williamsburg and Seven Pines. In the Valley Campaign, Stonewall Jackson prevents the Union army from reinforcing McClellan. Lee defends Richmond against McClellan, McClellan stays put, Lincoln appoints Pope to lead the Army of Virginia, Lee defeats Pope at the Second Bull Run and invades Maryland.
Battle of Antietam, McClellan wins.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation prevents European interference.

At the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, Lee defeats Hooker’s larger army with heavy losses. Hooker’s goal is to attack Lee and keep his army between Lee and Washington DC to the northeast. Hooker moves slowly. On June 3, Lee heads north toward Pennsylvania to capture horses, equipment, and food and increase pressure for a treaty.

Battle of Brandy Station on June 9, the largest cavalry battle. To help the Confederate Army slip away, Stuart prepares to raid Union forward forces. Hooker surprises Stuart with a preemptive attack: Buford makes a predawn raid across the river and Gregg threatens Stuart’s rear. But Stuart fends off the attacks and Hooker does not discover the Confederate army.

Battle of Gettysburg

General Meade halts Lee’s advance over three bloody days in July 1863.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_campaign
https://archive.is/2NbR9

Background. Lee’s army advances north in three corps under Longstreet, Hill, and Ewell. On June 28, Lincoln replaces Hooker with Meade, who promptly advances north to Gettysburg. In the lead are three corps under Reynolds, Sickles, and Howard. Meanwhile, Stuart’s cavalry is delayed riding fully east of the entire Union army for many days to raid supplies, depriving Lee of intelligence. Spy Henry Thomas Harrison reports that the Union army is very close, so Lee concentrates his army and orders his generals to avoid a large battle. On June 30, Buford’s cavalry and a brigade under Heth see each other in town. Buford calls for reinforcements and holds three layers of low ridges west of town for a delaying action: Herr Ridge, McPherson Ridge and Seminary Ridge. Hill thinks this is a local militia and sends some units to investigate.

Day 1. In the morning, Heth leads two brigades against Buford. Reynolds’ corps arrives (becoming Doubleday’s corps after Reynolds dies). In the afternoon, Howard’s corps reinforces to the right of Doubleday, facing attacks by Ewell’s corps (Rodes’ division and Early’s division to its east). Finally, Hill’s corps fully arrives, and the Union army makes a chaotic retreat through town to Cemetery Hill. Ewell does not try to take the hill, and Howard accepts the fantastic defensive position instead of falling back mid-battle to prepared defenses at Pipe Creek.

Day 2. Union forces are entrenched behind steep hills and stone walls, in a fishhook shape with short interior lines. Sickles (III) holds the left flank at Little Round Top; Hancock (II), Newton, and Howard extend up two miles of Cemetry Ridge to Cemetery Hill; and Slocum and Sykes (V) hold the right flank at Culp’s Hill. Longstreet urges Lee to leave for better ground, but Lee wants to keep the initiative. Lee attacks the Union left flank, unaware that it extended down to Little Round Top. Longstreet attacks from the south, Hill attacks from the west, and Ewell pins down units on the right flank. Against orders, Sickles overextends west to slightly higher ground in a peach orchard. With an attack imminent, Meade sends Sykes to support, weakening the rest of the line. Sickles takes heavy losses retreating through the peach orchard and the wheat field, and Longstreet takes heavy losses in Devil’s Den and Plum Run Valley (the “Valley of Death”) to the south. Hancock and Sykes barely hold Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top, resorting to bayonet charges by Colvill and Chamberlain. Stuart finally arrives around noon and have no role in the second day’s battle. Ewell takes some trenches at Culp’s Hill.

Day 3, Union reinforcements push Ewell out of Culp’s Hill. Lee orders a massive, ineffective bombardment against the Union center. Pickett’s Charge covers a mile of open terrain and is destroyed, marking the high-water mark of the Confederacy. Lee retreats and Meade does not pursue, eventually stopping for winter. Lincoln complains that “Our army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close it!”

