History

Circa 3100 BC, the two kingdoms began to intertwine in both culture and economics. Thus began the First Dynasty of Egypt. The first pharaoh post-unification was likely Narmer, a king often identified as Menes in the Greek classical tradition (there’s still some debate around this).

An important archaeological find from this period is the Narmer Palette, which depicts the White Crown of Upper Egypt along with the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.

Djoser of the Third Dynasty was the first King of the Old Kingdom, and he was buried in a notable namesake step pyramid at Saqqara, near Memphis. He worked with his vizier Imhotep (the guy from The Mummy) to make it, and Imhotep was one of the most important people during that time.

During the Third Dynasty, independent Egyptian states became called nomes, with each ruled by a nomarch. Each nome was under the ultimate rule of the king.

That brings us to the Fourth Dynasty, which began with Snefru (known sometimes as Soris), who became a prolific pyramid commissioner. Snefru ordered the building of three pyramids: the Meidum pyramid, the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, and the Red Pyramid.

Snefru was succeeded by Khufu (known to the Greeks as Cheops), who most famously built the Great Pyramid at Giza. Not much else is documented about his reign, but he is the main character in the Westcar Papyrus (a collection of some stories about miracles).

Later kings of the Fourth Dynasty included Menkaure, who also built a pyramid in Giza.

The Fourth Dynasty gave way to the Fifth, which ended in the First Intermediate Period. At this point, pharaonic power was greatly diminshed and power became decentralized.

That all ended when the Eleventh Dynasty reunited under Mentuhotep II. The Middle Kingdom gave rise to old styles of government, resulting in the readoption of the vizier as a position of great power.

However, by the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, dynastic chaos began to once again take hold of the Kingdom. Thus begins the full disintegration of unity once again, resulting in the Second Intermediate Period.

The Eighteenth Dynasty was home to perhaps the most famous figures of Egypt.

Ahmose I is the accepted founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. He campaigned against the Hyksos and the Levant. He was followed by Amenhotep I and Thutmose I.

Thutmose I was succeeded by Thutmose II, who married Thutmose I’s daughter, Hatshepsut. She came to power after Thutmose II’s death, ruling jointly with Thutmose III. Widely considered a hugely successful pharaoh, Hatshepsut built much of the Karnak temple in Luxor including a Chapelle Rouge (Red Chapel) from which we learned about her. She created an era of prosperity due to redeveloping trade networks and funded a mission to Queen Ati of the Land of Punt, which notably brought back myrrh and frankincense. The expedition was commemorated with a temple at Deir el-Bahri. Hatshepsut was succeeded by Thutmose III upon her death.

Thutmose III, having learned of military strategy during his time as co-regent with Hatshepsut, grew into an immensively successful expansionist. Sometimes referred to as “the Napoleon of Egypt”, he captured hundreds of eastern cities and crossed the Euphrates.

Amenhotep III built the Luxor Temple and multiple other huge palaces. He was the richest of the Eighteenth Dynasty kings.

Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC), formerly Amenhotep IV, completely reorganized all the religion in Egypt. He worshiped Aten (a solar disc) instead of the old religion. This didn’t exactly ingratiate him with the priests of the time, and he fell out with them 5 years into ruling. He was married to Nefertiti, a daughter of Ay who didn’t come from royal blood and his son was Tutenkhamen (who was a very young king). He constructed Amarna and was succeeded by Smenkhare.

The Eighteenth Dynasty fell into division and decline, and by 1292 BC the reigning pharaoh Horemheb died childless. He appointed his vizier as his successor.

That vizier became Rameses I, the first pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty. He was succeeded by his son Seti I.

Seti fought wars in the east, claiming large portions of the east for Egypt again. In particular, he managed to take Kadesh from the Hittites, though that particular victory was short-lived as the Hittites recaptured the city. Seti was succeeded by his son.

Rameses II, The Great (1279–1213 BC) fought the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh, near the Orontes River, where over 6,000 chariots were used; the battle was fought to a draw and the two kingdoms formed a treaty. Rameses also suppressed the Shardana pirates in a naval battle. Rameses built the Abu Simbel temples and a temple at Luxor that houses the House of Life. His wife was Nefertari, daughter of Hattusilis, and the Greeks called him Ozymandias. He added large sections to the Karnak temple complex and was succeeded by Merneptah I when he was buried in the Valley of the Kings.

Cyrus the Great, grandson of Astyages, founded the Achaemenid Empire. He ended the Babylonian Captivity, in which many Jews were held captive in Babylon, and his Edict of Restoration allowed them to return home. He created an important declaration of human rights and wrote it down on his “cylinder”, and his capital was at Pasargadae. Xenophon immortalized the man in his text Cyrus the Great.

Cyrus overthrew the Median Empire (the Medes). He was also victorious over Croesus of Lydia at Thymbra and at Sardis, Now, having built this empire, some Persian kings wanted to also conquer Greece. Obviously, the Greeks weren’t very pleased with this proposition, and fought back.

Darius I (the Great) attempted to conquer Greece. To get power, he overthrew Gaumata, and bragged about it in the Behistun Inscription. Following the Ionian Revolt (bunch of Greeks rising up in Asia Minor), he sent troops to Marathon.

The battle at Marathon (490 BC) coincided with the Carneia festival, so the Spartans didn’t fight (not very good sign for the Greeks, read about the Spartans below). The Persians were led by Artaphernes (Darius’s brother) and Datis. However, the Athenians, led by Miltiades, managed to win, and Pheidippides the runner ran back to Athens and died saying “Nike”, and the twenty six (approximately) miles he ran led to our modern marathon.

Darius also began construction of Persepolis, the new Persian capital. He increased the number of satraps (governors) in Persia to 23.

When Darius I died, he was succeeded by his son Xerxes I, who kept trying to conquer Greece. Xerxes enhanced the city of Persepolis and ordered the building of the Gate of All Nations. He faced multiple rebellions for melting down a big statue of Marduk in Babylon. At one point, a bridge spanning the Hellespont broke, and Xerxes decapitated the engineers (definitely the best way to get more work done). He then proceeded to whip the sea for insolence, as was the custom at the time. During the second Persian invasion of Greece, there were some important battles:

Thermopylae (480 BC) was a famous battle in which Leonidas and his 300 Spartans made a final stand against Xerxes in a narrow pass. They actually had a decent chance of surviving, but a traitor named Ephialtes decided to tell Xerxes about a path that was hidden in the mountains, and the Spartans returned home on their shields. Zack Snyder proceeded to show the battle in slow motion in the film 300.

Salamis (480 BC) was a naval battle near the Isthmus of Corinth, close to Piraeus. Themistocles led a force of Greek triremes against the navy of Xerxes. Xerxes placed men on Psyttaleia, a small island near the exit of the straits, to try and kill/capture any Greeks that dared pass. However, Aristides led an Athenian detachment and killed the Persians on Psyttaleia. Other people at the battle included Artemesia of Caria, Queen of Halicarnassus. Xerxes reportedly saw 200 of his ships sink into the sea from Egaleo Hill, and he wasn’t happy. This was the high point of the Persian invasion; after Salamis, they began to retreat. The battle has been called “the battle that saved Western civilization”.

Plataea was the final decisive defeat of the Persian army. After this, the Persians finally gave up and decided that Greece wasn’t worth it.

After the thwarted invasion of Persia and the ensuing Greco-Persian wars, Athens and Sparta fought during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Athens brought in some allies in the form of the Delian League. Briefly during the war, the Council of Four Hundred took power in Athens. At another time, Pericles, the leader of Athens, delivered a funeral oration.

The Athenians, in an attempt to win, launched the Sicilian Expedition, which attempted to take Syracuse. It didn’t end very well, so the expedition’s commander, Alcibiades, was recalled to Athens, and Sicily didn’t really care at all about Athens’s threats. Alcibiades would go on to be accused of profaning the Eleusinian mysteries, and notably switching sides multiple times during the Peloponnesian War. When the Athenians were going to go home, there was a lunar eclipse. Being superstitious, Nicias and friends decided not to sail, and were attacked by the Syracusians. Other battles include Cyzicus, where the Athenians won under Thrasybulus.

The last major battle of the war was Aegospotami, where a Spartan fleet under Lysander crushed the Athenian navy. Athens also had to endure a bad plague at this point, during which Pericles died. Other notable battles include Notium, Sphacteria, and Delium. Halfway through the war, the Peace of Nicias interrupted it. Thucydides ended up writing a history of the war.

Philip II, son of Eurydice and Amyntas III, was King of Macedon. He rose to the throne when his brother, Perdiccas III, died in battle against the Illyrians, leaving only his son, Amyntas IV. Philip got rid of Amyntas and united all of Greece, using both iron and gold to achieve his goals, and proceeded to conquer Paeonia and Thessaly (disregarding warnings by Demosthenes). He destroyed the Sacred Band of Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea; following the victory, Philip created the League of Corinth to help build amass armies against Persia.

Philip’s son was Alexander the Great, who would become one of the greatest conquerors of his time. Alexander the Child was tutored by Aristotle, and he became a brilliant tactician and leader. When he was young, he had helped his father at Chaeronea, and one of his earliest victories was at the Battle of the Granicus. When he was declared king, he killed some rivals, including Amyntas IV. He cut the Gordian Knot because he couldn’t untie it, (brute force solves all problems).

Alexander decided to try and conquer the massive Persian Empire, which was now ruled by Darius III. At the battle of Issus, Alexander met the forces of Darius, pushing him back and making him angry. On the plains of Gaugamela, Darius flattened the grass to make it easier for his large numbers of chariots to outmaneuver Alexander’s forces. Alexander was smarter than Darius and ended up winning anyway, taking over the Persian Empire.

Alexander eventually headed to Punjab, defeating King Porus of the Paurava Kingdom at the Hydaspes River (and losing his horse, Bucephalus, in the process).

Alexander proceeded to execute the general Permenion, as well as Permenion’s son, Philotas. After Alexander’s death, his generals fought over his vast conquered lands in the Wars of the Diadochi, and his massive empire fell apart.

There were seven kings of Rome, but here are the important ones:

Romulus founded the city of Rome in 753 BC along with his brother Remus. They were legendarily raised by a she-wolf, and they overthrew their evil grandfather Amulius and restored Numitor to power. Romulus staked his claim on Rome after seeing birds from the Palatine Hill, while Remus was on the Aventine. However, they got into a bit of a brotherly argument, and Remus ended up dead. As king, Romulus hosted a festival of Neptune, and invited the Sabines, who were led by Titus Tatius. There, he authorized his men to kidnap and rape the Sabine women, giving the Romans an easier way to increase their population. He organized a personal guard called the Celeres, and when he died, he was deified as Quirinus.

Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome, established a more organized religion and the office of Pontifex Maximus (kind of like the Roman Pope).

Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) was the seventh and final king of Rome. After the rape of Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, he was ousted by Brutus (not the one who killed Caesar).

With the death of Tarquinius Superbus, the Roman Republic began. It was governed by two consuls and a Senate, and lasted until about 14 BC. Collatinus and Brutus (recall the end of Tarquin) were the first two consuls. Brutus was also the only person in Rome to coin money with his own face on it,

The Republic lasted quite a long time, and lots of important things happened. I’ll talk about some of them, but this probably won’t end up being a complete account.

Rome began to expand following the creation of the Republic. Latin and Etruscan towns and cities fell at such battles as Lake Regillus (496 BC).

Roman society was split between plebeians and patricians, the commoners and nobles respectively. Because plebeians couldn’t hold high office, they would occasionally effectively go on strike (a “secession of the plebs”). The first such secession led to the creation of the office of Tribune, which provided the plebeians a way to check the power of the Senate. The struggle between the two classes, called the Conflict of the Orders, lasted until 287 BC, at which point the plebeians were effectively politically equal to patricians, though their quality of life was still quite low.

Marcus Furius Camillus was one of the first great generals of the Republic. He beseiged the Etruscan city of Veii and was given a triumph. During the course of the war with the Etruscans, he was named dictator. When he attacked Falerii, a local teacher attempted to surrender the children of the city to him. Camillus refused to capture the kids, and Falerii made peace with Rome. Livy and Plutarch claim he was given four triumphs and was dictator five times. Camillus was famously referred to as the “Second Founder of Rome”.

Rome waged three Samnite Wars in Italy intermittently from 343 to 290 BC. The Oscan-speaking Samnites were one of Rome’s most important rivals on the peninsula; the wars were a result of Roman intervention in political affairs that the Samnites took offense to. The largest of the wars was the Second Samnite War, which included a massive Roman defeat at the Battle of the Caudine Forks by Samnite leader Gaius Pontius. Despite this, the Romans bounced back and the war ended with Samnite defeat at Bovianum. The Samnites were subjugated and attempted to rebel in the Third Samnite War. Importantly, the Samnite tactical unit known as the maniple (a phalanx with joints) was adopted by the Romans upon seeing their opponents use it to great effect.

Pyrrhus of Epirus decided to invade Rome in 280 BC, ostensibly to aid the city of Tarentum in Magna Graecia (southern Italy). Victory would result his in being granted quite a lot of power. He took a bunch of elephants to stop the Romans and defeated the Romans at Heraclea. Pyrrhus won a costly victory at Asculum (279 BC) resulting in our use of the term “Pyrrhic Victory”. He then became ruler of Sicily for a while, before retreating from Italy.

During the Republic, Rome got into a series of three Punic Wars against Carthage. During these wars, Cato the Elder repeatedly said “Carthage must be destroyed”.

The First Punic War primarily took place on Sicily, with quite a bit of fighting around Syracuse. It was a result of Hiero II stopping a Mamertine uprising in Messina, Sicily. As a result of the First Punic war, Sicily became the first conquered Roman territory.

The Second Punic War was a much bigger deal. It started over a conflict of control of Saguntum in Spain. Hannibal Barca, his father Hamilcar, and his brother Hasdrubal, were the leading Carthaginian commanders. Hasdrubal died at the Battle of Metaurus during the war. They were opposed by Scipio Africanus, a highly competent Roman general. Hannibal took his elephants and his army through Spain and across the Alps, and he attacked the Romans when they weren’t expecting it. He won battles at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae, where Hannibal used his now famous pincer tactic to encircle the Romans army. At this point, the Romans were deploying the “Fabian Strategy”, which consisted entire of them trying to delay their inevitable death. However, soon the Romans pushed back, and eventually the final showdown at Zama was a win for Scipio. Hannibal eventually killed himself using poison he kept stored in a ring he wore.

In 197 BC, Philip V of Macedon, trying to live up to the greatness of his forefather Alexander, decided to take Greece back from the Romans and triggered the Second Macedonian War. He encountered Roman troops under Flaminius at Cynoscephalae, a field in Thessaly, where a large Roman contingent including 20 elephants thrashed the Macedonians. Philip sued for peace.

Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus were tribunes in the Roman republic. As tribunes, of course, their main objective was to make life better for plebeians. They were rivals with their cousin Scipio Aemilianus, who opposed some of their reforms. At one point, Tiberius was killed by the Optimate faction of the Senate, because he’d passed the Lex Sempronia Agraria, a land reform bill that his enemies didn’t particularly care for. Twelve years later, in 121 BC, Gaius was killed by the Senate following a constitutional crisis.

Cincinnatus was a former consul of Rome. He’d retired to his farm in rural Italy. When a Roman army was trapped on Mount Algidus by Aequi troops, Rome looked to Cincinnatus to help them out a bit. They appointed him dictator, a position that he ended up having for only sixteen days (traditionally the post was held for six months at a time). At the end of these sixteen days, he proceeded to go back to his plow and continue farming.

Gaius Marius was known as the “third founder of Rome” for defeating the Cimbri and Teutones at battles such as Vercellae and Aquae Sextiae. He defeated Jugurtha the Numidian and enacted various military reforms, and he was supported by the four-time consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who held quite a bit of power in Rome. He was elected consul for six years running, and his arch-nemesis was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who captured Jugurtha after Marius defeated him, thus ending the Jugurthine War.

Marius and Sulla had both fought in the Social War from 90 to 88 BC. The war was triggered by the murder of tribune Marcus Livius Drusus, who had wanted to extend citizenship to everyone in Italy. On his death, the Marsi and Samnites rebelled against Rome, and generals like Marius, Sulla, and Pompeius Strabo (father of the more important Pompey) won a military victory. The end result of the war, however, ensured that individual Italian groups got some more rights.

Following the death of Marius and the later death of Cinna, Sulla came back to Rome and started a rebellion. He won the Battle of the Colline Gate (defeating his last remaining opponents, including the last remnants of the Samnites), and was appointed as the first dictator for life. He doubled the size of the Senate and increased the number of praetors (judges). During his proscriptions, he promised rewards for the deaths of his enemies. He made peace with Mithridates VI, king of Pontus. Machiavelli refers to Sulla as “half fox and half man”.

The next most important events in the later Roman Republic were largely the work of the two triumvirates.

The First Triumvirate consisted of Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Crassus.

Julius Caesar was perhaps the most famous of the figures of the Roman Republic. As a young man, he was kidnapped by pirates, and he proceeded to be insulted by the low ransom they asked for. When he eventually became older, he hunted down the pirates and killed them. In 63 BC, he was picked to be Pontifex Maximus. His commentary on the Gallic Wars includes his victory over Vercingetorix at Alesia. Caesar’s generals at Alesia included Titus Labienus and Mark Antony. He was co-consul with Bibulus, and he won at Thapsus against the Optimates and the Numidians.

Pompey the Great was a general. He was granted a navy by the Lex Gabinia, and he defeated the Mediterranean pirates quickly and efficiently. He also helped Metellus fight Sertorius in Spain. The Lex Manilia gave him command of the war against Mithridates VI of Pontus, taking command from Lucullus. He quickly drove Mithridates back, and Mithridates decided to commit suicide. Pompey’s wife was Julia, and his was the first permanent theater in Rome — where Caesar would later be killed.

Marcus Crassus was a very rich person. He’d made lots of money through his building and firefighting empires; since Rome was made of wood (mostly), Crassus was able to buy burning houses for cheap, put out the fires, rebuild them, and flip them for some massive payoffs. Along with Sulla, Crassus had fought at the Colline Gate, where he commanded the right wing.

When Spartacus, a gladiator trained in Capua and aided by Crixus, revolted, Crassus fought against him in an attempt to bring him to justice. Spartacus was killed at the Siler River, and Crassus crucified those who participated in Spartacus’s slave revolt along the Appian Way, and he was mad when Pompey ended up claiming credit for taking out Spartacus. In an attempt to win some goodwill with the general public, Crassus went on a campaign in the Far East (starting in Syria), and proceeded to lose to the Parthians under Surena at Carrhae. He was killed when the Parthians supposedly poured gold down his throat.

When returning from Gaul, Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army, saying “The die is cast”. Bringing an army into Rome is simply not something that you’re supposed to do, so this little gesture triggered a civil war with Pompey. Caesar narrowly avoided being destroyed at Dyrrachium, but came back and decisively defeated Pompey at Pharsalus, where Mark Antony notably helped command the left wing. Following his final defeat, Pompey ran away and ended up in Egypt, where Ptolemy XIII beheaded him.

As the new dictator for life, Caesar lived well, increasing the size of the senate from 600 to 900. In 44 BC, his wife Calpurnia warned him to beware the Ides of March, but he went to the Theater of Pompey and got stabbed many times by Brutus and Cassius, resulting in the end of his rule and the rise of the Second Triumvirate. Brutus was notable because he was actually the descendant of the Brutus that had ousted Tarquin. Brutus had been saved at Pharsalus by Servillia, and he had been raised by Cato the Younger.

The Second Triumvirate consisted of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.

Octavian was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and he brought together a new triumvirate. His best friend was Marcus Agrippa, who commanded his armies.

Mark Antony was a friend of Octavian who would eventually fall out with him. He divorced Fulvia in order to marry Octavia the Younger. He delivered the eulogy at Caesar’s funeral, as noted by Shakespeare: “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…​”. With Octavian, he defeated Caesar’s murderers Brutus and Cassius at Philippi.

Lepidus is relatively lesser known, but he had a lot of money, for all triumvirates need to be bankrolled.

Later, when Octavian and Antony became enemies, Antony was in Egypt with Cleopatra. They battled, and in 31 BC, at the Battle of Actium, Agrippa was sent to crush Antony’s forces. They were successful, and Octavian became Augustus, first emperor of Rome.

Rome had lots of emperors, so I’ll go over the ones that come up often.

The dynasty was founded by Chandragupta Maurya. He defeated the Nanda Empire and the Macedonian Seleucid Empire, and having defeated Alexander the Great, he was able to unify India. The Iron Pillar of Delhi is sometimes attributed to him, but that theory was probably discredited.

Chandragupta’s grandson, Bindasura’s son, Ashoka (273–232 BC), is considered perhaps the greatest ruler of ancient India. He took the throne after killing some of his relatives (but spared his brother, Tissa). He conquered the Kalinga empire, an action that changed him forever, since he adopted Buddhism as his new religion. After his conversion, he put up edicts on columns all over the place to promote non-violence and animal rights, and he became mostly a pacifist ruler. One of those columns at Sarnath has four lions on it, along with a 24 spoke wheel of righteousness, a symbol which would be placed on the Indian flag.

Chandra Gupta II was the most important ruler during this time, and the Gupta Empire was biggest under him. Besides that, not a lot of hugely notable things happened around this time. There would follow periods of India being invaded repeatedly by people from all over the place, including Persia, Scythia, Parthia, and more.

Until we get to a point in history where India starts to interact with the rest of the world more, let’s move up a little bit and take a look at China.

The Shang is the first real Chinese dynasty with written records, succeeding the lesser known Xia dynasty. The writings are found on “oracle bones”, which were bones that were heated and used to tell the future in a practice called pyromancy. Their capital was near Anyang. The emperor Wu Yi was killed by a bolt of lightning, because he was quite vocal about not liking the god of lightning and thunder very much. Other notable emperors include Wu Ding and Fu Hao. Then, the emperor Xi Din lost the battle of Muye and killed himself, leading to the Zhou dynasty ruling.

The Zhou was the longest lasting period of Chinese history. During the Zhou, the use of iron began. When the Zhou capital was sacked, the Eastern Zhou and the Spring and Autumn period began. Intellectualism flourished at this point; Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War and the Hundred Schools of thought (one of which was Confucianism) were introduced.

However, during the Zhou dynasty, real power rested with the feudal lords, so by the end of this really long dynasty, everything fell apart into seven separate warring states. When the fighting had settled, the state of Qin was victorious.

A short, but important dynasty, consisting almost entirely of one important emperor: Qin Shi Huangdi. He burned a lot of books, so people tend to not think too highly of him. He also standardized weights, unified Chinese writing, and begin building a Great Wall which you may have heard of. Along with his minister Li Si, he implemented Legalism. When he died, he was buried near Xi’an with a massive and famous terra cotta army.

Qin Shi Huangdi had created the first truly unified China, but his death, the dynasty was mismanaged into failure, and it collapsed quickly.

A golden age of China that had a lasting impact, the Han dynasty names China’s predominant ethnic group today. The emperor Gaozu (aka Liu Bang) founded the dynasty, even though he was born as a peasant. He reunited China and made a new capital at Chang’an (now Xi’an).

One of the greatest rulers of China was Wudi, who expanded China greatly. He reformed government and he made Confucianism the new official doctrine. An official named Wang Mang temporarily overthrew the Han dynasty to try and make a new Xin dynasty, but it didn’t take. Wang Mang died at Chang’an, and Emperor Guangwu took back the throne.

By the end, the Han dynasty had faced the Yellow Turban Rebellion, a Taoist peasant revolt during the reign of Emperor Ling. The Yellow Turban Rebellion was the opening to the Period of the Three Kingdoms.

A short and violent period in history. The classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms ensured that it’s still well known today. The three kingdoms were Wei, Shu, and Wu: Cao Wei north of the Yangtze, Eastern Wu in the lower Yangtze, and Shu Han in Sichuan.

The Battle of Red Cliffs (208) was fought between Liu Bei and Sun Quan, (although admittedly it overlapped a bit with the Han dynasty). It set up the basis for the states of Shu and Wu.

Eventually, Cao Wei managed to defeat the other kingdoms, but failed to reunify China. China ended up going through a short period of Southern and Northern dynasties, but not a lot of things I care about happened during that time, so let’s skip to the Tang dynasty.

The Tang dynasty succeeded in reuniting China after the Sui dynasty (very short dynasty) fell. It brought another golden age in China: important people such as Li Po and Du Fu worked and the printing press was invented.

The Tang dynasty moved the capital back to Chang’an and was also ruled by Gaozu. His son, emperor Taizong (aka Li Shimin), deposed him and became a great ruler, consolidating power fairly effectively and conquering a lot more of western China. He was succeeded by Empress Wu, the only woman to be emperor of China, presiding over the “second Zhou dynasty”. The Tang also fought three wars against the Three Kingdoms of Korea (Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla).

Later, during the reign of Xuanzong, the An Lushan rebellion tore apart the Tang. Even though it was quelled, the revolt had lasting effects that ended up beginning the periods of the five dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms.

Soon afterwards, the Song dynasty began. This was a time dedicated to culture, not warfare; to engineering, not killing. Gunpowder was discovered, the first compass was made, a standing navy was established, and paper money was circulated.

The first ruler was Taizu, and he realized that he could save his own neck if he asked all the generals and military people around China to retire. This resulted in scholars being far more dominant during the Song dynasty.

The capital was moved to Kaifeng, which was captured by the Jin dynasty from the north. So, the Song fled down south and made a new Southern Song dynasty with capital at Hangzhou, and the Jin didn’t bother them any more. But then the Mongols came down and destroyed the Jin, with the help of the Song. The Song didn’t realize that the Mongols wanted their territory too, so even though they lasted a while under Mongol attacks, they eventually were defeated.

The Mongols established the Yuan dynasty, most notable for the emperor Kublai Khan. The dynasty was created after the Battle of Yamen, and the capital was at Dadu.

In the 1350’s, the White Lotus Society (Buddhists) created an army to go against the Yuan dynasty. This Red Turban Rebellion, led by Zhu Yuanzhang, would bring about the demise of the Yuan and the rise of the Ming within a few years.

The rulers of the Ming dynasty were the Zhu family. Everyone knows about their porcelain work, notably their vases. This dynasty originated the use of the word “china” to describe high quality porcelain.

The emperor Hongwu, who had led the Red Turbans, founded the dynasty. The eunuch Zheng He led fleets on treasure voyages to show off how rich they were.

This is also when China’s capital was moved to Beijing, and Yongle built the Forbidden City. The Ming dynasty collapsed as a result of a failing economy coupled with the invasion of the Manchu people from the north.

The Manchurian Qing dynasty was the last dynasty of China. They created the banner system, and the emperor Kangxi quelled the Revolt of the Three Feudatories. The dowager empress Cixi weakened the dynasty, and at one point, they were also threatened by a White Lotus Rebellion against Emperor Chia Ch’ing; the rebellion was almost successful because of a corrupt government under Ho-shen. The three great emperors were Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong. Other notable emperors include Guangxu. However, the dynasty ended because the later emperors weren’t very effective.

The Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864. The Christian Hong Xiuquan led a fairly bloody revolt against the Qing, aided by his God Worshiper’s Society. Hong Xiuquan said that he was Jesus’s younger brother (the genealogy might not side with him on that particular issue). The rebels set up a base at Nanking. The Qing were aided by foreign powers, which helped create the Ever Victorious Army, under the command of Frederick Townsend Ward, and later Charles George “Chinese” Gordon. The rebellion ended with the fall of Nanking and a Qing victory.

In 1899, foreign spheres of influence were growing in China. Locals such as the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (“Boxers”) weren’t particularly thrilled. They decided to fight back against the Unequal Treaties and the Open Door policy that other countries had created in China, starting the Boxer Rebellion. During the rebellion, Boxers killed foreign missionaries during the Taiyuan Massacre. Boxers converged on Beijing and laid siege to the Legation Quarter, and the Empress Dowager Cixi decided to support them. Thus began a conflict between Cixi and the Boxers and the Eight-Nation Alliance against them. The siege of the legations was lifted in 1900 and the Boxer Protocol was implemented.

The Three Kingdoms of Korea began in 57 BC and consisted of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla.

Goguryeo was founded by Jumong and the government was centralized by King Taejo. By the 5th century, Goguryeo had reached a peak. Gwanggaeto the Great and his son Jangsu expanded the kingdom into Manchuria and Russia. It was a military state which continually fought for control of the peninsula, and had multiple wars with various Chinese dynasties.

Baekje was founded by Onjo, a former Goguryeo, in 18 BC. Under King Geunchogo, Baekje expanded to control most of the western peninsula. Baekje was well known for its naval power and maritime trade.

Silla was univied by Bak Hyeokgeose in 57 BC around southeastern Korea. It was the smallest of the three kingdoms.

Silla drove Chinese Tang forces from the peninsula in the Silla-Tang War, and by the end of the seventh century, the North and South States Period began.

In the south was Unified Silla, which facilitated trade with the west (Abbasid Caliphate) and continued the maritime traditions of Baekje.

In the north was Balhae, founded after the fall of Goguryeo. Balhae was weakened and conquered by the Khitan Liao dynasty in 926. We don’t know much about Balhae due to a lack of records.

Goryeo was founded by Wang Geon in 918 and soon came to dominate Korea. Its name was the source of what we now call Korea. The dynasty continued well into the 1300s, so we’ll get back to that later.

By the fourth century, Rome’s influence in the Western world was unparalleled. The empire had conquered much of the known world by the time of Constantine, and even though it was split into multiple parts, it held quite a bit of sway in Europe and in Northern Africa. The fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century was a big turning point in history.

In 378, the Goths were invading the Roman empire (they were running from the Huns), and the Roman emperor Valens fought them at the Battle of Adrianople. Prior to the battle, Valens had given the Visigoths the status of foederati, and let them live across the Danube. They had even helped the Romans fight the Huns. But now, the invading army was comprised of: the Thervings (Visigoths), led by Fritigern; Bacurius the Iberian; and the Greutungs, led by Alatheus and Saphrax. Valens died at the battle (a result of being abandoned by his guards), and Gratian came to power as a result. The Goths' decisive victory struck a resounding blow against the might of the Romans; Adrianople is often considered the beginning of the fall of western Rome, despite the actual battle being fought by soldiers in the Eastern Roman Empire.

Gratian’s reign ended in 383 when Magnus Maximus, emperor in the West, attacked Gaul and killed him. Theodosius I became emperor. Theodosius fought civil wars with the West, and when he defeated Maximus, he appointed Valentinian II as Augustus in the West.

During the reign of Theodosius, a half-Vandal Roman general named Stilicho was appointed guardian of the young future emperor Honorius. Alaric I of the Balti dynasty became the leader of the Visigoths (the Thervings of Adrianople) after the death of Fritigern. The Visigoths had separated from the Ostrogoths, who had gone their own way. Alaric tried to rebel a couple times, but Stilicho stopped him. Eventually Stilicho made peace with Alaric, who went and joined the Romans and was no longer considered an enemy.

In 410, Stilicho was disgraced (a victim of conspiracy), hunted down, and killed. Alaric was once again an enemy of the state, so he went on the offensive. At this point, Rome wasn’t the capital of the Western Roman Empire anymore (that title had been given to Ravenna), but it was still considered an eternal city, and it was still a focal point of the empire.

Rome itself hadn’t been touched by any enemy since Brennus sacked it in 387 BC. First, Alaric invaded Greece, killing many and wiping out the Eleusinian Mysteries. Alaric invaded Italy and besieged Rome, trying to negotiate three times. On the third siege, Alaric got fed up and entered the city, pillaging and ransacking a lot of the big important buildings, but on the whole, not causing a particularly massive amount of damage. The sacking prompted St. Augustine to write City of God. Augustine would later die during the Vandal siege.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the empire, Honorius’s lands were breaking. Constantine III, last of the imperial usurpers, managed to raise an army in Britain and march on Gaul. He defeated Sarus (who was loyal to Honorius), and co-ruled with Honorius for a while. The Visigoths went west from Italy, and ruled Spain from their capital at Toledo. The Vandals eventually settled in the south of Spain. Other barbarian tribes settled into parts of Spain and Gaul, splitting the empire even further.

In 444, the Huns were united by Attila (the “Scourge of God”), who also included many Germanic tribes in his subjects. Attila had taken the kingship after his brother Bleda had died. He kept attacking the Eastern empire until 450, making money, but he always stopped at the walls of Constantinople. He then claimed the Emperor’s sister Honoria as his wife, and he invaded Gaul in 451 to get his “dowry”, half of the Western Roman Empire. The invasion was stopped by Flavius Aetius and the Visigoths under Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great at battles at the Catalunian Plains and at Chalons. Allegedly, Pope Leo I convinced Attila not to attack Rome — soon after, Attila died of a nosebleed in his sleep.

By 439, the Vandals had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, moved east, and taken Carthage from Rome. They set up a new kingdom in Northern Africa, where they would reside for a century. Genseric was their king, and his son the prince was Huneric. After going back and forth trying to attack Italy, they got their true chance when Valentinian killed Aetius, and in 455, the Vandals managed to enter Rome itself, and plunder it for two weeks. They sailed away with lots of gold and conquered Sicily. From this point onwards, their ships were a menace to the Romans.

In 476, a former soldier named Odoacer invaded Rome. He deposed the 16 year old emperor Romulus Augustulus, but didn’t kill him. Odoacer became the first ruler of Italy after Rome, and ended the Western Roman Empire.

Zeno was the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire at the fall of the West. Hoping to be rid of the annoying Theodoric, Zeno appointed him king in Italy, where he killed Odoacer in Ravenna. Zeno died by being buried alive while drunk, because nobody opened the sarcophagus.

Justinian I (482–565) was an important Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor. Justinian’s wife was Theodora, and his most important general was Belisarius. Belisarius won the Battle of Tricamarum, defeating Gelimer and the Vandals in Northern Africa.

There’s a famous mosaic of Justinian and Theodora at Ravenna, the Ostrogothic capital that Belisarius captured. His rule was documented in the Secret History of Procopius as well as by Agathias. Justinian also built the Hagia Sophia, the famous domed basilica in Constantinople, and he notably codified the legislation of the empire in the Corpus Juris Civilis, which was compiled for him by Tribonian.

The Nika Riots during Justinian’s reign were a result of chariot racing factions uniting against Justinian. Justinian was forced to fire Tribonian, and he ordered the instigator, Hypatius, nephew of Anastasius, killed by Belisarius and Mundus. Belisarius’s most notable rival, the eunuch Narses, helped by bribing the Blue racing faction into abandoning Hypatius.

During 541, the Plague of Justinian affected the Byzantine Empire, especially Constantinople. It was probably caused by Y. pestis, which would cause the bubonic plague. Justinian himself got sick, but he managed to survive.

Other notable rulers of the Byzantine Empire included Basil II and Leo IV, the Khazar.

In the fifth century, while Rome was falling, Childeric I, son of Merovech, leader of the Salian Franks, founded the Merovingian dynasty. It’s said that Childeric’s father was a half-fish, half-bull monster, but there’s perhaps a slight chance that’s just a fabrication. When Childeric died, he was buried in Saint Brice in Tournai, with a golden bull’s head and lots of golden insects (bees, cicadas, etc.).

Childeric’s son was Clovis I (481–511), the greatest of the Merovingian rulers. He was married to Clotilde, and he adopted Christianity, being baptized in 496. He united Gaul under his rule, and he defeated the remaining Romans (led by Syagrius, the last Roman official of Gaul), at the Battle of Soissons. At the Battle of Vouille (507), he allied with Anastasius I (Byzantine Emperor) and defeated the Visigoths under Alaric II, conquerer of Spain. Gregory of Tours would refer to Clovis as a “new Constantine” when he wrote his Histories. He would be buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles that he built in Paris.

When Clovis died, his kingdom was divided among his four sons. To the outside world, these four separate polities were still all the Merovingian kingdom. Eventually Clotaire II reunited the realm, and his son Dagobert I was the last powerful Merovingian king. Dagobert expelled the Jews after being asked to by Heraclius, who had prophesied the fall of Byzantium. After Dagobert, the kings were known as the “idle kings” or the “do-nothing kings”, so we don’t really care enough to discuss them here.

In 687, Pepin the Middle came to power by winning the Battle of Tertry. Pepin the Middle’s son, the prince Charles “The Hammer” Martel also assumed power. Martel’s sons, Carloman and Pepin the Short, appointed Childeric III as the new king. Pepin the Short was annoyed at not having the title of the King, even though he ruled the Franks. Childeric didn’t do much, Carloman had decided to become a monk or something, and Pepin’s other brother Grifo wasn’t a huge opposition. So Pepin deposed Childeric and colluded with Pope Zachary to get himself elected king.

Pepin the Short was the first Carolingian king. He had a good relationship with the papacy, exemplified by his earlier consultation with Zachary. He helped Pope Stephen II when he helped intervene with the Lombards (a Germanic tribe) in Italy at battles such as Pavia, and Stephen II helped Pepin by crowning him. He gave the captured lands to the pope, as part of the “Donation of Pepin”. In 768, Pepin died, and even though his reign would not be as impressive as his son’s, we can certainly consider him to be a highly successful ruler.

Pepin’s son was Charlemagne, who co-ruled with his brother Carloman I. He married Desiderata as a show of alliance with the Lombards. Carloman died in 771 and Charlemagne became the sole ruler of the Franks. With his brother’s death, he broke his alliance; he conquered the Lombards led by Desiderius in Italy and became their king.

Charlemagne continued his father’s good relationship with the pope, leading troops into Muslim controlled Spain. He led campaigns against people who lived east of him, forcing Christianity on them under penalty of death, a policy that resulted in the Massacre of Verden. A leading scholar in his court in Aachen was Alcuin, who led a “Carolingian Renaissance”, and established the Palatine school.

On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Leo III. Charlemagne is often referred to as the “Father of Europe”, because he united much of the West for the first time since the fall of Rome. When he died, he was succeeded by Louis the Pious.

Charlemagne and the Franks had recreated a new empire that strove to be as impressive as Rome itself. This Holy Roman Empire, as it would soon be known, was set to play a major role in history for centuries to come.

The Rashidun were the “rightly-guided caliphs”. Abu Bakr, the first caliph to succeed Muhammad, named Umar as his rightful successor, and after Umar came Uthman. When Uthman died, a conflict called the first Fitna (Islamic civil war) began. At this point, Ali came to power for a violent five years, and the followers of Islam split in two. The followers of Abu Bakr were Sunni Muslims, and followers of Ali were Shi’a Muslims.

