Industrial Workers Of The World

Industrial Workers of the World

In the history of U.S. labor, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) has no equal inward its revolutionary spirit, its vibrant proletarian together with egalitarian culture, together with its commitment to fighting the shape struggle. Between its founding yesteryear working-class militants inward 1905 together with its majority persecution after World War I, the IWW engaged inward hundreds of spectacular strikes from the timberlands of the Pacific Northwest to the cloth mills of New England.

For over a decade, the IWW was the most feared project spousal human relationship inward the country, making it the target of an extraordinary bird of repression from Pinkertons, vigilantes, police, together with militias, or what the Wobblies exactly called the “Iron Heel.” “There tin sack last no peace,” states the IWW’s founding document, “so long equally hunger together with desire are constitute with millions of working people together with the few, who brand upward the employing class, bring all the skilful things of life” (Kornbluh).

Attacked yesteryear employers, demonized yesteryear political leaders, together with depicted inward the capitalist press equally bomb-throwing together with un-American aliens, the IWW may bring been the most conspired against together with conspiratorially minded U.S. social displace of the early on twentieth century.

There are many reasons why the U.S. ruling classes saw the IWW equally such a threat. Broadly syndicalist together with socialist inward ideology, the IWW was dedicated to edifice “One Big Union” of all working people who would occupation the revolutionary “General Strike” to overthrow capitalism together with abolish the wage system. The IWW built its membership out of workers that most unions believed were unorganizable, including itinerant workers, tramps together with hoboes, lumberjacks, miners, harvest workers, together with mill women.


Unique with U.S. unions at the time, the IWW proudly organized men, women, together with fifty-fifty children of every race, nation, together with linguistic communication without prejudice. The IWW imagined itself equally the “fighting scheme of the working class,” together with resolutely refused to construct permanent spousal human relationship structures that could move coopted or bureaucratic together with thereby lose its revolutionary spirit.

Instead, the Wobblies offered their organizational talents during strikes together with taught workers how to organize, brand demands, together with win concessions for themselves. The Wobblies wrote songs together with poems of agitation, including the project classic “Solidarity Forever.” Their many newspapers were filled with political cartoons together with published inward dozens of languages.

IWW printing houses were famous for producing inflammatory pamphlets on sabotage together with revolutionary strategy, equally good equally thousands of stickers together with buttons known equally “silent agitators” emblazoned with slogans similar “Joint the IWW together with Fire Your Boss,” “Labor Is Entitled to All it Creates,” “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All,” together with “Bum Work for Bum Pay.”

The Wobblies also produced roughly of the most charismatic together with committed leaders inward the history of the U.S. Left, including the giant, one-eyed William “Big Bill” Haywood, the “Rebel Girl” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Eugene V. Debs, together with Ralph Chaplin.

In short, the IWW inculcated the fiercest radicalism inward sectors of the industrial working shape that were 1 time the most exploited together with degraded inward the country, thereby posing a straight threat to the profits of roughly of the country’s richest together with most corrupt corporations.

Choosing to brand its stand upward alone on the economical front, the IWW to a greater extent than oftentimes than non saw elections equally futile together with political institutions equally coconspirators with capitalism. Wobbly leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn argued that the province was exactly “the slugging commission of the ruling class” together with non a existent republic (Dubofsky).

“No Socialist tin sack last a law abiding citizen,” proclaimed “Big Bill” Haywood, commenting on the capitalist nature of the United States; “when nosotros come upward together together with are of a mutual mind, together with the occupation of our minds is to overthrow the capitalist system, nosotros move conspirators together with thus against the U.S. government” (Preston).

Though Haywood was beingness critical of the biases of province ability with this statement, most political together with industrial elites did regard the IWW equally a subversive “conspiracy” that was out to undermine property, decency, together with law together with order.

Where the government, business, together with press used violence to eradicate the Wobbly “conspiracy,” the IWW defended itself with accusations of a “frameup,” sparking an ongoing rhetorical, legal, together with political shape struggle over the pregnant of “conspiracy.” Committed to nonviolent direct-action protest, Wobbly civil-disobedience oftentimes generated violence inward return.

During major strikes together with confrontations, Wobbly leaders were repeatedly arrested together with charged with the law-breaking of “conspiracy.” The showtime major case began inward 1906 when Big Bill Haywood together with 2 others leaders of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) were tried inward Idaho for conspiracy inward the murder of the quondam governor.