Gettysburg Address. The nation was conceived in Liberty and equality. Mentions the dedication of the cemetery and honors the dead. Asks the audience to continue the work and achieve “a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”.

Grant vs. Lee

In March 1864, Grant gets command and proceeds to encircle Lee on three sides.

Sheridan moves cautiously to ensure Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, then defeats Early at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Sherman’s Western March to the Sea in Atlanta is a bloody success. Lee is unable to break out and surrenders at Appomattox Court House.

McClellan would lead the Union Army of the Potomac through Virginia toward Richmond.

Post Civil War

Lincoln wins reelection in 1864 on unity platform, naming Tennessee senator Andrew Johnson as his vice president.

The Thirteenth Amendment bans slavery. Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward bribe lame-duck Democrats with federal jobs and campaign contributions in exchange for votes. Lincoln also creates the Freedmen’s Bureau to provide temporary food, clothing, and shelter for newly freed slaves.

First-wave feminism focuses on legal rights and is primarily led by middle class white women.

Abolition

Native-American relations

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 established Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux territories. Pike’s Peak Gold Rush in Colorado in 1859, which was Cheyenne territory. The Treaty of Fort Wise of 1861 is signed by a minority of Cheyenne chiefs, leading to the Colorado War of 1864 and the Sand Creek Massacre.

In 1863, gold is discovered in Alder Gulch, Montana. Miners blaze the Bozeman Trail branching north from the Oregon Trail through Wyoming Sioux territory. Red Cloud’s War consists of many Sioux raids, including the Fetterman Fight which kills 81 US soldiers. The Crow ally with the US because the Sioux occupied some of their territory.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) ends Red Cloud’s War. It establishes the Great Sioux Reservation including the Black Hills, large amounts of Crow tribe land, and the Ponca Reservation. The Crow Indian Reservation covers 3,600 square miles in south Montana.

The Great Sioux War of 1876. The Black Hills Gold Rush begins in South Dakota, and Grant sends 570 men to attack the Sioux. In the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse kill 270 soldiers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenape

Reconstruction, 1865 - 1877

Andrew Johnson is 17th president from 1865 to 1869, taking office after Lincoln is assassinated. Johnson tries to readmit rebel states without protection for newly freed slaves. He pardons all the Confederates.

Republicans briefly control the South.

Radical Republicans in Congress take charge of reconstruction over Johnson’s veto. Include Benjamin Wade.

The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 includes:

Republican Ulysses S. Grant is president from 1869 to 1877, presiding over the Reconstruction era. Grant passed Enforcement Acts to send federal troops to curb white supremacist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) violence and ensure fair elections. He creates the Department of Justice to prosecute the KKK. He appointed many friends, leading to corruption scandals. Appears on the fifty dollar bill.

1869 Transcontinential Railroad. Chinese laborers provide much of the labor, and introduce chop suey 杂碎.

The Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 prohibits denying the right to vote based on race. In response, Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, grandfather clauses, and KKK violence to deter black voters.

The Great Chicago Fire kills 300 people. Insurance executive Arthur Ducat promotes better fire standards.

Gilded Age, 1877 - 1896

Republican Rutherford B. Hayes is 19th president from 1877 to 1881. He ends reconstruction.

Republican James Garfield is 20th president for half a year in 1881 but gets assassinated.
Republican Chester Arthur is 21st president from 1881 to 1885.

Grover Cleveland is 22nd president from 1885 to 1889, and 24th president from 1893 to 1897.

Republican Benjamin Harrison serves as the 23rd president from 1889 to 1893. He passes the unpopular McKinley Tariff of 1890 which raised import taxes to 50%.

The Tammany Hall political machine controls New York politics. Boss Tweed controls patronage and city jobs and embezzles millions of dollars.

Robber barons consolidate monopolies, manipulate markets, and lobby politicians.