The Rashidun spread across all of the Arabian peninsula and much of modern day Iran, as well as a small portion of Northern Africa. It was in fact the largest empire ever built up to that point in history.

After Ali’s reign, his son Hasan was elected as caliph, but he gave the caliphate to Mu’awiyah instead.

Mu’awiyah established the Umayyad caliphate, which expanded across all of northern Africa and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to control much of Iberia as well. It became the fifth-largest empire ever created in history, the largest up to that point, and its capital was at Damascus.

In 732, the Umayyad fought the Battle of Tours against the aforementioned Charles Martel. The battle took place in northern France, close to the Frankish border, and the Franks positioned their phalanx on a hilltop. The Franks won a decisive victory against Abd ar-Rahman, and the Umayyad were forced to dial down their ambition. It was at Tours that Charles earned the name “Martel”, meaning Hammer. The battle laid the foundation for what would become the Carolingian Empire. The Umayyads also lost in 740 to the Byzantines at Akroinon.

Notable caliphs during this time include Yazid I and Mu’awiyah II. The greatest period of the Umayyad was under Abd al-Malik, while the empire stretched from Spain to India. The last ruler of the Umayyad was Marwan II. In 747, a huge rebellion began against the caliphate, started by people who were annoyed at a distant government. In 750, Marwan fought an Abbasid army at the Battle of the Zab on the banks of the Great Zab river. The Abbasids killed Marwan and ended the rule of the Umayyads.

The Abbasid set up Baghdad as a major city until it was sacked in 1258. In the 9th century, they created an army that was meant only to fight for them. These slave soldiers were called Mamluks, and eventually they would control Egypt. The ruler al-Mu’tasim moved the capital from Baghdad to Samarra, while the Mamluks slowly gained power.

At one point, the dynasty was opposed by Banu and Babak Khorramdin. During the Anarchy at Samarra, Turkish chiefs fought for control. They would be sacked by Hulagu Khan at Baghdad, where the House of Wisdom was held.

Near the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Anglo-Saxons lived in England, a result of Germanic tribes moving north across the English Channel. Anglo-Saxon England was traditionally considered a heptarchy, consisting of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. By the 7th century, many of the Anglo-Saxons had converted to Christianity. The Venerable Bede chronicled the era, earning him the title “Father of English History”.

The kingdom of Mercia rose to prominence in the 7th century, building massive earthworks like Offa’s Dyke, which separated modern-day Wales from the rest of England. By the late 8th century, Viking raiders began to invade the island. These Danes were led by Guthrum, whom we don’t know much about before he seized control of the Danes. Other Viking leaders of the invading forces included Ivar the Boneless, son of Ragnar Lodbrok. They subdued East Anglia, capturing York.

Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, son of Æthelwulf, fought back against Guthrum. He created a network of fortified towns called burhs (these would be turned into boroughs eventually) to defend Wessex and defeat the invaders, who had formed the Great Heathen Army. Alfred was victorious at battles such as Eddington and Ashdown. He then confined Guthrum in a region thenceforth known as the Danelaw and he proclaimed himself king of all the English. His coronation was performed by Pope Leo IV, and he compiled a census of England called the Doom Book (not to be confused with the Domesday Book that would be made later). He introduced a system of shires, hundreds, and tithings to divide England into governable portions. Alfred remains the only English king to ever be called “the Great”.

Alfred was eventually succeeded by Edgar the Peaceful, and by the end of Edgar’s reign, Wessex had taken control of the rest of England, including York and the Danelaw. When Edgar died only two years after being crowned at Bath, the issue of who should succeed to the throne was thrown into doubt. Edgar’s son Edward was crowned king, but he was quickly assassinated.

He was followed by Edgar’s half-brother, Æthelred the Unready. As his name may suggest, his reign didn’t go very well, even though he did rule for a long time. It’s been written that he defecated in his baptismal font, leading to a prophecy that the English crown would fall under his reign; however, that story is probably entirely fake (entertaining, though). It’s now believed that he was simply the victim of bad counsel, and wasn’t actually particularly “unready”. He married Emma, a princess of Normandy. While he was king, England was invaded by Danes again, led by Sweyn Forkbeard, provoked by Æthelred’s St Brice’s Day massacre. The Vikings pillaged through Essex, an action that resulted in the Battle of Maldon, where the Vikings easily crushed the English. From that point forward, the Vikings roamed the countryside, apparently free to take whatever they pleased, while Æthelred simply hid in his basement. Sweyn found Æthelred and forced him into exile. Soon after, though, Sweyn died, and Æthelred was able to come back to England.

Angered at Æthelred, Cnut, son of Sweyn, invaded England. Æthelred’s son, Edmund Ironside, abandoned his father, and multiple English nobles took Cnut’s side. But Æthelred died and Edmund was forced to fight the Danes. At the battle of Ashingdon, the Danes overpowered the English and Cnut and Edmund split England; Edmund took Wessex, and Cnut took everything else. When Edmund died (probably murdered), the English witan council declared Cnut king of England. Cnut married Æthelred’s widow Emma, who agreed only because he agreed to allow her children to be heirs to the throne. However, Cnut had had a previous wife, and her children also wanted the throne.

When Cnut died in 1035, the throne was disputed. The claimants were Harold Harefoot (Harold I, son of Cnut) and Emma’s son by Cnut, Harthacnut. Emma’s son by Æthelred, Edward, tried to raid Southampton, but failed, and his brother Alfred was killed later. Harthacnut became king on the death of Harold Harefoot, but he was unpopular, and nobody wanted his heirs to become king. When he died, Edward came back from exile and was recognized as king.

Edward, known to us as Edward the Confessor, married the daughter of Earl Godwin of Wessex in order to secure an alliance. When the citizens of Dover killed Edward’s relative Eustace of Bolougne (probably a response to Edward’s appointment of Robert of Jumieges as Archbishop of Canterbury) and Godwin refused to punish some people who killed Edward’s relatives, Edward had a falling out with Godwin, and the Godwins ran away to Normandy. During the conflict, Edward was regularly working with and for the earls Siward and Leofric. At this point, Edward might have offered the succession to his cousin, William, duke of Normandy. However, the king reconciled with Godwin some time later, so when Godwin died in 1053, his son, Harold Godwinson, acceded to the earldom in Wessex. Godwin’s other sons were given East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria.

In 1066, Edward died, and Harold Godwinson was declared king of England. For the following year, England was in turmoil because even though Harold had taken the crown, there were those who believed it wasn’t his to take. Recall that Edward had likely given a promise of succession to his cousin, William, Duke of Normandy. Harald Hardrada of Norway, descendant of Cnut, also staked a claim to the throne, because that’s what Vikings had been doing for a few years at this point.

Harold’s brother Tostig, leader in Northumbria, allied himself with Hardrada. Hardrada invaded Northern England, fighting the Battle of Fulford near York, but he was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge by Harold Godwinson’s forces.

While Harold was celebrating his victory, William of Normandy sailed for England and landed at Pevensey. Harold marched back south, where he met William at the Battle of Hastings, near Senlac Hill and Telham Hill. Harold tried to use housecarls and shield walls to defend from William’s archers. William crushed Harold’s forces at Hastings, and Harold himself got an arrow in the eye. The battle was chronicled on the Bayeux Tapestry, which notably shows Halley’s comet in the sky. The site of the battle is now home to a church called Battle Abbey. As a result of his achievement, William is known to us as William the Conqueror.

William the Conqueror, now William I, king of England, quickly moved to consolidate his power. His people were revolting all over the place, and he crushed each uprising, building a set of castles to control them. These revolts included one led by the Earls Edwin and Morcar. He led a massive and bloody expedition through the north of England, killing those who stood in his way, called the Harrying of the North. He commissioned a census of the country, and recorded it in the Domesday Book. At the Trial of Penenden Heath, William investigated Odo of Bayeux for stealing lands. His archbishop was Lanfranc, and he stopped Edward Ætheling, Harold Godwinson’s successor. Orderic Vitalis, when chronicling William’s rule, says that William admitted to being a “barbarous murderer” when he died in 1087 after falling off his horse at the Siege of Mantes.

William Rufus (William II) inherited his father’s throne, but he also faced revolts from his brother Robert and his cousin Stephen. When William II died in a hunting accident (he may have been murdered), his brother Henry I quickly moved to take the crown.

Henry I, “Beauclerc”, defeated his brother Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, at Tinchebrai. He recalled St. Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury, but exiled him again. His son William Atheling drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120. This was particularly problematic, because even though Henry had at least twenty children, they were almost all illegitimate. The only reasonable heir was his daughter, the Empress Matilda (married to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor), who was unpopular because she was a woman. On Henry’s death in 1128, yet another power struggle broke out; Matilda disputed the claim of Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew. This civil war was called the Anarchy, and it resulted in the rise of a new dynasty.

Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI were members of the House of Lancaster, which would come to fight the House of York in the Wars of the Roses, so named because of the roses that were the insignia of the warring houses (red and white respectively).

Henry VI started his reign young, but even when he grew up, he would be a weak king. Many people would rise up against him, including Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, “the Kingmaker”. Warwick’s cousin was a naval commander — Thomas Neville, the Bastard of Fauconberg. Henry had a mental breakdown, and Richard, Duke of York, was named regent in his stead.

When Henry became sane again, Richard of York and the Nevilles decisively defeated him and the House of Lancaster at the First Battle of St. Albans. It wasn’t a big battle and few men died, but some of those killed were fairly important people. However, popular support wasn’t really with York, and they fled. When they returned, they won the Battle of Northampton and captured Henry. They reached an agreement called the Act of Accord, according to which Henry would stay king, and when he died, the House of York would take the crown.

Edward IV of York took the throne after he won the Battle of Towton. However, his marriage would lead to him being deposed and Henry VI being restored to the throne. Edward returned and his victory as the Battle of Tewkesbury and subsequent murder of Henry wiped out the Lancastrians.

At this point, the House of York seemed to be fairly solidly set as the new ruling family. When Edward IV died, he was succeeded by his brother Richard, who took the throne and became Richard III, under the Titulus Regius statute. Richard had supposedly imprisoned Edward’s children (Edward V and his brother). Richard had married Anne Neville after an argument with George, Duke of Clarence, and Edward IV. Edward’s sons were never seen again, leading to the legend of the “Princes in the Tower”.

By 1483, Lady Margaret Beaufort of the House of Tudor was actively promoting her son Henry as a better alternative to Richard III. Henry tried to take England, but his plans fell apart and he ran away to France, living in exile in Brittany for a year. He put together an army, getting help from the Welsh by using a dragon flag to show his ancestry. In 1485, he landed at Milford Haven to try again, realizing his best chance was to attack Richard and defeat him quickly.

Henry met Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field near Ambion Hill. The Yorkist army deployed on the hilltop so that Richard could see the whole area. Henry’s army had very few Englishmen in it — many were Scottish and French. His army was commanded by the Earl of Oxford, who was assisted by the Lords Stanley (who initially hung back but then decided to join when they felt like it). When the battle began, Henry was maneuvering around trying to get into a better position. The first charge was led by John Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

At one point, when Henry rode to join the Stanleys, Richard decided to charge and kill him quickly. He killed Henry’s standard-bearer Sir William Brandon and unhorsed John Cheyne, but Henry was still very well guarded. Richard had come close to Henry, but his group was surrounded gradually and Henry’s Welshmen hacked him to death. After the battle, Richard was buried at Grey Friars monastery. Richard’s circlet was brought to Crown Hill, where Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VII, king of England.

Henry VII was the first of the Tudors to rule England, and we’ll see more of him and his wild and crazy descendants later.

Viking advances and infighting amongst French royals would result in the downfall of the Carolingians. In 987, an assembly in Reims elected Hugh Capet to the position of King of the Franks. The dynasty he founded, the Capetians, would rule France for over eight centuries, along with its friends the Valois and Bourbons. Hugh’s son, Robert the Pious, was elected king before Hugh died, in order to ensure succession.

In the land of the Franks, Philip I came to power in 1060 and ruled until 1108. His reign included the First Crusade. This was also the time that William the Conqueror was invading England.

Starting with the reign of Louis VI, royal authority in France became more accepted. Louis liked war, and he was assisted by Abbot Suger regarding non-military things. He was succeeded by his son Louis VII, who people tended to like. He married Eleanor of Aquitaine, and also saw a crusade. However, his marriage was annulled, and Eleanor would marry Henry II of England.

Philip II Augustus recovered much of Normandy from England (under John’s rule at the time); recall the Battle of Bouvines, England was mostly ousted from France. He founded the Sorbonne, and he made Paris a more intellectual city.

In 1218, on Sicily, the bad rule of Charles I of Anjou forced a rebellion, in favor of Peter III of Aragon. This revolt was known as the Sicilian Vespers. A phase of the War of the Sicilian Vespers was the Aragonese Crusade. After the war, the Sicilians won and Angevin rule was kicked off the island.

France would become even more centralized under Louis IX (1226–1270). His mother was was Blanche of Castile. He fought Henry III in the Saintonge War, in which Henry tried to take back England’s old territory. Louis defeated Hugh of Lusignan and Henry III of England at the Battle of Taillebourg. On completion of the war, he supported new forms of art, and he commissioned the Saint-Chapelle, a Gothic building. He participated in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades. Louis’s nephew was Robert of Artois, an experienced soldier who participated in the Aragonese Crusade. He also won the Battle of Furnes against the Flemings, and in 1302, he went into Flanders and won the Battle of the Golden Spurs. On his death in 1270, he became the only canonized king of France, St. Louis.

Philip III and Philip IV (Philip the Fair) followed Louis IX. Philip IV tried to invade Aragon, and failed miserably because of an epidemic. The latter elevated his monarchy to a glorious position. He focused on the north of France, and he forced England out of Gascony. He got into an argument with Pope Boniface VIII for taxing the clergy in 1296. Eventually he would put his own pope into the papacy that got moved to Avignon. He also destroyed the Knights Templar. Philip IV died in 1314, and his son Louis X ruled shortly before he died of sickness.

The throne then passed to his brother Philip V. He made peace with Flanders, and he continued to fight with Edward II of England regarding Gascony. He put down the Pastoreux uprising when his hand was forced by Pope John XXII. He was succeeded by his brother, Charles IV.

When Charles died in 1328, it signaled the end of the main line of the Capetians. Thus, the crown passed down to Philip VI, son of Charles of Valois. The standing enmity between England and France turned into the Hundred Years' War, discussed above. Just as England experienced a peasant revolt in 1381, France experienced the Jacquerie in 1358.

France was pushed back in the beginning of the war (1337–1360), and they began to push back later. However, when Henry V of England won at Agincourt, France fell into chaos. Seven years later, Henry VI was declared king in Paris by the Treaty of Troyes, and the Valois were pushed back.

In 1429, Joan of Arc was seemingly given instructions from Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret. She went and met the Dauphin Charles VII at Orleans, and he was impressed by her. She then went to the siege of Orleans, and she helped lift the siege (claiming she had seen a sign), leading to her being known as “the Maid of Orleans”. The victory helped crown Charles VII king in Rheims. She went on to rout John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay, aided by La Hire. She wielded an old sword that was found behind St. Catherine’s altar. However, she was captured by Burgundians at the Compiegne, due to a mistimed drawbridge. Then, she was sold to the English John of Luxembourg, tried by Bishop Chaucon, and burned at the stake for witchcraft. She would be sainted in 1920.

The French went on to drive England back out of France. Other notable battles during the Hundred Years' War included: Bauge, where the French won; Poitiers, where the British crushed the French; and Formigny, where the French won. The last battle of the war is considered to have been the Battle of Castillon.

The first king of France of the House of Valois was Francis I, son of Charles of Angouleme. He succeeded Louis XII, who had died without an heir. Francis fought in the War of the League of Cambrai during the Italian Wars. During the final stage of that war, Francis routed the Papal States and the Old Swiss Confederacy at the Battle of Marignano. Other important battles include Agnadello, and France was placed under interdict by Julius II during this time. Pope Clement VII became a big ally of Francis.

The First Crusade (1096–1099) was declared by Pope Urban II in 1095 at the Council of Clermont. The main goal originally was to help Alexius I Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor at the time. At the Council of Piacenza, he asked Urban II for help repelling the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia. However, it quickly became about regaining Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and the crusaders expected help from Alexius. Anna Komnena, daughter of Alexius I, wrote the Alexiad, detailing his reign and his role in letting the Crusade go through the Byzantine empire.

During the crusade, the Byzantine general Tatikios won a victory at Dorylaeum. Walter the Penniless (aka Walter Sans Avoir) and Peter the Hermit were defeated at Nicea. Other leaders in the conflict included Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond, and Godfrey of Bouillon. It was ultimately successful in taking back the Holy Land. The prelude to the First Crusade was known as the People’s Crusade.

The Second Crusade (1145–1149) started as a reaction to Zengi’s capture of Edessa. It was encouraged by Pope Eugenius III in the bull quantum praedecessores and it was championed by the preacher St. Bernard of Clairvaux (called in by the Archbishop of Mainz). The major generals in the crusade were Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. The crusade ended when the siege of Damascus failed and it failed to take back the Holy Land.

The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was another attempt to take the Holy Land. It was also known as the Kings' Crusade, since Philip II of France, Frederick Barbarossa, and Richard the Lionheart all led forces. Frederick died when he decided to ride his horse across the Saleph River, because the horse couldn’t handle it and his armor was too heavy to swim with. The major leader for the Muslim side was Saladin.

Saladin had previously defeated the Assassins at Masyaf (he covered the ground around his tent with chalk so he could see their footprints). The assassins were led by the “old man of the mountain”, and their opiate-abusing ways would be stopped by Hulagu Khan.

Richard and Saladin made peace at the Treaty of Ramla after the Battle of Arsuf, mostly because they were tired of fighting and they didn’t feel like continuing. The crusade ended mostly successfully, capturing Acre and Jaffa, but failed to take Jerusalem. On the way home, Richard’s disguises failed and he was captured by Leopold V of Austria, and was kept in various states of captivity for a couple years.

The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) tried to take Jerusalem by way of Egypt. Pope Innocent III called for the crusade, but nobody really cared. So Theobald III of Champagne held a tournament where various people, such as Fulk of Neuilly, attended and took the cross, to go on the crusade. Before the crusade started, the Venetians had been in deep debt. Doge Enrico Dandolo wanted to pay it off, and Alexius IV, the Byzantine prince, offered to do so.

Boniface of Montferrat and Philip of Swabia met and agreed to take down the Byzantine emperor Alexius III. Because of this, the crusade ended up going to Constantinople. The crusaders attacked Galata Tower to break the chain across the Golden Horn. Eventually, they were able to enter the city and they sacked it for three days. At the end, Alexius III had been toppled and Alexius IV was in power. Only about a tenth of the crusaders ever made it to the Holy Land, so the very Christian intentions of the crusade simply turned into the extremely non-Christian sacking of Constantinople.

After the Fourth Crusade, Innocent III called the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 to discuss papal involvement in the crusades. The most important result of the meeting was the establishment of the doctrine of transubstantiation, but it also made one confession a year mandatory and planned the Fifth Crusade.

The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), also called the Cathar Crusade, didn’t go east. Pope Innocent III called for this one to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc in the south of France. The Cathars were a sect of Christians that became known as the Albigensians. This crusade ended in far less Cathars being alive and the French crown growing in power. The crusade ended with a Treaty of Paris.

The Children’s Crusade (1212) tried to take Jerusalem peacefully. It failed pretty badly because it recruited children and some of them were sold into slavery. Notable leaders included Stephen of Cloyes, and the crusade was sent home by Philip II after reaching Saint-Denis.

The Fifth Crusade (1213–1221) tried to take Jerusalem through Egypt (again). They lost to the Ayyubid state in Egypt and failed.

The Sixth Crusade (1228) tried to take Jerusalem (do you see a pattern?). Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II delayed the start of the crusade; when they did set out, there was an outbreak of malaria. Very little fighting actually occurred, and the crusaders won a diplomatic victory. Pope Gregory IX, an enemy of Frederick, didn’t like that Frederick declared himself king in Jerusalem.

Louis IX of France participated in the Seventh Crusade (1248–1254) and Eighth Crusade (1270). The crusaders didn’t take Jerusalem.

The last crusade was the Ninth Crusade.

The Bulgars were Turkic nomads who started to settle down along the north shores of the Black Sea during the 7th century. In 679, a group of Bulgars led by Khan Asparuh established the First Bulgarian Empire in the northeastern Balkans.

In the beginning, relations with the Byzantines were pretty good. A peace treaty signed with the Byzantines resulted in settlement south of the Danube. When the Umayyad beseiged Constantinople in 717, Khan Tervel sent Bulgarian forces to assist the city and kill Arabs. This alliance formed an effective bulwark against Arab incursion into Europe proper.

Unfortunately by the 750s the cohesion of Bulgaria was faltering. Internal instability (potentially regarding how to coexist with the Byzantine Empire) led to the rise of multiple factions. When Constantine V came to power in Constantinople, he launched invasions into Bulgaria. Of course, actively invading a nation which is debating whether or not to support you will make your staunchest allies in said nation turn on you rather fast. Bulgaria became united against the Byzantine threat, and the war continued until Bulgarian victory in 803.

In 803, Krum came to power and launched an expansion campaign which increased the size of Bulgaria twofold. In 808, he brought Bulgaria to war with the Byzantines once again. Emperor Nicephorus I managed to attack and capture Pliska, the Bulgarian capital, but was defeated decisively shortly thereafter at the Battle of Varbitsa Pass. Nicephorus was killed, and Krum supposedly lined his skull with silver and used it as a wine cup.

By the end of the 9th century and into the 10th, the reigns of Boris I and Simeon the Great resulted in a flourishing of Bulgarian culture. This Golden Age lasted until the early 11th century, when continued pressure from neighbors resulted in Byzantine rule over Bulgaria.

In 1185, a series of protests called the Uprising of Asen and Peter resulted in the restoration of Bulgaria as the Second Bulgarian Empire. Shortly following the Fourth Crusade, the Latin Empire crusader state lost to the Bulgarians at the 1205 Battle of Adrianople. By the mid 1200s, the Bulgarians became a powerful influence in the Balkans, and the Empire spread to the Black Sea. Constant invasion by Ottomans led to the fall of Sofia in the 1380s, and the Bulgarian capital of Tarnovo was captured in 1388. The Ottomans captured the rest of Bulgaria shortly thereafter, ending the Bulgarian Empire (though resistance would continue into the 1400s).

The Mongolian plateau was home to the Khereid, Khamag Mongol, Naiman, Mergid, and Tatar tribal confederations. The Jin dynasty emperors worked to keep them feuding among themselves. During the 13th century, the usually harsh, dry, and cold steppes of central Asia had very mild, wet conditions, which would contribute to a rise of Mongol military strength. One of the sons of the Mongol chieftain Yesugei was Temujin, whose family was killed in Tatars, leading him to swear revenge on those who would oppose him. By 1206, Temujin was crowned as the Khan of the Mongol Nation and he became Genghis Khan.

According to legend, Genghis had been born holding a clot of blood in his hand, which meant that he would become a leader. Genghis Khan married Borte and he appointed his brother Shigi-Khuthugh to the position of supreme judge to oversee the Yassa law code that he made. He also was tolerant of religious freedom and he didn’t tax those who couldn’t take it. He encouraged literacy and adopted the use of the Uyghur script. Genghis’s life was documented by Rashid al-Din and Juvaini.

Genghis united the warring Mongol tribes into a single mighty force. His army was divided into arbans, zuuns, Mingghans, and tumens. He forbade looting of the enemy without permission and he set up a system to share spoils of war; he also set up a practice of holding victory feasts on a platform on top of captured nobles. Genghis expanded the Mongol empire, and pushed into central Asia, with the help of his general Subotai. In 1220, he sacked Samarkand. Before he died fighting the Tangut peoples in 1227, he named his son Ogedei heir to his empire in place of his other son Tolui,

During Ogedei’s reign, a grandson of Genghis, Batu Khan, overran the Bulgars and other peoples of southern Russia. When Ogedei died in 1241, his widow Toregene Khatun took over control of his empire. She was able to control most of it for a long while, but Batu’s Golden Horde did not show up to the kurultai that was held to choose the next khan, and the empire was thrown into imbalance.

The Golden Horde was composed of the Blue and White Hordes, named for the colors of tents that they used. There was much more turmoil between the khans that I won’t get into right now, but other leaders of the Golden Horde included Nogai, Uzbek, Berke, Jani Beg, and Hulagu Khan. Also recall that Kublai Khan invaded China and set up the Yuan dynasty in the mid-late 13th century.

Some time in the 1320s, a man called Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane, was born. He founded the Timurid dynasty in Central Asia and referred to himself as the “Sword of Islam”. He led his army around Asia, wrecking and plundering all towns he saw and creating pyramids of skulls outside of places he sacked. His capital was at Samarkand, he put down a tax revolt in Isfahan, and he built the White Palace in his birthplace of Shahrisabz. At Ankara, he captured Bayezid the Thunderbolt and he defeated Mahmud Tughluq and sacked Delhi. Tokhtamysh of the Golden Horde, one of Tamerlane’s biggest rivals, lost Sarai to him at the Battle of Kur River. Tamerlane’s other victories include the Battle of the Terek River and the Battle of Ankara.

Tamerlane’s life was chronicled by Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, and he was buried in a tomb called Gur-e-Amir, which would be opened before Operation Barbarossa (see the World War II chapter). Tamerlane was be succeeded by his son, Shah Rukh. His grandson was Ulugh Beg, and one of his descendants was Babur, who would found the Mughal Empire.

The Ghana Empire (Wagadou) ruled from about 300 to 1235. It was founded by the Soninke people. Notably, it placed value on gold, treating all gold nuggets as the king’s property. The name of the Ghana Empire referred to the ruler, who lived in Kumbi Saleh.

Important kings of the Ghana Empire included Tunka Menin. It is said that the empire had 22 Muslim kings and 22 non-Muslim kings. Kings used to perform a “trial by wood”, which involved giving an accused person a bitter piece of wood and seeing if he vomited. We know about Ghana because of Al-Bakri’s Book of Highways and Empires.

Ghana’s decline led to the rise of the Sosso Empire.

The Oyoko clan settled at Kumasi and established the Ashanti Empire around the Ghana area. The kings of the Ashanti Empire ruled from the great and divine throne known as the Golden Stool. The Stool reportedly descended from the heavens and landed on the first king, Osei Tutu. Independence was declared in 1670.

The Mali Empire was founded in 1230 by Sundiata Keita, who defeated Sumanguru (Soumaoro) of the Sosso Empire. The Epic of Sundiata chronicles (semi-historically), the founding of the empire. Sundiata’s mother was the hunchback Sogolon. He was born a cripple, ugly and lazy, but then he lifted himself up using an iron rod, bending it and resulting in “The Hymn of the Bow”. Mali would become well known for its overabundance of wealth. Mali’s capital was at Timbuktu.

The other important king of the Mali Empire was Mansa Musa (Musa I). He once caused rampant inflation when he spent a lot of gold for salt in a pilgrimage to Mecca. His general was Sagmandia, who recaptured Gao. He also constructed the Sankore Madrasah (university) and the Djinguereber Mosque, and employed architects such as Abu Ishaq as-Sahili. Mansa Musa was notably shown in the Catalan Atlas holding a fleur-de-lis.

The Songhai Empire succeeded the Mali Empire. It was founded by Sunni Ali in 1464, and it would last until the late 1500s. The capital was at Gao, but other major cities did include Timbuktu. Notable locations included salt mines at Tagharza.

The empire was at its peak during the reign of Askia Muhammad. Other important rulers include Kings Nuhu and Kossoi.

In the late 16th century, Morocco invaded the Songhai Empire. Morocco was led by Judar Pasha against the Songhai King Askia Ishaq II. The final confrontation occurred at the Battle of Tondibi. The Songhai came up with the brilliant plan of sending a thousand cattle at the Moroccan lines. Moroccan cannons sent the cattle stampeding right back at the Songhai, breaking their lines and forcing them into retreat. Judar Pasha moved on, sacking Gao and continuing to Timbuktu.

Despite the shattering of the Songhai Empire itself, Morocco was never able to exert real influence over the area. Many smaller states sprung up in the aftermath. The Songhai reestablished themselves as the Dendi Kingdom by 1600, a nation which would remain until it fell to the French in 1901.

During the Iron Age, Great Zimbabwe was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. The city was constructed in the 11th century by Shona people, and it stayed around until the 15th century. The city included the Imba Huru (Great Enclosure) and it was excavated by Richard Hall.

The Shona constructed the Kingdom of Mutapa, which went between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. I wish I had more to say on the subject, but I don’t right now…​

Remember that the papacy had been moved to Avignon by Philip the Fair, so the papal states were fairly loosely held together, and didn’t do a lot of huge things. However, the Fourth Crusade had done much to improve the strength of trade of the northern Italian city-states, like Genoa, Venice, and Pisa, weakening the Byzantine Empire.

Most of the outside kingdoms left the city-states of Italy alone, and Florence grew in strength, resulting in their florin becoming the de facto currency of trade. Merchants were very powerful people in the 13th century.

But, in the 14th century, the economy fell apart, party as a result of the Hundred Years' War. The banks of Bardi and Peruzzi in Florence collapsed. The Black Death swept through Europe and took out nearly a third of Europe’s people. During the plague, flagellants went around whipping themselves for religious reasons. Florentine textile workers rebelled in the ciompi in 1378.

Northern Italy was divided between city-states, and there was conflict between the forces of the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Internally, they were also divided between the factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Mercenaries were employed by many city-states, and many would have a sizable military force. On land, the mercenaries were called condotierri, and they came from all over Europe.

Pisa, Genoa, and Venice fought many battles on water, and eventually Pisa’s became weakened. On land, Florence, Milan, and Venice became dominant, and they signed the Peace of Lodi (1454) and agreed to stop fighting so much.

In 1417, the papacy was able to return to Rome, but it mostly stayed a ruined city. By 1447, though, Pope Nicholas V was able to make it a better place. Pope Pius II was a humanist scholar, and the papacy would become controlled by powerful families, such as the Medici and the Borgias. Pope Sixtus IV ordered the construction of the Sistine Chapel. The Papal States became more centralized, and the popes became warriors.

Pope Alexander VI was pope for the last decade of the 15th century. His uncle was Alfonso Borgia, Pope Callixtus III, who had allegedly tried to excommunicate Halley’s comet. He was originally named Rodrigo Borgia, and he had a few children. The important ones were Lucrezia Borgia and Cesare Borgia. Claims of incest surrounded the family. Cesare, who conquered Forli, was praised in Machiavelli’s The Prince, being used as an example of a great and harsh ruler.

Recall that Henry VII Tudor had won at Bosworth Field and had become the first Tudor king of England. The Tudors would rule England for the entirety of the 16th century. It’s perhaps interesting to note that the actual Tudor monarchs didn’t particularly like being called “Tudor”, because the family had been largely unimpressive before Henry VII came to power.

Henry married Elizabeth of York and unified the warring houses of Lancaster and York, as symbolized by the Tudor symbol, a white and red rose. He planned to make a gold plated statue of himself and put it on the tomb of Edward the Confessor. He also made the Court of the Star Chamber to try to limit the power of barons. A plot against him by John de la Pole (Richard III’s nephew) involved a boy named Lambert Simnel, who posed as Edward, Earl of Warwick, and led some mercenaries into England, being defeated at the Battle of Stoke Field. Another threat came from Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be Edward IV’s son. Henry married his son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, but Arthur quickly died, leaving his brother Henry as the new heir.

When Henry VII died in 1509, his son became Henry VIII, and the position of the Tudors was secured. He married Catherine of Aragon, and the only child of theirs that survived was Mary. Henry started an incursion into France, but the only notable battle was the Battle of the Spurs, where the king didn’t even show up, so the war wasn’t particularly effective.

At this point, James IV of Scotland activated the Auld Alliance with France and declared war. In 1513, the English met 10,000 Scots at the Battle of Flodden Field (the battle actually took place at Milfield and Braxton Hill). The English were victorious and James IV was defeated, as chronicled by Walter Scott in his Marmion. Henry also negotiated with Francis I of France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, where the two monarchs notably wrestled each other.

When Catherine wasn’t able to have any more children than Mary, Henry got nervous. The last time a female monarch was on the throne was back when Matilda was queen, and you probably remember that hadn’t worked out so well. He decided to divorce Catherine, but Pope Clement VII wouldn’t let him. Henry got mad at the pope and decided to make his own church (starting the English Reformation).

The new Church of England wasn’t much of a change from Catholicism, except with Henry at the head of it. In 1530, he declared his marriage to Catherine invalid, so Mary was declared illegitimate. Henry then married Anne Boleyn in 1533, and Anne had a daughter named Elizabeth. Henry got annoyed again when the queen failed to have a son, so he beheaded her married Jane Seymour. Jane gave birth to Edward, and Henry was finally happy. Of course, Jane promptly died of sepsis, and Henry ended up quite upset. Henry then married the German Anne of Cleves for the political advantages. He didn’t like her very much, so he divorced her as fast as he could. He then married Catherine Howard, but since she wasn’t faithful, she ended up on the chopping block as well. Henry’s last marriage was to Catherine Parr, and his health started declining, so she outlived him. For those of you counting at home, that’s six marriages total.

Henry did do things other than get married. His 1530s Dissolution of the Monasteries resulted in Robert Aske leading a revolt known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. His advisors included Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, where he would serve into the reign of Mary I. Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer, a big part of the English Reformation. He got into an argument with Thomas More, Lord Chancellor, who opposed Henry’s creation of the new church. True to form, Henry had him convicted of treason and beheaded, so Pope Pius XI canonized More as a martyr.

Henry also launched the War of the Rough Wooing (1543–1550), also called the Eight Years' War, in which he tried to enforce the Treaty of Greenwich and force a marriage between his son Edward VI and the baby Mary, Queen of Scots. During the War of the Rough Wooing, Edward Seymour led an expedition to burn down Edinburgh, and the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh was so bad for the Scots that they now call it Black Saturday.

Henry died in 1547 as his paranoia and insanity got even worse. He was buried next to Jane Seymour and was succeeded by their son, Edward.

Edward VI was only nine when he took his father’s crown in 1547. He had to stop Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk and the Prayer Book Rebellion. At this point, England became a predominantly Protestant nation. Edward died in 1553 at age 15 from tuberculosis, failing to live up to expectations of greatness. John Dudley, Lord President Northumberland, put Lady Jane Grey on the throne. But her reign was disputed, so her head ended up slightly further from her neck than she would have preferred.

Thus, Mary I, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, took the throne. Excluding the only partially accepted reigns of Matilda and Jane Grey, Mary was the first true queen of England. She was Catholic and she wanted England to be more like before the English Reformation, so Mary burned almost 300 Protestants (recorded in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), resulting in her being called “Bloody Mary”. She imprisoned Thomas Cranmer, forced him to recant Protestantism, and burned him anyway. Notably, she married Philip II of Spain, son of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. When Mary died in 1558, English people rejoiced.

Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn, became queen in 1558. She moved to reestablish the Church of England and managed to end the conflict between Puritans and Catholics. Elizabeth never married and was referred to as the “Virgin Queen”, putting her succession in doubt. Her spymaster Francis Walsingham stopped the Throckmorton and Babington plots which tried to kill her. She also expelled the Hanseatic League from their London Steelyard, and sent raiders to burn Cádiz.

Elizabeth was able to maintain a fair amount of stability in the kingdom. She did have to stop the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569, but she managed to consolidate power fairly well. Population grew rapidly under Elizabeth while government expanded. Her policy was “Video et taceo” (“I see and I am quiet”) and she advocated some religious tolerance, such as issuing the 39 Articles to concretely define a doctrine of English religion. However, she was excommunicated by Pope Pius V by the bull Regnans in Excelsis.

Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart) was a Queen of Scotland while Elizabeth was queen in England. She was forced to abdicate by James after she was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle. Mary was Elizabeth’s cousin, and she asked for Elizabeth’s protection after her abdication. Mary had claimed the throne of England as her own right, and the participants of the Rising of the North believed that Mary was the true monarch. Elizabeth kept her imprisoned because she thought Mary was a threat, and she had Mary killed in 1567 for conspiring against her.

Elizabeth supported the “Sea Dogs”, her privateers, who included Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. Drake is notable for completing the second circumnavigation of the globe. On his way through California, he claimed land there as “New Albion”. He died of dysentery after losing at the Battle of San Juan.

In 1601, Elizabeth delivered the “Golden Speech” to Parliament, saying that this would be her last Parliament. Elizabeth died in 1603, marking the end of the House of Tudor that had reigned for the 16th century.

The Great Papal Schism was a split in the Catholic Church, occurring between 1378 and 1418. When Pope Gregory XI ended the Avignon Papacy and returned to Rome, some people became unhappy. When Gregory died, Romans wanted a Roman pope, so they presented Urban VI as pope. But, a bunch of cardinals picked Clement VII and made a new papacy in Avignon.

Eventually the Antipope John XXIII gathered the Council of Constance (1414–1418). Gregory XII, the Roman pope, agreed, and the parties met. A previous council at Pisa had started some Catholic reforms, and Constance continued them. The council succeeded in ending the Schism by electing Martin V as the new pope.

Also of note at the Council of Constance was the condemnation of Jan Hus. Hus, the author of De Ecclesia, is considered the first church reformer, The Council of Constance ended up convicting Hus of heresy, because he’d denounced indulgences under Antipope John XXIII. A secular court burned him at the stake despite King Sigismund’s promise of safe passage.

Hus had worked with John Wycliffe, another reformer around that time. Wycliffe’s supporters, the Lollards, opposed the Catholics in England. The Lollards were fought by Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury. They also had posted their “Twelve Conclusions” on the doors of St. Paul’s.

The Council of Constance also ruled on the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic wars. They established the Diocese of Samogitia, and Pope Martin V appointed a new Polish king.

Around 1517, Martin Luther started to talk about how the indulgences that were being sold by Johann Tetzel weren’t exactly legitimate, and just a way for the pope to make money. In defiance, Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. They criticized the Church and tore down the authority of the pope.

While Luther was making Theses, Ulrich Zwingli began a movement in Switzerland. Zwingli would later debate Luther on various Protestant matters. Some of Zwingli’s followers thought that Luther’s Reformation was too conservative, and they became the Anabaptists.

In the papal bull Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. The bull cited 41 sentences that Luther was commanded to recant, but Luther didn’t listen, sent the Pope a copy of his book On the Freedom of a Christian, and burned the bull publicly in Wittenberg. At the Diet of Worms, Luther was ordered to appear before a general assembly. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V presided. Other people at Worms included Jerome Schurff and Johann von Eck (a prominent theologian). Luther was ordered to recant. Obviously he didn’t, saying things like “Here I stand, I can do no other” (apocryphally) and “My conscience is captive to the Word of God”, opting for a speech talking about how he was right. The Diet declared Luther an outlaw and said anyone in Germany could kill him without consequence.