Under the administration of infamous Pinkerton James McParlain, Big Bill together with his comrades were kidnapped inward Colorado together with illegally extradited to Idaho to stand upward case for their lives. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 massive publicity sweat eventually “broke the conspiracy” together with Haywood was acquitted.

During the IWW’s “free-speech campaigns” inward Spokane, Fresno, San Diego, together with elsewhere, Wobbly activists were met with majority arrests, police line brutality, together with vigilante violence to preclude their constitutional correct to concord open-air meetings. During the Lawrence, Massachusetts, “Bread together with Roses” boom of 1912, cloth mill owners were position on case for planting a bomb that they intended to blame on the IWW.

In 1915, Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill was executed inward Utah inward what many believe was a conspiracy to frame a poetic vocalism of proletarian revolution. More thus than whatever other spousal human relationship inward the United States, Wobbly history is amount of such examples.

When the U.S. began to “prepare” for its entry into World War I, the repression of the IWW intensified. Teddy Roosevelt attacked the IWW equally disloyal together with pro-German, claiming that “every district where the IWW starts rioting should last placed nether martial law together with cleaned upward yesteryear military machine methods” (Dubofsky). Congressmen together with concern leaders denounced the IWW equally “Imperial William’s Warriors” or the “I Won’t Work” together with passed novel antisedition laws to quash dissent during wartime.

Although the IWW membership was separate over back upward for the war, its newspapers together with magazines were banned from the post service together with hundreds of Wobblies were persecuted for leading strikes, making speeches, or carrying membership cards. Frank Little, a militant Wobbly leader together with opponent of U.S. interest inward World War I, was lynched during a boom inward Butte, Montana, yesteryear a gang of masked vigilantes who were most probable hired yesteryear the copper-mine owners.

Beginning inward 1917, the Justice Department unleashed its newly constituted federal police line powers against the national leadership of the IWW, leading to the arrests of over 2,000 Wobblies on charges of conspiring to obstruct the state of war effort. Most were convicted of violating wartime antisedition laws (well after the state of war was over), together with sentenced to long prison theatre terms.

Many years later, 1 of the indicted Wobbly leaders from Chicago had this to say close the trial: “After nosotros had heard the instance for the prosecution nosotros became certainly that a existent accuse of conspiracy had been proven—but non against us. We were certainly that the existent conspirators were the ones who were trying the alleged conspirators. The authorities itself had planned the conspiracy, together with nosotros were its victims” (Brazier).

During the postwar carmine scare, 1 incident inward detail marked the violent destination of the IWW. On Armistice Day 1919, inward the lumber town of Centralia, Washington, several community leaders together with members of the American Legion carried out a bloody onslaught on the local IWW hall. Determined to defend themselves against the mob’s assault, the Wobblies engaged the Legionnaires inward a violent gun battle that left several men on both sides dead.

One Wobbly, Wesley Everest, who was captured inward his World War I soldier’s uniform, was after dragged from his prison theatre jail cellular telephone nether embrace of nighttime together with lynched yesteryear a mob. This outcome is widely known inward Wobbly literature equally the “Centralia Conspiracy.”

Wu Sangui (Wu San-kuei) - Chinese General

Wu Sangui (Wu San-kuei) - Chinese General

Wu Sangui was the commander of a powerful Ming army stationed at Sanhaiguan (Sanhaikuan), the pass of the Great Wall of China at its eastern terminus.

In 1644, faced with a rebel army that had captured Beijing (Peking), and the last Ming emperor dead from suicide, he opened the pass and welcomed the Manchu army under Prince Dorgon into northern China; together they freed Beijing of the rebels. The result was the creation of the Qing (Ch’ing) (Manchu) dynasty in China.

Wu Sangui was raised in Liaoxi (Liaohsi) in Manchuria, the son of a general. In 1644, his retired father and family were living in Beijing while he was stationed in southern Manchuria at the head of 80,000 troops.


In April, he received orders to move his troops 100 miles south to Shanhaiguan (Shan-hai Kuan), the easternmost pass of the Great Wall that separated northeastern China from Manchuria, so that he could be in better position to relieve Beijing from threatening rebels.