Coal
The Coal Region in northeast PA is the world’s largest anthracite coal deposit.

Progressive Era, 1896 - 1917

Also known as the Fourth Party System. The Republican vision of stronger central government, gold standard, and protective tariffs triumphs.

Labor movement.

Muckrakers target corporate monopolies and political machines.

1890. Sherman Antitrust Act bans anticompetitive agreements (e.g. cartels) and monopolization.
1914. Federal Trade Commission polices anticompetitive behavior.
1914. Clayton Antitrust Act bans price discrimination, exclusive dealings, tying, and mergers when they harms competition. It exempts organized labor: boycotts, strikes, picketing, collective bargaining.

Republican William McKinley is the 25th president from 1897 to 1901.

The Cuban independence movement had support from landowners and laborers. Landowners wanted lower taxes, while laborers wanted more political representation. Rural people often sheltered rebels. In 1896, Spain moves 500,000 rural people into Reconcentration camps, where half died of starvation and disease.

Spanish-American War of 1898. The US supports the Cuban War of Independence as a moral act. In addition, the US wanted a naval base near the Panama canal, and US magnates purchased most of the sugar and tobacco plantations in Cuba when they were devastated by high taxes. Spain gives Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the US in the Treaty of Paris of 1898. American foreign policy becomes more global.

The Teller Amendment blocks the US from acquiring Cuba. Teller ensured that Cuban sugar would not compete with Colorado beet sugar. However, the Platt Amendment allowed the US to dictate Cuban foreign policy and required Cuba to provide Guantamo Bay to the US, leading to resentment. The US wins the Philippine-American War of 1899, and the Philippines are finally independent in 1946. Cuba is very instable, with the US having to intervene after a revolt in 1906 to supervise new elections.

Republican Theodore Roosevelt is the 26th president from 1901 to 1909. He wins fame leading the Rough Riders against Spain in Cuba. Boss Platt places him as governor of New York, where he promotes the Square Deal of public responsibility of large corporations, moderate reform, and protection for the poor. Platt has him chosen as Vice President to get rid of him. Booker T. Washington is the leader of the black community, and has dinner with Roosevelt. Roosevelt brings antitrust suits aggressively and creates the Department of Commerce and Labor. He resolves the Panic of 1907 by allowing U.S. Steel to purchase a struggling steel company and save a major bank. Roosevelt forces coal owners to arbitration to resolve the coal strike of 1902. Roosevelt establishes the US Forest Service, five National Parks, the Antiquities Act of 1906 which creates National Monuments, and 150 National Forests, often by executive order. He also prosecutes corruption in the Indian Service, the Land Office, and the Post Office. He believes that war is noble.

Roosevelt installs William Taft as the 27th president from 1909 to 1913. Taft’s handling of the Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 alienates both liberals and conservatives. Roosevelt runs with the Progressive Bull Moose Party which ensures Taft’s defeat.

Democrat Woodrow Wilson is president from 1913 to 1921. He opposes federal laws on women’s suffrage and child labor. He narrowly wins reelection on an anti-war platform, and does not prepare for war.

World War era

World War I: see Europe

Interwar
Roaring Twenties, 1918-1929.

Republican Warren G. Harding is the 29th president from 1921 to 1923. The Teapot Dome scandal sees his Secretary of the Interior imprisoned for accepting bribes. In addition, he attacks the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 of 400,000 union workers. Secretary of the Treasury and oil baron Andrew Mellon pushes tax cuts for the rich and lower national debt.

Republican Calvin Coolidge is the 30th president from 1923 to 1929. He rises to prominence as governor of Massachusetts by attacking the unpopular Boston police strike of 1919. He signs the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and supports women’s suffrage. Congress passes the Bonus Act of 1924 paying up to $500 for WWI vets over Coolidge’s veto.

Great Depression, 1929-1941
Migrant Mother (1936) by Dorothea Lange.