Luther ran away and was given shelter by Frederick the Wise in Wartburg Castle. In 1529, the Marburg Colloquy was called together, and Luther advocated for the idea of a Real Christ (the Eucharist isn’t symbolic) in a debate against Zwingli.

The Catholics, in the wake of the Reformation, aimed to reform their own Church. Between 1545 and 1563, a Council of Trent was called It’s one of the Catholic Church’s most important councils, because it embodies the ideas of this Counter-Reformation. The council lasted for 25 sessions, under three popes: Paul III, Julius III, and Pius IV.

The council produced an Index of Banned Books, while declaring that the Vulgate was the only valid Bible. It upheld the seven sacraments as valid, and standardized a definition of transubstantiation. The papal bull Benedictus Deus upheld the outcome, and the council standardized the procedure of mass (Tridentine Mass). It had to move to Bologna temporarily due to people dying of plague.

In 1440, Frederick III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Nicholas V. Nicholas hoped that an alliance could help end the conciliary movement undermining the Church during the Great Schism. Frederick III married Eleanor of Portugal, and he built up lands and power. His son became Maximilian I.

Maximilian’s son, Philip the Handsome, married Joanna the Mad, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, heir to Castile, Aragon, and a bunch of the rest of Spain too. She apparently deserved the epithet, because she probably had to be forcibly removed from the corpse of her husband when he died, and she didn’t let any women approach his coffin. Joanna had six children, and the eldest became Charles V.

By the time Charles V came to the throne in 1500, the Habsburgs had gotten themselves a whole lot of power, but the 1.5 million square miles of family domains resulted in a pretty bad overextension modifier for the empires. His personal union with the Spanish Empire resulted in the largest European monarchy since Charlemagne had been in power 700 years prior.

Charles was a big opponent of the Reformation, resulting in constant conflict with German nobility who quite liked Luther’s ideas. As Protestantism proliferated his demesne, he reluctantly signed the 1555 Peace of Augsburg with the Schmalkaldic League. The League was an alliance of princes that helped Martin Luther, and the Peace of Augsburg stopped the religious struggles by formalizing the division of Germany along denominational lines.

During the Italian Wars (fought against France), he defeated Francis I at the Battle of Pavia. The wars, waged on and off between 1494 and 1559, featured loads of shifting alliances, multiple turnovers of cities like Milan, and general instability. The 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis resulted in Spanish control of Milan and the House of Savoy taking control of Turin. The wars were a notable instigating factor for the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent.

His advisors included Guillermo del Croy, Mercurino Gattinara, and Bartolomeo de las Casas, who helped him improve the social structure, e.g. by limiting slavery. Juan de Padilla tried to rebel in the Revolt of the Comuneros, which Charles put down. Other notable rebellions included one by the Arumer Zwarte Hoop (a peasant/mercenary army) in Frisia, and the Revolt of Ghent of 1539.

Of course, Charles’s control of Spain led to his signing off on the various conquistador adventures in the Americas; he enabled the destruction of the Inca and the Aztecs.

Charles abdicated in 1556, giving his brother Ferdinand I the lands of Austria and Bohemia (beginning what would become Austria-Hungary).

The Spanish lands went to Charles’s son Philip II. Philip married Mary I of England, and the phrase “the empire on which the sun never sets” was used to describe Habsburg lands at this time. He built himself a big palace called El Escorial. Spain went bankrupt many, many times while he was king. One time, his forces went into a “Spanish Fury” and massacred over 7,000 civilians in the Sack of Antwerp.

The Duke of Alba worked for Philip; he notably established the “Council of Troubles” (the “Court of Blood”) in order to prosecute heretics. This occurred in the Netherlands, where William I, the Silent, of Orange was revolting against Philip. William was eventually assassinated in 1584 when Spain declared him an outlaw. The Dutch War of Independence (Eighty Years' War) lasted from 1568 to 1648, during which Philip’s army fought in the Battle of the Downs.

Philip led Spain into the later parts of the Italian Wars. He won a Battle of the Gravelines against the French on land in 1558. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis secured some territory for Spain in 1559. The treaty ended the long-lasting Franco-Spanish wars of the era in Italy.

Philip liked to fight against heresy, and he defended Catholicism fiercely. After the Revolt of the Netherlands, he fought Protestantism in the Netherlands. This campaign ended up spiraling into the Cologne War.

In 1571, Philip put his brother John (Don Juan) of Austria in command of the fleet of the Holy League. The objective of the Holy League was to break the Ottoman Turks' control in the eastern Mediterranean. The League met the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto, near the Gulf of Patras. At Lepanto, Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) had to have his arm amputated. Among the commanders of the Holy League were Augustino Barbarigo and Andrea Doria. Uluch Ali, an Ottoman commander, captured the flag of the Maltese Knights during the battle. The leading Ottoman commander Ali Pasha was beheaded, and his head was stuck on a pike. The Holy League won a decisive victory at Lepanto.

In 1588, Philip sent his Spanish Armada, a fleet of 130 ships led by Pedro de Valdes, to try and invade England. At a second Battle of the Gravelines, this time on the sea, the Armada lost to the smaller, faster English ships, under the command of Francis Drake, where Drake commanded the Revenge. Drake had also raided Cadiz earlier while commanding the Elizabeth Bonaventure, aiming to “singe the beard” of the enemy king.

In 1572, Catholic princess Margaret of Valois married Protestant prince Henry of Navarre in the “secret nuptials”, and Catherine wasn’t very happy. She had the Duke of Guise kill Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader, in an assassination signaled by ringing church bells. Thus began the five day long St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Thousands of Huguenots were killed, but Henry of Navarre managed to escape by temporarily converting to Catholicism. Catherine said that the Huguenots were plotting against her son, King Charles IX. After the massacre, Pope Gregory XIII sent the king a Golden Rose, and praised the actions taken.

There were numerous smaller wars of religion in France, but the eighth and last conflict was probably the most important. The war was called the War of the Three Henrys. The first Henry was king Henry III of Poland. The second was Henry I, Duke of Guise, head of the Catholic League, supported by Philip II of Spain. The third was Henry III of Navarre, who had converted to Catholicism, but now converted back to lead the Huguenots. Guise and Henry III were both killed, and in 1589 Navarre was the only one left standing. Navarre famously said “Paris is well worth a mass” and renounced Protestantism in order to gain popularity.

Navarre became Henry IV of France, first of the house of Bourbon to sit on the throne. He instituted a policy called the paulette, in which offices could be bought and made hereditary. Henry conducted a “Conquest of the Kingdom” in which his armies swept through France and took Paris by way of the Battle of Ivry.

Henry also made social improvements. In 1598, he issued the Edict of Nantes at the encouraging of the Duke of Sully. The edict gave religious toleration and 150 places of refuge to Huguenots, and it was opposed by Pope Clement VII. Shortly after that, the Peace of Vervins ended the religious wars. Henry also built the Louvre.

Even though he was generally a very popular person, Henry faced multiple assassination attempts, such as by Pierre Barriere in 1593 and by Jean Chatel in 1594. In 1610, Francois Ravillac, a Catholic fanatic, stabbed Henry to death in in his coach on the Rue de la Ferronnerie.

In Portugal, Prince Henry the Navigator wanted to know more about places like Africa. He wanted to find Prester John, a legendary man that was supposed to have lots of rich lands in Ethiopia. He sponsored Joao Goncalves Zarco, who found the Azores and Madeira. The Portuguese used the caravel, a smaller ship that was able to sail windward very effectively. Henry died in 1460, and Portuguese explorers found the “Gold Coast” in modern-day Ghana. Portugal would colonize both sides of Africa, but not the land in between.

Next door to Portugal, Castile in Spain had taken rule of the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs, had completed the reconquista late in the 15th century, driven the Moors out of Spain, and wanted to find new trade routes. When they conquered Granada in 1492, the rulers funded Christopher Columbus of Genoa and his expedition to bypass west Africa and the Portuguese-controlled routes.

Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera on the ships Santa Maria, Nina, and Pinta. He first sailed to the Canary islands, and then went west across the Sargasso Sea. After five weeks, he landed in the Bahamas (which he called San Salvador), and he thought he was in the West Indies. He founded the settlement of La Navidad in modern-day Haiti, kidnapped some natives, and brought them back to Spain with him.

After Columbus came back, the Spanish and Portuguese decided that they needed to stay out of each others' way. Pope Alexander VI sent a bull to Ferdinand and Isabella dividing the lands. King John II of Portugal wasn’t happy with this, because it didn’t let him get to India. In 1494, after negotiations between the Iberian countries, they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portugal got the islands discovered on Columbus’s first voyage, and Africa, Asia, and modern-day Brazil. Spain got basically everything else, mostly uncharted territory.

In 1497, Henry VII of England commissioned John Cabot to explore the New World. He sailed from Bristol and landed somewhere around Newfoundland, and explored trying to find new routes. He was the first non-Viking European to explore North America. At the same time, Joao Fernandes Lavrador was sent by Portugal, and he found Labrador.

Columbus would discover the mouth of the Orinoco in northern South America. Amerigo Vespucci reached Guyana in 1499, and he sailed southward. Vespucci found the mouth of the Amazon River, and turned around. His first name would of course be notable in naming the Americas, because it was Vespucci that suggested that the lands were not the Indies, but actually a New World.

In 1500, the second Portuguese India Armada, commanded by Pedro Cabral. They landed on the Brazilian coast, and they called it Ilha de Vera Cruz because they thought it was an island. Cabral’s expedition connected Europe, Africa, America, and Asia.

In the early 1600s, Henry Hudson was an English explorer who tried to find the Northwest Passage to China. When he wanted to keep going west, though, his crew mutinied.

Portugal had rejected Columbus’s ideas of going west to get to India twice already, because it was just too far. John II sent Bartolomeu Dias in 1487 to go around Africa, but Dias wasn’t exactly successful, and he returned from the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1497, Manuel I, the new king, sent a fleet under Vasco da Gama to explore. They passed the Great Fish River where Dias had turned back and just kept going. He ordered the Sao Rafael burned near Malindi, Kenya. They made it to India in 1498. Da Gama was named viceroy in India in 1524. The Lusiads were written in honor of da Gama.

Cabral’s fleet that had landed in Brazil came back around Africa and reached Madagascar, Mauritius, and more.

Some other explorers also made it to southern China and traded there, as well as the “Spice Islands” in the Indian Ocean.

In 1513, the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa, hearing of another sea, trekked across Panama. His crew fought battles, bushwhacked through dense jungle, and climbed mountains. Balboa became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas. They found a bay that they called San Miguel, and he called the ocean the “South Sea”.

In 1516, Ferdinand Magellan presented a plan to sail all the way around the world to Charles I, king of Spain. Magellan had previously served under Alfonso de Albuquerque during the conquest of Malacca. In 1519, five ships including the flagship Trinidad left from Seville. Three of the ships were the first to reach Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of the Americas. They went through the straits that we now call the Straits of Magellan. At this point, the Pacific Ocean was given its name because it looked so still. Magellan was killed by a spear at the Battle of Mactan against Philippine natives led by Lapu-Lapu. The Spaniard Juan Sebastian del Cano (Elcano) commanded the return to Spain in 1522, completing the first circumnavigation of the globe.

While the Portuguese were exploring the Indian Ocean and trading a lot, the Spanish wanted to look for gold in the New World. The people that went on these expeditions were the conquistadors, and they were mostly in it for gold.

The Russian princes trace their heritage back to Rurik. The princes ruled over Kievan Rus', a predecessor to the modern Russian state that was centered around lots of smaller polities, notably Kiev and Novgorod.

The Mongols that we saw in the Middle Ages were also taking up a fairly large amount of space in Russia. But the Mongols (Tatars) of the Golden Horde, from their capital at Sarai, generally left the princes of south and east Russia alone as long as they paid their taxes.

The princes generally cared more about the Northern Crusaders in the 13th century, who were led by the Teutonic Knights and the Swedes. Alexander Nevsky, prince of Novgorod, became famous after victories such as the Battle of the Ice against the Teutonic Knights. Nevsky was hailed as a hero as a result of his exploits even though he often cooperated with the Mongols. Under the Mongols, the Russians developed an infrastructure and became much more organized.

The son of Alexander Nevsky, Daniil Aleksandrovich, founded Moscow, a polity that would force the Tatars from Russia. In 1380, the Mongols were defeated at Kulikovo Field by Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy. The Russian Orthodox Church also moved to Moscow, leading to it being known as a “Third Rome” (the first two were Rome and Constantinople, the previous centers of Orthodox Christianity).

By the 15th century, princes of Moscow were going around and taking as much land as they could. Most successful among these was Ivan III, the Great (1462–1505), Grand Prince of Moscow, who began the foundations for the Russian state itself. He annexed Novgorod and Tver', and defeated the Lithuanian armies at the Battle of Verdosha River, tripling the size of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. He also notably greatly renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and he was called “sovereign of all Russia”. His attacks would begin the eventual complete destruction of the once great Golden Horde.

The power that had been centralizing in Moscow became truly great during the time of Tsar Ivan IV, the Terrible (1547–1584). He was the first to be called “tsar”, and he made his position stronger than ever before. He was advised by a “Chosen Council”. He set up a new code of laws (the Sudebnik), and he created the Zemsky Sobor, the first Russian representative body. He waged the Livonian War against Stephen Bathory and Sigismund II of Livonia to take the Baltic, but he failed and asked Pope Gregory XIII for help. During the Livonian War, the Order of the Brothers of the Sword were defeated. Ivan also supposedly blinded the architect of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Later in life, Ivan proceeded to divide his lands into two, one of which was the oprichnina. His secret police, the Oprichniki, conducted the massacre of Novgorod because Ivan was suspicious of Archbishop Pimen. Ivan ended up killing his heir Ivan Ivanovich, and was therefore succeeded by the largely incompetent Feodor I.

Feodor’s reign was mostly actually run by Boris Godunov, the brother of Feodor’s wife Irina; Godunov usurped the Tsardom after Feodor died childless. He had won back territories from Sweden after the Truce of Plussa. Notably, he was the first tsar to use Siberia to send people into exile. Godunov’s later reign was full of civil wars, such as one against Grigori Otrepiev, a False Dmitri. His successor was only in power for two months before being killed. Russia descended into the Time of Troubles.

Russia would end up mostly surviving the Time of Troubles, despite the Russo-Polish war and the Ingrian war. We’ll look at the reemergence of the Tsars later — Russia will be more a part of European history from now on.

Classical Japanese periods are named after their capital cities.

During the Asuka period (538–710), the Japanese polities began to become a truly centralized state, and the three kingdoms of Korea were still in conflict. Buddhism moved to Japan.

The Asuka period was succeeded by the Nara period of the 8th century. Nara was generally considered a golden age of prosperity and progress.

The final period of classical Japan is the Heian period (794–1185). It’s noted for art and literature, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu wrote the Tale of Genji. Notable aristocratic families included the Fujiwara clan, who took control of the imperial family. They faced the Hogen Rebellion, Heiji Rebellion, and Gempei War. The Gempei War ended with the Battle of Dan-no-ura, when Minamoto clan won. Then, the first Shogun was Yoritomo of the Minamoto clan, signaling an end to the power of the Fujiwara.

Medieval Japan was controlled by daimyo, powerful families, and shogun, military warlords. The emperor was mostly a figurehead.

Recall that the Mongols tried to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281. They were deterred by the kamikaze, the famous typhoon that saved Japan.

Fast forward a bit past a bunch of mildly important stuff, and we get to the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1569–1603).

The first great unifier of Japan was Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582). Oda introduced musketeers into the Japanese military, and he allowed Jesuits into the country to combat the Ikko and Tendai monasteries.

He was killed in a revolt in 1582, and true unification was completed by his general Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the second great unifier of Japan. He invaded Korea, but he was stopped at the Battle of Noryang by the Korean turtle ships. Hideyoshi tried to conquer the Ming dynasty in China, but he died.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, a student of Oda Nobunaga, was a regent for Hideyoshi’s heir. He previously had won battles at Komaki, Nagakute, Temmokuzan, Anegawa, and Nagashino. At the Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa defeated Ishida Mitsunari, general of Toyotomi Hideyori (Hideyoshi’s son).

Tokugawa became the third great unifier of Japan and the first leader of Japan’s final shogunate. The Tokugawa Shogunate’s crest was three hollyhock leaves. Tokugawa created a “four-class” system of warriors, artists, farmers, and merchants, and he also made the sankin-kotai system of government. He destroyed the Toyotomi clan completely after the Siege of Osaka, where he used the excavation of moats (that he had filled in himself) as an excuse to start the attack. The Tokugawa would start a period of seclusion (sakoku) because of the Shimabara Rebellion. The Tokugawa Shogunate stayed in power for quite a while, so let’s go look at India for now.

When last we visited Korea, the Goryeo dynasty was founded by Wang Geon.

The Khitan Empire (the Liao Dynasty), which controlled what is now eastern Russia and some of China, invaded Goryeo in 1018 but were repelled at the Battle of Kuju. Victory against the Khitan resulted in a golden age for Goryeo. The Tripitaka Koreana, a comprehensive and still intact Buddhist canon carved on wood blocks, was completed.

In 1231, the Mongol leader Őgedei Khan invaded Korea. Mongol forces crossed the Yalu and captured the Goryeo capital at Gaesong. Goryeo sued for peace and the Mongols retreated. The following year, Goryeo evacuated Gaesong and moved the Royal Court south, irking the Mongols, who launched a second invasion, but were forced to withdraw again. The Mongols invaded again and again, nine times in total, until 1257. Driven to desperation, Goryeo swore allegiance to the new Mongol leader, Kublai Khan, and the Yuan Dynasty presided over Goryeo for almost the next century.

The Yuan Dynasty fell apart in the 1350s, and the Goryeo were reformed. The Goryeo was overthrown in 1392, when Taejo took power in a coup and established a new dynasty.

Yi Seong-gye (eventually also called Taejo), founded the Joseon dynasty in 1392. He introduced Neo-Confucianism as the main philosophy. Taejo built Gyeongbok Palace in modern day Seoul (then called Hanyang). Internal conflicts after he died included the Strifes of Princes, succession battles between Taejo’s heirs.

Sejong the Great (r. 1418-1450) ,stablished the Hall of Worthies, a research academy. The Hall created Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and worked on various other engineering and scientific advancements. He presided over a golden age of Korean culture, but this period was not to last.

Sejong was suceeded by his son Mujong, who promptly died and was succeeded by the 12-year-old Danjong. Danjong’s uncle Sejo then deposed Danjong in 1455. The so-called “six martyred ministers” then attempted to kill Sejo, but they were caught and executed. Danjong was then murdered in exile.

In 1494, Yeonsangun came to power and immediately abused it. Yeonsangun oversaw multiple literati purges at the turn of the century. He banned Hangul because people were using the alphabet to criticize him.

Amidst domestic unrest in the late 1500s, Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded over the sea. Under the command of Yi Sun-sin, Korean turtle ships repelled the invasion. Shortly thereafter, Manchu invasions led to more bloodshed until Joseon came to terms with the Qing dynasty, making Korea a tributary of China in 1636.

The Ottoman Empire was founded in the early 14th century by Osman I, son of Ertugrul. When the Seljuk Turk Sultanate of Rum fell, Osman expanded the Turkish borders towards the Byzantines. Osman’s son was Orhan, who captured Bursa in 1324 and made it the new capital. The Ottomans proceeded to capture Thessaloniki and they were victorious at Kosovo and Nicopolis.

In 1383, Murad I created the Jannissaries, an elite infantry group that formed the bodyguards for the Sultan. They started out as Christian child slaves and evolved into a great force. However, by 1620 or so, they were corrupt and failing. Mahmud II would abolish the Janissaries during the Auspicious Incident, which killed over 6,000 of them.

In 1402, Tamerlane won the Battle of Ankara and took Sultan Bayezid I prisoner. At the end of a civil war in 1413, Mehmet I took the rule, ending the Interregnum (Fetret Devri). At the Battle of Varna (1444), Murad II defeated Polish and Hungarian forces.

Mehmed II, son of Murad II, besieged and conquered Constantinople in 1453, overthrowing Constantine XI. By the 16th century, the empire was expanding fast. Selim I defeated Safavid Persia at the Battle of Chaldiran, and he established rule in Egypt.

Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566), son of Selim I, “Kanuni”, the Lawgiver, was the longest-reigning Sultan. During the Safavid wars, he signed the Peace of Amasya with the Shah of Iran. In 1521, Suleiman captured Belgrade. He fought parts of Hungary in the Ottoman-Hungarian wars. Notably, he won the Battle of Mohacs (1526), and took Hungary. He followed up by besieging Vienna in 1529, but failed. At the Siege of Guns (1532), he was stopped from taking Vienna again.

During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government created a more modern army and reformed many things. The Sultan Abdulmecid I issued the Rescript of Gulhane (Rosehouse or Rose Chamber), which stopped tax farming. The Constitution, called the Kanun-u Esasi, was the apex of this reform period. The Crimean War was a part of the contest in which European powers wanted to take parts of the empire for themselves.

Remember that France had just been through a lot with its wars of religion. Protestantism was still making waves, and even though the Peace of Augsburg helped a little bit, there was still quite a bit of unease running through Europe. Additionally, Calvinism still wasn’t really recognized in the Peace.

At this point, Spain wanted the German states because of territory in the Netherlands, France was uneasy about its proximity to Habsburg Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and Sweden and Denmark felt like they wanted some more land. The Holy Roman Empire was all over the place (par for the course), but was heavily fragmented.

The Thirty Years' War is generally thought of as having four phases: the Bohemian Revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, and the French intervention.

Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria was the Crown Prince in Bohemia. He was Catholic, and the Protestants in Bohemia weren’t particularly pleased with that. In 1618, they tossed some of his representatives out of a window in the Defenestration of Prague.

The Defenestration of Prague started the Bohemian revolt, which would move across the entirety of Europe. Protestant leaders moved the war to western Germany, and Philip IV of Spain was called to assist.

The Ottoman Empire decided to help out the Bohemian Protestants after they elected Frederick V as king, because the Ottomans were never particularly fond of Catholics in the first place. This triggered the minor Polish-Ottoman War (1620–1621), and the Ottomans defeated the Poles at the Battle of Cecora. But, the Ottomans didn’t help the Bohemians at the Battle of White Mountain (near Prague) where Christian of Anhalt was defeated by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Count of Tilly.

In 1625, Christian IV of Denmark decided to help the Lutherans, resulting in the Low Saxon War. In response, Ferdinand II hired Albrecht von Wallenstein, a rich Bohemian who let Ferdinand use his army. Wallenstein and Tilly pushed Christian back.

Wallenstein moved north and took parts of Denmark, but wasn’t able to take Copenhagen. So after a bit more fighting, a small Treaty of Lubeck put the Danish Intervention mostly to rest.

After the War of Mantuan Succession between France and the Habsburgs in Italy, another black death swept across northern Italy.

In 1630, Lutheran Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, the Lion of the North, invaded Europe. The Swedish armies pushed the Catholics back, and Gustavus Adolphus took much of the land for himself. France and Bavaria allied with the 1631 Treaty of Fontainebleau. At the Battle of Breitenfeld, the Swedes defeated Tilly, who would end up dead soon. Other notable Swedish victories around this time included the Battle of the Rain.

Now that Tilly was dead, Ferdinand II asked Wallenstein for help again. The Swedes met Wallenstein at the Battle of Lutzen; even though the Swedes won, Gustavus Adolphus died. Near the end of this phase, Ferdinand II signed the Peace of Prague. Later, because of treachery against the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II would have Wallenstein assassinated.

France was a Catholic state; recall their difficulties with the Protestant Huguenots. However, their hatred of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs, and Spain transcended religious boundaries. Cardinal Richelieu, Chief Minister, had already subsidized Gustavus Adolphus’s invasion.

Emperor Ferdinand II died in 1637, and was succeeded by Ferdinand III. The new emperor wanted to end the war using negotiation, so he convened the Imperial Diet. In Flanders, the French defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Rocroi (soon after the death of Louis XIII), and proceeded to take the rest of the region.

In 1642, Richelieu died, but his war continued. The French continued to push through, winning battles such as Nordlingen (1645). By 1648, battles were coming all the way to Prague, where the final battle was fought.

It took four years for the war to be resolved. Much of the work was done at Osnabruck and Munster, in Westphalia. Other treaties that were part of the final Peace of Westphalia (1648) included the Treaty of Hamburg. The war was decided in favor of letting countries deal with religion for themselves.

When Elizabeth I died in 1603, her closest Protestant relative was James VI of Scotland, who was crowned James I of England in the Union of the Crowns. He quickly made peace with the Spanish, and the English didn’t really deal with the rest of Europe for a good part of the 17th century. In the Spanish Match, he tried to find a Habsburg Infanta wife for his son Charles, but that failed. He was called the “wisest fool in Christendom” because he was educated but kind of foolish. He wrote the The True Law of Free Monarchies and the Basilikon Doron. James also started the North Berwick witch trials.

There were people who weren’t particularly happy with the Protestant James as king, and they tried to kill him every once in a while, notably with the Main Plot and the Bye Plot in 1603. He was held hostage during the Ruthven Raid, and he set up the Treaty of Berwick.

On the fifth of November, 1605, a group of Catholics led by Sir Robert Catesby schemed to kill James I. This Gunpowder Plot aimed to blow up Parliament. Guy Fawkes, a conspirator, rented a room in the Whynniard House under the name “John Johnson” from Thomas Percy in preparation for the event. When Robert Cecil found a warning letter from Francis Tresham to his brother-in-law William Parker, Lord Monteagle, they looked around a bit and found Fawkes with 36 barrels of gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament. In the aftermath, the principal Jesuit in England, Henry Garnet, was convicted of treason and killed. These days, Guy Fawkes Day is commemorated with fireworks and bells and such.

James I was succeeded by Charles I in 1625. At this point, the Parliament didn’t really have a lot of power and it was summoned whenever the king felt like it. However, it was particularly useful in that it could raise taxes, which the king was particularly fond of. In 1628, a new Parliament drafted the Petition of Right, which further restricted Charles’s power.

For the next ten years, Charles didn’t call Parliament in a period called the “Personal Rule”. He believed in High Anglicanism, which he supported through his appointment of William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Let’s talk about ship money. England is on an island, and as such, often needs a good navy to handle war. So when the country was at war, the king generally could levy a “ship money” tax without approval of Parliament, in order to raise a navy for defense. Usually, the only people that had to pay ship money were people on the coastal areas of the island, seeing how they would be affected if a marauding band of killers decided to land on Great Britain. In 1634, Charles decided to start asking inland residents for ship money, making everyone mad.

In 1640, Charles’s religious beliefs resulted in the Bishops' War, an uprising in Scotland, which he managed to stop with the Pacification of Berwick. It didn’t take, and the Scots started another war. Charles didn’t have enough money to fight the Scots, so he had to call a new Parliament in 1640, led by John Pym. Parliament wasn’t nice enough to Charles, so he disbanded them after a few weeks, so it’s now called the Short Parliament. Then, Charles went back into Scotland but didn’t do very well.

In November 1640, he called another Parliament under pressure: the Long Parliament. They started to air their grievances and made it so a Parliament must convene at least every 3 years (Triennial Act). They also passed the Ship Money Act, stopping the ridiculous ship money taxes that Charles had put into effect. They accused Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, of treason. Charles tried to capture five members of Parliament but he failed.

In 1642, after the failed capture by Charles, an English Civil War broke out between Parliament and the crown. Parliament armies were known as the Roundheads, and Charles’s forces were the Cavaliers. The first battle of the war was fought at Edgehill in 1642, which ended inconclusively. After the Battle of Turnham Green, Charles was pushed back to Oxford.

At the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, Parliament won with the help of the Scots under the strong leadership of Oliver Cromwell. Parliament proceeded to create a New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell.

At the Battle of Naseby in 1645, Parliament destroyed Charles’s forces. The First English Civil War ended with the imprisonment of Charles. In 1647, Cromwell and others argued in the Putney Debates against the Levellers, who wanted more political equality.

Charles escaped, and the Second English Civil War was a short conflict, which ended with the New Model Army securing the country. The Long Parliament was disbanded in a coup known as Pride’s Purge, and Charles was tried at the Rump Parliament, after which his head was taken from him in 1649 at Whitehall Gate in London.

Having killed Charles I, Cromwell proceeded to subjugate Scotland, Ireland, and the rest of England. In Ireland, he won the Siege of Drogheda in 1649, killing 3,500 people. In 1653, John Lambert wrote the Institution of Government, giving Cromwell the title of Lord Protector for life, making him “king in all but name”. Cromwell disbanded the Rump Parliament and established the Barebones Parliament.

Cromwell ended the First Anglo-Dutch War and died in 1658. Power passed to his son Richard Cromwell, but Richard was ineffective and his father’s Protectorate crumbled around him.

In 1659, Richard Cromwell was forced to abdicate. The newly elected Parliament let the exiled king back from the Netherlands, and he sailed back from Scheveningen in 1660. The monarchy was restored to England, and Charles II (The “Merry Monarch”) became king. He had many mistresses, including the “pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn; he had at least twelve children, but none by his wife, Catherine of Braganza.

Parliament passed the Clarendon Code, which was comprised of the Conventicle Act, the Corporation Act and the Act of Uniformity. It aimed to make the Church of England the dominant faith in Britain. In 1665, the Great Plague of London swept through the city, and Charles and his family fled to Salisbury.

In 1666, the Great Fire of London started in a bakery in Pudding Lane. It burned down much of the city including St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was restored by Christopher Wren. The fire was chronicled, along with much of Charles’s reign, in the journal of Samuel Pepys.

Charles’s brother James was the heir because of Catherine’s inability to have kids. In 1678, Titus Oates, a priest, warned Charles of the “Popish Plot” which aimed to kill him. He was making it all up, but Charles had his minister Lord Danby investigate, causing panic. Charles would later have Lord Danby imprisoned for treason and other crimes.

Charles died in 1685 and his Catholic brother James II took the crown. James’s wife was Mary of Modena. After James Scott tried to overthrow James II in the Monmouth Rebellion, the king had Judge Jeffrys begin a set of trials called the Bloody Assizes following the Battle of Sedgemoor. He set out the Declaration of Indulgence, a step toward religious freedom, but it was opposed by seven Anglican bishops, who were upset by it.

People weren’t happy with James, so a group called the Immortal Seven asked his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William III of Orange to take power in the country. In the Glorious Revolution, beginning in 1688, William landed in England and was crowned. James tried to fight back in the Williamite War, but William defeated James at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690.

In 1689, the English Bill of Rights was passed. It stated that monarchs could not be Catholic, and it gave the Parliament more power. But, Catholics loyal to James were still trying to take the throne back. This resulted in 1692 at the Massacre of Glencoe. Jacobite rebellions continued until the forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie were defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

When Henry IV was killed in 1610, Louis XIII succeeded him. He was only nine, so his mother Marie de' Medici was his regent. But she wasn’t very competent so she got exiled by the king in 1617 while he proceeded to kill a bunch of her followers, such as Concino Concini.

Louis then worked closely with chief minister Cardinal Richelieu, who had succeeded the Duke Charles de Luynes in the position. Richelieu had previously implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent in France.

At one point, Richelieu was exiled to Avignon, and in another event, he had to run to Blois after Concino Concini was killed. He created the Company of One Hundred Associates and started the “reformation of the third order of the realm”.

In 1627, in an attempt to defeat the Huguenots, Richelieu ordered the Siege of La Rochelle. The city, led by Jean Guiton, stood for a whole year before surrendering in 1628 with the Peace of Ales. In 1630, Marie and enemies of Richelieu tried to get the king to dismiss Richelieu. They thought they were successful, but Louis kept Richelieu and the event came to be called the Day of the Dupes. This is important because it shows how reliant Richelieu was on Louis for his power.

While Louis XIII was in power, the French won at Veillane against the Spanish, and he helped Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers, secure Mantua. His brother Gaston, working with Counts of Montresor and Soissons, tried to overthrow Louis, but he failed.

Louis died in 1543, just a few days before the Battle of Rocroi. His son succeeded him.

Louis XV (1710–1774), the Beloved, took the throne when he was only five. While he was a child, his great-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, was regent, and Cardinal Fleury was his chief minister. Philippe dealt with the Mississippi bubble, in which there was a lot of investor interest in the Mississippi Company. Philippe was targeted in the Cellamare Conspiracy, in which Antonio del Guidice, Spanish Ambassador, tried to put Philip V of Spain in power.

After Philippe’s death, Louis married Maria, daughter of Stanislaw Leszczynski, although Madame de Pompadour is probably his better known lover.

He participated in the Battle of Fontenoy in the War of the Austrian Succession, and he returned the Austrian Netherlands to Austria in 1748. During the Seven Years' War, Louis lost a good chunk of French India and New France.

The first successful English colony was Jamestown, started by colonists who came over under the command of Christopher Newport. During the Starving Time, many people died while the colony was directed by George Percy, and the Starving Time was ended by the arrival of Thomas West, Lord De La Warr. Lord De La Warr went on to found Henricus, a town nearby. Jamestown also faced the first strike in the colonies, in which Polish members of the community refused to work.

Jamestown was dependent on trade with the local Native Americans, including Powhatan. The tobacco farmer John Rolfe married Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan, and brought her back to London. Popular religious leader Alexander Whitaker converted Pocahontas to Christianity. Captain John Smith sent a “Rude Letter” to the Virginia Company, and the company sent the Sea Venture, which got shipwrecked.

In 1619, the House of Burgesses was established in Jamestown. The first meeting was presided over by George Yeardley, and the House later moved to Williamsburg.

In 1676, Bacon’s Rebellion, an uprising of indentured servants and slaves, occurred under Governor William Berkeley. The rebellion was started with a disagreement between Giles Brent and some Doeg Indians, after a Doeg raid on Thomas Matthews’s farm. Skirmishes in the rebellion included massacres of the Occaneechees. When Bacon died of dysentery, John Ingram became the leader of the rebellion. The rebellion resulted in the burning of Jamestown.

George Calvert, Lord Baltimore wanted to found a new Catholic refuge in the Chesapeake. He managed to get a charter for the colony of Avalon, but then he died.

His son, Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was granted a charter for Maryland, named after Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I of England.

Delaware was home to the Algonquian tribes. The Dutch were the first to settle there, but they all were killed. In 1638, Peter Minuit established New Sweden for 1651.

In 1651, Peter Stuyvesant and his fellow Dutch made a fort at New Castle, and they annexed New Sweden into New Netherland.

In 1624, the Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. When Richard Nicholls took it in 1664, he renamed it New York. With the Treaty of Breda (1667) after George Carteret’s capture of Albany, the capture was confirmed. Governors of New York include Richard Nicholls, Francis Lovelace, and Sir Edmund Andros.

In 1681, Charles II gave a charter to William Penn to repay a debt that he owed Penn’s father, along with the land that had previously been known as Upland. Penn originally called it New Wales, and then Sylvania, but the king renamed it Pennsylvania. Penn, a Quaker, signed a peace treaty with Tammany of the Delaware tribe, and there were good relations between Quakers and other tribes.

New Jersey was created from New York but the border wasn’t finalized for a long time. The land was given to George Carteret and John Berkeley.

The Puritans who wanted to reform the Church of England made the Massachusetts Bay colony. They wanted to make a nation of saints, a “City upon a Hill”.

In 1689, there was a revolt in Boston against James II, and Sir Edmund Andros and others were arrested.

In February 1692, Salem cousins Betty Parris and Abigail Williams started having fits of epilepsy. They started screaming, throwing things, and enacting scenes from The Exorcist, which was impressive considering it wouldn’t be made for another 300 years. They accused Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba of afflicting them with witchery. Thus began a period of mass hysteria that surrounded the Salem Witch Trials.

All sorts of interesting ways of accusing and proving that Salem residents were witches came about. At one point, Mary Sibley instructed John Indian to make a “witch cake”. The cake was made of rye meal and urine from the girls, was fed to a dog, with the belief that this would hurt the witch.

Cotton Mather wrote Wonders of the Invisible World in defense of the trials. His father, Increase Mather, also wrote about evil spirits and how to deal with them. The last trial was held in May 1693, and people worked to clear the names of those accused and killed.

Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay because he wanted a better separation of Church and State. He went and founded Rhode Island, which became a place for refugees, including Anne Hutchinson. The land was provided by the Narragansett sachem Canonicus. Williams made a constitution with majority rule, that advocated a “liberty of conscience”.

The main settlers in Connecticut were Puritans led by Thomas Hooker. The Quinnipack Colony was a part of it, and the colony would come to be called New Haven. Other important settlements include Windsor and Wethersfield.

During the Pequot War, the Pequots besieged Saybrook Colony’s garrison and raided Wethersfield. After they lost at Fairfield, the Pequot asked for peace, having been nearly wiped out. Other battles during the war include the Mystic Massacre. The resulting peace was the Treaty of Hartford.

The first permanent settlement in New Hampshire was Hilton’s Point, which became Dover. In 1679, it was the Royal Province, and Father Rale’s War was fought between colonists and the Wabanaki Confederacy.

The British colony was established by James Oglethorpe in 1733. It was intended as an agrarian society with no slaves and lots of farmers.

The first incorporated town in North Carolina was Bath, which is where Edward Teach would have his headquarters. The first capital of North Carolina would be New Bern.

Early leaders of Roanoke, a colony on an island off the coast founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, included Richard Greenville and Ralph Lane. John White was another governor, and he left at one point. The colony worked close with Manteo and Wanchese, who were brought back to England. When White returned in 1590, he found the word “Croatoan” carved into a tree, and he saw nobody around.

South Carolina was a colony, notably situated south of North Carolina.

In 1613, Michael I Romanov (Mikhail I Romanov), son of the patriarch Filaret, was elected tsar by the Zemsky Sobor, ending the Time of Troubles and founding the House of Romanov. The early part of his reign, while he was a child, was dominated by the Saltykovs from his mother’s side of the family. The Romanovs would stay in power until 1917. The Russians moved to peace with their enemies, and Michael signed the Peace of Stolbovo with Sweden. Michael died in 1645.

