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History Custom Essays Samples
Free Online Research Papers, College Papers, English Papers, Admission Essays, Thesis, Analyzed Essays, Essay Papers, Term Papers, Coursework Essays, Custom Papers, Non-Plagiarized Essays
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|  Age of Discovery |
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| The so-called Age of Discovery was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which European ships traveled around the world to search for new trading routes and partners to feed burgeoning capitalism in Europe. In the process, Europeans encountered peoples and mapped lands previously unknown to them. Among the most famous explorers of the period were Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Alvares Cabral, John Cabot, Yermak, Juan Ponce de Leon, and Ferdinand Magellan.
The Age of Exploration was rooted in new technologies and ideas growing out of the Renaissance, these included advances in cartography, navigation, and shipbuilding. Many people wanted to find a route to Asia through the west of Europe. The most important development was the invention of first the carrack and then caravel in Iberia. These that were a combination of traditional European and Arab designs were the first ships that could leave the relatively passive Mediterranean and sail safely on the open Atlantic. |
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| Alexander's Place in History |
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| Alexander the Great, King of Macedon 336-323 BC, was arguably the most successful military commander of ancient history, conquering most of the known world before his death. Born in 356 BC in Pella, Macedonia. Alexander is also known in Zoroastrian Middle Persian works such as the Arda Wiraz as "the accursed Alexander" due to his destruction of the Persian Empire and its capital Persepolis. He is also known in Eastern traditions as Dhul-Qarnayn (the two-horned one), apparently due to an image on coins minted during his rule that seemingly depicted him with the two ram's horns of the Egyptian god Ammon. In Iran, north-west India and modern-day Pakistan, he is known as Sikandar-e-Azam (Alexander the Great) and many male children are named Sikandar (or Iskander) after him.
Following the unification of the multiple city-states of ancient Greece under the rule of his father, Philip II of Macedon, (a labor Alexander had to repeat - twice - because the southern Greeks rebelled after Philip's death), Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, including Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Gaza, Egypt, Bactria and Mesopotamia, and extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as the Punjab. Alexander integrated non-Greeks into his army and administration, leading some scholars to credit him with a "policy of fusion." He encouraged marriage between Greeks and non-Greeks, and practiced it himself. After twelve years of constant military campaigning, Alexander died, possibly of malaria, typhoid or a viral encephalitis. His conquests ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and rule over non-Greek areas, a period known as the Hellenistic Age. Alexander himself lived on in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek peoples. Already during his lifetime, and especially after his death, his exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appears as a towering legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles. |
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| Benito Mussolini |
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| Benito Mussolini, the oldest of Alessandro Mussolini's and Rosa Maltoni's three children, was born on July 29, 1883, in Predappio, a village about ten miles from the city of Forli in that region of east-central Italy called Romagna. Predappio was divided into several scattered groups of houses, and each group had its name. The Mussolinis lived in the one that was then called Dovia.
In the early formation of Benito's character four factors are outstanding: the influence of his native Romagna, a land of restlessness and rebellion, once called the Sicily of continental Italy; the ideology of his father, a village blacksmith, atheist, and convinced revolutionary; the middle-class heritage and devout Catholicism of his mother, a gentle, somewhat unbending elementary school teacher; and the distressing poverty of the people around him, shared from time to time by his own family. . .
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| The Founding of Constantinople |
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| On May 11, A. D. 330, on the shores of the Bosphorus, Constantine solemnly dedicated his new capital, Constantinople.
Why did the Emperor, turning his back upon ancient Rome, remove to the East the seat of the monarchy? Not only had Constantine no personal liking for the turbulent pagan city of the Caesars, but he also, and not without good reason, considered it badly placed for meeting the new exigencies with which the Empire was confronted. The Gothic peril on the Danube, the Persian peril in Asia, were imminent; and though the powerful tribes of Illyricum offered admirable resources for defense, Rome was too far away to make use of them for that purpose. Diocletian had realized this, and he too had felt the attraction of the Orient. |
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| Egyptian Religion |
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| Egyptian mythology (or Egyptian religion) is the name for the succession of beliefs held by the people of Egypt until the coming of Christianity and Islam. The timespan involved is nearly three thousand years, and beliefs varied considerably over time. As the leaders of the different groups gained and lost power, so the dominent beliefs merged and mutated. First, Ra and Atum became Atum-Ra, with Ra the dominant of the two, and then Ra became absorbed in his turn by Horus into Ra-Herakty. Ptah, on the other hand, after having become Ptah-Seker, was absorbed into Osiris, becoming Ptah-Seker-Osiris. The goddesses fared no better, with Hathor initially absorbing the details of the other goddesses, but ultimately being absorbed into Isis. Meanwhile, the villains similarly amalgamated, with Set, who was initially a hero, absorbing all the aspects of the other evil gods, which he was doomed to do after having been chosen as the favoured god of the Hyksos.