The Fifth Party System (1932-1980) begins with a Democratic landslide. Democrats begin prioritizing civil rights and gaining black voters.

Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) is president from 1933 to 1945. The popular New Deal expands the federal government, building the New Deal liberal coalition of labor unions, blue-collar workers, and minorities against rich people, businesses, and Protestants. Appears on the dime.

Eleanor Roosevelt is a civil rights activist. She hosts hundreds of Black guests at the White House and speaks against anti-Japanese prejudice. In 1948, she leads the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

World War II

The United Nations is founded on June 1945 at the United Nations Conference on International Organization.

Truman’s Marshall Plan rebuilds Europe. It is named after Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who wins a Nobel Peace Prize.

1957. European Economic Community.

Sustainable development

1944 Bretton Woods Conference

1940s Bobby soxer subculture. Rise of teen culture in the swing era.
1950s Baby boom.

Cold War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cold_War

Democrat Harry Truman is 33rd president from 1945 to 1953. The Truman Doctrine pledges US support for democracies against authoritarian threats. George Kennan devises a policy of containment against communism.

Second Red Scare

1946 Greek Civil War is a failed communist uprising caused by the White Terror persecution of communists.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is founded in 1949.

The October Revolution of 1944 is a Guatemalan revolution establishing democracy. The second president begins the Decree 900 land reform program, returning United Fruit Company land to poor farmers. In the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, the CIA installs a military dictator.

1946 First Indochina War. Ho Chi Minh founds the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and Việt Minh, Soviet, and Chinese forces defeat France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

1950 Korean War. Japan occupied Korea in WWII, and the USSR and the US accepted the Japanese surrender in two zones divided at the 38th parallel. Kim Il-sung becomes leader in 1948, establishing a totalitarian Leninist Juche regime emphasizing self-reliance. Kim invades most of South Korea until the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter in August, where 140,000 UN troops hold the port of Busan against 98,000 North Korean troops. In the September Battle of Inchon, the UN makes an amphibious landing, captures Seoul, and pushes near the Chinese border. China intervenes in the November Second Phase Offensive, leading to a two-year stalemate. In 1953, Stalin dies and the Soviet Union withdraws support, leading to an armistice establishing the Korean Demilitarized Zone DMZ.

Nikita Khrushchev rules after Stalin dies in 1953. He ousts the Stalinists and allows some reforms. His 1956 speech On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences criticizes Stalinism and causes the Sino-Soviet split.
He crushes the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
In 1960, the Soviet Union shoots down a U-2 spy plane and captures pilot Gary Powers alive, disrupting a thaw in US-Soviet relations.

1953. Eisenhower’s New Look emphasizes tactical nuclear weapons, covert operations, and the Strategic Air Command. The Army was cut, and develops the Pentomic concept, which is too spread out and too complex to command.
1954. Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll is the largest at 15 megatons and causes fears in Japan about eating contaminated fish.

President Gerald Ford issues Executive Order 11905 banning political assassinations. TODO
Ford suppresses the House Pike Committee report and edits the Rockefeller Commission.

The Committee for State Security (KGB) was the Soviet secret police from 1954 to 1991.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) is the main security agency of Russia. Its spetsnaz special forces includes Alpha Group and Vympel.
The GRU is the Soviet and Russian military intelligence.

1957. Sputnik crisis begins the space race.

Spies

Cuba

1963 Kennedy Ich bin ein Berliner speech.

Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War.

1975 Third Indochina War

Richard Nixon.

The Reagan Doctrine supports resistance movements against the Evil Empire (the Soviet Union) to roll back communism.

Gorbachev promotes glasnost and perestroika. Economic collapse leads to nationalist movements.
Revolutions of 1989. Fall of communism in Germany (fall of the Berlin Wall and Peaceful Revolution), Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (Velvet Revolution), Romania, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Albania.

Civil Rights

Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower is 34th president from 1953 to 1961.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) establishes separate but equal.