After Michael died, there were multiple peasant disorders in Russia. In the mid to late 17th century, rebellions included the Salt Riot, Copper Riot, and the Moscow Uprising. In 1667, the Cossacks, free settlers of South Russia, led by Stenka Razin, went up the Volga River, but eventually Stenka was caught and killed. Later, Stepan Razin would be supported by the streltsy in a 1670s uprising. It’s probably useful to note that of the four great Russian rebellions at this time, all were led by Cossacks — we mostly care about Razin and Pugachev (we’ll see him later)

Peter the Great (1672–1725) was an important part of modernizing Russia. When he was a child, he got military experience from playing with his “toy army” in war games. He originally shared power with his brother Ivan V, who had severe mental and physical disabilities. By the time he became tsar, Russia was the biggest country in the world.

In 1689, the streltsy, musketeers that Ivan the Terrible had organized when he was tsar, revolted to put Peter’s half sister Sophia on the throne. Peter put down the rebellion with the help of his advisor Patrick Gordon. Peter’s first attacks were against the Ottoman Turks, and he wanted to take Azov, near the Black Sea.

When Peter wanted a better “window to the West”, he made an alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and started the Great Northern War against Charles XII of Sweden. Sweden was able to stop attacks at Travendal and the Battle of Narva (1700), and pushed back through to Saxony where, after the Battle of Kliszow, it forced Augustus II of Poland-Lithuania to accept the Treaty of Altranstadt. The treaty ensured the execution of Johann Patkul, who’d made the alliance in the first place.

Peter pushed west and in 1703, he built St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Charles moved into Russia and met Peter’s forces at the Battle of Poltava (1709). At the battle, Ivan Mazepa, a Cossack commander in the Russian army, deserted and went to the Swedish side after learning that he was going to be replaced by Alexander Menshikov. The Russian army under Menshikov crushed the Swedish forces at Poltava and Charles was exiled to the Ottoman Empire (Moldova, to be precise). Charles would later be killed at the Siege of Fredriksten. In 1714, at the Battle of Gangut, Russia won its first ever naval victory. The war ended with Sweden defeated and Russia as a dominant power in the world. The war concluded in 1721 with the Treaties of Stockholm, Treaty of Frederiksborg, and the Treaty of Nystad, in which Russia got Estonia and East Ingria.

Peter modernized and reorganized his governmental structure. He turned it into a more centralized state, and he replaced the Duma, the old council of boyars (nobles), with his new nine-man senate. In 1722, he set up the Table of Ranks, which formalized positions in the military and public office. He created the Holy Synod, a collective body led by a government official. Peter imposed a beard tax as part of his war on facial hair. He took a Grand Embassy through Europe, working as a carpenter for Lynst Rogge in a Dutch shipyard.

Peter launched the Russo-Persian war in 1722 to take down the Safavid Empire in Persia. Even though the Safavid lost a lot of territory, they got it back when Nader Shah, the new leader, signed the Treaty of Resht to create an alliance against the Ottomans.

The Hohenzollerns were an important part of the history of Prussia. Around the time of the Thirty Years' War, the Mar-grave George William fled to Konigsberg. His successor was Frederick William I, The Great Elector. Frederick William I reformed the army and paid homage to Wladyslaw IV (House of Vasa) of Poland, in return for the Duchy of Prussia. With the duchy in hand, the Hohenzollern dynasty had a territory all their own. Frederick William I organized an absolutist monarchy in Brandenburg-Prussia and issued the Edict of Potsdam, which opened the borders for Protestants (including French Huguenots).

The Great Elector’s son, Elector Frederick III, crowned himself King Frederick I of Prussia, and the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I allowed him to do so even though Prussia was largely in the empire. Frederick I sponsored the arts, and Prussia grew. Frederick I was succeeded by King Frederick William I, the Soldier King. He put together a better standing army, and they saw a little action in the Great Northern War. In the Treaty of Stockholm, he got half of Swedish Pomerania.

When his father Frederick William died in 1740, Frederick II, the Great took the throne. He built the Sans Souci Palace, near Berlin. He also created the Furstenbund, a Protestant alliance of German princes.

At the time, Prussia was still mostly a scattered mess of territories. When Frederick took the throne, he wanted to take the Austrian province of Silesia. Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI had issued a Pragmatic Sanction in 1713, stating that Habsburg domains in Austria would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa.

Frederick disputed the claim because he wanted the money in Silesia. He won the First Silesian War, which ended with the Treaty of Breslau. The three Silesian Wars were part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), known in the Americas as King George’s War. Frederick was worried that Augustus III of Poland would take Silesia. As is often the case with wars of succession, a lot of other countries were drawn into the conflict. George II of Britain led troops at the Battle of Dettingen (the last time a British monarch would ever do so). One part of the war was the First Carnatic War.

In another sub-conflict, some Spanish coast guards boarded a British merchant ship and cut off the captain’s ear, resulting in the War of Jenkins’s Ear. Other notable battles in the war included Fontenoy and Mollwitz. Frederick’s forces also won at Hohenfriedberg.

The war was ended by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. It confirmed Maria Theresa as ruler of Austria and Hungary, while Prussia kept Silesia. The treaty also reasserted Britain’s right to the asiento (slave trade), which was a big part of their motivation for war.

Later, Frederick was involved in the 1778–79 War of the Bavarian Succession, the “Potato War”, against the Austrians. Frederick wanted to prevent the Habsburgs from taking control of Bavaria. The Treaty of Teschen ended the war without any major battles; however, about 10,000 soldiers on each side died of starvation and disease.

Great Britain and France started fighting in 1754 because of tensions in the New World. At the same time, Prussia was in a conflict with Austria (again) over lands and dominance in the Holy Roman Empire. In 1756, Prussia allied with Britain, and France and Austria allied against them. The Anglo-Prussian alliance was joined by Portugal and some German states, and the French and Austrians were joined by Sweden, Saxony, and Spain. Russia joined Austria at the outset, but then switched sides when Peter III came to power there.

As far as notable battles in Europe go: at the Battle of Leuthen, Charles of Lorraine was defeated. At the Battle of Wandiwash, Sir Eyre Coote was defeated by Count de Lally. And, at the Battle of Rossbach, Charles de Rohan and Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen were defeated. Baron von Seydlitz was promoted after his victory at the Battle of Kolin.

The American theater of the war was the French and Indian War because the Native Americans allied with the French against British control in America.

During the French and Indian War, the Braddock Expedition (1755) tried to capture Fort Duquesne, but it failed at the Battle of Monongahela, where Edward Braddock was killed. Notably, George Washington was the American aide to Braddock during the expedition. After the disastrous expedition, Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia commissioned Washington as Commander of the Virginia Regiment.

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec was the major victory in the American theater. At the battle, the Marquis de Montcalm and James Wolfe both died; the latter inspired a famous painting by Benjamin West. The French had regrouped near Bougainville across the St. Charles River, and the battle itself lasted less than an hour.

The war was a great success for William Pitt the Elder, who strategized for the British. Britain took possession of Canada in the Treaty of Paris. One of the notable negotiators for the treaty was John Stuart. The Treaty of Huburtusburg allowed Frederick the Great to keep Silesia.

Catherine II, the Great came to power in Russia in 1762, having engineered a coup that killed her husband Peter III. Her accession to the throne was aided by her favorites: Count Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. Potemkin notably made fake villages to impress the empress after ousting Alexander Vassilchikov and helping win the Russo-Turkish Wars. Catherine’s generals included Alexander Suvorov and Pyotr Rumyantsev, and one of her admirals was Fyodor Ushakov.

Catherine crushed the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish Wars, and after the Battle of Chesma, she was able to take Azov and the Crimea. She helped Stanislaw Poniatowski acquire the throne in Poland, but then she, along with Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa, partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth amongst their three countries, with Russia getting the biggest chunk. Under Catherine, Russia started the colonization of Alaska.

She continued to modernize Russia in the style of Peter the Great, but serfdom was still an important part of the economy. Catherine faced Pugachev’s Rebellion (1773–1775), a large scale uprising of Cossacks and peasants which she had to have her general Suvorov put down. The rebellion was led by Yemelyan Pugachev, a Cossack pretender to the throne. At the Battle of Kazan, the rebels took the city but were then beaten by the government led by Peter Panin. Alexander Pushkin wrote about Pugachev in his The History of Pugachev and The Captain’s Daughter.

Partially because of the Enlightenment, Catherine’s Russia was in a golden age. She defined her rule in much the same way Elizabeth I had done in England. Catherine is a notable example of an enlightened despot — she spent time with the ideas of the Enlightenment, frequently corresponding with Diderot and Voltaire, who called her the “Star of the North” and the “Semiramis of Russia”. Catherine wrote the Nakaz, a set of legal principles influenced by the French Enlightenment. She also established the Smolny Institute, the first place of higher learning for women in Europe. Her Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry was Russia’s first learned society and became an important part of liberalism in Russia.

Catherine died of a stroke in 1796. She was succeeded by her son, Paul I of Russia.

Queen Anne (House of Stuart) was Queen starting in 1702. Under the Acts of Union which united England and Scotland, she became the monarch of the new united state called Great Britain. She favored the more moderate Tory politicians because she was Anglican, and during the War of the Spanish Succession, she dismissed many of their opponents, the Whigs. Anne died childless in in 1714.

She was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover. He was descended from James I, through the Stuarts, because the Act of Settlement of 1701 prevented Catholics from taking the throne. He was succeeded by George II, who in turn was followed by George III.

In 1721, Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. He’d previously been Chancellor of the Exchequer, during which time he’d created a “sinking fund” to try and reduce national debt. He managed to keep the position of prime minister for 20 years straight — some people call the period the “Robinocracy”. He covered up a bunch of scandals including the South Sea Bubble (during which he came to power), leading to his sometimes being called the “Screenmaster General”. Walpole started using 10 Downing Street as the primary residence for the Prime Minister. His government collapsed partly as a result of Britain’s entrance into the War of Jenkins' Ear, which Walpole was somewhat forced into joining against his will.

George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, grandson of George II, son of Frederick Prince of Wales, reigned from 1760 to 1820. During his reign, Great Britain and Ireland formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Acts of Union (1800). George was the longest reigning monarch up to that point, and his wife was Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

The early parts of his rule were marked by the Seven Years' War. The Whigs didn’t really like him because they thought he favored the Tories. During George’s reign, the American Revolution took place, but we’ll look at that later.

Later in his reign, George appointed Lord Shelburne to the Prime Minister’s position. Charles James Fox, however, didn’t like Shelburne and feuded with George constantly. Nevertheless, George approved Fox’s appointment to the “ministry of all the talents”, which was eventually disbanded under Baron Grenville. George developed porphyria later in life and died in 1820.

We start in the years following the French and Indian War in the colonies of America. Various people came to dislike British rule in the area. In 1763, the Proclamation of 1763 was issued, forbidding settlement west of the Appalachians.

In that same year, Pontiac’s Rebellion broke out against British policies in the Great Lakes area. Pontiac, an Ottawa chieftain, started the war near Fort Detroit. An attack on the weapons caches was stopped because the mistress of Henry Gladwin, the commander of the fort, warned the defenders of the fort of the attack. Jeffrey Amherst tried to win the war by infesting blankets with smallpox. A massacre occurred at Parents' Creek, after which the river was called Bloody Run. Other battles included the Devil’s Hole Massacre. A vigilante group called the Paxton Boys went on a rampage in western Pennsylvania, resulting in governor John Penn ordering their arrest. The rebellion ended in a stalemate and was partially concluded by the Fort Niagara treaty.

In 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act, which stopped use of some paper money. They also passed the Sugar Act, placing duties on multiple goods. The prime minister at the time was George Grenville, who wanted to levy even more taxes, but he waited for a year before doing so.

In 1765, the Sons of Liberty were formed. They tried to show that the British tax laws were pointless, and in Boston, they looted the home of Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice. The Stamp Act Congress was convened at Federal Hall in New York City, and a Declaration of Rights and Grievances was made. The Congress was convened by John Otis, and participants included John Dickenson and Caesar Rodney.

When the colonists couldn’t put up any more money, Parliament passed the Stamp Act (1765), the first direct tax only on the colonies, which taxed paper products. The “Committees of Correspondence”, a setup of communications between the colonies, were created. As a result of the Stamp Act, Ebenezer MacIntosh led an assault on Thomas Hutchinson’s house.

In 1767, the Townshend Acts (named after the current Chancellor of the Exchequer) were imposed on paper, glass, tea, etc. Within a year, colonists started putting together resistance — riots broke out when Liberty, John Hancock’s sloop, was seized.

On March 5, 1770, a mob gathered around a bunch of British soldiers, throwing snowballs, supposedly because of some accusations made by a wigmaker’s apprentice. The soldiers, under Thomas Preston, started firing into the crowd and hit 11 people — five people died in total in the Boston Massacre on King Street, which ended when governor Thomas Hutchinson cleared the crowd. Among the people who died were the African American merchant Crispus Attucks, as well as Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, and Patrick Carr. Paul Revere, a local silversmith you may have heard of, made and circulated Henry Pelham’s print of the massacre. John Adams defended the soldiers involved against the prosecution of Samuel Quincy and Robert Treat Paine, resulting in their acquittal. The press compared the event to a similar one at St. George’s Field a few years before.

In 1770, the new Prime Minister was the Tory Lord North, and Parliament withdrew a bunch of taxes except for tea. In the Gaspee Affair, some patriots under John Brown burned a warship.

Parliament then passed the Tea Act to help the East India Company sell Dutch tea. A meeting in Boston decided that the tea shouldn’t be allowed to land, a position in stark opposition to Hutchinson’s stance. Francis Roth tried to negotiate with Hutchinson, but Hutchinson wouldn’t give in. So, the Patriots organized the Boston Tea Party. Participants met at Faneuil Hall and the Old South Meeting Hall, dressed like Mohawks, and on a signal from their leader Samuel Adams, they went out to Boston Harbor. They then went on ships in the harbor and dumped tea off into the water. Similar events took place in Edenton, North Carolina (organized completely by women), and in Annapolis, Maryland (organized by Thomas Charles Williams).

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts (Coercive Acts). These consisted of: the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, the Boston Port Act, and the Quartering Act. The patriots issued the Suffolk Resolves, forming a new “Provincial Congress”. In 1774, the First Continental Congress convened. During the Congress, it was decided that Americans would obey Parliament but continue to resist taxes and boycott goods.

In February 1775, Massachusetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion. Thus began Battles of Lexington and Concord, which started with the “Shot heard `round the world” at Concord (not to be confused with Bobby Thomson’s 1951 home run). Revere, Prescott, and Dawes went around warning the Americans that the British were on their way.

The Battle of Bunker Hill near Boston followed a siege on the city after Thomas Gage tried to take Dorchester Heights. The Americans were led by Israel Putnam, and William Prescott ordered soldiers to not fire until they could see the whites of the British soldiers' eyes. The American doctor Joseph Warren died at the battle and Prescott led the expedition to occupy Breed’s Hill. British admiral Samuel Graves provided artillery support from the HMS Somerset. Other hills included Moulton and Copp Hills, which were assaulted by Robert Pigot. The British under William Howe won a Pyrrhic victory at Bunker Hill in what would be the bloodiest battle of the war.

After Bunker Hill, the colonists issued the Olive Branch Petition to try to make peace with George. The document was requested by John Dickinson at the Second Continental Congress and carried by Robert Penn. George III never actually saw the letter and he issued the Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition.

By June 1776, colonies were getting on board with the idea of independence after the Halifax Resolves allowed voting for independence. The Committee of Five, consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson, drafted the Declaration of Independence. On signing it on July 4, 1776, John Hancock said that he wanted to make sure the king could read his huge signature.

The United States was a new nation, but they still had to defend their independence. The British returned to America, sweeping down from Canada with the help of their German Hessian mercenaries, and taking New York City after the Battle of Brooklyn. At the Staten Island Peace Conference, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin met with Howe but failed to come to an agreement. The British also took New Jersey at some point.

Recall that George Washington was the commander of the Continental Army. On December 26, 1776, the Hessian forces under Johann Rall were quartered in Trenton (people say they were drunk because of Christmas, but that might not be true at all). Washington crossed the Delaware River, launching a surprise attack at the First Battle of Trenton. In order to help the attack, the American spy John Honeyman had fed the Hessians bad intelligence after an interrogation. The local militia, led by John Cadwallader, launched an attack on Bordentown to try to stop enemy supplies, but weather conditions didn’t really let them pull that off very well. John Sullivan led his column around and stopped the Hessians from escaping down an abandoned road near Assunpink Creek. Washington’s forces were victorious at Trenton, and soon afterwards, the Americans defeated Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton to take back the rest of New Jersey.

In 1777, the British sent an invasion under John Burgoyne to move down from Canada. Following the British capture of Fort Ticonderoga, they met the Americans, led by Horatio Gates, at the Battle of Saratoga. Near the start of the battle, Daniel Morgan’s sharpshooters killed many British officers. Soldiers under Benedict Arnold and Ebenezer Learned charged the Hessians. Arnold was wounded in the leg and removed from combat, but was considered a hero of the battle. Later, Simon Fraser was mortally wounded by a sniper. Notable engagement locations in the battle included Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights.

Later, Gates would be the leader that some Continental officers called the Conway Cabal that tried to replace George Washington as command of the army. The Cabal obviously failed, and Gates apologized for his role.

The American victory at Saratoga signaled a turning point, because France (and Spain) decided they wanted to help the Americans out. The British were stuck fighting a global war they never really wanted against powerful countries without any real allies of their own.

In 1781, the British army, now led by Cornwallis, marched on Yorktown, Virginia. They hoped to rendezvous with the British fleet on the coast, but that didn’t end up happening. A fleet from Saint Domingue, led against the British by the Comte de Grasse, blocked escape for the British fleet led by Thomas Graves at the Battle of the Chesapeake. Joint forces under the Comte de Rochambeau and Washington defeated Cornwallis on land during the Battle of Yorktown. In the midst the battle, Robert Abercrombie tried to disable enemy cannons. The British plan to evacuate to Gloucester Point was stopped by a storm and they lost. After the battle, the British band played “The World Turned Upside Down”. The battle signaled Cornwallis’s final surrender to Washington, and North proceeded to resign from his post as Prime Minister.

In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Revolution. Notable signers include John Jay, Ben Franklin, and John Adams. One of the negotiators, Henry Laurens, had just been released from the Tower of London. Article 2 used the Mitchell Map, which wasn’t very accurate, while Article 6 required forts on the Great Lakes to be vacated. It set the borders of the USA as the Mississippi River and Florida.

Louis XVI, the grandson of Louis XV, came to power in 1774, when his father, the Dauphin, died. His wife was Marie Antoinette of Austria. Louis supported the American Revolution starting in 1776 until independence. In the beginning of his reign, he wanted to make France more Enlightened, so he tried to abolish serfdom, stop the taille, and increase religious tolerance. His foreign minister Charles Gravier was an important part in Louis’s support of the American Revolutionaries.

Louis’s financial reforms were carried out by Turgot and Malesherbes, but the nobles weren’t happy with that. Turgot had been appointed by Louis’s adviser Maurepas, so Louis fired Turgot and replaced him with finance minister Jacques Necker.

Necker was given the title of Director-General of France (he couldn’t be named controller because he was Protestant), and quickly became popular through various tax reforms. Necker tried to divide the taille tax more fairly, and he took many loans to help finance the American Revolution, a venture which the French were increasingly in favor of. Necker published the Compte rendu, in which he summarized government cash flow in order to provide transparency into the monetary inner workings of the government

By 1781, public opinion had turned on the high cost of the war, and Necker was left high and dry with no friends in the court as a result of his reforms. As a result of increasing public and internal pressure (including from the king and queen), Necker resigned.

Louis wasn’t happy with Necker and would replace him with Charles Alexandre du Calonne. When Calonne wasn’t able to get France out of debt, Louis called the Assembly of Notables.

The king was losing power, and people were calling for him to convene the Estates General, an assembly of the nobility, clergy, and common folk which hadn’t been called since 1614 under Louis XIII. In 1788, Louis succumbed to public pressure the Estates General.

The Third Estate wasn’t pleased by the fact that they weren’t as well off as the nobility and clergy. They split off in June 1789 and declared themselves the National Assembly. When the Menus Plaisirs at Versailles was locked and the 577 assembly members were left without a place to meet, they went to an indoor tennis court and took the Tennis Court Oath. The agreement, written by Jean-Sylvan Bailly and Jean-Joseph Mounier, promised that they would stay together until a new constitution was created. Other notables at the Tennis Court Oath were Abbe Sieyes and Mirabeau. Jacques-Louis David made a sketch of the Oath.

On July 11, 1789, Jacques Necker was dismissed. People were mad, since Necker had been doing good things for the general populace. On July 14, some insurgents decided to storm the Bastille. The fortress prison had become a symbol of the power of the king, despite only holding seven prisoners at the time. The insurgents went for ammo caches inside the building. The commander of the Bastille, Bernard de Launay, was killed and his head was put on a pike. After the storming, Jean-Sylvan Bailly became mayor following the death of Jacques de Flesselles. The wave of revolution resulted in the Great Fear.

In August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man was passed. It was heavily influenced by the Declaration of Independence in the USA, where the Marquis de Lafayette had worked with Jefferson. The National Constituent Assembly then worked to make a new constitution.

In October, there was a Women’s March on Versailles, protesting the high price of bread by means of weapons. The mob stormed the palace, killing some guards. Louis gave in to their demands and moved his family from Versailles to the Tuileries in Paris.

Around this time, the Jacobin Club (Society of Friends of the Constitution) was forming. The Jacobins would become a more radical group of revolutionaries, in contrast to the Girondists. Jacobin members included Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Danton, who would become quite important in the coming years. Robespierre wrote the “Defender of the Constitution” to oppose war with Austria.

At the meetings that tried to define a new constitution, issues were raised regarding how the new government would govern. It was decided to continue the monarchy checked by a constitution. Louis would remain in power, with some weaker power. These new ideas weren’t very popular with the radicals.

In 1791, Louis XVI wasn’t very happy with the state of the revolution, so he decided to take his family and run for the border. They fled towards Varennes, trying to get to Austria and safety. Louis posed as the butler of a fake Russian baroness played by the dauphin’s governess. But, they were captured and placed under house arrest in the Tuileries.

In the Brunswick Manifesto, Austria and Prussia demanded that Louis be put back in power. Not being fans of the idea, the Legislative Assembly went to war with Austria and Prussia.

Because they thought that he was conspiring with enemies of France, the people condemned Louis to death. He was executed by guillotine on the Place de la Concorde in January 1793, stripped of his title. His final words were drowned out by a National Guard drum roll ordered by Antoine-Joseph Santerre. Marie Antoinette would be killed in the same way nine months later.

Lots of violence broke out at this point. The wars weren’t going very well, and sans-culottes (literally: without culottes), poor workers and some radicals, were rioting.

This was the point that the Committee of Public Safety rose to power under the leadership of the Jacobins. Robespierre was the leader of the Committee, and he ordered executions in large numbers during the ensuing Reign of Terror. At least sixteen thousand people lost their lives to the guillotine. Many Girondins were arrested, including Jacques Pierre Brissot.

Jean-Paul Marat was a journalist who was known for his inflammatory rhetoric. Marat had been a scientist and doctor, but he became the editor of Friend of the People. He wrote The Chains of Slavery and A Philosophical Essay on Man. Marat spent a lot of time attacking Girondins, and when he was in his bath, Charlotte Corday, a Girondin assassin, assassinated him. His death was painted by Jacques-Louis David.

The Vendee Revolt was a 1792 uprising against the government. The rebels were people who were loyal to the church and to the king. This counter-rebellion was suppressed by General Lazare Hoche at battles such as Savenay and Cholet.

Members of the Committee of Public Safety such as Georges Danton were being removed all the time. Robespierre, “the Incorruptible”, became more and more powerful, and more and more radical. A new Constitution of 1793 was adopted; it granted universal male suffrage. Robespierre, in 1794, created a new religion, known as the Cult of the Supreme Being, which replaced the Cult of Reason. The French calendar was changed — the new months were completely different.

In the new month of Thermidor, people stopped loving Robespierre, who had gone off the deep end. The moderate factions, led by Paul Barras, went and arrested Robespierre at the Hotel de Ville. As a result of this Thermidorian Reaction, Robespierre was guillotined, and a five man governing entity called the Directory rose to power.

The Directory was against the pointless death of the Reign of Terror, but it wasn’t effective either. It did manage to end the Vendee Revolt, and its final leader was the Abbe Sieyes. The Army, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, took control of France after deposing them in the Coup of 18 Brumaire. This established a Consulate, and Napoleon would declare himself Emperor in 1804.

Napoleon had been born on Corsica, and he served in the French army for a while. His brother was Joseph, who would help when Napoleon became a leader. He married Josephine de Beauharnais and during the French Revolutionary Wars, he led a campaign in Italy. He signed the Treaty of Campo Formio with Austria and divided Italy with them. In 1797, he’d helped start the second phase of the directory during the coup of 18 Fructidor.

In 1798, Napoleon had led an expedition into Egypt, fighting against the Ottomans. He defeated the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids, securing the territory. The campaign started the modern study of Egyptology. Later, the British fleet destroyed the French at the Battle of the Nile, and Napoleon was forced to leave Egypt later.

In the 18 Brumaire Coup (1799), Napoleon overthrew the Directory in alliance with officials such as Joseph Fouche and Talleyrand. The new Consulate drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and Napoleon was elected First Consul. In 1800, his army crossed the Alps into Italy, where the Austrians were occupying the land. At the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon defeated the Austrians and barely avoided being pushed out of Italy.

While ruler, Napoleon faced the Conspiration des poignards and the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (the “infernal machine”). He used these and made himself the Emperor of the new French Empire. He was crowned by Pope Pius VII at Notre Dame. In 1805, he was crowned King of Italy and he added 18 Marshals of the Empire to secure it for him.

At this time, George III was still king of Britain. In 1801, Great Britain and Ireland joined to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Horatio Nelson was one of the most important commanders in British history. He had learned from his uncle, Maurice Suckling. Nelson had also taken a trip to the Arctic when he was a kid, so there’s a famous painting of him hitting a polar bear with a rifle. He was a lover of Emma Hamilton, for whom he killed Admiral Caraciollo of the Pathenopean Republic.

Nelson served under Samuel Hood, and at the Siege of Calvi, he was wounded and he lost his eye. Due to his service under Sir John Jervis at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, he was knighted by the king. Nelson also led British forces at the Battle of the Nile during Napoleon’s ventures into Egypt. At Santa Cruz de Tenerife, he lost his arm while leading an assault.

In 1802, France and Britain had agreed to end hostilities resulting from the War of the Second Coalition with the Treaty of Amiens. The War of the Third Coalition (1805) was the end of that peace.

Napoleon seriously considered invading Britain, but he needed a stronger navy. When he got one, he met the British fleet under Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson commanded HMS Victory. Nelson copied his old admiral Jarvis by trying to split Napoleon’s forces and taking the French in two blocks. At the start of the battle, he famously sent the message “England expects every man to do his duty” by flag signals to the other ships. John Pasco, who was sending the signal, had the word “confides” replaced with “expects”. Nelson’s fleet was hit by cannon fire, but the British were able to break the center, split the French, and take the Redoubtable and the Bucentaure. Cuthbert Collingwood commanded the Royal Sovereign and attacked the French from the rear. During the battle, the Admiral Villaneuve was captured and Britain lost no ships, but Nelson was shot by a sniper while on deck and killed. Trafalgar ensured that Napoleon stopped trying to take Britain.

After his navy was crushed at Trafalgar, Napoleon faced the Austro-Russian army at the Battle of Austerlitz in Moravia. Austerlitz is sometimes called the Battle of Three Emperors: Napoleon (France), Alexander I (Russia), and Francis II (Holy Roman Empire). Napoleon chose to split his army across the two massive opposing armies and he fought from the low ground. The most important charge, led by Marshal Nicolas Soult with St. Hilaire and Vandamme, was a big push to take Pratzen Heights. This led to the Austrians and Russians being split, so the French army encircled and defeated them. Napoleon only lost one battalion in the battle; Austerlitz is perhaps his greatest victory. The battle led to the Treaty of Pressburg, which created the Confederation of the Rhine. It was a nail in the coffin of the Holy Roman Empire; the Habsburgs had to pay indemnities of forty million francs. The French proceeded to occupy Vienna and Venice, and Napoleon grew even more confident.

In 1807, Napoleon had signed the Treaty of Tilsit with Tsar Alexander I. But, in 1812, Napoleon and Alexander disagreed on the issue of Poland. Napoleon decided to invade Russia with 650,000 men in his Grand Armee. They won some victories, such as the Battle of Smolensk. For almost 3 months, the Russians retreated, burning the earth as they went.

The armies then met at the Battle of Borodino near Moscow. Napoleon’s forces, aided by Prince Eugene and Count Barclay de Tolly, scattered Mikhail Kutuzov’s soldiers. Notable places in the battle included the Raevsky Redoubt and the “Bagration fleches”. Borodino was the bloodiest battle of the Russian Campaign, but it wasn’t decisive. Napoleon entered Moscow, and the Russians retreated. When the infamous Russian winter came around, Napoleon gave up, left his men, and went back to Paris.

Napoleon also fought against Spain, Portugal, and Britain in the Peninsular War (1808), part of the War of the Sixth Coalition. It featured the first use of the term “guerrilla warfare”. The British Duke of Wellington devised the Lines of Torres Vedras, a set of strong forts and such, in order to protect Lisbon after the Battle of Talavera. Ande Massena tried to attack the Lines, but he failed. In early 1812, Wellington defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Salamanca. During the war, the Treaty of Kiel took Denmark out of the war.

At the Battle of Leipzig (a “Battle of the Nations”) during the War of the Sixth Coalition, 30,000 troops were stranded in the city after the bridge over the Elster River was demolished, leading to Napoleon’s defeat there at the hands of an Austro-Prussian force led by Prince Schwarzenburg and General Blucher, as well as Alexander I of Russia. Important locations of engagement include Markkleeberg and Liebertwolkwitz, while Antoine Drouot commanded artillery on Gallows Hill.

After the War of the Sixth Coalition, Napoleon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleu (1814) with Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Napoleon was exiled to Elba, and Louis XVIII was restored to the throne in France.

The Congress of Vienna was a Congress convened in order to figure out what to do following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. It lasted from September 1814 to June 1815.

The Congress was convened and chaired by Klemens von Metternich of Austria, who had replaced Johann Stadion as Foreign Minister. Metternich’s deputy was Johann von Wessenberg. Other representatives at this “concert of Europe” included Viscount Castlereagh from Britain, who would be succeeded by the Duke of Wellington, and later, the Earl of Clancarty. Talleyrand represented the French, and Alexander I attended for Russia.

As a result of the Congress of Vienna, many boundaries were shifted and power was redistributed in Europe. Norway and Sweden were united under a single ruler, and Krakow was declared a new free city. A new German Confederation consisting of 38 states was created, and Switzerland was officially declared neutral. The Congress condemned slavery, but didn’t outlaw it.

The Congress of Vienna was interrupted by the Hundred Days. Napoleon returned from exile on Elba in March 1815, sparking the War of the Seventh Coalition.

After failed attacks at Quatre-Bras and Ligny, Napoleon met the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. Wellington was joined during the battle by Prussians Gebhard von Blucher and H.E.K. von Zieten. Napoleon’s forces under Marshal Ney captured La Haye Saint, but Zieten was able to attack back. Troops under D’Erlon attacked Mont-Saint-Jean and a farm. Waterloo signaled Napoleon’s final defeat. Following the battle, the Lion’s Mound was constructed to commemorate the death of William the Silent of Orange.

Napoleon was subsequently exiled to Saint Helena, where he moved into Longwood House. He died in May 1821.

The first President of the nascent United States was George Washington, unanimously elected to the position by the electoral college. His Vice President was John Adams, and his First Lady was Martha Washington.

Washington created a Cabinet with four departments: State, War, Treasury, and Justice. As Secretary of State, he appointed Thomas Jefferson. His Secretary of War was Henry Knox, who had helped him with artillery at Trenton; Knox would be succeeded by Timothy Pickering. As Secretary of Treasury, he appointed Alexander Hamilton.

John Jay, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, was sent to negotiate a treaty with Britain. There had been disputes in the US regarding the evacuation of forts in the Northwest Territories and the Great Lakes, so Jay signed a treaty with the British. Jay’s Treaty didn’t solve the fact that British ships had been impressing sailors onto their boats, and some people like Thomas Jefferson thought that it was too friendly to the British. Popular outrage led to Jay being burned in effigy in the streets.

Another notable treaty was the 1795 Pinckney’s Treaty (Treaty of San Lorenzo), which was negotiated with Spain by Thomas Pinckney. It ended the first phase of the West Florida Controversy, and it also allowed farmers to ship through New Orleans.

During the Whiskey Rebellion (1794), a bunch of people in western Pennsylvania decided to rise up against excise taxes on liquor. Alexander Hamilton had proposed the tax, and it wasn’t very popular, but Albert Gallatin (future Treasury Secretary) failed to prevent it. The governor of Pennsylvania at the time was Thomas Mifflin, who personally led troops during the conflict. The rebels were incited by editorials written by “Tom the Tinker”. During the rebellion, John Neville’s house was burned at the Battle of Bower Hill. Washington sent “Light Horse Harry” Lee and his “Watermelon Army” to put down the rebellion.

Washington’s Farewell Address is notable because it offered advice to the new country. Washington talked about the importance of law and of national unity He warned against making entangling alliances and said that the US should focus on American affairs. “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Washington’s vice president, John Adams, succeeded him. Adams’s cousin Sam Adams had led the Sons of Liberty, and his First Lady was Abigail Adams. Adams was the first president to live in the White House.

In the XYZ Affair, three French diplomats demanded bribes from Americans. In response, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (different Pinckney than the one who signed the treaty) is thought to have said either “No, no, not a sixpence” or “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!”

John Adams also signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, a set of four laws passed in 1798 during the Quasi-War with France. The fourth one was important because it made it criminal to criticize the government and president. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson opposed the Federalist perspective that these laws created, as they were clearly designed to weaken the Democratic-Republican party. To this end, they wrote the Kentucky Resolution and Virginia Resolution, which resulted in the Acts being deemed unconstitutional.

Jefferson was succeeded as President by James Madison, who had earlier helped draft the Constitution. Madison’s First Lady was Dolley Madison. He retained Albert Gallatin as Treasury Secretary. Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill, which would’ve used bonuses to create a highway. Before he took office, the Non-Intercourse Act was signed, but it was replaced by Macon’s Bill No. 2; both bills had to do with limiting foreign trade, but weren’t as absurdly restrictive as Jefferson’s Embargo Act.

While Madison was President, a big problem on the seas was the fact that the British Navy was practicing impressment; they would take US sailors and make them work on British ships. Impressment was a big cause of conflict between the US and Britain, which became the War of 1812.

The Battle of Lake Erie (1813), also called the Battle of Put-In Bay, was a naval battle in which the US took control of the lake. The American commander was Oliver Hazard Perry, who notably said “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Perry had earlier served in the Barbary war, notably at the Battle of Derne. British leaders included Robert Heriot Barclay and Robert Finnis. Before the battle, Perry took his ships across a sandbar at Presque Isle using “camels” (barges and such that were emptied of any ballast). Jesse Elliot, an American Lieutenant, controversially wasn’t fighting at the start of the battle. When the Americans took the Lawrence, there was a flag on it saying “Don’t give up the ship”.

At the Battle of Bladensburg (1814), the British under Robert Ross decisively defeated the US under William Winder. The British had amassed their ships on Tangier Island and launched rockets against the Americans. As a result of the battle, the British walked into Washington and burned the White House and other important things. Bladensburg and the burning of D.C. have been called the “greatest disgrace ever dealt to American arms”.

Francis Scott Key penned The Star Spangled Banner during a battle at Fort McHenry. Other battles in the war include Chateauguay, Crysler’s Farm, and Prophetstown, while the bloodiest battle was Lundy’s Lane. Laura Secord, a Canadian heroine, walked 20 miles out of US-occupied territory in 1813 to warn the British of an attack; she’s now mostly remembered because of the Canada-made Laura Secord Chocolates, which she didn’t really have anything to do with.

The Treaty of Ghent ended the war. Important American negotiators were Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. During the negotiation, the British launched multiple invasions, stopping after Plattsburg and Bladensburg. The treaty notably asks the Americans to stop fighting with the Native Americans and create a new barrier state in the Northwest Territory.

Two weeks after the treaty was signed, the Battle of New Orleans took place, because they hadn’t gotten the memo yet. The Americans were commanded by Andrew Jackson against British forces under Edward Pakenham. Jackson had earlier won the Battle of Pensacola against Creek and British forces. The American army was notably assisted by the French pirate Jean Lafitte. Other American commanders included John Coffee and William Carroll, while British officers included Admiral Alexander Cochrane and Thomas Mullins. Much of the fighting occurred at Rodriguez Canal, where the British tried to fill the canal with sugarcane (they failed). At one point, British troops under Thomas Mullins forgot the ladders needed to scale American earthworks, leading to confusion and necessitating Pakenham’s reinforcement with the missing ladders. Choctaw fighters tried to surround the Americans by attacking through marshes. There was also fighting at Fort Bowyer and Fort St. Philip. The battle ended with only 71 American casualties and over 2,000 British casualties.

James Monroe was elected to the presidency in 1816. He was the last President to have been a Founding Father, and he’d fought in the Revolutionary War and had been wounded at Trenton. While governor of Virginia, he had faced Gabriel Prosser’s Rebellion. At this point, the Federalists were a broken and failing party, so Monroe defeated Rufus King and took the presidency easily.

The time he was president is called the “Era of Good Feelings” because there was effectively one party. His Secretary of State was John Quincy Adams, John Adams’s son. Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, which prohibited European countries from interfering with the Western hemisphere. The Adams-Onis Treaty (1819) was signed, buying Florida from Spain. Spain had claimed West Florida as a consequence of the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

In 1820, Henry Clay passed the Missouri Compromise. It temporarily reconciled the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in Congress. The compromise prohibited slavery north of 36°30' N, except in Missouri. Because Missouri was admitted as a slave state, Maine was split from Massachusetts and admitted as a free state. A follow-up passed to the compromise added an exclusionary clause for mulattoes. James Tallmadge tried to pass the Tallmadge Amendment, which would have freed some slaves when they turned 25.

The First Seminole War was fought from 1816 to 1819, while Monroe was in office. General Andrew Jackson had been going into Spanish Florida to fight before the US took control of the area. Britain and Spain weren’t very happy with this arrangement, but eventually the Adams-Onis treaty gave Florida to the US. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek, or Fort Moultrie, forced the Seminoles to leave north Florida.