This move left all Manchuria, to the rapidly expanding Manchus. At the end of April, he received further orders to march to defend Beijing against the rebel forces of Li Zicheng (Li Tzu-ch’eng), but the city had fallen before he could reach it and he retreated to Sanhaiguan to await further orders.

Meanwhile the last Ming emperor had committed suicide, and Wu’s family had been taken prisoner. The rebel leader then forced the elder Wu to persuade his son to surrender, and when he refused, all the Wu family were tortured and killed.

Trapped between two dangers, the rebel army advancing from the south and the Manchus moving in the north, Wu negotiated with the Manchus, who had been Ming vassals for over 200 years. Prince Dorgon, regent for the boy Manchu ruler Fulin (Fu-lin), accepted Wu’s offer jointly to rid the rebels.

Li Zicheng’s army was no match for the coalition, and he fled Beijing for Sha’anxi (Shensi) province after an orgy of killing, burning, and looting. While the people of Beijing expected Wu to restore the Ming dynasty, what they got was Prince Dorgon, who promptly announced the Manchus as saviors of the people against the bandits and proclaimed the establishment of the Qing dynasty on behalf of his young nephew.

Wu’s forces destroyed the remnant rebels in 1645 and he was rewarded with the title Prince Pacifier of the West and after serving in Shaanxi and Sichuan (Szechuan) for several years, he was sent to Yunnan province as hereditary governor with full civil and military powers.

One of his sons was married to a daughter of Manchu emperor Shunzi (Shun-chih). A Ming pretender had earlier established himself in Yunnan in 1656. Wu set out to destroy his power in Yunnan, finally chasing him into Burma, capturing him and his court, and killing him and his son.

Fearing the power and ambition of three Chinese generals who had helped establish Manchu power in 1644 (called the Three Feudatories because they had been granted hereditary fiefs in southern China) and suspicious of Wu, Emperor Kangxi (K’ang-hsi) ordered all three to resign in 1673.

Wu responded by declaring himself emperor of a new Zhou (Chou) dynasty in 1674 and began an offensive that pushed northward to the Yangzi (Yangtze) valley, winning many adherents. The tide turned in 1677, when the other two feudatories surrendered. Wu died of dysentery in 1678, leaving his throne to a young grandson who committed suicide in 1681 as his movement crumbled.

Wu Sangui left a mixed legacy. Ming loyalists regard him as a traitor because the Manchus could not have captured power in 1644 without him. His motivation was personal, and probably he did not understand the consequences of his action. By the time he rebelled, he was old and Qing power was established under a vigorous young Kangxi emperor.

Mongke Khan - Mongol Leader

Mongke Khan - Mongol Leader

Mongke Khan was the eldest son of Tului Khan (fourth son of Genghis Khan) and Sorghaghtani Beki and fourth khaghan or grand khan of the Mongol empire. He was a famous warrior and commander and was also noted for his devotion to the Mongol way of life. He had served on the campaign in eastern Europe under his cousin Batu Khan’s leadership and gained the latter’s goodwill.

The good relations between Batu’s (leader of the Golden Horde) and Tului’s families were reinforced when Ogotai Khan’s son and successor Guyuk Khaghan (r. 1246–48) planned to ambush Batu, and Mongke’s mother secretly warned Batu of the plot, even though nothing came of it because Guyuk soon died.

In the struggle among the grandsons of Genghis Khan to be his successor, Batu successfully sabotaged regent Oghul Khaimish’s (Guyuk’s widow) attempt to have the Mongol council elect one of her sons the next khaghan.


Batu was not interested in being khaghan, but as the descendant of the eldest son of Genghis, he wanted the role of kingmaker and was successful in having Mongke elected the fourth khaghan in 1251.

Mongke immediately consolidated his position by ruthlessly purging and killing his cousins and other relatives from the Ogotai and Chagatai (Genghis’s second son) branches of the family and their supporters.

Anticipating his election, Mongke established a shadow government. Thus he was able to move quickly to fulfill his grandfather’s mandate to conquer the world. Ruling from Karakorum in Mongolia when not on the move, Mongke relied on Mongols in top positions in his government, assisted by people from the conquered ethnic groups.

He made important reforms needed to mobilize resources and manpower by unifying the tax collection system, stopping many abuses, and rebuilding the economies in some already conquered lands. Starting in 1252 he began a census of the peoples and resources of his lands from China to Iraq to assess taxes, control resources, and identify skilled craftsmen.