1954 Brown v. Board of Education bans racial segregation in public schools.

Black power movement advocates more violent resistance.
1959. Nation of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Advocates Black separatism and Back-to-Africa movement.
Black Panther Party publishes their platform, the Ten-Point Program (1966).
Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics.
1992. Rodney King riots after LA police officers are acquitted of beating

John F. Kennedy (JFK) is president from 1961 to 1963. He orders CIA Project Mockingbird to wiretap the national security reporter for The New York Times and another Washington reporter. He writes A Nation of Immigrants (1958). Appears on the half dollar coin.

Modern US

1950s Silent Generation includes conservatives and hippies.

1960s counterculture: civil rights and antiwar movement.

Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) is president from 1963 to 1969. He launches the Great Society as a War on Poverty, and loses the Vietnam War.

Republican Richard Nixon is the 37th president from 1969 to 1974.

In 1973, Nixon leads the war on drugs, increasing black prison rates by 5x. Drug laws 100:1 racial disparity in sentencing: 5 grams of crack cocaine gets the same sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine. He also founds the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Watergate scandal. In February 1971, Nixon installs a White House tape system. In 1972, Nixon records his coverup of the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the smoking gun tape. FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, codenamed Deep Throat, tells Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward of Nixon’s involvement. The Senate committee learns about the tape system in 1973, and special counsel Archibald Cox subpoenaes the tapes. Nixon is contemptuous and vindictive. In the Saturday Night Massacre in October, Nixon fires the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General in order to fire the Cox, and claims “I am not a crook”. In August 1974, Nixon resigns to avoid impeachment.

New social movements focus on social change over politics and class struggle. Culture, social relations, identity, quality of life, and human rights.

1974. Republican Gerald Ford is the 38th president. Ford pardons Nixon.

1977. Democrat Jimmy Carter is the 39th president.

1981. Republican Ronald Reagan is the 40th president to 1991. He promotes Reaganomics, neoliberalism, trickle-down economics, deregulation, and tax cuts on the rich.

In 1987, Reagan helps abolish the FCC fairness doctrine requiring broadcasters to present controversial issues in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. This enables Fox News and conservative talk radio such as Rush Limbaugh to air hateful content and conspiracy theories that increases emotional engagement and political polarization. Radio and TV are still required by the equal-time rule to provide equivalent access to competing political candidates.

New Journalism is literary reporting, with more immersive storytelling, dialogue, and scene-setting.

1989. Republican George H. W. Bush is 41st president.

1993. Democrat Bill Clinton is 42nd president to 2001. He portrays himself as a centrist New Democrat. Madeleine Albright is secretary of state.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich increases polarization by emphasizing ideological differences, raising culturally charged issues, and using combative and hateful language. This nationalizes and homogenizes politics, marginalizing local issues and political independents. He added term limits on committee chairs, which prevented chairs from developing a separate power base, consolidating the power of the Speaker and increasing conformity. He forces an unsuccessful 1990 government shutdown and wins large gains in the 1994 midterms.

The 1994 Crime Bill is the largest in history. Clinton pushes a “tough on crime” policy.

Carol Moseley Braun is the first female Black Senator.

2001. Republican George W. Bush is 43rd president to 2009. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice serve as secretary of state. Vice president Dick Cheney.

Democrat Barack Obama is 44th president from 2008 to 2016.

Republican Donald Trump is president from 2016 to 2020, defeating Hillary Clinton. FBI director James Comey announces a new investigation into Clinton’s emails eleven days before the election. Clinton feels that Bernie Sanders stayed in the primary race longer than needed, hurting her in the general election.

2017 #MeToo movement.

2018 Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
Greta Thunberg calls for climate action.

2020. Joe Biden is president to 2024.

Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee for 2024.

Gen Z: slow living, less alcohol, greater mental health awareness, more sleep deprivation.

Gen Alpha just being born.

Internet culture

Economic impact
History of computing

Mexico

Yucatán: Chichen Itza, a Mayan city.