The Second Seminole War (1835–1842) started when the US tried to make the Seminoles leave Florida completely, as a result of the Treaty of Payne’s Landing (1832). Osceola was an important Seminole leader at the start of the war. Seminoles claimed they signed the treaty under duress, and they used guerrilla warfare against American troops. Many Seminoles died, and the ones that weren’t were forced to Oklahoma. During the Dade Massacre, the Seminoles decisively defeated US forces under Major Francis Dade.

The Third Seminole War (1855–1858) was provoked when settlers went into Seminole territory. Chief Billy Bowlegs raided Fort Myers in 1855. The rest of the Seminoles were forced to go to Oklahoma, and only about 100 of them remained in the Everglades.

The election in 1824 was a strange one. None of the candidates had a majority in the electoral college, so it fell to the House to select the president. Surprisingly, the House picked John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson. Many people believed that Adams had struck a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay. It was claimed that in exchange for Clay convincing the House to pick Adams, Adams would make Clay his Secretary of State.

While president, Adams was opposed at every turn by Jacksonians who resented him. He appointed Robert Trimble to the supreme court. By the end of the presidency, he had endured a terrible argument with the British West Indies, and he had built the Dismal Swamp Canal and some other useful transportation routes.

Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory”, known as “Sharp Knife” to Native Americans, took the presidency in the 1828 election.

During the beginning of his administration, Jackson dealt with the Peggy Eaton Affair, in which a bunch of his cabinet members and their wives were targets of vicious attacks concerning their morality. Jackson eventually concluded that John C. Calhoun was responsible for the rumors, but Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife Peggy ended up shunned by many. Jackson also had an unofficial Kitchen Cabinet which contained a bunch of his advisors.

If you’ve seen The West Wing, you’ll know that Jackson once put a two-ton block of cheese in the White House and invited anyone to eat from it. This was intended to show openness to the American people. In 1830, he struck down the Maysville Road bill, vetoing a bill that would allow the government to buy stock in a road company to construct a road in Kentucky.

While president, Jackson initiated a whole new set of Indian removal policies. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the Cherokee having to be relocated. Leaders of the Cherokee included John Ridge, who negotiated the Treaty of New Echota with Jackson.

During the Nullification Crisis (1828–1832), Jackson faced controversy over tariffs. The 1828 Tariff of Abominations was protested by South Carolinian Vice President John C. Calhoun. Calhoun claimed that the state should be able to nullify the tariff, and he wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. Jackson supported a strong union, opposing Calhoun. The Verplanck Bill almost ended the crisis, but eventually the Force Bill was passed, expanding the power of the presidency and compelling compliance.

The Second Bank of the United States had been created in 1816 by Madison. In 1823, Nicholas Biddle was appointed as executive of the Bank. Biddle submitted a recharter for the Bank in 1832, but Jackson really didn’t like the Bank, so he vetoed the bill. Jackson also issued the Specie Circular, an executive order that compelled government land to be paid for using gold or silver.

The election of 1832 featured the Bank as a central issue. Jackson and Martin van Buren were nominated from the Democratic Party. The National Republican Party nominated Henry Clay and John Sergeant, while the Anti-Masonic party nominated William Wirt and Amos Elmaker, because Jackson and Clay were both masons. Jackson was quite popular at this point, achieving a solid victory and reelection.

In 1835, Richard Lawrence, the first known failed presidential assassin, tried to shoot Jackson outside the Capitol. When Jackson died in 1845, he was buried at his house, The Hermitage, in Nashville.

Martin Van Buren had been Jackson’s Vice President, and Jackson had previously appointed him as Minister to Great Britain until Calhoun shut that down. He’d been Secretary of State until the Peggy Eaton affair. He had developed the Albany Regency, a political machine.

Van Buren was elected to the presidency in 1836, and he served one term. His Vice President was Richard Mentor Johnson, and his Secretary of State was Daniel Webster.

During the Panic of 1837, the economy collapsed. This was followed by five years of depression, sometimes attributed to Jackson and his Bank War. Van Buren denied Texas’s request to join the Union, trying to keep the world together.

During the 1838 Mormon War, Joseph Smith and the Mormons were forced from Missouri. Smith tried to get Van Buren to help the Mormons, but Van Buren refused.

Following the Treaty of New Echota, the Cherokee and other Florida tribes went on the Trail of Tears. Winfield Scott had set up internment camps to prepare for Indian removal.

In 1839, a small incident arose regarding the border between Maine and New Bruns-wick, Can-ada. The bloodless Aroostook War occurred when loggers from both countries disputed where they could cut trees. William I of the Netherlands tried to help mediate the conflict after John Baker tried to create the Republic of Madawaska, but he failed. Forts constructed as causes of the war included Fort Kent, Fort Fairfield, and Fort Blunder. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, negotiated by Daniel Webster, Winfield Scott, and Alexander Baring, ended the dispute.

Napoleon had wreaked havoc on Italy (along with the rest of Europe). With his fall, the old power structures of Italian city-states had fallen apart, and nationalism was on the rise. The process of Italian unification, called Risorgimento, began after the Congress of Vienna.

In 1820, the Two Sicilies Insurrection, a mutiny by soldiers in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, took place against the reigning king Ferdinand I. Later, during the Piedmont Insurrection, Santore di Santarosa wanted to unite Italy under the House of Savoy.

By 1830, the Italians began to look more favorably on the idea of unifying Italy. The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious man who wanted to unite northern Italy under his rule. His supporters were Carbonari, and he arrested Ciro Menotti for a planned uprising. In 1831, however, Pope Gregory XVI asked for Austrian help against rebellions across the peninsula. The Austrian armies went across Italy, suppressing rebellion.

In 1848, revolution in Lombardy began in earnest. Shortly afterwards, revolts broke out in Sicily and Naples, putting Ruggero Settimo in power in Sicily. Unrest in Tuscany resulted in Grand Duke Ferdinand granting the Tuscans a constitution. Pope Pius IX gave a constitution to the Papal States as well.

Milan was besieged by the Austrians under Marshal Josef Radetzky, but he failed and retreated. Eventually, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, declared the First Italian Independence War on Austria. Radetzky won at the Battle of Custoza and took Lombardy, except for Venice, where the Republic of San Marco was established.

The Second Italian Independence War started in 1859. The Sardinian Prime Minister, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (colloquially Camillo Cavour), allied with Napoleon III. The last major battle of the war was the Battle of Solferino and San Martino. It was the last major battle in which armies were personally commanded by monarchs. The battle resulted in a Franco-Sardinian victory, and leaders at the battle included General Ludwig von Benedek and Franz von Gyulai. Jean-Henri Dunant wrote A Memory of Solferino, and he started a discussion that would end with the creation of the Geneva Convention, as well as the inception of the International Red Cross. Sixteen days after the battle, the Peace of Villafranca was signed.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was a native of Nice. He had been part of the Piedmont uprising, after which he went to South America for a while, returning to Italy in 1848. His defense of Montevideo during the Uruguayan Civil War against Jan Manuel do Rosas, combined with his following heroics in Italy, resulted in people calling him “The Hero of Two Worlds”. He’d also fought in the Ragamuffin War (also called the War of Tatters) in southern Brazil, and he almost fought in the American Civil War, but didn’t because Lincoln didn’t make abolishing slavery the stated goal of the war.

After the Revolutions of 1848, Garibaldi became the hero of the unification movement. He was quite popular in the south, but in the north, the House of Savoy was in power in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

Garibaldi’s Redshirts, the Italian Legion, were a volunteer force that Garibaldi had formed in Uruguay, when Garibaldi was fighting its Civil War. Their flag was black, with a volcano in the middle.

By the middle of 1860, there were few states remaining in Italy. Garibaldi wasn’t happy with the fact that France had taken Nice, so he wanted to take it back. Cavour convinced Garibaldi to instead direct his forces south, toward the Sicilian rebellions. In the Expedition of the Thousand (Mille Expedition), Garibaldi took a his Redshirts and landed at Marsala on the coast of Sicily. Following battles such as Calatafimi, Garibaldi advanced on Palermo, taking it and inciting Ferdinando Lanza. He proceeded to topple the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Garibaldi proceeded to subdue the rest of Italy, and retired to Caprera. In 1861, Italy became a true nation-state, unified under Victor Emmanuel II, House of Savoy, of Piedmont. Cavour became his Chief Minister.

Giuseppe Mazzini was another notable radical in the unification movement. He started the political society called La Giovine Italia (Young Italy), whose motto was “God and the People”. One of his followers was Felice Orsini, who tried to kill Napoleon III. Mazzini was Chief Minister in Rome in 1849, before Garibaldi’s Expedition. After unification, Mazzini wasn’t happy with the fact that Italy was still a monarchy.

After Napoleon was finally subdued, France fell back into old monarchic habits for a while. Some revolutions would take it back out of that and into modernization, though.

Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, ruled from 1814 to 1824. He created the Charter, which kept some of the advances of the French Revolution. The revived absolute monarchy had a parliament, consisting of a Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Peers.

In 1830, Charles X of Bourbon was ruling over France. He’d succeeded Louis XVIII, and opinion of Charles quickly went south. In addition, Charles’s minister Jules de Polignac had invaded Algeria and established rule there.

On March 17, the majority in the Chamber of Deputies gave the Address of the 221 (a no confidence motion). Charles got mad and proceeded to dissolve Parliament and the National Guard of Paris. Adolphe Thiers created Le National and an association called “Help yourself, and Heaven will help you”.

At this point, revolution was right around the corner. When Charles signed the July Ordinances, also called the Ordinances of Saint-Cloud, he suspended freedom of the press. The revolution began on July 27.

The opening of the July Revolution is a time known as the Three Glorious Days, during which opposition to Polignac led to barricades being built all over Paris. By the end of the July Revolution, France was placed under a constitutional monarchy, and Charles X abdicated.

In Charles’s place was Louis Philippe I, the “Citizen-King” of France, who’d been picked by the National Assembly over Henry V. Notably, he had defected to Austria with Charles Francois Dumouriez in 1793. He ruled over the July Monarchy from 1830 until 1848.

Louis Philippe wanted a “just milieu” between royal power and popular pressure. Under Louis Philippe, the haute bourgeoisie were quite dominant. The conservatives in the House of Deputies were led by Francois Guizot. The center-left faction was led by Adolphe Thiers, who would become president in 1871. In a notable political cartoon, Louis Philippe was shown transforming into a pear. He sent Marshal Soult to put down the Canut Revolt in Lyon.

The king survived seven assassination attempts while in power. In 1835, while in Austria, Louis Philippe was attacked by Giuseppe Fieschi, who built an “infernal machine”, a gun that was 25 gun barrels tied together. Fieschi just ended up killing 18 other people while the king went through relatively unscathed.

Because so many people were trying to end the monarchy, it began to rule more harshly. By 1848, it fell apart as people revolted against the king. Louis Philippe abdicated and the Second Republic was formed.

By the end of 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was overwhelmingly elected president of the Republic. He had previously tried to overthrow the government multiple times. During one attempt, he hired a ship called the Edinburgh-Castle and sailed to Boulougne, but he failed miserably, was arrested, imprisoned in Fort Ham, and ridiculed vigorously.

His prime minister was Odilon Barrot, who nobody objected to because he was so neutral. Louis Napoleon sent forces under Nicolas Oudinot to the Papal State because the Pope had run away. He also signed the Falloux Law, which restored some power for the Catholic Church and its schools.

In 1851, Louis Napoleon wasn’t allowed to run for president again. Naturally, he decided to stage a coup and make himself President for Life. By the following year, he had created the Second Empire and made himself Napoleon III of France. As noted previously, Napoleon III colluded with Cavour in Italy and signed the Treaty of Villafranca, following heavy losses at Magenta and Solferino.

Napoleon III reconstructed Paris with his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. He picked Emile Ollivier as his prime minister, installed Maximilian as ruler in Mexico, and commissioned Charles Garnier to build the Paris Opera House. He wrote The Extinction of Pauperism, and noted that “history appears the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.

In 1858, Felice Orsini and friends tried to kill Napoleon III (the event is sometimes called the Orsini Affair). One of the accomplices posed as a Portuguese beer salesman. They failed, but they did manage to hit his carriage, also containing his wife Eugenie de Montijo, with three bombs.

Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War, which we’ll look at in detail later on. His wife Empress Eugenie fled Paris and the Second Empire fell apart.

So, the Third Republic began in February 1871, with Thiers as the new president.

Radical factions led by men such as Louis Auguste Blanqui quickly seized the National Guard in Paris, taking control of 400 bronze cannons and stationing them in neighborhoods around Paris. Thiers decided to send the actual army to seize control of the cannons in Montmartre, but failed due to popular support for the National Guard. The army retreated to Versailles and Blanquists took control of various important government buildings. Elections in the city during March 1871 chose 92 councilmembers and created the Paris Commune.

The Paris Commune shed the tricolor (using a red flag in its stead) and re-adopted Robespierre’s Republican Calendar. They intended to enact a set of forward-thinking social democratic reforms. Notably, the Commune toppled the Vendôme Column, a monument to Napoleon I. Though they couldn’t vote, there were many prominent Communard women, including Louise Michel, “The Red Virgin of Montmartre”, who led various insurrectionary fights.

Thiers was regrouping in Versailles, but he had not the manpower to retake Paris. The Commune decided of their own volition to march on Versailles, convinced that soldiers of the French army would not fire on members of the National Guard. They were wrong.

The Commune took the failed attack on Versailles personally. They declared that anyone who aided the government in Versailles would be killed, and brought back a new incarnation of the Committee of Public Safety.

On May 21, the army attacked Paris and began the Bloody Week. They fought through the newly widened streets of the city (courtesy of the aforementioned Haussmann), and outflanked the Communards. For a week, the army marched through Paris, capturing and summarily executing members of the Commune. Many survivors such as Louise Michel were sent to French New Caledonia (in the South Pacific), where they oppressed the indigenous Kanak people.

In 1894, Jewish artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason and imprisoned on Devil’s Island. Two years later, an investigation by Georges Picquart identified Francis Esterhazy as the actual culprit. High ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, convicting Dreyfus on a few more charges instead. The incident and the cover-up began to spread, prompting outrage, such as in Emile Zola’s J’accuse. By 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated.

Otto von Bismarck is called the “Iron Chancellor” for a reason. He played a big part in unifying Germany in the 19th century, and his influence would be felt for years to come.

When Prussia defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks' War, France got scared. Napoleon III didn’t want Germany to tip the balance of power. Bismarck wanted war with France, but he needed it to be France’s fault so Germany would be behind him.

In 1870, Bismarck published the Ems Dispatch, an edited conversation between Wilhelm I and Count Benedetti (French ambassador to Prussia). The idea had come about as a consequence of Leopold of Hohenzollern being offered the Spanish throne, and it precipitated a whole new war.

France declared war in July 1870, and each side saw the other as the aggressor. Bismarck’s Chief of Staff, Moltke the Elder, led the German army to lots of victories. After battles such as Sedan and Metz, the Germans had a lot of momentum. They captured Napoleon III at Sedan, and the rest of the war was mostly a siege of Paris, but it didn’t work very well.

The war provided Bismarck with what he needed to unify Germany. By the end of the war, Wilhelm I was declared German Emperor and the new German Empire was created. The end of the war also saw France surrender Alsace-Lorraine, and they had to pay an indemnity.

Alexander I (1801–1825), the Blessed, son of Paul I, was around during the Napoleonic Era. Some claim that he knew about the plot to assassinate his father and bring himself to power.

He signed the Treaty of Tilsit with Napoleon on a raft in the Niemen River, following the Battle of Friedland in the War of the Fourth Coalition. Alexander I also fought at Leipzig during the War of the Sixth Coalition. He increased Russia’s territory following the Finnish War, and he became King of Poland due to the Congress of Vienna, and Napoleon’s fall.

Alexander I was succeeded by Nicholas I (1825–1855). Most notably, he faced the Decembrist Revolt in 1825. The Decembrists aimed to put either Sergey Trubetskoy or Constantine Pavlovich in charge. Trubetskoy ran away, and Pavlovich didn’t show. Supporters were thrown into the Neva River. Leaders of the revolt formed the Union of Welfare, the Union of Salvation, and the Northern and Southern Societies. Pavel Pestel, leader of the Southern Society, was hanged at the end of the revolt. At one point, a cavalry charge ended in failure when the horses slipped on ice. After the revolt, the Chernigov Regiment tried to mutiny.

Nicholas I also was tsar when Russia entered into the Crimean War (1853–1856), on the namesake peninsula on the Black Sea, against the allied forces of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. Causes of the war included religion in the Holy Land, as well as the fact that everyone wanted land in the failing Ottoman Empire. The London Straits Convention preceded open war, which the Ottomans declared in 1853.

A notable engagement is the Battle of Balaclava. The Allied forces arrived from the village of Kamara, and the Russians set up on Woronzov Heights. The battle is most well known for the Charge of the Light Brigade, in which Lord Raglan sent cavalry under the Earl of Cardigan into the Valley of Death, which was defended by Pavel Liprandi. As you can guess by the name of the location, the Charge didn’t end well for the British troops. Notably, Colin Campbell’s 93rd Highland Regiment formed the “Thin Red Line” and repelled Russian attacks. The battle was memorialized by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and by Iron Maiden in “The Trooper”.

Nonmilitary personnel in this war were also important. Florence Nightingale (the lady with the lamp) and Mary Seacole served as nurses during the war. Journalists the photographer Roger Fenton and the journalist William Howard Russell.

Other important battles include the Russian defeat at Inkerman, during which the Russian forces were in heavy fog and ended up going the wrong way. Lesser battles were fought at Alma and Sinope. At the Siege of Sevastopol, French and British forces realized that Sevastopol was the key to the Black Sea. Both sides lost many troops to disease, and Lord Raglan himself died of dysentery. Sevastopol was the last major decisive battle of the war. The 1856 Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War.

During the Crimean War, Nicholas I died and his son Alexander II, the Liberator, succeeded him. Alexander was tsar at the conclusion of the war and signed the Treaty of Paris. His wife was Marie of Hesse, and his mistress was Catherine Dolgorukov. During his reign, he signed the Dictatorship of Heart. He also waged the Russo-Turkish War, after which he signed the Treaty of San Stefano, attended the Congress of Berlin, and revised the treaty into the Treaty of Berlin.

The most important thing Alexander II did was issue a ukase to emancipate the Russian serfs in 1861. This reform led him to be called Alexander the Liberator. He also reorganized the judicial system and created a system of zemstvos for local government, with help from Nikolay Milyutin. He started mandatory military service for everyone, even nobles, and he was helped in military reform by Dmitry Milyutin, Nikolay’s brother. His secret police was called the Third Section (Third Department), and they exiled lots of people to Siberia. Alexander was the first tsar with a beard since Peter.

There were people who didn’t really like Alexander, and after an assassination attempt, Count Loris-Melikov was appointed head of the Supreme Executive Commission and given power to fight the rebels. In 1881, Alexander was traveling to Mikhailovsky Manege for roll call. On the side of the street, Nikolai Rysakov, a member of the People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya), had a package in his hand. When he threw the bomb, it failed to penetrate the bulletproof carriage (a gift from Napoleon III). A second bomber, Ignacy Hryniwiecki, threw his bomb at the tsar and mortally wounded him. Later, the Church of the Savior on Blood was built where Alexander had been killed.

Alexander III, son of Alexander II, the Peacemaker, succeeded his father as tsar. While he was tsar, Russia fought in no big wars. Notably, Alexander passed the May Laws (1882), which prevented Jewish people from inhabiting many rural areas, including shtetls and the Pale of Settlement (where they previously had been expressly allowed to stay).

Nicholas II reigned from 1894 until the revolutions that forced the downfall of the tsar in 1917. In 1891, while in Otsu, Japan, he had been the target of an assassination attempt. When Nicholas took the throne, Russia was one of the biggest powers in the world. His advisors included Prime Minister Peter Stolypin and Sergei Witte, and his Minister of the Interior was Alexander Protopopov. His government was notably anti-Semitic, and his secret police forged documents proving that Jews would conquer the world.

Nicholas’s coronation was held in Uspensky Cathedral on Khodynka Field, and free beer and cups were served. Rumor spread that there wouldn’t be enough beer for everyone, and this being Russia, the crowd trampled each other to get their share, suffocating and killing over a thousand people. The incident became known as the Khodynka Tragedy.

Nicholas’s son, Alexei, had hemophilia. Tsarina Alexandra wanted him cured, and the best mystic she found was Grigori Rasputin, the “Mad Monk”, who was recommended by Anna Vyrubova, whose life he had saved earlier. People sometimes claim that Rasputin had associations with the khlysty group. Eventually, people like Oswald Rayner decided to kill Rasputin. They poisoned him. Then they shot him. When that didn’t work, they dumped him into the Neva River, and he likely drowned. Later, Rasputin’s body was dug up and burned.

Nicholas and the Russians had been moving east for a while, and war with Japan was a natural consequence. When the Japanese attacked Port Arthur in 1904, they preemptively declared war on Russia. The ensuing Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was of particular importance to this part of Nicholas’s rule.

Now, the part of the Russian fleet that wasn’t stuck at Port Arthur was all the way in the Baltic Sea. It’s a nine-month journey to the east side of Russia, and Britain wasn’t letting Russia use the Suez Canal, so Nicholas had to bring his ships around the long way to help at Port Arthur. While the Baltic Fleet was moving, the biggest land battle occurred at Mukden. When the fleet finally arrived, they faced the Japanese under Togo Heihachiro at the Battle of Tsushima Strait, and the fleet was almost destroyed immediately. Other notable battles include Motien Pass and Ulsan. The Yalu River was a notable location of land battles while crossing it, while the Battle of the Yellow Sea included a blockade of Russian forces.

The war was ended by the Treaty of Portsmouth. Theodore Roosevelt helped negotiate the treaty, along with Sergei Witte and Komura Jutaro.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 was an empire-wide revolt that aimed to take down the tsardom, partially instigated by the humiliation that Russia had suffered following the Russo-Japanese War. As the revolution grew, it included a strike on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, as well as the Potemkin Mutiny. Father Georgy Gapon organized marchers on Bloody Sunday, calling for the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers to march on the Winter Palace.

The revolution caused Nicholas to issue the October Manifesto, a document that tried to create a new constitutional monarchy in Russia. Written by Sergei Witte, the manifesto gave veto powers to the Duma, and he allowed for more liberty in expression. The document gave its name to the Octobrists, led by Alexander Guchkov, who would end up dominating the Third and Fourth Dumas. However, the manifesto was repealed just a year later by the Fundamental Laws.

Queen Victoria, House of Hanover, Empress of India, came to power in 1837 after William IV. Victoria had been raised by Sir John Conroy and the Duchess of Kent, her mother, under the Kensington System. She married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha in 1840, and she had 9 children, giving her the nickname of “grandmother of Europe.”

Victoria reigned for 63 years, making her the second longest reigning English monarch. When she died in 1907, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII.

Robert Peel was a noteworthy Conservative prime minister around the early years of Victoria’s reign. He began the Bedchamber Crisis in 1841 when he suggested that Victoria replace some Whig advisors with Conservative ones. In 1843, an insane Scot named Daniel M’Naghten tried to kill Peel, but ended up killing Peel’s personal secretary Edward Drummond instead.

Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1842, and reintroduced the income tax among his other financial reforms. The repeal of the Corn Laws was opposed to typical Conservative ideology, and the incident resulted in loss of his ministry.

Two rivals in Parliament were known for shaping the country during Victoria’s reign.

The Conservative Benjamin Disraeli remains the only Prime Minister to have been of Jewish descent. When he was getting started, he’d published the newspaper The Representative, and he’d led the Young England movement with George Smythe. Under the Earl of Derby, he’d served as Chancellor of the Exchequer three times, including during the “Who? Who? Ministry”. He represented Britain at the Congress of Berlin, and he was supported by Queen Victoria, who made him an earl. Disraeli made Victoria Empress of India using the Royal Titles Act of 1867, When Disraeli purchased 44% shares in the Suez Canal Company, he took a loan from Lionel de Rothschild and family and passed the 1867 Reform Act.

Victoria didn’t like the Liberal William Gladstone, a “Grand Old Man”, very much. As Prime Minister, Gladstone introduced two bills for Irish Home Rule, but they were rejected. During his Midlothian Campaign against Disraeli, Gladstone denounced atrocities that were taking place in the Ottoman Empire, in a pamphlet called “Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East”. His Secretary of State Edward Caldwell reformed the military (Caldwell Reforms), and he “invincibles” stabbed Lord Cavendish during his ministry. After Mahdists in Khartoum killed “Chinese” Gordon during the Mahdist War, Queen Victoria held Gladstone responsible.

The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) was the formalization of the Scramble for Africa. Europeans got together and carved up the continent in a manner that they felt suited them. It was organized by Otto von Bismarck, and it resulted in the General Act of the Berlin Conference.

British company rule in India had begun in 1757 following the Battle of Plassey, at which Robert Clive and the British East India Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal. Over the following century, the British took over the entire subcontinent.

In 1857, Indian conscripts of the British army began to hear rumors that cartridges of the Enfield rifles they used were coated with pig and cow fat. This, along with other factors, led the Sepoy Mutiny to break out in Meerut. The East India Company set up in Delhi, where a siege led to the arrest of Bahadur Shah II. William Hodson had Bahadur Shah’s children shot at the Bloody Gate. A siege at Lucknow was relieved by forces under Henry Havelock and Colin Campbell. The next siege at Kanpur was led by Tatya Tope, and Havelock and Campbell moved their relief column to end the siege. The rebels were defeated because they weren’t very organized and they had no clear goals, but the large scale of the revolt made the British government take control of the region from the companies. Thus ended company rule in India, leading to the start of the British Raj.

The election of 1844 resulted in Democrat James K. Polk, “Young Hickory”, defeating the Whig Henry Clay, following Clay’s third and final attempt to take the office. Polk, who was governor of Tennessee, had been a dark horse who got the nomination over Lewis Cass and Martin Van Buren.

Polk’s Vice President was George M. Dallas. Robert Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, passed the Walker Tariff, which helped a border dispute in Oregon; this resulted in Polk acquiring some of the Oregon territory for the US. Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft established Annapolis Naval Academy, and Polk established the Smithsonian. As president, he also created the Department of the Interior.

In 1836, American settlers in Texas (a part of Mexico) decided they didn’t want to be Mexican any more. So they declared independence and created the Republic of Texas. While Mirabeau B. Lamar was President of Texas, Texas printed “red back” currency.

Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna decided to take Texas back. His general Jose de Urrea led the Goliad campaign up the coast, killing almost all troops he encountered.

Santa Anna himself led a force that marched to San Antonio, where he met a Texan garrison at the Alamo. Before the Battle of the Alamo, the commander William Travis acknowledged certain death. He drew a line in the sand and said that anyone who wanted to could cross the line and fight with him. Everyone crossed the line except for Moses Rose, who ran away. Defenders at the Alamo included Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Travis responded to Santa Anna’s request for surrender by firing cannons at him. The garrison of about 200 men died fighting Santa Anna, in a battle that is remembered to this day.

The Texans, under Sam Houston (first president of Republic of Texas), came back to ambush Santa Anna’s forces at San Jacinto. The battle didn’t even last 20 minutes because the Texans caught the Mexicans on a siesta. The Texans also had some impressive cannons called the “Twin Sisters”. Battle cries included “Remember Goliad” and “Remember the Alamo!”. The battle was a decisive victory for the Texans, and it resulted in the capture of Santa Anna and the signing of Treaties of Velasco.

Texas was annexed into the Union in 1845, ending the Lone Star Republic. Just before the deal was set, the Regulator-Moderator war was quelled. The plan was proposed by Anson Jones, and Texas reserved the right to split into five states in the future. In 1850, a payment of $10 million helped Texas repay its debts. Later in Polk’s presidency, the question of the southern border of the Nueces River for the state would be brought into question.

Precipitated by the Thornton Affair, a battle along the Rio Grande, the Mexican-American War lasted from 1846 to 1848. The US quickly took New Mexico and California.

The war featured some notable fighting groups. St. Patrick’s Battalion was a group of Irish Catholic soldier who defected and were subsequently hanged. The Mormon Battalion, the only religious military unit in US history, was led by Philip Saint George Cooke.

At the Battle of Chapultapec, US Marines stormed a castle on a hill, the site of a Mexican military academy. They won, and in the process, they killed the six “Boy Heroes” (Los Ninos Heroes), Mexican military cadets who wouldn’t fall back when ordered by General Bravo.

Zachary Taylor led land forces to win at battles at Monterrey and Buena Vista. Winfield Scott and Matthew Perry ran the first successful American amphibious landing at Veracruz. They besieged the city and took it.

In 1846, Californian settlers under William B. Ide captured Sonoma and General Mariano Vallejo. This initiated the Bear Flag Revolt, and John Fremont (the Pathfinder) and Robert Stockton became leaders. The revolt was put down by Stephen Kearny during his conquest of California during the war.

The war was ended by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Nicholas Trist and John Slidell were negotiators at the treaty, but Trist’s disobedience of Polk’s instructions made Polk mad at him. Trist had been ordered to offer $30 million to get Baja California and more territory in the South. When Trist finished with the treaty, he had taken less land, and he got money from Mexico, and was promptly fired on returning to Washington.

Certainly you know about the numerous outlaws and renegades that wandered the Old West, killing and robbing town all over the frontier. In this section, we look at some of the most famous of these people and the ones who chased them.

In 1849, James Marshall struck gold at Sutter’s Mill. John Sutter was a Swiss pioneer who had tried to make New Helvetia, a colony near modern day Sacramento. However, the gold discovery and resulting California Gold Rush didn’t really help his plans. The so-called 49ers, gold hunters, showed up in California in droves, looking to make their fortunes. Word spread when people like Samuel Brannan, publisher of the Star, publicized discovery of gold.

During the gold rush, brand new techniques like coyoteing, dredging, and improvements on gold panning were pioneered. Levi Strauss sold denim overalls to help out the 49ers. To get to California, the 49ers used the Siskiyou Trail to get to places like Coloma, CA.

In the 1848 election, Lewis Cass and Martin Van Buren were defeated by Whig Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough-and-Ready”. Taylor had fought in the Mexican-American War, winning at both Palo Alto and Buena Vista even though he was outnumbered three to one. Before that, he had won the Battle of Lake Okeechobee during the Seminole Wars. Taylor’s Secretary of State was John M. Clayton. Clayton negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which said that canals in Central America should be controlled by both the US and Britain and open to all countries.

In the middle of 1850, Taylor got cholera after eating fruit and milk, and died. He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, his Vice President, whom history has proved to be one of the worst presidents ever. Fillmore ran again in 1856 as a member of the Know-Nothing Party. During his presidency, Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate.

In 1850, Henry Clay helped write the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise admitted California to the union as a free state, banned slave trading in Washington, DC, contained a strong Fugitive Slave Act, and gave popular sovereignty to Utah and New Mexico. During debate over the Compromise, William Seward gave his “Higher Law” speech opposing it, saying that “there is a higher law than the Constitution”. Other opponents included John Calhoun, but Webster and Douglas reworked Clay’s original compromise and got it passed.

The candidates in the election of 1852 were Franklin Pierce the Democrat, Winfield Scott the Whig, and John P. Hale of the Free Soil Party. Pierce won the election in an electoral landslide. His Secretary of State was William Marcy, and his Secretary of War was Jefferson Davis, who would become President of the Confederacy.

In 1854, Marcy met with some American ministers in Europe to discuss acquiring Cuba for the US. They met in Aix-la-Chapelle and drafted the Ostend Manifesto. It was quickly hated in the north of the USA and in Europe.

Also in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Act had been written by Senator Stephen Douglas from Illinois, and it created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, allowing settlers in each territory popular sovereignty to decide if they wanted to allow slavery.

Pierce also signed the Gadsden Purchase on April 25, 1854. The purchase included southwestern New Mexico and southern Arizona (south of the Gila River), and it was signed by James Gadsden, former president of the South Carolina Railroad Co. and current US ambassador to Mexico. It was made because the US was thinking about making a transcontinental railroad. However, it was so unpopular in Mexico that Santa Anna was ousted as dictator.

James Buchanan was elected president in 1856, defeating Republican John C. Fremont and “Know Nothing” Millard Fillmore. He was notably the only bachelor president, and his Vice President was John Breckinridge. Lewis Cass, his Secretary of State, quit while Buchanan was in office. Buchanan had been Secretary of State for Polk, and he’d helped write the Ostend Manifesto as minister to Britain.

In 1856, the Lecompton Constitution was drafted for Kansas. It was pro-slavery, and Buchanan endorsed it (not a good call). Stephen Douglas was against the constitution, and governor Robert J. Walker resigned over controversy regarding it. As a result, Free-Staters and Border-Ruffians got into a conflict in the territory, during a period we now call Bleeding Kansas.

Charles Sumner was a senator from Massachusetts, and during the Bleeding Kansas crisis, he denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in the Senate. His “Crime against Kansas” speech attacked Andrew Butler and Stephen Douglas, calling them Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, respectively. Butler’s nephew, Preston Brooks, didn’t like the speech; he took a cane and beat Sumner in the Senate chamber. During the caning of Sumner, Laurence Keitt reportedly waved a gun around and said “let them be!”

At this time, abolitionism was also picking up steam, partly under the violent leadership of John Brown. Brown had led the Pottawatomie Massacre near Lawrence, Kansas during Bleeding Kansas, killing five settlers.

In 1859, Brown took 21 men, funded by rich people called the Secret Six, and led a raid on the United States Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. The first person to die in the raid was Dangerfield Newby, and the raid was stopped by General Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart. Brown was captured and hanged; notably, Stonewall Jackson guarded him while awaiting execution.

The Free Soil Party was a party that advocated abolition. In 1948, the Barnburner faction (opposed to the Conscience Whigs), nominated their leader Martin Van Buren for the presidency. Salmon P. Chase coined the Free Soilers' slogan, “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”.

In opposition to the abolition movement were the Knights of the Golden Circle. They were led by Clement Vallandigham, and they would try to help the Confederacy defeat the Union and spread slavery.

John J. Crittenden had been the Attorney General for Millard Fillmore and William H. Harrison. In 1860, as senator from Kentucky, Crittenden proposed the Crittenden Compromise to try and stop the Civil War, but it failed. In 1861, Crittenden chaired the Frankfort Convention, and he passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, also called the War Aims Resolution, to try to define goals for the Civil War.

The Copperheads, Peace Democrats, were opposed to the war when it began, and they were led by Clement Vallandigham. They were occasionally linked to the Knights of the Golden Circle, and other leaders included Lambdin Milligan, who was involved in the Ex parte Milligan case.

Notably, we haven’t really talked about Abraham Lincoln yet, because he definitely deserves his own subsection. Lincoln had grown up in Kentucky, and had moved to Illinois to become a lawyer. He served in the Illinois House of Representatives, and was elected to the US House in 1846. He opposed the Mexican-American War in his Spot Resolutions, asking for proof of Mexican belligerence, which made him unpopular in Illinois for a while.

In 1854, Lincoln joined the nascent Republican Party, helping it grow. He gave the Peoria Speech against slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, stating that “the policy of prohibiting slavery in new territory originated with the author of the Declaration of Independence”.

In 1858, he ran for the Senate against Stephen Douglas, in a race that contained lots of very public and famous debates. His nomination acceptance is now called the House Divided speech, and Lincoln claimed that “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free”. Douglas formulated the Freeport Doctrine, which said that states could always choose to outlaw slavery if they wanted to.

Lincoln lost the race, but later, he gave a speech at the Cooper Union university in New York, once again asserting that he didn’t think slavery should be expanded. The speech helped him get the Republican nomination over William Seward.

The 1860 Presidential Election was Lincoln’s next run for office, and he swept the North, winning the election and becoming the 16th president. When he was elected, seven slave states promptly seceded from the Union and created the Confederate States of America. Then, they attacked.

John Wilkes Booth was an actor — a Maryland native who sympathized with the Confederacy. So, on March 20, 1865, Booth and some friends decided to kidnap the president. He put together a group of friends including John Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold. They met in a boarding house owned by Mary Surratt, John’s mother. They assembled when they thought Lincoln would be attending a play on March 17, but Lincoln’s plans changed and he didn’t show up.

On April 14, Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd went to a performance of Our American Cousin, which was being shown at Ford’s Theatre. Booth decided to kill Lincoln that night, and he told Powell to kill Secretary of State Seward, and assigned Atzerodt to Vice President Johnson’s assassination. Booth was well known at the theater, so he had free access to the whole building. He walked into the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. He then stabbed Major Henry Rathbone and jumped down to the stage. He shouted “sic semper tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants), and then ran away.

Booth then hid in Zekiah Swamp, and arrived back at Surratt’s Tavern. Along with Herold, he went and got help for his injured leg from Dr. Samuel Mudd. Eventually, Booth was tracked down to the Garrett Farmhouse after his fellow conspirators, and he was shot resisting arrest by Sergeant Boston Corbett.

The other assassinations didn’t succeed. Powell stabbed Seward in the face and neck, but he survived. Atzerodt spent the evening drinking at a hotel bar and didn’t try to kill Johnson. Mary Surratt would become the first American woman to be executed.

Johnson was governor of Tennessee during the Civil War, and he had served in that post in the 1850s as well. He became the only senator from the South that didn’t leave the Senate after secession, an act that led him to succeed Hannibal Hamlin as Lincoln’s Vice President. Before his first speech as Vice President, he’d apparently gone through a bottle of whiskey, resulting in this bit of fun:

Following Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson was inaugurated as the 17th president.

In an 1866 campaign against Radical Republicans, Johnson delivered the Swing Around the Circle Speeches, following a National Union Party convention in Philadelphia. Johnson was joined by David Farragut and U.S. Grant.

Johnson’s Secretary of State, William Seward, negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russians. In the Treaty of Cession negotiated with Baron Eduard de Stoeckel, called “Seward’s Folly”, the US paid $7.2 million to Russia in exchange for a territory that was nothing more than rocks and ice. The Senate voted in favor of it partly because of a speech given by Charles Sumner (of caning fame) in its favor, and party because of the help of Cassius Clay (no, not that one). Baron Stoeckel bribed the Daily Morning Chronicle to ensure that the paper supported it as well. Because of the purchase, the calendar changed from the Julian to the Gregorian, resulting in the date instantaneously changing from June 6 to June 18 (time travel in the 19th century).

The Senate didn’t really like Johnson, so they passed the Tenure of Office Act over his veto. The Act stated that Senate approval was needed to remove a Senate-confirmed official (read: cabinet member) from office. Johnson promptly tried to remove Edwin Stanton, his Secretary of War, from office, and replace him with Lorenzo Thomas. Of course, this was a violation of the Tenure of Office Act and Johnson was impeached. The Swing Around the Circle speeches were cited as being “disrespectful” by the Senate, and proponents of impeachment included John Bingham and Thaddeus Stevens.