At the end of this, all that remained, by the time of hellenic influence over Egypt, was the trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and their enemy, Set, as exemplified by the Legend of Osiris and Isis. The trinity had absorbed so many of the prior cults, that each was worhipped at their own cult centre - Abydos for Osiris, Dendara for Isis, and Edfu for Horus. Even by this stage, the amalgamation was continuing, with Osiris all but an aspect of Horus (and vice-versa), heading rapidly towards monotheism. Nethertheless, monotheism had briefly existed before, as, in the 13th century, Akhenaten had attempted to introduce the monotheistic worship of Aten, the sun-disc itself, although it was subsequently rejected.
According to the Turin Royal Canon, ten gods ruled Egypt, each for long (but finite) periods, prior to the First Dynasty: Ptah, Ra, Su, Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth, Ma'at, Horus. |
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| Fertile Crescent |
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| The Fertile Crescent is a region in the Middle East incorporating present-day Israel, West Bank, and Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, south-eastern Turkey and south-western Iran. The term "Fertile Crescent" was coined by University of Chicago archeologist James Henry Breasted.
The Fertile Crescent has an impressive record of past human activity. As well as possessing many sites with the skeletal and cultural remains of both pre-modern and early modern humans (e.g. at Kebara Cave in Israel), later Pleistocene hunter-gatherers and Epipalaeolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers (the Natufians), this area is most famous for its sites related to the origins of agriculture. The western zone around the Jordan and upper Euphrates rivers gave rise to the first known Neolithic farming settlements (referred to as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)), which date to around 9,000 BC (and includes sites such as Jericho). This region, alongside Mesopotamia (which lies to the east of the Fertile Crescent, between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates), also saw the emergence of early complex societies during the succeeding Bronze Age. There is also early evidence from this region for writing, and the formation of state-level societies. This has earned the region the nickname "The Cradle of Civilization."
Since the Bronze Age, the region's natural fertility has been greatly extended by irrigation works, upon which much of its agricultural production continues to depend. The last two millennia have seen repeated cycles of decline and recovery as past works have fallen into disrepair through the replacement of states, to be replaced under their successors. Another ongoing problem has been salination - the seepage of salt water into irrigated farmland.
As crucial as rivers were to the rise of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, they were not the only factor in the area's precocity. The Fertile Crescent had a climate which encouraged the evolution of many annual plants, which produce more edible seeds than perennials, and the region's dramatic variety of elevation gave rise to many species of edible plants for early experiments in cultivation. Most importantly, the Fertile Crescent possessed the wild progenitors of the eight Neolithic founder crops important in early agriculture (i.e. wild progenitors to emmer, einkorn, barley, flax, chick pea, pea, lentil, bitter vetch), and four of the five most important species of domesticated animals - cows, goats, sheep, and pigs - and the fifth species, the horse, lived nearby.
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| Greco-Persian Wars |
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| The Greco-Persian Wars or Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Greek world and the Persian Empire that started about 500 BC and lasted until 448 BC.
At the end of the 6th century BC, Darius the Great ruled over an immense realm, from Western China to Eastern Europe. In 513 BC Darius for the first time conquered Thrace and Macedonia. Macedonian king Alexander I became his vassal. But the conquest of Asia Minor (546 BC) left the Ionian Greeks under Persian rule, while the other Greeks were free, a state of affairs that was going to cause trouble sooner or later. Persian satraps (governors) of Asia Minor installed tyrants in most of Ionian cities and forced Greeks to pay taxes for the "King of Kings".