Mexican food

South America

Brazil

Argentina

Bolivia
1825. Simón Bolívar wins the Bolivian War of Independence against Spain and Spanish Peru during Spain’s Peninsular War.
1920. Saavedra overthrows the Liberal Party, but his Republican party soon splinters.
1952. Bolivian Revolution. The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) overthrows the Bolivian oligarchy with liberal and communist support.
1964. Bolivian coup by army commander Barrientos with CIA help. Che Guevara is executed trying to overthrow Barrientos.

In the Central American crisis, the US supported right-wing governments against left-wing guerrillas.
1979 Nicaraguan Revolution. Sandinistas overthrow the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.
1979 Salvadoran coup d’état by US-aligned military leads to civil war in El Salvadore by FMLN guerrillas, killing 75,000. Authoritarian President Nayib Bukele arrests over 75,000 alleged MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) gang members, leading to 90% approval.

Grenada

1980s Latin American debt crisis or La Década Perdida has high debt and inflation. Mexico borrowed against future oil revenues with debt in US dollars.

Chile

Venezuela: Hugo Chavez is president from 1999 to 2013.

Africa

map

Geography

Hadza people in East Africa are around 1,000 hunter-gatherers with no known genetic relatives. They live in bands of 20-30 people. They predate the Bantu expansion and speak a click language isolate.

2000 BC to 0 CE. Bantu expansion. Bantu speakers around Cameroon displace other hunter-gatherer groups and become the dominant language family, spoken by 300 million people. Bantu are associated with iron, millet, and sorghum.

700 Kanem-Bornu Empire in Central Africa.
700 Gao Empire in the Niger River valley.
1226 Mali Empire in the Niger River valley, West Africa
1696 Omani Empire in East Africa.

Scramble for Africa.

South Africa

1957 Kwame Nkrumah achieves Ghana independence in the Positive Action campaign.

1960 Congo gains independence from France.
1993 Congo Civil War: Sassou Nguesso and his Mbochi Cobra militia wins the ethnic conflict against Nibolek (Cocoye militia) and Lari (Ninja militia).

1975 Angolan Civil War after it becomes independent from Portugal kills over 500,000. In 2002, the communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) wins.

1988 Somali Civil War begins with armed rebels fighting the military junta. In 1922, 37,000 UN soldiers controls the southern half of Somalia, including the capital, trying to build a nation. In 1993, the UN ends up fighting against the Somali National Alliance. In a raid, the SNA inflicts 100 US casualties, downing two Black Hawks with RPGs and ambushing the relief convoy in multiple places.

Liberia peace settlement required ceding local power to bad people.

Sudan

In 1991, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe implements anti-colonial land reforms that result in a flight of capital, banking collapse, a drop in food production. Mugabe continues printing money to fund the Congo War and corruption, leading to hyperinflation. Most transactions are now conducted in US dollars.

1992 Algerian Civil War. Military coup d’état after Islamists win elections. Islamic rebels start with popular support but are defeated after ten years of civil war killing 100,000. Partly caused by economic problems from the oil glut. It spills over as the Islamist insurgency in the Maghreb and the Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region: Mali War, Niger, and Burkina Faso. A Coup Belt forms from disatisfaction with handling the insurgency.

1885. Berlin Conference gives King Leopold II of Belgium rule over present DRC. Belgium colonized the entire country to extract rubber killing 10 million people, mostly due to famine.
1960. Congo Crisis. DRC gains independence from Belgium. White officers led by Force Publique army commander Janssens continue to repress black soldiers, who mutiny. President Mobutu Seko overthrows the elected president Kasa-Vubu in 1965 and crushes Soviet-supported communist resistance. Hutu Banyamulenge militias help Mobutu defeat the Simba rebellion.