The South was in shambles after the war, and it had to be reconstructed. Reconstruction began under Lincoln and continued until about 1877.

In 1864, the Wade-Davis Bill was written by two Radical Republicans. It required Southern states who wanted to be admitted back into the Union to take an Ironclad oath, stating that they had never supported the Confederacy. The bill was pocket vetoed by Lincoln, who instead supported the Ten Percent Plan. Lincoln’s plan was more lenient, only requiring that 10% of the vote count from a state had to swear an oath to the Union.

Lots of Northerners came South in an attempt to profit. Because of their luggage, angry Southerners called them carpetbaggers. Southerners who tried to do the same thing and sympathized with the North were referred to as scalawags.

The Freedmen’s Bureau was an organization that helped former slaves get an education. It was headed by Oliver Howard, and it was created a couple months before Lincoln was shot.

In 1868, Ulysses S. Grant was elected President. His running mate was Schuyler Colfax, and he defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour. The election had made an issue of Grant’s General Order No. 11, which expelled Jews from some states. He implemented the Force Acts to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan.

Grant’s administration was full of scandals and scams. During the Virginius Affair, there was a dispute over a ship in Cuba during the Ten Years' War. His War Secretary William Belknap was accused of taking kickbacks from Caleb Marsh, as a result of appointing Marsh to Fort Sill; Belknap resigned pending impeachment.

On September 24, 1869, a day known as Black Friday, Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. Other participants included Abel Corbin, who helped Fisk and Gould talk to higher social circles, allowing them to give loans to people like Daniel Butterfield. Eventually, the attempt was stopped by George Boutwell.

The Whiskey Ring was a scandal in which people tried to get around taxes on whiskey. It was organized by John McDonald, apparently under direction from Grant’s private secretary Orville Babcock. Babcock was eventually acquitted, but only because of his position so close to Grant. Over 200 other people were indicted, including IRS agents such as John Joyce. The scandal was uncovered by Treasury Secretary Benjamin Bristow.

During the Credit Mobilier of America scandal, Oakes Ames offered discounted stock to congressmen during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. The scandal was investigated Aaron Perry, and it was leaked when Colonel Henry S. McComb leaked letters to Charles Dana of the New York Sun, who ran the “King of Frauds” column about the scandal. Other people implicated in the scandal included James Patterson and James Brooks.

The first Homestead Act had been passed in 1862, giving people who wanted to move West cheap land. People who wanted to take up the government on its land offer simply had to be the head of a family and not have taken up arms against the US.

George Custer went west, trying to find gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota with Alfred Terry. He led a campaign against Sioux in the area, destroying Black Kettle’s home. At the Battle of Little Big Horn, Custer fought the Sioux. The chief was Sitting Bull, and the battle commander was Crazy Horse. After Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn, the only survivor of his forces was a horse named Comanche.

The Election of 1876 was one of the most controversial elections ever. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was up against Democrat Samuel Tilden, who won the popular vote. Tilden had been the Governor of New York, where he’d tried to stop Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed. Hayes was down by 19 electoral votes, but Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon were in dispute. An elector in Oregon was declared illegal and replaced. As a result, the Compromise of 1877 was created, giving all 20 remaining votes to Hayes. In return, Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction and take the troops out of the South. Power in the South went to eh Democratic Redeemers, and Hayes was sometimes called “His Fradulency”.

Hayes’s First Lady was Lucy Hayes, now known as “Lemonade Lucy” because she was a big supporter of the temperance movement to ban alcohol. The president banned alcohol from the White House while in office. Hayes’s Secretary of the Interior was Carl Schurz, who helped determine Indian policy, and his Attorney General was Carl Devens. His Treasury Secretary was John Sherman, and his Vice President was William Wheeler (Hayes apparently asked “Who is Wheeler?” when told about his running mate).

Hayes vetoed the Bland-Allison Act, in which the Treasury would be required to put $2 million in silver into circulation, but Congress passed the act over his veto anyway. He also sent Winfield Scott Hancock to Pittsburgh and Baltimore to deal with the Great Railroad Strike. Hayes removed Alonzo Cornell and Chester Arthur from power in the Port of New York, an action that was opposed by his nemesis Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwarts.

Hayes also helped arbitrate the end of the War of the Triple Alliance in South America. He got Paraguay some territory.

Hayes didn’t run for reelection, and Republican James Garfield took office, having gotten the nomination as a result of a compromise with the Stalwarts and Half-Breeds. Garfield had previously won Ex Parte Milligan, and his rags-to-riches story was written by Horatio Alger. While in office, Garfield had Postmaster General Thomas James investigate the Star Route frauds.

In 1881, Charles Guiteau, a Stalwart, asked Garfield for a consulship in Paris. He had printed lots of copies of a speech about Winfield Scott Hancock called “Garfield vs. Hancock”. Garfield refused Guiteau and Guiteau got angry. Yelling “I am a Stalwart!”, Guiteau shot Garfield. In an attempt to help Garfield, Alexander Graham Bell brought a metal detector to find bullets, although at first it was only detecting springs in the bed that Garfield was on. Garfield died and Guiteau was convicted of his murder, and the assassination resulted in the Pendleton Civil Service Act being passed.

Garfield’s Vice President Chester A. Arthur took office. Arthur had previously been supported by Stalwart Roscoe Conkling (during the Hayes administration). He signed the Pendleton Act, and he rebuilt the navy. During Arthur’s administration, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, and he signed a compromise tariff called the Mongrel Tariff. He also signed the Edmunds Act, banning polygamists from taking public office.

In 1884, Grover Cleveland was elected the 22nd president, defeating Republican James G. Blaine. Interestingly, during the election, Cleveland was supported by the Mugwumps, Republicans who believed in Cleveland’s ideas on civil service reform. Cleveland (along with Tilden before him) was a Bourbon Democrat, a conservative group of Democrats who wanted a gold standard. Reverend Samuel Burchard claimed at a meeting where Blaine was present that the Democratic party’s antecedents were “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”, a fatal mistake during the last week of the campaign that hurt Blaine with the Catholic vote.

While he was in office, Cleveland refused to pay attention to the Tenure of Office Act, which led to it being repealed in 1887. His Vice President, Arthur Hendricks, died in 1885, and during much of his term, Cleveland didn’t have a Vice President. He tried to reduce the amount of silver backing the dollar, favoring the gold standard instead. His Secretary of State, Thomas Bayard, negotiated for fishing rights off of Canada, and Cleveland withdrew the US from the Berlin Conference Treaty (recall the Scramble for Africa). He also set the record for most vetoes in one term because he opposed spending so much.

During the election of 1888, Cleveland ran for reelection against Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s campaign manager William Dudley tried to bribe “the Blocks of Five”, electors who sold their votes to Harrison. Harrison won on issues like tariffs, leaving Cleveland a private citizen for the next four years.

In office, Harrison tried to get more money backed by silver. To this end, his administration managed to pass the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act with the help of the Billion Dollar Congress. Also during his administration, the Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law. During the Baltimore Crisis, some American sailors were attacked by a Chilean mob. He tried to help secure voting rights to enforce the 15th amendment in the Force Bill, with help from Henry Cabot Lodge. He did that in opposition to his Vice President, Levi Morton, but it mostly failed.

Harrison was nominated for reelection again, and went up against Cleveland again in 1892. In the “cleanest, quietest” election of the post-war generation, Cleveland defeated Harrison, making Cleveland the 24th president as well. The victory might be attributed to the fact that Harrison didn’t campaign much because his wife had tuberculosis.

Cleveland took office again, and the Panic of 1893 promptly began. The increased coinage of silver had resulted in a gold shortage, and Cleveland tried to get the Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed. The repeal of the act was the beginning of the end for silver as a basis for currency in the US. In 1894, Cleveland also had to handle the Pullman Strike, and he sent federal troops to break it up. Also, while Cleveland was president, the Statue of Liberty showed up in New York. He elevated the Department of Agriculture to the Cabinet, and he vetoed the Texas Seed Bill.

American military influence in the southwest United States and northern Mexico in the middle of the eighteenth century resulted in increased resistance by numerous Native American tribes including the Chiricahua Apache. Most notable among the war leaders of the movement was Cochise, a chief who began an uprising in 1861 following the death of his father-in-law Mangas Coloradas. Cochise hid in the Dragoon Mountains and led raids against American forces led by General George Crook. Cochise then worked on peace talks with Otis Howard, the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Thomas Jeffords, perhaps the only white friend he had.

Following Cochise’s death in 1874, Geronimo took over the fight for the Apache. Some of Geronimo’s followers were killed at Casa Grande in 1873, and after he took over the fight, Crook sent multiple columns of troops into Mexico. In 1886, Geronimo entered peace talks with Crook in the Canon de los Embudos. However, on finding out that Crook was planning to kill him anyway, Geronimo escaped. Crook was promptly replaced by Nelson Miles, who ended up capturing Geronimo in Skeleton Canyon later in 1886.

Geronimo spent quite a while in captivity, mostly in Fort Sill. During this time, he joined the Dutch Reformed Church to try and take the “white man’s road”, but he was expelled after a few years because of his gambling habits. Geronimo died in 1909. His name is still used by jumping paratroopers.

McKinley had put the McKinley Tariff through Congress while Harrison was president, although it had gotten replaced by the Wilson-Gorman Tariff. He’d also chaired the Ways and Means Committee during the Billion Dollar Congress. In 1896, he got himself the Republican nomination for president, with the help of his strategist Mark Hanna. He defeated William Jennings Bryan after a front-porch campaign for the gold standard and “sound money”.

McKinley passed the Dingley Tariff and in 1900, he set up the Gold Standard Act. In 1898, the US annexed Hawaii and it became a territory.

In 1900, McKinley defeated Bryan again to get reelection. However, he didn’t stay in office very long. In 1901, he went to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, came in concealing a pistol in a handkerchief. Czolgosz shot McKinley, and failure to use a nearby X-ray machine may have contributed to his death. Afterwards, Czolgosz claimed that his name was “Fred Nobody” and said that “I didn’t believe one man should have so much service, and another man have none.”

The Spanish-American War, a splendid little war, started in 1898 and was an important part of McKinley’s presidency. Cuba had been revolting against Spain for quite some time.

Eventually, the USS Maine, under the command of Charles Dwight Sigisbee, exploded in Havana harbor. People didn’t know what was going on, but yellow journalists like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst helped people figure out that the Spanish were evil — “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!”. In 1976, the explosion would be investigated by Admiral Hyman Rickover, and it was probably caused by a coal explosion, not a mine.

Also at time, Senor Don Enrique Dupuy de Lome sent the De Lome Letter. The letter, sent to the Foreign Minister of Spain, Don Jose Canelejas, was a huge insult to McKinley, filled with references to his effeminacy and his ineffective weakness as a leader. Hearst called it the “worst insult to the United States in its history”. Two months later, McKinley asked Congress to declare war.

The short war began in the Pacific. At the Battle of Manila Bay, the Asiatic Squadron, under Commodore George Dewey, forced the Spanish Pacific Squadron, under Admiral Patricio Montojo, to surrender the city of Manila. American ships took position in Subic Bay, and the Spanish set up in Bacoor Bay. Dewey spent the battle on the USS Olympia and said “You may fire when ready”.

A notable unit in the American army during the war was the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, also called the Rough Riders, or “Wood’s Weary Walkers” after their commander, Leonard Wood. Wood’s second in command was Theodore Roosevelt, former assistant Secretary of the Navy. When Wood left the regiment, the Rough Riders became Roosevelt’s. They fought at the Battle of Las Guasimas, and at the Battle of San Juan Hill, near Kettle Hill. San Juan Hill was an important battle for the Rough Riders. Henry Lawton’s men were stopped at the Battle of El Caney, so Wood was forced to charge up the hill against Arsenio Linares. Other locations in included Bloody Ford and Hell’s Pocket.

The war was ended by the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Spain gave up control of much of its land, and the US got temporary control of Cuba and indefinite control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Following the treaty, the Insular Cases decided that in the island territories, “the Constitution follows the flag”.

Poor labor conditions in the early nineteenth century resulted in the creation of the Knights of Labor in 1869. Led by Grand Master Workmen such as Uriah Stephens and Terence Powderley, the Knights were the first large labor organization in the United States. Members of the union killed many Chinese laborers in the 1885 Rock Springs Massacre, and they attempted a strike against Jay Gould’s Great Southwest Railroad in 1886.

On May 1, 1886, anarchists threw a bomb at police officers in Haymarket Square in Chicago during a strike against the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. The ensuing riot resulted in many arrests, as well as the executions of August Spies and three other men. Governor John Peter Altgeld ended up pardoning everyone else, but the Knights of Labor were blamed for the incident and their reputation was irredeemably damaged.

This paved the way for the rise of the American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel Gompers. The AFL was created primarily as a place for people dissatisfied by the Knights of Labor, and they excluded unskilled workers, African Americans, and women.

In order to discuss the history of women in the United States, we must begin some time ago. In the early and middle parts of the nineteenth century, the cult of domesticity emerged. Thus arose the notion that ideal women stayed with the house and did not work outside it, as a result of the fact that people didn’t all need to work on making goods by themselves to survive. Even at this time, there were some minor equality movements, but they were largely unsuccessful, and many of them were tied to abolitionism. Notably, Oberlin College became the first coeducational institution in 1837, just four years after its founding.

The first wave of feminism started at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848. Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the convention put forth a Declaration of Sentiments, which stated that “all men and women are created equal”. Stanton and Mott had come up with the idea eight years previously, while attending William Lloyd Garrison’s World Anti-Slavery Convention. It is also notable that Frederick Douglass argued in favor of women’s suffrage at the convention.

Three years later, Stanton met Susan B. Anthony, and together, they founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society, as well as the Women’s Loyal National League. In 1868, Anthony began a women’s rights newspaper called The Revolution,

In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting in Rochester, New York, and although she was convicted, she never paid the fine. Later, she and Stanton presented Congress with what would become the 19th Amendment. In 1890, she united women’s rights activists into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

The 19th Amendment passed Congress in 1920, granting women the right to vote.

Under William McKinley, Roosevelt had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he’d led the Rough Riders for a year in the Spanish-American War. Coming back from the war, he became Governor of New York, but party establishment didn’t want him actually doing anything, so they put him in the least powerful position in government: the Vice Presidency. However, McKinley’s assassination led to Roosevelt being sworn in as the youngest president in history when he was just 42 years old.

As president, Roosevelt put forward his Square Deal domestic policy. His vice president was Charles Fairbanks. He tried to make life more fair for people by “trustbusting”, and helping reform with the Pure Food and Drug Act. He coined the term “bully pulpit” for the power he wielded from the White House. He also passed the Elkins Act, fining railroads offering rebates. Roosevelt led the country into the new Progressive Era. In 1904, he was reelected over Alton B. Parker in a landslide. He loved the outdoors, and established many new national parks, forests, etc. Roosevelt was also a historian; he wrote The Naval War of 1812 and The Winning of the West.

Roosevelt’s foreign policy was all about “speaking softly and carrying a big stick”. He sent the new Great White Fleet all around the world to show that the US was powerful. His Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, proposed after the Venezuela Crisis (British bombarding Venezuelan forts), stated that the US will intervene in cross-hemisphere conflicts between Europe and Latin America to ensure fairness. He set up a Gentlemen’s Agreement to prevent Japanese immigration.

Roosevelt set Taft up to succeed him in 1908, and following the end of his second term, immediately departed for a safari in East Africa. Over a few months, his group killed or captured over eleven thousand animals.

Following his loss in the election of 1912, Roosevelt joined Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon on an expedition through the Amazon rainforest. The objective was to find the headwaters of the so-called “River of Doubt”. Along for the ride was Roosevelt’s son Kermit, and about a dozen other helpers. Roosevelt hurt his leg on the trip, and the subsequent infection resulted in rapidly declining health. He survived the trip, but died a few years later. The River of Doubt was renamed the Roosevelt River.

In the late 1690s, the Scots had tried to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans using the Darien Scheme; they wanted to make a colony providing an overland route across Panama. That didn’t work out.

In the early 20th century, the first people to try and make a canal through Panama were the French. They failed badly, and the company’s director Philippe Bunau-Varilla, came to Washington asking for help from Roosevelt and Secretary of State John M. Hay. The Senate voted in favor of building the canal across the isthmus, but there was a problem. Panama wasn’t its own country; rather, it was part of Colombia, and they didn’t want the canal made.

The Hay-Herran Treaty was proposed by US to mitigate this issue, but the Colombian Senate didn’t like it. Bunau-Varilla told the Americans that the Panamanians might revolt soon, in an effort to get their own dictator, and Roosevelt decided to actively support the rebels. Dr. Manuel Amador worked with the Americans brought by the USS Nashville, overthrew the Colombian government, and became the first president of an independent Panama.

After the revolution was successful, Bunau-Varilla signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the US, giving them rights to dig across the isthmus. Notably, no Panamanians actually signed the treaty. Roosevelt, faced with a bit of an image problem as a result, was told by Attorney General Philander Knox: “Mister President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality!” Construction on the Panama Canal would proceed from 1904 to 1914.

Roosevelt decided not to run for reelection again in 1908. He endorsed Secretary of War William Howard Taft for the presidency instead. Taft had been the first American Governor-General of the Philippines. After the Russo-Japanese War, he’d discussed the Taft-Katsura Agreement with the Japanese Prime Minister.

As president, he tried to improve the economies of Latin America with Dollar Diplomacy. His Secretary of State was Philander Knox, and his Secretary of the Interior, Richard Ballinger, had an argument with the Forestry Service under Gifford Pinchot (Ballinger-Pinchot affair). In 1909, the Payne-Aldrich Tariff was passed. The tariff was really high and protectionist, so it was unpopular; Taft defended it in the Winona Speech, and he claimed it was the “best tariff bill that the Republican Party ever passed”.

Taft was really fat, and he may or may not have gotten stuck in a White House bathtub at some point. He would go on to become the only President to also serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The election of 1912 heralded the return of Theodore Roosevelt from his badly timed four year leave. He formed the Progressive Bull Moose Party instead of being nominated by Republicans again, since they picked Taft as their candidate again. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was nominated after a fairly contentious Democratic convention, and he picked Oscar Underwood as his running mate. The fourth candidate was Socialist Eugene V. Debs, who ended up getting 6% of the popular vote.

Roosevelt’s reforms were grouped together as “New Nationalism” and advocated a strong government; Wilson’s “New Freedom” platform was based on a smaller government. Taft didn’t use a fun name like Roosevelt and Wilson, and he came in third in the election anyway. In 1912, Roosevelt was shot by John Schrank on the campaign trail, but the bullet was sufficiently slowed down by his eyeglass case and his 50 page speech that he said:

The split Republican vote allowed Wilson to win the election. Taft only won 8 electoral votes, and the election was the first and only time since 1860 that 4 candidates cleared 5% of the vote.

The last of the German Kaisers was Wilhelm II. Otto von Bismarck was in power under Wilhelm until he was dismissed in 1890 and replaced by Leo von Caprivi. He built a greater navy for the German empire, led by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, containing the new German submarines, the U-Boats. Helmut von Moltke the Younger led the General Staff of Wilhelm’s army while he was in power.

When the Daily Telegraph interviewed the Kaiser, he called the English “mad, mad, mad as March hares”, which didn’t do much for his popularity abroad. During the Moroccan Crisis, in which he sent the Panther into Agadir, Wilhelm called for the Algeciras Conference.

The Black Hand was a Serbian secret military society that was formed by Serbian army leaders. Led by Dragutin Dimitrijevic, codename “Apis”, the Hand aimed to unite Serbia and Montenegro.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, decided to marry Countess Sophie von Chotek. In order to let this go through, he renounced any regal claims that his children held, thus allowing for Charles I of Austria to be crowned.

In 1914, Apis decided that Franz Ferdinand should be killed. The Archduke was visiting Sarajevo, and he was driving through town in a motorcade. Three young Serbs named Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, and Trifko Grabez were put in position, impersonating customs officials, to blow him up, shoot him, etc. Cabrinovic failed his grenade attack. When Franz Ferdinand was mistakenly directed off the Appel Quay by the driver Leopold Lojka, Princip put two bullets into the car. The first went into the Archduke’s neck, and the second hit the Duchess.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand launched a crisis. Austria-Hungary issued the July Ultimatum against the Serbs, but they created it to be impossible to fulfill. The empire was looking for war, and they would have it.

On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The next day, Russia mobilized against Austria-Hungary. Germany then declared war on Russia, Britain on Germany, and thus began the Great War.

The Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, were surrounded. They were forced to fight a land war on two fronts; France to the west, and Russia to the east. The Germans devised the Schlieffen Plan, in which they would quickly defeat the French and then continue the war against Russia. The plan was deployed by Helmut von Moltke the Younger, and originally planned to march through the Netherlands.

The man in charge of French forces at the start of the war was Joseph Joffre, a man who realized that this would be a different war than the ones France had fought previously, and dismissed numerous corps commanders and divisional commanders, replacing them with better wartime commanders such as Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Petain. The French deployment plan against the Schlieffen Plan was Plan XVII.

France waged the Battle of the Frontiers across the eastern border of France. While the middle of the line was beaten back by German forces after attacks into Alsace-Lorraine, field commander Charles Lanrezac was forced to hold the Germans at the left flank with the aid of British Commander-in-Chief Sir John French (be careful with this name),

The Germans managed to break through the Franco-British defense, allowing them to take Liege and Namur and force their way into northern France. This would end up forcing the First Battle of the Marne.

On the way, the siege at Liege was taking so long that Erich Ludendorff took a small force with him, found his way to the front door of the fortress, knocked on the door, and demanded the French surrender. They did.

In 1914, the Schlieffen Plan was halted at the First Battle of the Marne. The French Sixth Division, under Philippe Petain, held off the Germans until 600 taxicabs commissioned by General Joseph Gallieni brought reinforcements to the battlefield, forcing the Germans to retreat. Other notable commanders included Louis Francet d’Esperey, whom Joffre had replaced Lanrezac with just prior, following the Battle of St. Quentin.

Historians these days seem to be cooling on the term Race to the Sea, since it implies that the outflanking effort which resulted in trenches being dug toward the Belgian coast would somehow result in something when they reached it. British and French forces aimed to push forward against the Germans, while the Germans simply wanted to defend the territory they had gained. As a result, German trenches were far better constructed and more intended for permanence.

Five battles took place at Ypres, a city the British called “Wipers”.

The first battle was part of the First Battle of Flanders in late 1914. The battle started following the failure of the Race to the Sea to accomplish anything useful, in terms of territorial gains. Subconflicts included the Battle of Langemarck and La Bassee and Armentieres.

The Second Battle of Ypres was fought in April 1915. It notably included the first use of mass German poison gas attacks, in which chlorine was used in violation of the Hague Convention. The battle included conflicts at St. Julien and Kitcheners' Wood.

The Third Battle of Ypres is also known as the Battle of Passchendaele. During it, the ANZAC Corps took Broodseine Ridge and Polygon Wood, and the Canada Corps under Arthur Currie took Passchendaele Ridge. Other commanders included Douglas Haig and Robert Nivelle.

There were two other battles at Ypres.

In 1916, the German Fifth Army attacked near Verdun, on the Meuse River, attempting to capture a critical point to take the city. The French commander was the defense-minded Philippe Petain, who ordered that the French were not to withdraw. Robert Nivelle said that “They shall not pass!”, but Petain is often credited with the quote as well.

General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Germany, aimed to “bleed France white” at Verdun, having been stopped at the Marne. Germans went into battle with grenades, not rifles. During the battle, La Voie Sacree, the Sacred Way, was used to channel supplies and reinforcements. Commanders included Emile Driant (killed), Fernand de Langle de Cary (removed), and Charles Mangin, who captured Fort Vaux and Douaumont. Important focuses of fighting included Mort-Homme and Cote 304. Victory at the battle resulted in Petain being hailed as “the Lion of Verdun” and promoted out of there.

The Battle of the Somme (1916) was meant to relieve some of the pressure placed on the Allies at Verdun. The Allies were led by Ferdinand Foch and Douglas Haig, and the offensive was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. On the first day, 60,000 British troops were killed.

Right before Zero Hour, a huge mine exploded under Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, as part of a huge preliminary attack, beginning the battle. Fighting locations included High Wood, during the Battle of Bazentin Ridge, and subconflicts included the Battle of Albert. The first tanks were placed into combat, and the British Mark I tore through barbed wire.

After the stalemate at the Somme, the German army retreated to the Hindenburg Line, a network set up to provide defensive positions. One section of the line was called the Siegfried Line.

The Gallipoli Campaign, aka the Dardanelles Campaign, took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire. The aim of the campaign was to open a path to Constantinople via the peninsula. The offensive was supported by Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and HH Asquith, the Prime Minister.

The first landing of Gallipoli is now marked by ANZAC day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). ANZAC took heavy casualties during the campaign. The Allies fought at Salonika, and were unable to get reinforcements through. The largest battle was fought at Suvla Bay, during the August Offensive of the campaign, where Frederick Stopford was stopped by Otto Liman von Sanders. Following the August Offensive, Charles Monro was appointed as a replacement for Ian Hamilton. Other notable locations included Krithia, Scimitar Hill, and Chocolate Hill.

The failure of the Gallipoli campaign led to the resignation of Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, and Asquith fell into disfavor, paving the way for the rise of David Lloyd George in Britain.

The important naval battle that comes up here is the Battle of Jutland, between steel Dreadnought battleships. The battle was fought in the North Sea, near Denmark, and it was the only full scale battleship battle in the war. The Allied Grant Fleet was commanded by Admiral John Jellicoe, and the Central High Seas Fleet was under German Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer.

Scheer sank the Indefatigable and the Queen Mary during the battle. Scouting forces were led by David Beatty and Franz von Hipper, and phases of the battle included a “run to the south” and a “run to the north”. During a night fighting part of the battle, there were limited radio capabilities.

The Hundred Days Offensive would ultimately cause the end of the war. The offensive began in August 1918 with the Battle of Amiens, during which Allied forces put together huge advances; Erich Ludendorff referred to the first day of the battle as “the black day of the German Army”. Troops under Henry Rawlinson silenced the artilleries and used fake radio messages to confuse the Germans. The Hundred Days Offensive also allowed the Allies to break the Hindenburg Line.

President of Princeton University prior to running for public office, Woodrow Wilson was the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson to win two consecutive terms. Wilson had written A History of the American People and he advocated a “New Freedom”.

His election had been managed by William McCombs, and he was supported by William Jennings Bryan. Wilson was largely elected because of the fact that Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party split the Democratic vote with Taft’s Democratic party.

While in office, Wilson would pass many important bills. Among these were the Underwood Tariff, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, and the Federal Reserve Act (Glass-Owen Act). Also notable were the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the passage of the Federal Farm Loan Act.

Wilson was a big proponent of neutrality in the opening phases of the Great War. In 1916, he won reelection over Charles Evans Hughes under the slogan “He kept us out of war!”

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner owned by the Cunard line. On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the ship, sinking it. The Germans thought that there were munitions on the boat, but it was only admitted that the ship was carrying cartridges. There were Americans on the ship, and William Jennings Bryan resigned following the event — Robert Lansing took over as Secretary of State.

In 1917, German Foreign Secretary Zimmerman sent a message to Heinrich von Eckardt. This Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted by British Intelligence and decoded at Room 40. The message called for Mexico to attack the US to take back territories like New Mexico and Texas. After the British forwarded the message to Woodrow Wilson, the American people were outraged. The note was an important catalyst in sending the US into war.

In April 1917, Wilson went before Congress and asked Congress to declare war, stating that it would make “the world safe for democracy”. In order to garner support for US involvement in the war, Wilson formed the Creel committee, a group of “Four Minute Men” who gave propaganda speeches.

Leading the American Expeditionary Force into WWI was General of the Armies John “Black Jack” Pershing. Pershing had, as previously mentioned, been sent after Pancho Villa near the Mexican Border.

In the early 20th century, a good number of people were following the temperance movement. People like Carrie Nation had been opposing alcohol use for some time, enforcing beliefs with a hatchet. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded by Frances Willard to promote prohibition of alcohol. The Anti-Saloon League also supported banning alcohol.

In 1920, the “Noble Experiment” of Prohibition was put into effect by the 18th Amendment. The Volstead Act enforced Prohibition, setting the law that actually banned alcohol itself. Prohibition would remain in effect until 1933 until it was repealed by the 21st Amendment.

The start of Prohibition led to the rise of all sorts of unsavory people. Chief among these was Al Capone, a gangster on the south side of Chicago. At one point, Capone had been slashed in the face while working for Frankie Yale in the Harvard Inn, leading to his nickname: “Scarface”. When William Emmett Dever forced Capone out of the city, Capone made a deal with mayor Big Bill Thompson, and got himself a new headquarters at the Lexington Hotel.

At the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, Capone’s agents attacked North Side Gang members who worked for Bugs Moran. The victims had been lured to the SMC Cartage Co. building for a fake shipment of whiskey. Six of Moran’s men were killed, but Moran lived. After the massacre, there was an attack on the Barker compound.

Capone was targeted by the Department of Justice’s Prohibition Bureau. The bureau was led by Eliot Ness, who formed the Untouchables in Chicago to go after gangsters. Capone was eventually sent to prison for tax evasion, based on precedent set in United States v. Sullivan.

Herbert Hoover was the last president of the roaring twenties. Born in Iowa (the first President who hailed from west of the Mississippi), he’d made his fortune directing Australia’s Consolidated Zinc Inc. Hoover won the election of 1928 by defeating Al Smith, promising “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”. Hoover signed the Norris-LaGuardia act, ending “yellow-dog” labor contracts that prevented employees from unionizing.

On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange crashed, starting the Great Depression. Hoover’s worst mistake was signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930, claiming that “Prosperity is just around the corner”. He also created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to try to stabilize the economy.

The Bonus Army was a group of World War I veterans, led by Walter Waters, that traveled to Washington to force payment of their insurance certificates. Others that supported the army included Evelyn McLean and General Pelham Glassford. They camped out in Anacostia Flats, in a collection of tents some described as an “immense hobo jungle”. Hoover sent Douglas MacArthur to break up the army. MacArthur, of course, did this using artillery and tear gas, but Hoover never reprimanded him for it.

Of course, Hoover’s failure to deal with the situation correctly led to people not to like him very much. Small shantytowns called “Hoovervilles” sprung up all over the place. As the Depression grew worse, feelings toward Hoover were summed up by a poem:

The election of 1932 wasn’t great for Herbert Hoover. He lost all but six states to the Democratic candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s running mate was John Nance Garner.

Shortly after the election, Giuseppe Zangara shot at Roosevelt while he was meeting with Chicago mayor Anton Cermak. Zangara missed because he was standing on a wobbly chair, killing Cermak but leaving Roosevelt unscathed.

Roosevelt proposed a New Deal to help get the country through the Depression. An important piece of New Deal legislation was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which would set up the PWA and the NRA (see below). Schechter v. US ruled the NIRA unconstitutional. The New Deal was composed of many different projects, most of which have a 3 letter acronym associated with them.

In an attempt to improve the chances of New Deal legislation winning in the Supreme Court, FDR tried court packing. He wanted to add extra justices and fundamentally change the makeup of the court. The court packing plan also called for a ten year term limit and mandatory retirement of justices. The conservative justices were called the “Four Horsemen”, and the liberal justices were the “Three Musketeers”. On “White Monday”, Owen Roberts changed his mind on a Washington state minimum wage case, tipping the court to a 5–4 ruling. Now that Roberts was considered to be on the Democratic side, the change of opinion is called “the switch in time that saved nine”.

Another piece of important New Deal era legislation is the National Labor Relations Act, or Wagner Act. It set up the National Labor Relations Board and was quite pro-union. However, the act eventually was gutted by the later Taft-Hartley Act, passed over Truman’s veto, which allowed states to pass right-to-work laws and generally greatly reducing the power of unions.

By 1917, the Russian people were getting tired of the mediocre leadership. They didn’t trust Rasputin, food was scarce, people were dying in the war, and the tsar was losing support. In late February of 1917, strikes began occurring, and soon much of the labor force of St. Petersburg were no longer working. Nicholas ordered the Duma to disband, and he ordered his troops to shoot people in the street, triggering the February Revolution. The revolution led to Nicholas’s abdication, and a new provisional government took over.

The provisional government was initially led by Prince Georgy Lvov, who coordinated with the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Soviet in the “Dual Power”.

Vladimir Lenin had fled to western Europe after multiple encounters with the law in Russia. He created the newspaper Iskra, an attempt to spread revolutionary ideals among those whom it would benefit most. He had been active in the 1905 revolution, after which he had joined New Life, a radical newspaper. In April 1917, he took a train from Zurich back to Finland Station in St. Petersburg. On the way, he wrote his “April Theses” in an attempt to start undermining the provisional government.

During the July Days, Lenin tried to organize protests against the government, but he failed. However, his failure still had the effect of getting Prince Lvov out of power and putting the government in the hands of Alexander Kerensky, the Socialist Revolutionary minister, while Lenin himself ran off to Finland.

Kerensky’s government was a bit more progressive than Lvov’s. He instituted freedom of speech, but Lenin’s Bolsheviks weren’t really happy with that either. During Kerensky’s government, the Kornilov Affair attempted to overthrow Kerensky. Lavr Kornilov failed, and Kerensky removed him as commander-in-chief. It’s worth noting that Kornilov had originally inherited the post from Aleksey Brusilov (the general who led the Brusilov Offensive in World War I).

The Bolsheviks under Trotsky and Lenin decided to start the October Revolution in late 1917. Under the slogan “Peace, Land, Bread”, the Bolsheviks aimed to supplant Kerensky. The revolution began when a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora signaled an assault on the Winter Palace. The Women’s Battalion of Death was ordered to guard the Winter Palace from the revolutionaries. The tsar and his family were sent to Yekaterinburg and subsequently executed. Notably, John Reed wrote Ten Days That Shook the World about the revolution.

Now that Lenin was in charge, he wanted out of the quagmire that the war had placed the country in. He sent Leon Trotsky to negotiate the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans. Richard von Kuhlmann was the German representative at the talks. The Russians gave up a good chunk of western Russia to the Germans, and the treaty also provided for a new independent Democratic Republic of Armenia. The districts of Kars, Bactum, and Erdehan were ceded back to the Ottomans. However, the treaty would eventually be nullified by the Treaty of Rapallo anyway.

Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy (NEP), which taxed farmers following the Kronstadt Rebellion. His Red Army was led by his good friend Trotsky, having successfully dealt with the moderate Mensheviks. During this period of war communism, all industry and land was nationalized, and the rich peasants, kulaks, benefited quite a bit.

Lenin was followed as Soviet Premier by Joseph Stalin. At this point, Trotsky had been exiled to Mexico to escape his enemies, so Stalin ordered him killed; Trotsky ended up with an ice-axe in his skull, but he didn’t die for a day after the attack.

In 1929, Stalin proposed the first Five Year Plan. He did away with Lenin’s NEP and controlled all economic activity through the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin forced a million kulaks off of their land, leading to some kulaks killing their own livestock in defiance; the event is sometimes called the “liquidation” of the kulaks. Russia, once the poorest power of Europe, quickly industrialized.

Stalin also ordered the NKVD, a law enforcement agency led by Lavrenti Beria, to carry out the Great Purges. During the Moscow show trials following the assassination of Sergey Kirov, Andrei Vyshinsky targeted Old Bolsheviks and other people Stalin didn’t like, as Stalin consolidated his power. After the Trial of the Sixteen, Grigory Zinoviev was notably executed; he had allegedly sent a letter to the British Communist party, costing Ramsay Macdonald a 1924 British election. At one point during WWII, Stalin didn’t agree to exchange prisoner Friedrich Paulus for his own son. He invented the “Doctor’s Plot” but prosecution stopped when he eventually died. The lawmaking body of the Soviet Union was called the politburo.

Germany had been utterly destroyed by the fallout of World War I. The military was decimated, the country was going broke paying war reparations, and the Germans had lost quite a bit of territory, both within and outside of Europe.

Following the abdication of the Kaiser, the once great German empire became the Weimar Republic, a collection of 19 states governed by a leadership that was falling apart as soon as it took power. Early in the Republic’s rule, the Spartacists (Spartacus Revolt) tried to overthrow it. The first president of the Weimar Republic was Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democrats (SPD), but he was forced out of Berlin during the Kapp Putsch. When Ebert was killed in 1925, Paul von Hindenburg (that general during World War I) took office.

Hindenburg would defeat Communist Ernst Thalmann in elections twice. The “camarilla” of four advisors included his son Oscar. He appointed Franz von Papen to the chancellorship, and Hindenburg himself would hold office as President until 1935.

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born artist. Unfortunately, the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts rejected him multiple times due to his “unfitness for painting”. As a result, when World War I broke out, Hitler volunteered to serve in the army. He was wounded at the Somme and was given the Iron Cross. After the war, Hitler joined the DAP (German Worker’s Party), which soon changed its name to the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker’s Party), or Nazi Party. Hitler managed to gain a decent following on account of his vitriolic speeches against his enemies.

At the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler, aided by Erich von Ludendorff, attempted a coup against the Weimar government. He wanted to emulate Mussolini’s March on Rome the previous year and take power. Hitler and his SA stormed a beer hall in Munich, interrupting Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had been placed in power along with Hans Ritter von Seisser and Otto von Lossow. Hitler took the three men into a back room with a gun and claimed that he had four bullets, one for each of them and one for himself, if they did not cooperate with him. During the putsch, sixteen demonstrators and three policemen were killed. Hitler and Rudolf Hess were sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison, while Ludendorff was acquitted.

While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), laying out his plans for changing Germany. When he got out of prison, the NSDAP was banned in Bavaria, but he got the ban lifted. Then, the US stock market crashed. Hitler took full advantage of the shock to the German economy and got the NSDAP over 100 seats in the Reichstag. In 1932, he ran against Hindenburg in the presidential election, and came in second. This rise to prominence made powerful people in Germany urge Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as the new chancellor, which Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to. Hitler quickly started trying to get Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag.

In 1933, the Reichstag was set on fire. The Nazis blamed a communist plot, but historians disagree on who actually set the fire. Some claim that the communist Dutchman Marinus var der Lubbe set the fire, and some Bulgarians were also put on trial for it: Blagoy Popov, Vasil Tanev, and Georgi Dimitrov. Hitler then convinced Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree, repealing many human rights, and forcing many communists into concentration camps.