Mongol Empire during the reign of Mongke Khan

In 1252 Mongke began a three-pronged campaign. One brother, Hulagu Khan, commanded an army that headed west, successfully targeting Kashmir, the Assassins in the Caucasus, Iran, and the Abbasid Caliphate, and taking Baghdad in 1258.

A relative from the Golden Horde headed for Korea, subduing it in 1259. Another brother, Kubilai Khan, set out to conquer the Nanchao or Dali (T’a-li) kingdom located in modern Yunnan Province in southwestern China, securing its surrender in 1253.

His youngest brother, Arik Boke, remained in Mongolia. In 1256 Mongke announced his goal of conquering the Southern Song (Sung) in which he would take personal command with a threepronged attack from the north, west, and south.

In the midst of the campaign, Mongke died in August 1256, of either wounds or dysentery. Mongke’s death gave the Southern Song a 20-year reprieve because Kubilai immediately halted the campaign to secure his succession as khaghan.

The ensuing civil war between Kubilai and his brother Arik Boke involved his other brother, Hulagu, and various cousins. The Mongol empire reached its apogee under Mongke and would never recover from the succession crisis.

Natives of North America

Natives of North America

Perhaps no other group in human history has experienced as extreme a change in its circumstances as did the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere between 1450 and 1750.

The so-called Columbian exchange, set off by Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage from Spain, completely altered the ecology, economy, and web of social relationships among the diverse peoples that Columbus (inaccurately) named “Indians.”

The people who populated North and South America between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago crossed what was then a land bridge between Siberia and modern Alaska and gradually settled the hemisphere.


When a worldwide Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, the land route between Asia and the Americas disappeared. By the time of Columbus’s first voyage, historians and anthropologists have estimated that the hemispheric population stood between 10 million and 75 million, most living in Central and South America.

The peoples of North America were diverse in almost every possible way except biologically. Experts argue about the extent of North America’s precontact population—the range is 1 million to 18 million—but most agree that populations began declining several hundred years before Europeans showed up.

By 1450, some large Indian communities in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and middle Mississippi Valley had vanished or dispersed, abandoning sophisticated buildings and artifacts. Factors that have been proposed to explain these declines include climate change, warfare, and disease.

By 1450, there were dozens of tribal groups and alliances speaking diverse languages and following very different religious and social customs. There were some commonalities: Most Indians were animists, believing in the spiritual power of their natural surroundings.

They devised elaborate rituals to placate these spirits, especially those of animals they had killed. In many areas human burials were placed in elaborate and extensive earthen mounds. Most tribes respected shamans (healers) and believed that a Great Spirit oversaw the natural world.

Because tribes were likely to move often in search of better land or more abundant game—or to avoid other hostile tribes—property ownership in the European sense was all but unknown. Archaeologists have found abundant evidence of trade routes that spanned the continent, bringing tribes together in the process of tukar barang and exchange.

In most North American tribes, women were in charge of agricultural production, while men hunted for game. Maize (corn), first cultivated in Mexico, was by the time of contact a basic crop in much of North America.

Squash and beans were also staples of most tribes’ diets. While by no means environmentalists in any modern sense, most North American tribes were well adapted to their surroundings and were often helpful to inexperienced Europeans.

For example, natives taught French explorers how to build lightweight birchbark canoes to travel where their clunky wooden ships were useless. Others helped Europeans identify strange plants and animals, learning which were edible and which poisonous.

Most famously, Squanto, a Patuxet who had been kidnapped by an English slave trader in 1614, returned to America in time to teach the Pilgrims how to fish and grow corn, keeping them alive to hold a Thanksgiving in 1621.

Warfare was a constant among various Indian groups both before and after European contact. Early on, some tribal groups welcomed alliances with Europeans as a way to overpower their traditional rivals, in part by acquiring the foreigners’ goods and technologies, especially their superior weapons.

But as the trickle of Europeans became a flood, especially in British-claimed regions, some tribes forged alliances with traditional friends and even enemies to counter European threats to Indian survival.

For example, Algonquian chief Powhatan, head of a strong confederacy, at first welcomed Jamestown settlers, even allowing his daughter, Pocahontas, to marry Englishman John Rolfe.