1971. General Amin overthrows President Milton Obote. In 1972, Obote orders an abortive invasion of Uganda.
1979. Uganda-Tanzania War. Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) leader Milton Obote overthrows Amin.
1980. Ugandan Bush War. Dictator Museveni overthrows Obote.
1986. Ugandan Civil War against Museveni. Rebels include Joseph Kony’s army, which uses 66,000 child soldiers.

1994. Rwandan Civil War. In the Rwandan genocide, Hutu militias kill around 500,000 Tutsi minorities. Rwanda president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, are killed when their plane is shot down. The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front wins the war. Mobutu welcomes the Hutu extremists, who escalate violence.

1996. Congo War. Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi invade to pursue some rebel groups, joined by Angola and Eritrea. Rebels include Tutsi Banyamulenge. The occupation replaces president Mobutu with the rebel leader Kabila, and starts a second war when Kabila tries to expel them. Kabila gets military help from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, Libya and Sudan, resulting in 5 million excess deaths through disease and malnutrition. In 2003, a democratic Transitional Government is shakily established, though it is weak and corrupt.

1974 Ethiopian Civil War. Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) overthrows the communist Derg military junta. 1 million die from famine.
1993 Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia.
1998 Eritrean-Ethiopian War. Eritrea invades Ethiopia.
2018 Opposition leader Abiy Ahmed defeats the TPLF and gives Badme to Eritrea, ending the border conflict.
2020 Tigray War. TPLF condemns the peace and fights the government for two years.

2002 African Union. The African Standby Force intervenes in peacekeeping missions.

2007 Kenyan crisis. Ballot-stuffing on both sides leads to violent mass protests. Kofi Annan brokers a coalition government.

2010 Somaliland opposition candidate Ahmed Mohamoud defeats President Kahin.

1960 Nigeria gains independence. It is the most populous country and leading oil producer in Africa.
2009. Islamist Boko Haram insurgency includes the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.
2015. Nigeria opposition candidate Buhari defeats incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.

1992. Ghana becomes a democracy.
2016. Ghana has a peaceful transfer of power from John Mahama to Nana Akufo-Addo.

2017. Gambia: president Barrow defeats incumbent Jammeh, who leaves after Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) military intervention.

2020. Malawi opposition candidate Chakwera defeats incumbent Mutharika.
2021. Zambia opposition candidate Hichilema defeats incumbent Lungu.

1989. First Liberian Civil War. Dictator Charles Taylor overthrows dictator Samuel Doe.
1991. Sierra Leone Civil War. Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Charles Taylor take over diamond mines and commit war crimes. In 1992, Captain Valentine Strasser overthrows the government. In 1996, Julius Maada Bio overthrows Strasser and Ahmad Tejan Kabbah is elected president.
1993. Second Liberian Civil War. Taylor resigns in 2003 and Ellen Sirleaf is elected president.
2024. Libera opposition candidate Boakai defeats George Weah.

Gabon

Niger

https://old.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1acakjs/what_country_in_africa_has_the_most_potential_and/

Law

Judicial branch: federal courts. Judges are appointed for life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Evidence_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_instrument

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_(law)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_hands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxims_of_equity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_interest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_marshalling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_conversion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_English_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subrogation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injunction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_performance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolling_(law)

Learned Hand served on the 2nd circuit appeals court from 1924 to 1961. He is the most quoted lower-court judge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Intellectual_property

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_affairs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Endowment_for_International_Peace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sex_and_the_law

Education

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(colleges)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarthmore_College
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Mawr_College
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haverford_College

Literature

High level is more abstract and general.
Low level is more detailed.
Granularity: degree to which a system is composed of distinguishable pieces.
Emergence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Unit of analysis: entity being studied. Discuss conclusions in terms of the unit of analysis.

1959. The Two Cultures by C. P. Snow argues for more dialogue between science and humanities.

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976) by Raymond Williams.