In 499 BC, instigated by Aristagoras in Miletus, the Ionian Revolt broke out; Ionian cities threw out the "tyrants" that the Persians had set over them, formed a league, and applied for help from the other Greeks. Athens sent twenty ships and Eretria five, and the fleet helped spread rebellion all along the coast. In 498 BC the Greeks captured and burnt Sardis, thereby requiring a Persian response in the form of an invasion. The Greek fleet was crushed at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC, and the Ionian cities sacked, although they were permitted to have democratic governments afterwards.
In 492 BC, an army commanded by Darius's son-in-law Mardonius overran Thrace and Macedonia, followed in 490 BC by the punitive expedition of Datis and Artaphernes. The islands of the Cyclades surrendered, Eretria was captured, and the expedition landed in Attica near Marathon. Phidippides got the message for help to Sparta in record time, but in the end the Athenians and Plataeans alone defeated the Persians in the battle of Marathon. |
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| History of Babylonia |
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| Babylonia was an ancient state in Mesopotamia (in modern Iraq), combining the territories of Sumer and Akkad. Its capital was Babylon. The earliest mention of Babylon can be found in a tablet of the reign of Sargon of Akkad, dating back to the 23rd century BC.
During the first centuries of the "Old Babylonian" period (that followed the Sumerian revival under Ur-III), kings and people in high position often had Amorite names, and supreme power rested at Isin.
A constant intercourse was maintained between Babylonia and the West - with Babylonian officials and troops passing to Syria and Canaan, while "Amorite" colonists were established in Babylonia for the purposes of trade. One of these Amorites, Abi-ramu or Abram by name, is the father of a witness to a deed dated in the reign of Hammurabi's grandfather.
The city of Babylon was given hegemony over Mesopotamia by their sixth ruler, Hammurabi (1780–1750 BC; dates highly uncertain). He was a very efficient ruler, giving the region stability after turbulent times, and transforming it into the central power of Mesopotamia.
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| New Spain |
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| New Spain was the name given to one of the viceroy-ruled territories of the Spanish Empire from 1525 to 1821.
New Spain was ruled by a Mexico City-based viceroy appointed by the Spanish monarch.
New Spain's territory included what is now Mexico and Central America (as far as the southern border of Costa Rica), and nearly all of the southwest United States, including all or parts of the modern-day U.S. states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
New Spain was organized into several subdivisions, including Nueva Extremadura, Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya and Nuevo Santander, as well as the Captaincies General of Guatemala, Cuba and Santo Domingo.
The northern boundary of New Spain remained undefined until the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. In 1821, Spain lost most of its colonies in North America, except for Cuba and Puerto Rico, when it recognized the independence of Mexico.
The Philippines was administered as a colony from New Spain between 1565 to 1821. It remained a possession of the Spanish crown until the Spanish-American War. |
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| Sparta |
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| Sparta was an ancient city in Greece, the capital of Laconia and the most powerful state of the Peloponnesus. Tradition relates that Sparta was founded by Lacedaemon, son of Zeus and Taygete, who called the city after his wife, the daughter of Eurotas. But Amyclae and Therapne (Therapnae) seem to have been in early times of greater importance than Sparta, the former a Minoan foundation a few miles to the south of Sparta, the latter probably the Achaean capital of Laconia and the seat of Menelaus, Agamemnon's younger brother. Eighty years after the Trojan War, according to the traditional chronology, the Dorian migration took place. A band of Dorians united with a body of Aetolians to cross the Corinthian Gulf and invade the Peloponnese from the northwest.
Sparta was the main power in ancient Greece before the rise of Athens after the Persian Wars. Initially, Sparta and Athens were reluctant allies, but soon became rivals. The second and third conflicts between the two states, which resulted in the dismantling of the Athenian Empire, is generally known as the Peloponnesian War. Spartan attempts to take over the Athenian role of 'guardian of Hellenism' ended in failure, and the first ever defeat of a Spartan hoplite army at full strength at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. By the time of the rise of Alexander the Great, Sparta was a shadow of its former self, and was eventually forced into the Achaean League.
Spartans continued their way of life even after the Roman conquest of Greece. The city became something of a "tourist trap" for the Roman elite who came to observe the "unusual" Spartan people. Following the disaster that befell the Roman Imperial Army at the Battle of Adrianople, Spartan phalanges met and defeated a force of raiding Visigoths in battle. This is considered the last noteworthy deed of the Spartans. |
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