The Nazis didn’t get a majority in the elections of 1933, but Hitler still got enough votes to pass the Enabling Act. He got full legislating power, and by 1934 he decided to get rid of his enemies. Franz von Papen’s recent speech at Marburg University antagonized Hitler. In the Night of the Long Knives (codename Operation Hummingbird), Hitler targeted Ernst Rohm, Kurt von Schleicher, and Gustav von Kahr, among others. Rohm had been the Chief of Staff of the SA, but Hitler had been disagreeing with Rohm lately.

A few days later, Hindenburg died, and Hitler became the new head of state — Fuhrer and Chancellor of Germany. Let’s look at some of the high ranking people in Hitler’s new Third Reich.

Heinrich Himmler was the new commander of the SS and Gestapo, as well as supervisor of the new concentration camps. He was in charge of purging the SA in 1934, and he set up an assassination attempt on Albert Speer.

Hermann Goering was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (Air Force) in 1935, having been an ace fighter pilot in World War I. In fact, he had led the fighter wing that had once been commanded by Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and he had won the Blue Max award.

Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s Rich Minister of Propaganda. He founded a newspaper called The Assault and he was appointed General Plenipotentiary for Total War. Goebbels also confiscated what he called “degenerate art” and helped deport Jews from Berlin.

Hitler’s regime attacked Jews in Germany, treating them as subhuman and boycotting their businesses. In 1933, the Nazis established their first concentration camp at Dachau in Bavaria, and they created the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to ban Jews from holding important positions.

In 1938, Hershel Greenspan killed the Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. Goebbels said that Greenspan was part of a huge Jewish conspiracy and called for an attack on Jewish homes and synagogues. The many broken windows during the November attack led the night to be called “The Night of the Broken Glass”, or Kristallnacht.

The chancellor of Austria from 1932 to 1934 was Engelbert Dollfuss. When he was killed by Nazis, he was replaced by Kurt von Schuschnigg. Both Dollfuss and Schuschnigg tried to stop Hitler from taking Austria and bringing it into Germany, an annexation called Anschluss. Hitler justified the expansionism by stating that Germany needed Lebensraum, “living space”. When Schuschnigg insisted on a referendum being passed, he was replaced by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who was placed into the governorship of the new state of Ostmark. Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, and took down Wilhelm Miklas, president of Austria.

A few months after the Anschluss, Hitler decided he wanted the Sudetenland, a region in Northwestern Czechoslovakia. At the time, Konrad Henlein was leading a separatist movement in the Sudetenland. A conference was called in Munich, with Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier. The Munich Pact resulted in appeasement for Hitler, and Chamberlain went home declaring “peace for our time”. This policy was appeasement was condemned by “Cato” in the book Guilty Men.

In May 1939, German and Italian foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentropp and Galeazzo Ciano signed an alliance. The original name for it was the Pact of Blood, but Mussolini decided that it would be better received if it was instead called the Pact of Steel. The pact solidified the main alliance that would make up the Axis Powers.

To trace the roots of the war in the Pacific, let’s go back a bit to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria back in 1931. In September 1931, the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan, led by Kanji Ishiwara, invaded Manchuria, in response to the Mukden Incident (a staged bombing to provide pretext for invasion). This prompted the creation of the Manchukuo puppet state under Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor.

Roosevelt’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson issued the Stimson Doctrine, outlining how the US would deal with Manchukuo. Manchukuo was also home to Unit 731, a covert biological warfare division of the Japanese Army, which conducted some of the most heinous war crimes of the war, experimenting on humans, poisoning water, and killing thousands of people. Unit 731 and its affiliates were known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department.

Japan joined the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936, and in 1940, it joined Germany and Italy to form the Axis Powers. At this point, the emperor Hirohito was talking about the revival of hakko ichiu, the God-given right of Japan’s emperor to unite and rule the world. The USSR fought Japan at the Battle of Lake Khasan (1938) and the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (1939), part of the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars over the definition of Manchukuo. Notably, Georgy Zhukov fought at Khalkhin Gol, assisting Grigory Shtern in defending Baintsagan Hill. We’ll see more of Zhukov in the Eastern Front in Europe. After the battles, the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed in 1941.

During Japanese occupation of Nanking, they perpetrated the Rape of Nanking. Between December 1937 and January 1938 (during the Second Sino-Japanese War), over 300,000 civilians were killed by Japanese occupying forces. During the massacre, the Nazi John Rabe helped create a safety zone where he sheltered civilians, while the missionary John Magee took lots of pictures and documented the event. Toshaki Mukai won a sword contest in which the objective was to kill a hundred people. The event was so horrific that many Japanese textbooks still omit it.

Hideki Tojo was the Prime Minister of Japan, and he believed that war with the US would be inevitable. He convinced Hirohito to allow an attack on America, the UK, and the Netherlands. Others, such as Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, disagreed. Yamamoto claimed that Japan wouldn’t last in a prolonged war against the Americans.

On August 23, 1939, Soviet minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentropp signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact, also called the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact. The treaty was formally a non-aggression agreement between Hitler and Stalin, but it also set up government and partition of territory in Eastern Europe, notably splitting up Poland preemptively.

On August 31, the Nazis set up a false flag operation, posing as Poles and staging an attack on a German radio station. The Germans then used this Gleiwitz Incident, part of the Operation Himmler propaganda campaign, as a reason to invade Poland. The Soviet Union invaded shortly thereafter, having come to an agreement with Japan as well. The Polish, facing a war on two fronts, retreated to Romania, and Poland was occupied. The Germans then annexed western Poland and the Free City of Danzig.

The invasion of Poland prompted France, Great Britain, and the rest of the Commonwealth to declare war on Germany. Hitler tried to make peace with the UK and France, saying that they shouldn’t interfere with Poland, but Chamberlain responded that “Past experience has shown that no reliance can be placed upon the promises of the present German Government.” As a result, Hitler ordered an attack on France, which would commence in the spring of 1940.

In November 1939, the USSR invaded Finland because the Finns didn’t give the Russians the land they wanted. The USSR probably wanted to conquer Finland in its entirety, seeing how it had three times as many soldiers, thirty times as many planes, and 100 times more tanks than Finland. Even with such staggeringly uneven odds, the Finns were able to hold off the Soviets for months. This was largely due to mediocre leadership in the Red Army, following Stalin killing or imprisoning all the good generals.

The war started when the village of Manila was shelled, probably by the Russians. The Finns fought using skis and Molotov cocktails, which proved effective against Soviet tanks. A Finnish marksman named Simo Hayha, aka the “White Death”, killed at least 505 men, the highest number of sniper kills in any major war. The Russians' advance to Oulo was stopped by the Finns at the battle of Suomussalmi.

Under the leadership of Semyon Timoshenko and Kirill Meretskov, the Russians were eventually able to push through the Mannerheim Line, a Finnish defense system constructed between Taipale and the Gulf of Finland. They entered the Isthmus of Karelia, and the war was ended by the Moscow Peace Treaty.

In June 1940, the USSR annexed the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertza.

At this point, Hitler thought that Britain was still holding out hope that the Allies would be aided by the US and the Soviet Union. So, Hitler tried to get the Soviets to join the Axis Powers. When the Soviets asked for some territorial concessions, Hitler decided to prepare for war.

On June 22, 1941, the Axis, led primarily by the Germans, invaded the USSR in Operation Barbarossa, named after Frederick Barbarossa (recall the emperor during the Third Crusade). The offensive was in direct opposition to the agreement that the countries had agreed to in the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact earlier. The Axis’s main goal was to create a line of demarcation from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan, crush communism, and take the Soviet Union.

The Axis proceeded to launch the Siege of Leningrad. The Nazis set up the siege in September 1941, but the battle would not end until January 1944. The city was low on supplies, but a supply route called the Road of Life over the frozen Lake Ladoga prevented supplies from running out. Troops stationed in and around the city were commanded by Carl Mannerheim, but he elected not to have his men directly fight in the siege. Immediately following the battle, Finnish forces took back Karelia from the Soviets.

By October, the Axis seemed to be doing pretty well for itself. The Kiev offensive was extremely successful, allowing the Axis to advance into the Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The German pincer offensive known as Operation Typhoon was about to go into effect, pinning Moscow, and allowing the Germans to take the city. The only sieges still in effect were at Leningrad and at Sevastopol.

As the offensive against Moscow was put into action, the harsh Russian weather began. The Germans were forced to stop just outside the city simply because they were really tired. Even though the Nazis had taken quite a bit of territory, their goals remained unmet, and the momentum of their blitzkrieg had run out.

The Russians, notoriously slow at mobilizing troops, finally put together enough men to match the Axis’s numbers. By December, they began a huge counteroffensive to get the Nazis off their land.

Going into World War II, the US was under the Neutrality Acts of 1936, supporting complete isolationism: Americans understandably didn’t want anything to do with the growing unrest in Europe. However, the Neutrality Acts were woefully insufficient, because they didn’t really distinguish between aggressors and victims, opting instead to treat both as “belligerents” in a war America wanted no part in.

When war broke out in Europe, FDR requested that Congress switch to a policy of cash and carry. The policy allowed for the selling of materiel to belligerents, provided that the buyers transported the goods themselves and paid in cash.

By March 11, 1941, the US enacted a new Lend-Lease policy for selling arms to the Allies. Aid was free to the Free French, Great Britain, China, and the USSR. In exchange, the US was given some leases on bases in Allied territory. Roosevelt justified the policy by likening it to a garden hose:

Eventually, the bill was passed when Everett Dirksen introduced it while a bunch of Congressmen were at a luncheon. The office created to administer the Lend-Lease Act was headed by Edward Stettinius, and it ended up improving on a previous Destroyers for Bases act.

In August 1941, Churchill met Roosevelt in Placienta Bay, Newfoundland, aboard USS Augusta and HMS Prince of Wales. They signed the American Charter, defining Allied goals for the war. It stated that there would be no “territorial aggrandizement” and emphasized “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”.

By 1939, the US had stopped trade with Japan and placed more economic pressure on Japan. Japan’s attacks on China stalemated in 1940. The McCollum memo was a memo that outlined a course of action against Japan in the Pacific, suggesting that the US provoke Japan into an “overt act of war”. Roosevelt put troops in the Philippines, saying that the US would react if anyone in that area was attacked by Japan. This put a damper on Japan’s aim to take a defensive perimeter around their country. They didn’t want Americans interfering with Japan’s plan to take the Dutch East Indies. As a result, Yamamoto made the decision to directly attack the US on home soil.

On December 2, 1941, the Japanese navy received a message to “climb Mount Niitaka”, giving information on how and when to attack the Americans (the Japanese referred to it as Operation Z). Japan then sent the “Fourteen Part Message” to the US, breaking off negotiations with the Americans. On December 7, Japanese aircraft attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. The first person to see the fighters coming was Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, who was manning a radar at Fort Shafter. The attacks targeted Wheeler Field, and destroyed battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and California. The Japanese fleets used the code words “Tora, Tora, Tora” to signal a successful surprise attack.

The next day, Roosevelt went in front of a Joint Session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war. He gave his famous Infamy Speech:

The only congressperson to vote against a declaration of war was Jeanette Rankin. As a result of alliances, Britain, China, and Australia also formally declared war on Japan, and Germany and the other Axis powers declared war on the US.

Fighting in North Africa started when Italy declared war. The British army crossed into Libya, taking the Italian Fort Capuzzo. They then launched Operation Compass, which crushed the Italians in Africa, and Germany sent Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox of the Afrika Korps, to Africa.

The British fought Rommel all around Libya and Egypt at battles such as Tobruk, until eventually they met at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Just before the battle, General Claude Auchinleck (the Auk), had been replaced by Bernard Montgomery. Auchinleck had defended Ruweisat Ridge at the First Battle of El Alamein. Montgomery planned Operation Lightfoot, a means to cut accessible corridors through the Axis minefields. British tanks attacked Axis gasoline supplies at Tel el Aqqaqir. Rommel was forced to get past land mines and barbed wire that went to the Qattara Depression. The decisive defeat of the Germans at El Alamein led Churchill to say:

The US entered the war during Operation Torch in late November, 1942. Dwight Eisenhower commanded the troops in North Africa, and George Patton came in from Casablanca. They were defeated by Rommel at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass early in 1943, but by May, the Allies broke the Mareth Line and shattered the Axis defense.

In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met at the Casablanca Conference. It was agreed that the Allied forces in the south would turn their attention to Sicily, which Churchill called the “soft underbelly” of Europe. The Allies also decided to begin nonstop bombing of Germany from here on out (Operation Pointblank), and that they would accept no less than the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers. Roosevelt explained:

In July 1943, Operation Husky was launched, following a disinformation campaign against the Italians known as Operation Mincemeat. The amphibious invasion landed between Licata and Scoglitti, and the Allies began pushing forward into the continent.

As soon as the Allies took Sicily, Italian public sentiment immediately turned against Mussolini. Victor Emmanuel III called Mussolini into his office and told him he was fired. The king replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Germany came into Italy, taking Rome and forcing Badoglio and the king to run away. By October 1943, Italy declared war on Nazi Germany from Malta.

Starting in 1942, RAF Bomber Command were helped by the US Air Force in raiding Germany. The general strategy was one of “Europe First”; the US would help take out Hitler and Germany before focusing on Japan. The meeting in Casablanca then issued the Casablanca directive:

Let’s discuss the most important battles of the war in the Pacific.

Following the victory in World War II, Truman and friends helped set up the United Nations. He also issued the Truman Doctrine, giving aid to Turkey and Greece, in an attempt to contain communism. Truman’s policy of containment was inspired partly by George F. Kennan (Mr. X) and his writings talking about containment of communism. Kennan sent the Long Telegram from Soviet Russia, claiming that the Soviets were expansionist and needed to be contained in places that mattered to the US.

In order to help rebuild Europe, Secretary of State George Marshall came up with a strategy. The Marshall Plan consisted of using $13 billion to bring economies back on track, and William Clayton, Kennan, and Marshall unveiled the plan at a graduation speech at Harvard in 1947. To counter the Marshall Plan, the Soviets put their own Molotov Plan into effect to help Eastern European countries.

In 1949, the former Allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Headquartered in Brussels, NATO’s goal was to stop the growing Soviet threat. They set up yearly readiness exercises named after Able Archer and Dean Rusk.

In response, the Soviets set up the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Included in the organization were China and North Korea, and during Zapad 81, they would carry out the largest military exercise ever.

In the US, the transfer of leadership from Truman to Eisenhower resulted in policy not changing much, even though the transition crossed party lines. The change from Stalin to his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, however, was big. Stalin died in 1953, and the Communist Party named Khrushchev, his right hand man, First Secretary.

During some collective leadership, Khrushchev consolidated power. He gave his secret speech, “On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences”, to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party, denouncing Stalin and the crimes that Stalin had committed:

Even though his speech was supposed to be secret, it ended up getting leaked. Khrushchev ended up being named Premier of the USSR in 1958.

While in power, Khrushchev used the Virgin Lands Campaign to try and improve agricultural productivity. He oversaw some liberalization and de-Stalinization, in a period known as the Khrushchev Thaw. At one point, Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Anti-Party group, tried to overthrow him and replace him with his Prime Minister, Nikolai Bulganin.

When the Soviets got tired of Khrushchev in 1964, they ousted him and placed Leonid Brezhnev in his place as First Secretary. He’d previously been in charge of the Virgin Lands Campaign, and now he took full power. Brezhnev would consolidate power, setting up his Brezhnev Doctrine, allowing intervention if socialist countries decided to turn to capitalism. A prime example of the use of his doctrine is the invasion of Czechoslovakia during Prague Spring. He also ordered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he would participate in the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreements.

When Brezhnev took over, the “Era of Stagnation” began. The economy, politics, and social change all more or less came to a standstill, and they would stay that way until Gorbachev took over in the mid-80s.

Brezhnev left office in 1982. He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, and Konstantin Chernenko. Their leadership didn’t last very long, and in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo. Gorbachev had a big wine-colored birthmark on his forehead that cartoonists were quite fond of mocking.

Gorbachev began to turn around the stagnant economy. His agenda was called perestroika, or restructuring. It relaxed the production quota system and let people own their own businesses through the Law on Cooperatives. He also started glasnost, or openness, which introduced transparency and improved freedom of the press. Gorbachev implemented the “Sinatra Doctrine”, which let Warsaw Pact nations determine for themselves how they would work (the name’s an allusion to the song “My Way”).

An August 1991 Communist coup tried to target Gorbachev after the Cold War ended, and it was suppressed by Boris Yeltsin, who then gave a speech while standing on a tank.

Because of the fact that the USSR was giving in a bit, Reagan decided that it would be OK to start talks with the Russians on thawing the Cold War. The first meeting was held in Geneva, and the second Reykjavik Summit was set up in Iceland. The third summit resulted in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

In 1987, Reagan gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate. In challenge to Gorbachev, Reagan said:

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and the iron curtain across the continent was lifted. With the end of the Cold War, the 1989 revolutionary wave washed over Central and Eastern Europe.

Let’s talk about Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt’s final Vice President. Truman was born in Missouri, and he joined Tom Pendergast’s political machine in Kansas City. As discussed before, Truman assumed the presidency just before the Nazis surrendered, and he ordered dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Truman ran for reelection in 1948. His opponent was Thomas Dewey, a New York Republican. Also running was Strom Thurmond, who had shown up from South Carolina with the support of Dixiecrats, and formed the States' Rights Democratic Party with his running mate Fielding Wright. During the election, Truman criticized the “Do-Nothing Congress” for opposing his Fair Deal. On election day, the Chicago Tribune preemptively announced election results: “Dewey Defeats Truman!” However, they were wrong because some polls weren’t available, and Truman ended up winning reelection. Truman’s new cabinet included Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

Dwight David Eisenhower was a five-star general in the United States Army, serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. In 1952, he entered the Presidential race as a Republican. His running mate was Richard M. Nixon, and he defeated the Adlai Stevenson/John Sparkman ticket in a landslide.

Eisenhower authorized Operation Ajax, which deposed Mohammad Mosaddegh, prime minister of Iran, in a 1953 coup. He also gave the go-ahead on Operation PBSUCCESS, targeting Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, ending the democratic government in Guatemala, ending the revolution, and putting Carlos Castillo Armas in charge of a new military dictatorship. His New Look policy was an attempt at nuclear deterrence in the face of the burgeoning Cold War.

In 1947, a young Wisconsin Senator named Joseph McCarthy took office, having defeated Robert La Follette, Jr in 1946. McCarthy had flown combat missions for the Marines during the war, and he turned his nickname “Tail-Gunner Joe” into a campaign slogan: “Congress needs a tail-gunner!” In 1950, McCarthy came to prominence by giving a speech to the Women’s Club of Wheeling, WV:

McCarthy quickly became the most well-known face in an anti-Communist witch hunt. His modern Red Scare went until the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, until the Senate eventually voted to censure McCarthy. Senator Joseph Welch said:

Eisenhower covertly opposed McCarthy while he was doing his whole crusade. He was a mostly moderate conservative president, keeping around most of the New Deal programs. He also launched the Interstate Highway System and DARPA. In 1957, Orval Faubus opposed the enrollment of nine black students into Central High School in Little Rock. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to intervene and make sure that they got into school.

In January 1961, Eisenhower gave his farewell address, written by himself, his brother Milton, and his speechwriter Malcolm Moos:

Booker T. Washington was one of the last American leaders who were born as slaves. He was the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, a newly formed educational institution for Black Americans. Washington built the college from scratch, from premises to curricula. He also founded the National Negro Business League. Later, he wrote his autobiography Up From Slavery.

Washington gave the Atlanta Address of 1895, at which he announced the Atlanta Compromise. The idea was that southern African Americans would accept white political rule, provided that they were given basic education and due process.

A few years after Washington gave his speech, leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and a group he called “The Talented Tenth” spoke out against the compromise. Du Bois explicitly campaigned for full civil rights and better representation in politics. He founded the Niagara Movement, an activist group which became the foundation for his future organization: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Du Bois was a prolific author: he wrote The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America, his autobiography Dusk of Dawn, as well as many pieces for NAACP’s journal The Crisis.

During the Great Migration, a large percentage of African American populations moved out of the South into urban centers in the north and the west. This led to cultural flourishings such as the Harlem Renaissance in New York, as well as political and economic prosperity in locations such as the south side of Chicago. The founding of the NAACP led to increased opposition to violence against Black people, particularly regarding lynching as it was practiced in the south.

The Ku Klux Klan had come back thanks to the extreme popularity of Birth of a Nation, a film directed by D.W. Griffith in 1915 which glorified the terrorist activities the Klan had engaged in during the Civil War era.

Racial tensions were high in Oklahoma, where Native American relocation had brought slaves to the territory. Once freed, the oil economy in cities such as Tulsa housed an unusually large number of wealthy and educated African American residents. One location with a particularly dense concentration of money was the Greenwood District, which was known as “Black Wall Street”. In 1921, white residents of Tulsa perpetrated the Tulsa race massacre, in which hundreds of Black residents were killed and Greenwood was utterly destroyed.

The crux of the Civil Rights Movement that comes up takes place between 1954 and 1968:

In May 1954, the Supreme Court rules on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. A more detailed overview of the important case is in the appendix, but the decision overturns Plessy.

On March 2, 1955, a black woman in Alabama is arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus to a white man. The ACLU and civil rights leaders quickly mobilize, but then they stop. She is fifteen years old, pregnant, and her name is Claudette Colvin. A pending bus boycott is called off, and leaders decide not to publicize Colvin’s story because it doesn’t play well, even though her court case will eventually end segregation on the buses (Browder v. Gale).

On December 1, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary for the NAACP, doesn’t listen to James Edwards’s instructions to leave her seat on a bus and gets arrested. This triggers the Montgomery Bus Boycott; leading this is a Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. He is elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. People start to listen to Dr. King, who rises to prominence at the head of a burgeoning movement for civil rights.

In September 1957, Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, decides to block integration of Little Rock Central High School. Within two weeks, President Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard and orders the Army into Little Rock. The Little Rock Nine, a set of students who were to attend the school, get a military escort. By the end of the month, Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1957, in spite of segregationist Strom Thurmond, who tried to stop it by giving the longest one-person filibuster of all time, lasting over 24 hours.

Meanwhile, King founds the South Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and is chosen as its first president. The SCLC leads the Albany Movement in Georgia against segregation in 1962. In 1963, King organizes nonviolent protests in Birmingham, garnering national attention. Alabama is governed by George Wallace, who had called for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” at his inauguration. The protests result in a massive police response they land King in jail, where he writes his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

In August 1963, King organizes the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with logistical help from Bayard Rustin. Speakers at the huge event include Walter Reuther, Josephine Baker, and John Lewis, who criticizes Kennedy in his speech, causing some controversy. Of course, the most famous speaker is King himself, who gives his “Normalcy, Never Again” speech, saying that he had come to “cash a check” for inalienable rights, and he refused to believe that the bank was bankrupt. The speech quickly becomes known as the “I Have a Dream” speech.

In 1968, King travels to Memphis, Tennessee, to help striking African American sanitation workers, who have walked out in protest of Mayor Henry Loeb. On April 3, he delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech:

While staying at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, King walks out onto his balcony at 6:01 PM on April 4. He is struck by a bullet fired into his jaw, and he dies an hour later at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The FBI investigation finds the fingerprints of James Earl Ray at the origin of the gunfire. Two months later, Ray is captured at Heathrow Airport and confesses to having killed King.

The 1960 Democratic primary resulted in John Fitzgerald Kennedy defeating Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon B. Johnson. At the convention, Kennedy gave his “New Frontier” speech:

Upon winning, Kennedy asked Johnson to be his running mate.

The general election was shaping up to be the closest in many years. Kennedy would be fighting a battle against Richard M. Nixon, centering around Cuba, Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism, and the space race. The election brought the first televised presidential debates in history. Nixon looked uncomfortable with his five o’clock shadow and injured leg, while Kennedy looked far better to a television audience.

Kennedy ended up being the youngest man elected president. During his inauguration, he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Kennedy would go on to write Profiles in Courage.

Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense was Robert McNamara, who ramped up the Vietnam War. When he was Secretary, McNamara surrounded himself with a set of experts from RAND Corporation, who were called the Whiz Kids, hearkening back to a group McNamara had been a part of at Ford. This was all part of McNamara’s attempt to try and run the Pentagon like a business.

We’ve discussed some of what Kennedy did in relation to the Cold War already. He signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, set up the Peace Corps, and increased US involvement in Vietnam. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion occurred soon after he took office, and he was forced to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. In West Germany, he gave his “Ich bin Ein Berliner” speech.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was traveling through Dallas in a presidential motorcade. Accompanying him were his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally’s wife Nellie. While driving through Dealey Plaza, shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository. The assassination was recorded by Abraham Zapruder on his namesake film. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged for killing Kennedy, but he claimed he was just a patsy. Two days later, Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. Chief Justice Earl Warren chaired the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. The commission, which included Gerald Ford, concluded that Oswald was the only assassin, and the nearby “grassy knoll” that some claimed to have significance wasn’t important at all.

Lyndon Baines Johnson had been elected as a Texan Senator in 1948. The election was fraught with controversy, and Johnson defeated incumbent governor Coke Stevenson in court with help from his friend Abe Fortas. The situation resulted in Johnson being called “Landslide Lyndon” permanently thereafter amidst fraud allegations. Johnson proceeded to work his way up to majority whip and Democratic leader in the Senate. The senator was also quite the imposing personality; he would stand uncomfortably close to people while talking to them, in a strategy called “The Treatment”. In 1960, Kennedy chose Johnson as his running mate; upon Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson took the oath of office on board Air Force One.

The 1964 campaign for reelection made Johnson look for a new catchy slogan to encompass his social agenda. He settled on “The Great Society”. The plan discussed urban improvements, a war on poverty, educational reform, and crime control. During election season, Johnson aired the “Daisy Ad” against his opponent Barry Goldwater, claiming that a vote for Goldwater is a vote for the nuclear annihilation of children: “the stakes are too high for you to stay home [and not vote]”.

Johnson passed the Economic Opportunity Act, creating the Job Corps and Head Start. He appointed Abe Fortas and Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. Robert Weaver became the first African-American cabinet member in the new Housing and Urban Development Department.

A front runner in the Democratic primary campaign in 1968, Robert Francis Kennedy had previously served on the Senate Labor Rackets Committee. He had challenged the Teamsters under Jimmy Hoffa and written The Enemy Within. Robert Kennedy had served on his brother’s cabinet as Attorney General, advising the president during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He’d delivered a speech in Indianapolis following the assassination of Martin Luther King. In June 1968, RFK won the California primary, defeating Senator Eugene McCarthy. He was celebrating in the Ambassador Hotel, where Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan shot him. Sirhan was subdued by bodyguards including Rafer Johnson and Rosey Grier in the Embassy Room.

Richard Milhous Nixon had served as Vice President under Eisenhower. In response to slush fund allegations, Nixon had delivered the “Checkers Speech”, discussing a dog he’d gotten as a present. Previously, he’d also defeated Helen Douglas for his Senate seat, claiming she was “pink right down to her underwear” and calling her “the Pink Lady”. He’d lost to Kennedy back in 1960. He proceeded to fail to win the California gubernatorial election in 1962, and he decided to try for the presidency again in 1968. His opponent was Hubert Humphrey running with Edmund Muskie. Humphrey was the incumbent Vice President, hailing from Minnesota. Nixon crushed Humphrey in the election, getting himself the presidency.

Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He visited China with his First Lady Pat, and he ended the draft and proceeded to pull troops out of Vietnam. In 1972, he was reelected in a huge landslide over opponent George McGovern and his running mate Sargent Shriver (who had replaced Thomas Eagleton).

In 1967, Robert McNamara had prepared a set of documents on the military presence in South Vietnam, and had sent them to RAND Corporation. These documents would eventually come to be known as the Pentagon Papers. A military analyst named Daniel Ellsberg opposed the war, and when he discovered the papers, decided that the American public should see them, and gave them in March 1971 to the New York Times. Attorney General John Mitchell cited the Espionage Act and tried to arrest Ellsberg for the release, but the papers ended up staying public.

Nixon’s top advisors at this time included Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and John Mitchell, and John Dean. They decided to set up a secret organization to fix leaks, the White House Plumbers. One of their first jobs was to break into the office of Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Also on the Plumbers were Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

At this point, the Republicans wanted to run against McGovern, because it seemed like he’d be easier to beat than Muskie. The Republicans had set up the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).

Liddy came up with an idea to burglarize the Watergate complex. They were to break into DNC headquarters and bug the telephones. People recruited into the operation included James McCord and Bernard Barker. But, the DC Police caught the burglars, and they were hauled in front of Judge John Sirica. Now, the FBI started investigating, and it was suggested to Nixon to put an end to this because it was a security risk.

At this point, McGovern became the Democratic candidate, and he botched his run. He ended up winning only Massachusetts and DC, and got trounced by Nixon.

Now, the White House was denying any connection to the Watergate break-in. The people who had actually broken in weren’t particularly happy about this. Then, John Dean decided to go and talk about how Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the President had been part of the cover up. Now, CREEP, Nixon, and everyone was being investigated by the grand jury, the FBI, and by the media.

Chief among the reporters looking into Watergate were two Washington Post reporters named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They were helped by a mysterious informant named Deepthroat (now revealed to be Mark Felt, the #2 man at the FBI). There was also a special prosecutor named Archibald Cox, who was looking into CREEP and friends. CREEP money was supposedly being channeled into covert operations.

When it was revealed that Nixon had been recording all the conversations he’d had, everyone wanted the tapes. Of course, Nixon didn’t want to give the tapes away.

Nixon tried to get Attorney General Elliot Richardson to get rid of Cox, but Richardson didn’t want to, and he resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus did the same, and then Nixon turned to Solicitor General Robert Bork. Bork determined that it was legal to do what Nixon was asking, Cox was sent away, and his office was sealed off. This series of events came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon was forced to put Leon Jaworski into the Cox’s old position.

Then, Nixon decided to give some transcripts of the tapes over. This didn’t work for very long, and the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Nixon that he had to release them all. When people heard the tapes, it was fairly obvious that the Nixon administration was wholly corrupt. Pressure against Nixon grew until he was about to be impeached, and he resigned.

When Spiro Agnew resigned as Nixon’s Vice President, Nixon appointed Gerald Ford (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.) to the post. On Nixon’s resignation, Ford became president, making him the only person to have served in both the vice presidency and the presidency without having been elected to either post. A month after Nixon’s resignation, Ford pardoned him, and he also pardoned Vietnam war draft dodgers.

In 1975, in the span of three weeks, Ford had two attempts on his life. Sara Jane Moore and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, the only two women to attempt presidential assassination, tried to kill Ford.

Ford’s economic policy was called “whip inflation now”. Donald Rumsfeld served as both his Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense. He also retained Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State from the Nixon administration. Ford signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975, attempting to improve relations with the Communist bloc. During the Mayaguez incident (the last official battle of the Vietnam War), Ford sent Marines to retake the Mayaguez, a merchant ship near Cambodia.

At the start of the 1976 campaign, Ford had to overcome opposition in his own party. He defeated Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, and got the nomination at the convention, selecting Bob Dole as his running mate. His opponent was Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from rural Georgia who served as governor until 1975. Apparently when Carter told his mother he was running for president, his mother asked, “President of what?” Carter’s running mate was Walter Mondale, and he beat Carl Sanders (“Cufflinks Carl”) in the primary. During the campaign, Ford famously claimed, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration”. The election ended up being fairly close but Carter won.

On his second day in office, Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft dodgers. He created the Department of Energy. He established the Department of Education, appointing Shirley Hufstedler as its first secretary. He signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, guaranteeing that Panama would own its Canal by 1999. Carter’s Secretary of State was Cyrus Vance, but when Vance resigned, Carter replaced him with Edmund Muskie. At the urging of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter established his “Carter Doctrine”, stating that the US would use military force to defend the Persian Gulf.

In March 1979, a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island almost caused an evacuation of Harrisburg, PA. The meltdown was partially blamed on a maintenance bag that covered up information from Met Ed employees. While the energy crisis was setting in, Carter gave his “malaise speech”:

The incumbent Jimmy Carter went up against Ronald Reagan, former actor and governor of California, and independent John B. Anderson in the election of 1980. As a result of the failure to deal with the Iran Hostage Crisis and a failing economy, Reagan won the election in a landslide, with Carter only winning 6 states and the District of Columbia. Simultaneously, Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time in 28 years.

Reagan’s “voodoo economics” had been attacked by his Vice President, George H.W. Bush, during the primaries. Reagan signed the Kemp-Roth tax cut, and his director of the OMB was David Stockman, who helped implement his supply-side economics. While Reagan was in office, he dealt with the air traffic controller strike.

In March 1981, John Hinckley, Jr. tried to kill Reagan at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Hinckley was obsessed with Jodie Foster, who’d starred in Taxi Driver just a few years prior, writing:

All targets survived. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Reagan did not believe that the US and the Soviets were both equally culpable in the manifestation of the Cold War. In March 1983, he stood in front of the National Association of Evangelicals and delivered the “Evil Empire” speech, decrying the USSR as directly opposed to all that is good in the world:

In October 1983, Reagan ordered US forces to invade Grenada. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, the goal was to intervene with the Marxist-Leninist government under Maurice Bishop that had taken control in 1979. Bishop had been killed six days prior and hidden in a dumpster by Bernard Coard’s new JEWEL faction. Reagan also cited a threat to a few hundred medical students at St. George’s University. The invasion was a success, resulting in a new government and Bishop’s body

In 1984, Reagan and Bush utterly demolished Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. Mondale won only Minnesota and DC, and Reagan was reelected.

Of course, in Reagan’s second term, he dealt with media exposure of the Iran-Contra Affair. Here’s how it happened.

At this point in time, The Contras in Nicaragua were fighting against the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas, under Daniel Ortega, had taken power a few years ago, and since they leaned very far to the left, Reagan wasn’t overly fond of them, and he wanted to help the Contras. Congress didn’t want to fund the Contras, so they passed the Boland Amendment preventing sending government money to them.

Seven Americans were taken hostage in Lebanon by Hezbollah. Iran was currently involved in the Iran-Iraq War. In order to free them, Israel was meant to send weapons to Iran, with the US resupplying Israel. So, this was a fairly straightforward arms-for-hostages situation, with the Americans using Israel as a proxy.

Then, National Security Council military political liaison named Oliver North diverted funds from the weapon sales to fund the Contras. So, the money was being funneled in a way that tried to bypass the Boland Amendment.

In November 1986, the story was leaked by the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa. This turned into a Congressional investigation, and Reagan claimed no knowledge of the affair. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger wrote that Reagan knew that the hostage-for-arms deal was happening, In March 1987 Reagan took full responsibility for the bad stuff that happened during the scandal.

A few investigations into the affair were conducted, notably one by Congress, and one by the Reagan appointed Tower Commission (John Tower, Brent Snowcroft, and Edmund Muskie). Reagan wasn’t implicated in any criminal acts in the end, but fourteen officials including Weinberger were indicted, and eleven were convicted, including National Security Advisor John Poindexter. During the trials, Fawn Hall, North’s secretary, was granted immunity for her testimony. During his state of the union, Reagan said of the affair: “Mistakes were made.”

Incumbent Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush and Dan Quayle of Indiana won the 1988 election in a landslide, defeating Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. On accepting the nomination, Bush had given his “thousand points of light” speech. Bush campaigned largely on his economic policy: “Read my lips — no new taxes.” During the Vice Presidential debate, Dukakis’s running mate Lloyd Bentsen famously told Quayle, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” When Bush won the election, he became the first sitting vice president to be elected to the presidency since Van Buren all the way back in 1836.

Before he’d been vice president, Bush had been the RNC chairman during Watergate and he’d directed the CIA. As president, he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. He launched Operation Restore Hope to give aid to Africa. Bush also launched Operation Just Cause, which ousted Manuel Noriega from his position in Panama. While in office, he appointed David Souter and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, a coalition was put together to free the country, and we’ll talk the resulting Operation Desert Storm when we get to recent Middle Eastern history.

On October 13, 1946, a new Fourth Republic established itself in France. The French Colonial Empire proceeded to fall apart. French Indochina was lost at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, falling into Viet Minh hands, led by Ho Chi Minh.

In 1956, France faced the Suez Crisis. France had built the Suez Canal, and therefore owned the Canal. When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (more in the later chapters) decided to nationalize the Canal, Britain and France attacked. Isreal had also allied with Britain and France in the secret Protocol of Sevres. It started when Israel, aiding the British and French, began Operation Kadesh. They invaded Port Said as part of Operation Musketeer. Eisenhower would put a stop to the fighting.

Shortly after the Suez Crisis, Guy Mollet was forced out of the post of Prime Minister. By 1958, the Fourth Republic was falling apart under Rene Coty. French army units took power in Algiers in May and the whole thing fell apart.

Into this crisis rose Charles de Gaulle, who had led the Free French in World War II. The National Assembly put de Gaulle in power and he founded the new Fifth Republic. He introduced his “Politics of Grandeur” and demanded that France be given complete autonomy in its affairs. He withdrew France from NATO’s military command, because he thought that the US had too much control. In 1965, de Gaulle helped start the Empty Chair Crisis, which involved financing the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Economic Community (EEC). The crisis was resolved when the Luxembourg compromise was reached in January 1966.

On a visit to Canada in 1967, de Gaulle voiced support for a free Quebec, declaring, “vive le Quebec libre” (long live free Quebec).

The new president also had to deal with the war in Algeria. After visiting Africa, he decided that he supported independence for Algeria, and neutralized the army that was stationed there. In 1959, he gave the country self-determination, and there followed a revolt by the French settlers. The Secret Army Organization opposed Algerian independence.

In 1962, de Gaulle signed the Evian Accords, creating a ceasefire in Algeria and giving victory to the FLN (National Liberation Front in Algeria). This resulted in several assassination attempts against him by the OAS (the settlers' resistance group), including one in which he narrowly escaped machine gun fire in a limousine.