Thomas Schelling writes The Strategy of Conflict (1960) on action-based communication to demonstrate credible commitment in war and diplomacy. He proves the existence of a focal point or Schelling point that people assume in the absence of communication. People default to meet at noon at the information booth at Grand Central Terminal, heads over tails, ABC letter order, and $50 for splitting money. Micromotives and Macrobehavior (1978) pioneers agent-based computational economics proving a tipping model of racial segregation.

Classical realism theory by Hans Morgenthau (1948) studies the international relations of self-interested states. It holds that multipolar systems are more stable than bipolar systems through alliances and petty wars.

Neorealism theory by Kenneth Waltz (1979) assumes that states fundamentally care about survival and thus power. Because states cannot trust others’ future intentions, they face a security dilemma where one state’s increase in security reduces the security of others’, causing an arms race. This prisoner’s dilemma can lead to tension, escalation, or conflict. The dilemma is stronger when offensive weapons have an advantage over defensive weapons and when offensive and defensive weapons are hard to distinguish. Multipolar systems are more unstable because of greater complexity in diplomacy, higher change of misreading others’ intentions, chain-gaining where allies are drawn into unwise wars provoked by their partners, and buck-passing where states hope others will pay the costs of balancing against a threatening power. Offensive neorealism theory by John Mearsheimer (2001) argues that all states pursue offensive power.

Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) argues that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism is the final form of sociocultural organization.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kuhn argues that science involves paradigm shifts, not just an accumulation of knowledge.
Diffusion of innovations (1962) by Everett Rogers: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Imagined Communities (1983) by Benedict Anderson on the spread of nationalism.

Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) argues that differences in development originate in environmental differences that are amplified in positive feedback loops. Eurasia has more suitable plants and animals for domestication, more east-west orientation allowing economy of scale. Density and trade led to higher immunity to disease.

Hard Choices (1998) on humanitarianism, with contributions from Kofi A. Annan.

Steven Pinker writes The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) that violence has declined over time due to state monopolies on force, commerce, humanitarianism, communication, rights revolutions. Empathy, self-control, moral sense, and reason triumph over practical violence, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideological justification.

Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari argues for growing political and economic interdependence and unification driven by money, empire and capitalist globalization, and universal religion.

The Dawn of Everything (2021). Rejects the State as a colonial construct. Favors flexible politics without domination (control over violence and information). Favors freedom of movement, freedom to disobey arbitrary authority, and freedom to reimagine society.

The Human Past by Chris Scarre

Anthropology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_100
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_100:_The_Most_Important_People_of_the_Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_System_(economic_plan)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_African-American_history#1970%E2%80%932000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Women%27s_Hall_of_Fame
https://www.youtube.com/@mapsinanutshell
https://vimeo.com/128373915
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_world#Early_Modern_Era
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_economics#Economic_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations_(1814%E2%80%931919)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_the_1930s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkans_campaign_(World_War_II)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khedivate_of_Egypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Imperialism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Turkish_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania_in_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1917%E2%80%931923
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen%E2%80%93Russian_conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Tolkachev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-35
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizer_(aeronautics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_stabilizer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_stability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%E2%80%93Lagrange_equation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_mechanics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_theories_in_physics#Unification_of_gravity_and_astronomy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil,_3rd_Marquess_of_Salisbury#Prime_minister:_1895%E2%80%931902
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italian_War_of_Independence#War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Legionary_State
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Romania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_century
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Brief_History_of_Europe/TOC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Joe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_simple
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freehold_(law)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSDCORB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_reform
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Greatest_Britons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Evidence-based_practices
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ages_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Chinese_Military_Texts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_alliances_of_France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire_under_the_Palaiologos_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bulgarian_Empire
dominant power in the Balkans until 1256
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Croatia#Legacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cities
Rede Lecture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Renaissance_navbox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Early_Modern_Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_selection_(politics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Culture_of_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Environmental_social_science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Social_sciences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:History_of_Mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_age
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_ancient_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journal_of_African_American_History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Social_History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Black_Studies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_African_American_Studies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_directories