検索キーワード： 著者 "Charles River Editors" すべてのカテゴリー

India has been the location of many different empires throughout its long history. The Indus Valley Civilization was home to one of the world’s first civilizations more than 5,000 years ago, which was followed by the Aryan-Vedic culture and then a host of other kingdoms that flourished across the subcontinent. India has also been the birthplace of many religions. The Vedic religion of the Aryans evolved into the Hindu religion, and Buddhism and Jainism were also born in India. By the Middle Ages, India was home to many different religions and ethnic groups.

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras. What humans commonly refer to as the “Ice Age” is actually a series of fluctuating climate events that have occurred throughout the planet’s history. These ongoing historical phenomena are difficult to conceptualize because of both the time frame involved and the natural process by which they cyclically unfold.

Over the course of his life, Ely Samuel Parker was a Seneca chief, a civil engineer, a close friend and adjutant to General Ulysses S. Grant, an advocate for the Indian peoples, and the first Native American Commissioner of the Department of Indian Affairs. His marriage to a much younger socialite scandalized Washington, and he made a fortune on Wall Street and lost it all. He ended his life in genteel poverty, working for nearly 20 years in an obscure position for the New York City Police Department.

For much of American history, women were second-class citizens in the sense they could not vote or run for office and had few property rights. However, women were often able to overcome social restrictions and forcefully affect the world around them, sometimes nationally. This took a real force of character, determination, and sometimes bravery. Women activists focused on issues such as temperance, women’s property rights, improvident or violent husbands, women’s suffrage, cruelty to animals, concern for child labor, and more. This is the story of five such women.

When scholars study the history of the ancient Near East, several wars that had extremely brutal consequences (at least by modern standards) often stand out. Forced removal of entire populations, sieges that decimated entire cities, and wanton destruction of property were all tactics used by the various peoples of the ancient Near East against each other, but the Assyrians were the first people to make war a science. When the Assyrians are mentioned, images of war and brutality are among the first that come to mind, despite the fact that their culture prospered for nearly 2,000 years.

When England’s King Edward IV fell ill at Easter 1483 after coming back from a fishing trip and died shortly after on April 9, it threw a country that had already suffered a series of wars into a state of chaos. What exactly killed him is unclear, and though some people would later speculate that he had been poisoned, there is every reason to believe that he died of natural causes. Disease was common in medieval England, and doctors lacked much of the medical knowledge now taken for granted.

Throughout the history of warfare, the practice of placing blame on innocent parties in order to justify attacking them has been a constant feature. In the 20th century, this practice began to be commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation. The essence of a false flag scenario is that it is conducted by one party or government and “made to appear as though another party sponsored it".

The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is technically over 70 years old and counting but has its roots in over 2,000 years of history. With so much time and history, the Middle East peace process has become laden with unique, politically sensitive concepts like the right of return, contiguous borders, secure borders, demilitarized zones, and security requirements, with players like the Quartet, Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, the Arab League and Israel.

The Underground Railroad is one of the most taught topics to young schoolchildren, and every American is familiar with the idea of fugitive slaves escaping to Canada and the North with the help of determined abolitionists and even former escaped slaves like Harriet Tubman. There were also slaves who ran and hid out, or who made their own settlements, who were called maroons. Some escapees joined together to establish lasting settlements in inaccessible areas in mountains and swamps, sometimes preferring death rather than being caught and enslaved again. Others hid temporarily.

For the people of the ancient Mediterranean and beyond, the city of Rome had been a symbol of power for centuries, and entering the early 5th century CE, the Eternal City hadn’t been taken by an enemy force since the Gauls had done it about 800 years, an unheard of period of tranquility in a world wracked with almost constant warfare. Thus, when the Visigoths, whom the Romans considered uncultured and inferior, took the city of Rome and sacked it in 410, the world was stunned. It made theologians of the newly Christianized empire question God’s plan on Earth.

In March 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the president to give arms to any nation if it was in America’s national interest. Operation Barbarossa gave the Soviets common cause with the British, and subsequently the Americans, changing the purpose of the Lend-Lease Act. Getting supplies to the Soviets to help them resist the German armies became a strategic imperative, and Iran’s geography of bordering the Persian Gulf to the south and Soviet territory to the north brought Iran to the front and center in the strategic supply effort.

With a lack of formal education and scant financial resources, Cesar Chavez achieved what previous activists could not, negotiating contracts between unionized workers and corporate agribusiness concerns based on work strikes and retail bans against specific products. Where others had failed, Chavez found a national audience for his protests, tipping the balance for the Southwestern farm workers.

Some historians have called the Seven Years’ War the first true world war, and they make a good point. Ultimately, this globally coordinated war involved five continents and at least 29 states and tribal confederacies, with a casualty toll in the millions and the maps forever altered. As part of the Seven Years’ War, the French and Indian War was the last in a long series of colonial conflicts between the French and British and also changed the map in America. At the end of the war, disputed borders were finally settled, and both empires were left reeling from the costs of war.

Since the early days of human warfare, which may date back to the Stone Age, combatants have sought to gain an advantage through the acquisition of secret information. With the growth of technology, a parallel advantage was sought through the application of numerous types of torture. In the 19th century, the concept of manipulation was added to military tactics, an attempt to influence the minds of assassins, double agents, and world leaders alike to act against their natures.

It is believed that the Circassians—the English translation of the Turkish term Cherkess—emerged as a discrete society or entity around the 10th century CE, although there are references to them before this. In fact, the Circassians are believed to be the oldest indigenous people of the North Caucasus and self-identified as Adyghe. Historians believe the first settlers appeared some 300,000 years ago. Nevertheless, the history and culture of Circassia and the Circassians is largely unknown in the English-speaking and wider world outside Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Many important figures in Israeli history played a part in the establishment of the new state, and among the most iconic is the nation’s first female premier, Golda Meir. Known as the “uncrowned queen of Israel” and “Mother Courage”, Meir was an activist for many years, lobbying for a Jewish state in the Mandate of Palestine. She served in numerous capacities before her appointment as prime minister and remains one of the most revered Israeli leaders from the pre-state years through the long-sought dream of a Jewish nation.

When the Battle of Towton took place on Palm Sunday in 1461 near a small village in Yorkshire, it was the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Towton was one of the battles of the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars ravaging England from 1455-1487. These marked the longest period England has been in unrest, surpassing the 12th century civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda (Maud), which lasted 15 years.

After a 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, bus segregation was made illegal on new grounds. With this victory in hand, the Freedom Rides of 1961 began. Organized primarily by the Congress on Racial Equality, the Freedom Rides followed the same guidance that inspired the Montgomery Boycott—nonviolent direct action. The momentum generated by the Freedom Rides and the following activism would lead to the famous March on Washington and eventually the passage of a historic civil rights bill in 1964.

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team was working on the Manhattan Project in America, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945. During this time, J. Robert Oppenheimer emerged as an extraordinary scientific mind in the United States.

The concept of death can be viewed from different perspectives. In general terms, it can be defined as the end of life, but a more spiritual interpretation would describe it as the separation of the soul from the body. Regardless of the definition, death implies change and transformation, even if only on a physical level. The idea of transcendence has served as a source of comfort for humanity that is usually represented in the belief of an afterlife which takes place in another realm.