In May 1968, protests broke out against de Gaulle’s government. His OTRF broadcasting organization had a monopoly on TV and radio. On May 29, de Gaulle disappeared without telling anyone. He went to Baden-Baden, from whence he returned with the military’s support. During the revolts, the Grenelle Agreements were signed, increasing the minimum wage, but failing to resolve the conflict. Eventually, de Gaulle’s time as a leader was up and George Pompidou took over running the country.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia expelled a bunch of Germans who’d been living in its borders. The Third Republic began, but the country became part of Stalin’s sphere of influence. In February 1948, Communists took over the country, and Edvard Benes came to power. In June 1953, strikes in Plzen were broken up without too much blood, disappointing Allen Dulles, who’d wanted an excuse for the CIA to help the people resist Soviet control. The 1960 Constitution proclaimed the victory of socialism, and created the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

In January 1968, Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak reformer, was elected first secretary of the KSC (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia). He replaced Antonin Novotny as Novotny also ceded the presidency to Ludvik Svoboda. Dubcek started to enact a new reform movement in the spring of 1968, which would be known as Prague Spring. On April 5, he set up the Action Programme, which guaranteed freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech, calling it “socialism with a human face”. During Prague Spring, Ludvik Vaculik published his “Two Thousand Words” manifesto. Other Warsaw Pact countries weren’t particularly happy about what was happening in Prague Spring, so they invaded Czechoslovakia in August. Dubcek was arrested and taken to Moscow, where he negotiated the Brezhnev Doctrine, allowing for Czechoslovakia to become partially sovereign, with the KSC gaining power. Notably, in January 1969, Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague to protest the invasion of the country and the end of Prague Spring. By April 1969, Dubcek was replaced by Gustav Husak.

Skip forward a bit to 1989, when the anti-Communist revolution started. Between November and December of that year, the non-violent Velvet Revolution took place. The main anti-communist party was Charter 77, a civic initiative that managed to overthrow the communist regime. Former playwright Vaclav Havel was elected the first president of Czechoslovakia in 41 years. Havel was reelected and became the first president of the new Czech Republic, after it split from Slovakia following the Velvet Divorce in 1993.

After the war, Hungary had passed a new constitution, and socialism was set up as the main governmental goal. The People’s Front, led by Matyas Rakosi, took power and declared all other parties illegal. In May 1949, Laszlo Rajk of the “Hungarian” Communists, was arrested and put on trial. He was found guilty and executed, and Rakosi proceeded to impose full totalitarian rule, executing thousands. His secret police, led by Gabor Peter, persecuted anyone that Rakosi called an enemy. Rakosi fell in 1956.

On October 23, 1956, a student demonstration in Budapest began. The protests got attention from the police, who opened fire on the students, sparking the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Stalin’s statue was toppled, and people wanted Erno Gero to step down from power. At two in the morning the following day, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. On the 25th, they opened fire on protesters, and the Central Committee forced Gero to resign, replacing him with Janos Kadar. At this point, Imre Nagy and a group of supporters took over the Hungarian Working People’s Party. Nagy freed Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, among other political prisoners. On November 1, Nagy announced that he was going to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Then, Khrushchev intervened. Soviet tanks took airfields and subdued the Hungarian forces. Nagy was arrested and replaced by Janos Kadar, a Soviet loyalist.

Kadar proceeded to lead an attack on the revolutionaries, imprisoning or killing them. He then declared general amnesty. By the late 1980’s, Kadar’s government was poised to become a Western-style democracy. Kadar was replaced in 1988 by Imre Pozsgay.

Going back a bit, Romania had declared independence from the Ottomans in 1878, following the Russo-Turkish war. The country declared neutrality in World War I, but was eventually pressured into joining the Allies. Surrounded by Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans, most of the country was immediately captured, but the Allied victory resulted in territorial gains. The interwar years were characterized by the larger country they called “Greater Romania”, and in 1938, the first Romanian dictator, King Carol II came to power.

When World War II started, the Soviet Union declared interest in Bessarabia, currently under Romanian control. While Romania initially tried to remain neutral, Soviet aggression led to the country joining the Axis Powers. Territorial losses in the opening year of the war led to Carol II being deposed. He was replaced by Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard, who formed the National Legionary State. Antonescu and friends participated in the Holocaust, and were deposed late in the war by King Michael I, who decided to have the country join the Allies instead.

Three years later, in 1947, Michael was forced out of power by Communists. Soviet occupation resulted in a communist republic governed by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. With the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in 1965, Nicolae Ceausescu became the first President of Romania.

Ceausescu’s regime became increasingly authoritarian throughout the 1970s. In his July Theses speech, Ceausescu aimed to intensify socialist ideology in the country, beginning a Neo-Stalinist type attack on freedom and autonomy.

In December 1989, Ceausescu tried to evict Laszlo Tokes, a Hungarian pastor, from the city of Timisoara. Protests against the move quickly spiraled into a Romanian Revolution against the regime in general. People’s opinion of the government dropped quickly, and when Ceausescu tried to give another speech on the 21st, the audience quickly booed him off the stage, yelling “Timisoara!” Ceausescu took refuge in the Central Committee building with his wife Elena, but the following day, the crowd rushed the building and made it inside. He and his wife barely managed to escape by taking a helicopter off the roof. On Christmas Day, the Ceausescus were arrested and killed.

The Polish People’s Republic was created under the communist Polish United Workers' Party, and the new name was adopted in 1952. Under the Stalinist regime, thousands were tried and executed. The Catholic Church was persecuted after Stalin died, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski was detained, and there was a show trial of the Krakow Curia in January 1953. When the Warsaw Pact formed in 1955, the Polish People’s Republic had the second largest army.

As de-Stalinization started in 1956, riots broke out in Poznan. During the Polish October, the new Polish Party’s First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka liberalized life. This Polish Thaw started the country in the “way to socialism”. During the 1968 political crisis, inspired in part by Prague Spring, Polish opposition set up protests, prompting a crackdown by the authorities.

In the early 1970’s, Poland’s economy was in a good place, but the 1973 oil crisis caused a recession. Edward Gierek, who had replaced Gomulka, tried to help the economy, but he wasn’t successful, and 1976 led to protests against him. In 1978, Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, improving Catholic morale. By 1979, economic growth was tanking and foreign debt was going straight up.

In 1980, the government tried to increase meat prices, but that resulted in general strikes in Lublin. Then, protests at the Gdansk Shipyard started a reaction of strikes that stopped a lot of progress. Workers led by Lech Walesa, a former electrician who had led the strike at the Lenin Shipyard, signed the Gdansk Agreement that ended the strike. Now, a bunch of unionizing movements swept over the country. On September 17, they got together in Gdansk, led by Walesa, and created a new national union organization called Solidarity. In 1981, at the first Solidarity National Congress, Walesa was elected the national chairman of the Union.

In December, the regime began martial law in the country, and ZOMO riot police were deployed to stop Solidarity. The Military Council of National Salvation was put in charge, as a basic appearance of political stability had been attained. When Gorbachev came to power, his reforms helped Poland. Then, the Round Table Negotiations and the election of 1989 led to the fall of communism.

The Round Table Agreement set up local self government, and the legislature (the Sejm) was split based on the new agreement. After some work, Lech Walesa was elected president of the Third Polish Republic in November 1990.

Yugoslavia had been created following the First World War, when it was called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. But they decided that name was too long, and in 1929 it was renamed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was invaded during World War II, and after the war, it was known as the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. A communist regime was put in place.

At the head of the country was the Partisan Josip Broz Tito. Tito took down the Chetnik (opposing party) leader Draa Mihailovic, and he set up the UDBA secret police. Yugoslavia was expelled from Cominform in 1948 following Tito’s notable split with Stalin, and he became the First Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement, which he helped created with Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. Tito signed the Treaty of Vis with Ivan Ubaic, and his British liaison was Fitzroy Maclean. After imprisoning Aloysius Stepinac for helping the Ustashi movement against him, Tito was excommunicated by the pope. In 1974, Tito called himself “President for Life”, promoting “brotherhood and unity” in Yugoslavia.

Tito died in 1980. This led to some internal strife in Yugoslavia, and the country dissolved by 1991, leading to the Yugoslav Wars.

Bulgaria had joined the Axis in 1941 as part of the Tripartite pact, occupying much of the Balkans (Greece, Yugoslavia). However, when the Red Army marched across the border in 1944, Bulgaria severed ties with the Axis and the Communist Party in the country launched a coup and installed a new government led by the Fatherland Front.

By 1946, the monarchy had been abolished, Tsar Simeon II had been exiled, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria became the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. The Communist Party, led by Georgi Dimitrov, became the majority power.

Dimitrov was succeeded on his death in 1949 by Vulko Chervenkov, who wasn’t popular enough to keep hold of power. He was replaced by Todor Zhivkov in 1954, who would remain General Secretary of the party until 1989 (making him the longest serving leader under the Iron Curtain).

Among the political complexities the Bulgarian government had to deal with was the matter of Pirin Macedonia. A Macedonian region which had been ceded to Yugoslavia after the First World War, its fate had been left to the whims of the relationship between Tito and Stalin. Bulgaria and Greece had been fighting over Macedonia for many years, but now Stalin demanded that cultural autonomy must be given to the people of Pirin Macedonia, to create a unified identity within Bulgaria. In the 1960s (well after Tito and Stalin stopped being friends), Zhivkov would declare that Pirin Macedonia was part of Bulgaria, stating that there was no such thing as a Macedonian nation, and all accounts to the contrary had been fabricated by the Yugoslav government.

Zhivkov borrowed ideas from the Soviet Union and China, being inspired by the Great Leap Forward to create the Third Five-Year Plan (1958-1962), which attempted to industrialize and liberalize the country. However, due to nearby turmoil (e.g. the USSR invading Czechoslovakia in 1968), Bulgaria backed off on the aggressive industrial investment and began to stagnate in the 1970s. Zhivkov tried to remedy this in 1981 using the "New Economic Model". For example, Bulgaria supplied 40% of the computers used by the Eastern Bloc economic union (COMECON). The general quality of life stayed low as shelves stayed empty (or filled with mediocre products).

In 1980, the Zhivkov and the Bulgarian government, spurred by Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus and Kenan Evren’s coup in Turkey in 1980, decided to wage a culture war on the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. Turks were forbidden to speak their language, were forced to change their names, and in 1989, many Turks were expelled from Bulgaria (resulting in yet more economic decline due to reduced agricultural output).

Zhivkov’s failure to improve things came to the forefront, and he was replaced with Peter Mladenov in 1989. That only kept the Communists in power for a short time, though, as proper elections were held in 1990, ending the Communist lead in government and renaming the country the Republic of Bulgaria.

I’m going to go a little further than I have in other sections. The Bosnian War took place between 1992–1995, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It came about as a result of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, the Bosnian Serbs, supported by Slobodan Milosovic and his Serb forces, mobilized inside the country and started a war that raged across all of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On one side was the Serb Army of the Republika Srpska (VSR), and on the other was the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH). Also in the mix were the Croats, who wanted to make parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina part of Croatia.

The war was full of fighting, unchecked shelling of populated areas, ethnic cleansing, and mass rape. These atrocities were especially exemplified by the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica Massacre, during which Ratko Mladic’s troops killed over 8,000 men and boys. During the war, Sarajevo was home to Sniper Alley, a major street in the city, where signs reading “PAZI” warned about the dangers inherent in using the road. After the massacres, NATO forces intervened in 1995. The war included Operation Deliberate Force and Operation Deny Flight, and the latter resulted in the Banja Luka incident, in which six Serb attack jets were shot down by American F-16s.

Peace negotiations in Ohio resulted in the Dayton Agreement, which was finalized in November 1995. The treaty that was signed by Alija Izetbegovic, Franjo Tuđman, and Bill Clinton.

For this part, we go all the way back to the first part of the 19th century. Spain and Portugal ruled South America, and in the first quarter of the 1800’s, the wars of independence began.

In 1819, Simon Bolivar came up with a plan to take New Granada by crossing the Andes. He’d previously given his Decree of War to the Death during his Admirable Campaign through Merida. Bolivar aimed to create an army himself and invade Venezuela with the help of Antonio Jose de Sucre. After winning at the Battle of Carabobo, the Battle of Pinchincha, and finally at the Battle of Boyaca, Bolivar created Gran Colombia in northern South America and became its first president. In 1828, an assassination attempt on Bolivar was stopped by his mistress Manuela Saenz, and Bolivar called her “Libertadora del libertador” (liberator of the liberator). At the Guayaquil Conference, Bolivar met with Jose de San Martin and convinced him to retire to France.

When King Joao VI of Portugal left Brazil in 1821, he left behind his son, who became Dom Pedro I of Brazil. He, in turn, abdicated in 1831, leaving behind his young son as the new emperor.

When Pedro II took power, he was only five, so regents ruled until 1840. At this time, there were loads of revolutions and wars, including: the Sabinada, the Ragamuffin War or War of Tatters (recall Garibaldi), the Male Revolt, Cabanagem and Balaida, and others. Then, Pedro started a new parliamentary reign. He passed the Law of Free Birth, and his daughter Isabel passed the Golden Law which abolished slavery. Pedro was ousted in 1889 by a coup led by Deodoro da Fonseca, and a republic was established in Brazil.

The Old Republic lasted from 1889 to 1930, during which important events almost certainly occurred.

After 1930, Getulio Vargas led a new military junta. He was called the “Father of the Poor”, and he set up an Estado Novo in Brazil, inspired by the Estado Novo that Antonio Salazar had set up in Portugal. He replaced the “cafe com leite” (coffee with milk) politics that had dominated the old republic, which had placed a lot of power in the hands of the very rich and particularly alert coffee industry. He created the fake communist “Cohen Plan” to foment hatred of communists, and he supported Plinio Salgado’s far-right political organization until Salgado targeted him in the Pajama Revolt.

Vargas was deposed in 1945 and replaced with Jose Linhares, but he returned, becoming a democratically elected president in 1951. When his bodyguard tried to kill his rival Carlos Lacerda on Rua Tonelero, people called for Vargas’s resignation. He killed himself in 1954 and was replaced by his Vice President Cafe Filho.

Chile’s independence movement began in 1810, following the establishment of a new junta. The new government was led by Jose Miguel Carrera, who ruled with an iron fist. Unhappy about this, Bernardo O’Higgins led a group of rivals that aimed to get full independence. After a loss at Rancagua, he and his friend Jose de San Martin, the “Bolivar of the South”, led the Army of the Andes to victories at Maipu and Chacabuco. O’Higgins served as the second Supreme Director of Chile from 1817 to 1823.

In 1970, Marxist Salvador Allende was elected president. He was part of the new Popular Unity Party, and he defeated Jorge Alessandri to win the election. He dealt with the El Teniente copper mine strike, and he went through the Cuban packages smuggling scandal during which arms were discovered in the packages.

In August 1973, Carlos Prats, a member of Allende’s cabinet, was replaced by Augusto Pinochet. A month later, on September 11, 1973, Pinochet staged a CIA-backed coup against Allende. Allende apparently committed suicide in the presidential palace, La Moneda, and Pinochet seized power in Chile.

Having come to power, Pinochet ordered the assassination of everyone he didn’t like by the Caravan of Death. He arrested Defense Minister Orlando Letelier, imprisoned him for a year, and tortured him; Letelier was eventually assassinated on Pinochet’s orders. Pinochet killed Carlos Prats, utilized the DINA secret police, and he was supported by the Carabineers. He also employed the Chicago Boys, a group of Chilean economists, who had trained at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, and who lowered tariffs and privatized industry following Allende’s Marxist regime. Pinochet led Operation Condor in the 1970’s, suppressing and killing leftists in South America. The campaign was what targeted Orlando Letelier, as well as the Group of Seven. During Operation Condor, the Night of the Pencils resulted in the kidnapping and torture and murder of many students. The operation expanded into the Dirty War under Jorge Videla in Argentina.

Argentina was placed into turmoil in 1943 by a coup led by Pedro Pablo Ramirez, Arturo Rawson, Edelmiro Farrell, and Juan Peron. They marched on the Casa Rosada and demanded that President Castillo step down, which he did, and ended the Infamous Decade of Argentina. Ramirez took power, and broke relations with the Axis. He was replaced by Farrell, and Peron helped manage relations with laborers until he was deposed. Peron was detained on Martin Garcia Island, until he was brought back in 1945 and won elections.

Peron’s second wife was Eva “Evita” Peron, who helped out a lot and then died of cancer in 1952. She did the Rainbow Tour to try and improve relations with Europe. When Evita died, Peron’s third wife, Isabela, was Vice President.

Juan Peron censored lots of things and the number of unionized workers went up. His government was isolationist, and he tried to avoid the Cold War using his “Third Way” policy, which ended up being targeted by the Dirty War mentioned earlier. Peron was supported by the descamisados (shirtless ones). When a group of his Monteneros supporters went to meet him at the airport, they were killed in the Ezeiza massacre. Peron was deposed in 1955 and exiled by Eduardo Lombardi, but he came back to power in 1973.

The British Raj had been in charge in India since 1858. While there had been some more militant movements for independence in Bengal, they were largely failures, so let’s forward a bit to the 20th century.

In the early 20th century, people were getting fed up with the Qing dynasty, and they revolted. The revolutionaries were led by Sun Yat-sen, and the Wuchang Uprising led to the new provisional government of the Republic of China, headquartered in Nanjine. Sun Yat-sen was declared the first president of the new republic.

Sun was succeeded by Yuan Shikai, who was made president because he was able to get Emperor Puyi to step down. Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren formed the new Kuomintang (KMT), China’s nationalist party. Yuan started persecuting the KMT, who ended up winning elections in 1912–1913. The Second Revolution took place when Sun and KMT forces tried to overthrow Yuan, but they failed and Sun ran to Japan while Yuan likely ordered a successful hit on Song Jiaoren. Yuan created the Empire of China in 1915, and he set himself up as emperor. But he died in 1916 right after abdicating, and this led to the Warlord Era of China. China fell apart.

In the 1920s, Sun Yat-sen set up a base in the south to try and unite the broken country. He set up alliances with the USSR and the Communist Party in China (CPC), talking to Mikhail Borodin at a conference in Penang. He delivered a speech talking about the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood. He also put forward the Five-Power Constitution.

On Sun’s death, his protege Chiang Kai-shek took control of the KMT. He’d been the first commander of the KMT Whampoa Military Academy that Sun had set up, and in 1926 he led the Northern Expedition against the Beiyang Government (which had been created by Yuan Shikai) to try and unify the country. Chiang became the president of China. He set up the New Life Movement, and with the help of the Blue Shirts Society, he tried to spread education of a new vaguely fascist set of ideals. During the Xi’an incident in 1936, Chiang was kidnapped by Marshal Zhang Xueliang, and Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek) helped negotiate an end to the incident. Chiang set up a truce with the CPC to fight Japan before the Second World War, but truces between enemies aren’t really made to last.

After Japan was defeated, the civil war started up again between the Nationalist forces and the CPC. The Marshall Mission, in which the Americans tried to help set up a coalition government, failed in 1946 and the war continued. By 1949, the Nationalists were defeated because the CPC were simply better at war, as well as the fact that Chiang had managed to antagonize a good chunk of the country.

Upon defeat, Chiang and the Nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan (called Formosa). Chiang set up a new martial law under the KMT, going after people who criticized him with the help of the Green Gang. This period was known as the White Terror. Chiang died in 1975.

With the KMT out of the way in Taipei, the CPC was free to do whatever they wanted on the mainland. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Mao had become head of the CPC during the Long March, when they had been forced to retreat from the KMT, He’d also joined forces with Zhu De in order to create the Red Army. For the next few years after taking power, he set up his Marxist/Leninist ideals in the country, which would later be detailed in his Little Red Book.

Mao launched the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1956, encouraging people to openly express their ideas. Of course, when he decided that he didn’t like people disagreeing with him, he quickly changed tack and cracked down on dissidents as part of his Anti-Rightist Campaign. In 1957, he launched his Great Leap Forward, trying to turn China from an old-fashioned agrarian state into a modern industrial one. This had the particularly impressive effect of transforming it into neither of the above, and leaving it in famine.

Mao started the Cultural Revolution, in which he tried to get rid of Chinese traditionalism. The main objective was to destroy the Four Olds (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas). Mao issued the “Bombard the Headquarters” document, which incited reactions from the public. The Red Guards attacked many people in the country, killing and pillaging as they saw fit. During the 1968 “Down to the Countryside Movement”, Mao sent a bunch of privileged city kids to go learn from farmers in the middle of nowhere. While the Cultural Revolution was going on, the Gang of Four came to prominence, led by Mao’s last wife, Jiang Qing.

Under Mao, the first Premier of the PRC was Zhou Enlai, who helped out with foreign policy related issues. He had previously helped negotiate Chiang Kai-shek’s release during the Xi’an incident. After Nehru was elected, Zhou talked with him and came up with the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”. He administered China during the Cultural Revolution. John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, didn’t want to shake Zhou Enlai’s hand, but Kissinger smoothed over relations when discussing Nixon’s visit to China.

Mao died in 1976, and a power vacuum was created. The Gang of Four were blamed for the craziness that was the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s appointed successor was Hua Guofeng, but he wasn’t going to stay in power for long. Before long, Deng Xiaoping defeated Hua Guofeng and took control as the Paramount Leader of China from 1978 to 1992. Deng advocated the Four Modernizations, and he created Special Economic Zones to help the economy, pushing for his “one country, two systems” policy.

The death of former general secretary Hu Yaobang in 1989 resulted in a funeral that ended in Tiananmen Square. Students and protesters called for governmental reform and about a million people stood in the square. Initially, the government didn’t do anything, but the protests kept going. Then, Deng decided to use force to resolve the protests, sending in tanks and declaring martial law. Jeff Widener took a picture of a man standing in front of a column of tanks. The incident resulted in really hurting Deng’s popularity, who had actually been doing pretty well up until that point.

In 1945, the Japanese were occupying Cambodia. The young king Norodom Sihanouk declared the existence of the independent Kingdom of Kampuchea, and the Japanese ratified it and the new government set up shop in Phnom Penh. He stayed around until he was ousted by Prime Minister Lon Nol in 1970 while he was in Beijing. He quickly moved to ally Cambodia with the US.

In April of that year, Nixon announced that the Cambodian Incursion of US and South Vietnamese troops had begun. The aim was to destroy the NVA bases in the country. This came as no surprise; the US had been bombing Cambodia for a while at this point. In 1972, Lon Nol became president.

All this while, the Khmer Rouge (CPK) insurgency was growing within Cambodia. It was led by Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, who were backed by North Vietnam. They slowly weaned off Vietnamese dependency and on 1975, they attacked in full. In 117 days, the Khmer Republic fell and Lon Nol surrendered.

Not one to be outdone by Chairman Mao, Pol Pot set up the Super Great Leap Forward, instituting a bunch of purges after declaring that this was Year Zero. The CPK subsequently ordered everyone out to go work on farms, trying to rebuild the country to conform to Pol Pot’s ideas. The farming collectives soon came to be known as the “killing fields”. Pol Pot set up a prison camp codenamed S-21in a high school and killed 20,000 people. In 1979, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia, creating the new People’s Republic of Kampuchea and forcing Pol Pot to the Thai border. He killed himself when his party decided to turn him over to international authorities.

In 1942, Japan was occupying Indonesia. They offered Sukarno some power in order for him to make everyone else in the country support Japan. Sukarno instituted “guided democracy” in the country when he became the first president. He set up the Pancasila (Five Principles) in a 1945 speech. After the 30 September Movement, he was deposed and replaced by Suharto.

Suharto, head of the Golkar Party, came to power in 1967. He was apposed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter, who led the PDI. His New Order government invaded East Timor in Operation Komodo, occupying it and beginning a bloody era that lasted from 1975 until 1999. He was forced to resign in 1998, following a riot at Triskati University and his failure to manage the economy. He was succeeded by Bacharddin Jusuf Habibie, but he only lasted until 1999 because nobody liked him.

In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles was determined to build a new British base in Southeast Asia, as a means to challenge Dutch dominance of navel trade in the area. Following a dispute between Tengku Long and Tengku Rahman over the Sultanate of Johor, Raffles managed to install Tengku Long in power and create a British base in Singapore. He then left Singapore and left Major William Farquhar as governor of the new base. Over the next fifty years, the population of Singapore would grow from 1,000 to 100,000. Tensions with the Dutch rose over the next few years, leading to the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824.

Together with Penang and Malacca, Singapore formed the “Straits Settlements”, administered by the British East India Company until they were established as a Crown Colony in 1867.

During the Second World War, Allied troops retreated to Singapore following the Japanese conquest of the Malay Peninsula. The defenses gave out and Arthur Percival ceded the city to Tomoyuki Yamashita. Japanese occupation was harsh and ruthless. During the Sook Ching Massacre, the Japanese military targeted allegedly “hostile elements” such as Chinese Singaporeans and systematically murdered tens of thousands. There were also significant purges of Indian, Malay, and other people throughout the area.

After the war, the British failure to defend the city led to anti-colonial movements rallying under the slogan Merdeka ("independence"). The Straits Settlements were separated, and Singapore got its own Legislative and Executive Councils as its own Crown Colony.

In 1955, David Marshall was the first Chief Minister of Singapore. The Hock Lee bus riots killed four people and shook trust in the government. The Chinese middle school riots further worsened the state of things for Marshall.

Singapore achieved full self government in 1958 as the result of the State of Singapore Act. The first Prime Minister was Lee Kuan Yew, who represented the People’s Action Party (PAP).

In summer 1963, Singapore, Malaya, Sabah, and Sarawak signed the Malaysia Agreement and established Malaysia. However, racial tensions rose again as non-Malays in Singapore protested discriminatory Malay policies. From Indonesia, Sukarno was stoking the fires by trying to incite Malay violence against Chinese Singaporeans. The 1964 Race Riots resulted in 23 deaths and more injured. Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman expelled Singapore from the federation to stop the violence. Singapore was independent.

Here’s a country with history that comes up sometimes, but often in fragments. So, I’m just going to go over the bits that matter.

During World War II, Operation Dracula was an Allied attack on Burma. This was part of the Burma Campaign, and the operation’s goal was to attack Rangoon and reoccupy Burma. The Japanese had already left, so occupation came swiftly.

The 8888 Uprising took place on August 8, 1988, which lends it its name. Note that until this point, the Burma Socialist Programme Party had reigned supreme under Ne Win. The Way to Socialism had wrecked Burma’s economy, and people were not happy. The goal of the uprising was democracy, and it was violently suppressed, but it did manage to get Ne Win out of power. In 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) took power.

In 1990, elections resulted in a win for the National League for Democracy (NLD), notably including Aung San Suu Kyi. But the military quickly put a stop to that and put her under house arrest. Everyone in the world got mad at them, and Aung San Suu Kyi was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The military put Than Shwe in power in 1992. He eventually released Aung San Suu Kyi.

In the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was an entity rooted in the past, the last remnants of a bygone era of kings and sultans that had peaked with Suleiman the Magnificent. Time had eroded the borders of the empire, resulting in the loss of Greece, Algeria, and Tunisia. Beset on all sides with attackers, the Ottomans built a new alliance out of necessity with Germany. They joined the First World War and managed to hold their own (certainly better than Austria-Hungary did) but were ultimately defeated by the Allied Powers. The Treaty of Sevres broke up the empire and distributed it among Greece, Italy, Britain, and France.

Into these fractious times came Mustafa Kemal, a soldier who had made a name for himself in the Gallipoli Campaign, having been saved from certain death by a pocket watch that had blocked a piece of flying shrapnel. Under him, the Turkish War of Independence raged in the country, aiming to revoke the Treaty of Sevres. By the end of 1922, the new army expelled the occupying forces, overthrew the sultanate, and set up a new parliament. The Treaty of Lausanne, signed by Mustafa Kemal in 1923, resulted in the formation of a new Republic of Turkey. Mustafa Kemal was made first president of the new republic, and he was rewarded with the honorific Ataturk and hailed as the “father of the Turks”.

Ataturk’s philosophy was characterized by the “Six Arrows”: Republicanism, Nationalism, Populism, Revolutionism, Secularism, and Statism. His policies included adoption of the Latin alphabet and the metric system. He prohibited civil servants from wearing the Ottoman fez, a relic that was not welcome in Ataturk’s new republic. Ataturk also established full rights for women politically. When he died in 1938, he designated Ismet Inonu as his successor.

Following the end of the Second World War, the Tehran Declaration allowed Iran to have independence. The young Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, came to power, and his constitutional monarchy started to work well. He had a hands-off role in government, and by 1950 he had created the new Senate, which elected Mohammad Mosaddeq as prime minister in 1953. Mosaddeq nationalized British oil interests, and he forced the shah into exile following an attempted coup by intelligence chief Nematollah Nassiri.

Now, the CIA and MI6, under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt, decided to organize a coup under Fazlollah Zahedi (codenamed Operation Ajax and Operation Boot, respectively). The coup took Mosaddeq out of power, and installed Pahlavi as shah again. Pahlavi introduced the White Revolution, modernizing the country. He was a secular Muslim, and he tried to westernize Iran. His new ideas and reforms didn’t leave him without enemies, and Pahlavi used his SAVAK secret police to crush opposition to his regime.

In 1979, opposition to the shah came to a head in the Islamic Revolution. A huge outpouring of support ushered Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini into power. Khomeini had been saved from execution a few years prior by Hassan Pakravan, a member of SAVAK, whom Khomeini promptly executed because he was a member of SAVAK, even though Pakravan had saved his life. Iran quickly shifted into an Islamic state, replacing a capitalist economy and social structure with a nationalized, heavily regulated one. Khomeini’s ideology was called the “Guardianship of the Jurist”.

The first major event worth noting in Khomeini’s Iran was the Iran Hostage Crisis. When the US admitted the former shah into America for cancer treatment, Iranian students overran the US embassy, taking 52 hostages on November 4, 1979. Carter then launched Operation Eagle Claw to try and rescue the hostages. Helicopters launched from USS Nimitz ran into issues with obscure sand-based weather phenomena called haboobs, in which sand is suspended in the air, and they were forced to abort. The failure of Eagle Claw damaged American reputation across the world. Notably, the Canadian government launched the Canadian Caper to rescue six Americans trapped in Tehran, who had evaded capture with the rest of the embassy. They pretended that they were scouting locations for shooting a scene of a fictional movie called Argo, and Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor helped pull off a successful rescue (watch the Oscar winning movie).

It’s also worth discussing the Iran-Iraq War, which ran from 1980 to 1988. Saddam Hussein decided to invade Iran because of the unstable state it was in as a result of the revolution. This was the war in which the Iran Contra affair took place, and the US ran Operations Earnest Will and Prime Chance during the “Tanker War” phase of the war. During Operation Praying Mantis, the US launched attacks on oil platforms. Iraq authorized the Halabja poison gas attack, which attacked the Kurdish population. A ceasefire was signed in 1988.

Israel gained independence in 1949, signing armistices and ceasefires with friends and neighbors. The Knesset (parliament) was convened and moved to Jerusalem. The first elections resulted in the Socialist-Zionist parties of Mapai and Mapam winning most of the seats. The leader of Mapai was David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister.

Ben-Gurion ordered Operation Magic Carpet, which successfully migrated lots of people out of Yemen. Ben-Gurion also founded Ahdut HaAvoda, which would eventually become the Labour Party. In 1956, he launched the Sinai War when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The Lavon Affair, in which Operation Susannah failed to blame the Muslim Brotherhood for some bombs being planted. The affair resulted in Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon resigning, and Ben-Gurion soon left the party, being succeeded by Moshe Sharett and Levi Eshkol.

The 1967 Six Day War pitted Israel against Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. It was started by Israeli preemptive strikes on airfields in the opposing countries. During the brief war, Israel took the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the West Bank. It was ended by UN Resolution 242, and it led to the Khartoum Resolution, declaring that there would be “no peace, no recognition, and no negotiation”.

In 1969, Eshkol died in office, giving the office to Labour leader Golda Meir, winning 56 of 120 seats in the Knesset. Meir had previously been Foreign Minister under Ben-Gurion and Eshkol. She was the first female prime minister of Israel, and like Thatcher, she was called the “Iron Lady”. During the War of Attrition, the Israelis shot down some Soviet fighters because they were helped Egypt. During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, 11 Israeli team members were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, and they were killed as a result of a failed German rescue. In response, Meir authorized Operation Wrath of God, in which Mossad assassinated people that were involved in the incident.

The Yom Kippur War with Sadat’s Egypt started on October 6, 1973. Syrian and Egyptian forces launched a surprise attack on Israeli troops at Golan Heights and across the Suez Canal (Operation Badr), respectively. Israel hadn’t mobilized, partially because Meir and Moshe Dayan rightly believed that the US wouldn’t help Israel if it instigated a war. Of course, American aid to Israel resulted in an OPEC oil embargo against the US. Other Israeli commanders included David Elazar and Israel Tal. UN Resolutions 338 and 339 called for ending the war. After the war, Kissinger negotiated troop disengagements using “shuttle diplomacy”. Meir was succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin, who was notably assassinated by Yigal Amir.

The Egyptian Republic was declared in June 1953, with Muhammad Naguib as the first president. He was forced to resign the following year and Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power. Nasser had headed the Free Officers Movement that had dethroned King Farouk in the first place. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, leading to the Suez Crisis, and he allied with Syria in the United Arab Republic. Recall that while he was president, Egypt fought in the Six Day War. He also built the Aswan High Dam, which resulted in the creation of Lake Nasser. After he was almost assassinated (recall the Lavon affair), he banned the Muslim Brotherhood, executing Sayyid Qutb.

Nasser died in 1970 and he was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. Sadat launched the Yom Kippur War (October War). His Infitah economic policy wasn’t particularly popular, leading to the Bread Riots. He signed the Camp David Accords with Menachim Begin (with help from Jimmy Carter), winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated by Khalid Islambouli for the same accords and succeeded by Hosni Mubarak.

Menelik II came to power in Ethiopia in 1889 with the death of Yohannes IV at the Battle of Gallabat, after which he declared himself the negus of Shewa. He signed the Treaty of Wuchale, ceding the future land of Eritrea to Italy. Menelik fought the First Italo-Ethiopian War, decisively defeating the Italian forces at the Battle of Adowa. Following the war, a peace at Addis Ababa gave Ethiopia its independence. Menelik died in 1913.

In 1930, Haile Selassie became Emperor on the death of Empress Zauditu, although his real title was “His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God”. When Abba Jifar II of Jimma died, Haile Selassie annexed Jimma into Ethiopia.

World War II led to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Mussolini’s forces occupied Addis Ababa, and while the Emperor tried to get the League of Nations to intervene, he was exiled and Italy formally annexed Ethiopia. The war continued, with the League of Nations recognizing that Ethiopia was part of Italy. Following peace in Europe, Haile Selassie returned to power.

The emperor replaced the Constitution of 1931 with a new Constitution of 1955. He founded the Organization for African Unity in 1963.

In 1974, the aging Haile Selassie was taken out of office and replaced with the Derg, an administrative military council which promptly executed large sections of the Emperor’s government. Haile Selassie was reportedly strangled in his palace the following year.

Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam took control of the Derg, putting some Marxist policies in place, bought and paid for courtesy of the Soviet Union. Many rich people in Ethiopia took offense at this, and the ensuing internal conflict prompted Somalia to invade. Ethiopian forces barely managed to push them back.

The Derg began the Red Terror in 1977, killing thousands of enemies of the communists. Communism was officially adopted in the 1980s, and Mengistu became the first President in 1987. Opposition movements resulted in Mengistu’s fleeing the country to Zimbabwe, where he still lives. Mengistu was convicted of genocide in 2006, having killed hundreds of thousands of people.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down on descent into the Rwandan capital of Kigali, and everyone on the plane died. Habyarimana was the head of the Hutu-led Rwandan government, which had come to power after overthrowing Gregoire Kayibanda. His death prompted genocidal killings against Tutsi opposition to start. The Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militias went around recruiting other Hutus to pick up whatever weapons they could find and help out. Their RTLM broadcast messages telling Hutus to “cut down the tall trees”. One of the first actions taken was when some “cockroaches” were killed in a Polish church in Gikondo.

The UN launched UNAMIR (UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda), and some Belgian soldiers were killed. Force Commander Romeo Dallaire was criticized for inaction, and after the genocide he went to Canada and wrote Shake Hands with the Devil. The diplomatic officer was Jacques Roger Booh Booh. The French tried to intervene in Operation Turquoise, setting up a safe zone (Zone Turquoise).

The genocide ended with Paul Kagame and his RPF taking control of Kigali. The Tanzanian city of Arusha held a criminal tribunal for the genocide.

Uganda got independence from Britain in 1962, and the first Chief Minister was Benedicto Kiwanuka. In 1966, Milton Obote became prime minister and suspended the constitution. On January 25, 1971, Idi Amin, a commander in the army, led a military coup, taking Obote from power and putting himself in his place. He would rule for the next eight years.

Amin set out to kill everyone who opposed him (as is customary for evil dictators). He killed over 300,000 people during his time in office, and when he pushed out all the Indian entrepreneurs from the country during “Africanization”, the economy fell to bits.

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, whom Amin allowed to land at Entebbe airport (the biggest in Uganda). They proceeded to let all the non-Israeli passengers go, and kept the crew and the rest of the passengers. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) put Operation Thunderbolt into effect. Led by Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, commandos secured 102 hostages, resulting in 5 wounded commandos and the death of Netanyahu. Amin proceeded to order the death of many Kenyans in Uganda because Kenya had supported Israel.

When Amin tried to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania in 1978, he started the Uganda-Tanzania War. The war led to the end of his rule, and Amin went into exile, dying in 2003.

Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975. Many different factions worked towards this goal, and their interests were not always aligned. Chief among these independence fighters were the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The FNLA, led by Holden Roberto, were notably instrumental in securing independence.

However, soon after independence, the MPLA gained control of the capital of Luanda with the help of Cuban forces, Agostinho Neto was chosen as the first president of Angola. UNITA aimed to take the capital, resulting in 26 years of civil war. The FNLA played little to no part in the war. Back in the United States, Dick Clark introduced the Clark Amendment to prevent covert military aid to Angola. The civil war did not end until 2002 with the death of Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA.

Apartheid was a South African system of segregation that started in 1948 and stayed around until 1991. It was staunchly advocated by H.F. Verwoerd, who would end up being killed in parliament in 1966. Apartheid party members created Bantustans, which were territories set aside for black residents of the country. The UN declared it a crime against humanity in 1966. Apartheid led to the Sharpeville Massacre, and during the Soweto Uprising, many people including Steve Biko were killed. During the Rivonia Trial, ten members of the African National Congress (ANC) were charged and some were convicted for fighting against the state, essentially.

Among those convicted was the Xhosa ANC leader Nelson Mandela, who was placed in prison on Robben Island for the next 27 years. During the Rivonia Trial, he had said:

Mandela served 27 years of his life sentence, and after being freed, he succeeded F.W. de Klerk as president of South Africa. One of his important acts of unity was presenting the winners' trophy at the Rugby World Cup. He established the Truth and Reconciliation commission. Mandela offered South Africa as a site for the trial of the Lockerbie Bombers (Pan Am Flight 103).