But in 1622, Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough, now leader of the Powhatan Confederacy, launched a surprise attack on settlers, killing more than three hundred of them and capturing women and children. Ultimately, the Virginians rallied, using trickery and even poison to reclaim their holdings.

In this early war, as in later conflicts, tribes were responding to growing white populations. Whites were no longer perceived simply as traders who would soon move on; they had become settlers using—and claiming as their own—traditional tribal lands.

Disease did even more damage than European land grabs and weapons of war. Because Indians were genetically very similar, and because they had been isolated in the New World for many centuries, they were at the mercy of pathogens carried by the invaders.

The worst of these was smallpox, with measles and influenza also sowing death. These diseases killed Europeans, too, but ravaged the Indian population. Long before germs were known to cause disease, Europeans praised God for smiting Indian enemies, thus making it easier to colonize America.

Some Europeans “assisted” this process by purposely distributing to Indians smallpox-infected blankets and other tainted goods. Smallpox epidemics could and did change the course of battles and negotiations between natives and Europeans.

Southwest

Descendants of the Anasazi, whose complex civilization came to a puzzling end in about 1300 c.e., the Pueblo Indians, including Hopi and Zuni, for centuries had lived in settled agricultural communities in today’s southwestern United States.

The Spanish, who had already made a fortune exploiting Central and South America, in the 17th century also began aggressively exploring the southern reaches of North America, with terrible consequences for the native population. In 1598, Juan de Oñate marched four hundred soldiers, priests, and colonists into New Mexico, killing almost half the residents of the cliff city of Acoma and forcing most of the rest into slavery.

In 1680, Popé, a Pueblo religious leader who had been punished for rejecting Franciscan priests’ attempts to convert him, led the Pueblo Revolt, the most successful native retaliation in this masa of European occupation.

Indian ranks had thinned through disease and compelled labor, but they still outnumbered the Spanish colony of about three thousand. The Pueblo peoples spoke several different languages, yet they managed to unite, with the help of traditionally hostile Apache, to expel the Spaniards and destroy symbols of Catholicism.

Although internal native strife, including raids by Apache and Navajo enemies, soon resumed, and the Spanish retook New Mexico in 1692, the Pueblo were treated with greater respect, becoming one of the few tribal groupings in North America to mostly retain ancestral homelands.

Southeast and Florida

In 1513, Hernán Ponce de León invaded Florida in search of slaves, wealth, and promises of eternal youth but was repulsed by local Calusa Indians. More sustained and far-ranging efforts led by Hernando De Soto and others in the 1540s explored the Gulf coast and penetrated as far as the Great Plains. Not until 1565 did King Philip II authorize what was essentially a Florida military base to deter British, French, and Dutch piracy of Spanish gold.

In the process, the Spanish massacred a tiny colony of refugee French Huguenots and built a fort at St. Augustine, the oldest U.S. site continuously peopled by Europeans. Efforts to convert the local Guale tribe sparked an uprising in 1597. The tiny Spanish colony put down the uprising in 1602 but never attracted more than a few thousand settlers.

In other sections of the Southeast, a confederacy among four tribes—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek—preceded the European invasion. They would be tested by European incursions that forced these tribes to relocate, sometimes competing among themselves for territory.

By 1745, the Cherokee were allied with the British in their effort to contain France and Spain, focusing on lands between Florida and the recently established colony of Georgia. In this period, Creek began migrating to Florida under pressure from both Europeans and members of their own tribe. In the 19th century, they would call themselves Seminole.

British and French American Alliances

The five (later six) tribes that became the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) centered in what became New York State, had also, prior to European contact, initiated a Great League of Peace in response to destructive warfare among tribes.

These “people of the longhouse” included the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Oneida tribes, joined in the early 1700s by Carolina’s Tuscarora. The Iroquois were not nomadic but lived in large villages. Their longhouses were wood and bark structures that might be 400 feet long and accommodated many family groups.

Skilled negotiators, the tribes individually and confederacy as a whole for a time held their own against Dutch, British, and French claims and demands. Some among the Iroquois hoped to remain neutral, but they soon were edging toward the British.

By the 1670s, the Iroquois and British had pledged mutual friendship. After a sneak attack by French forces in 1687, the Five Nations retaliated by attacking New France settlements on behalf of British objectives in what was known in North America as King William’s War.

They fought both the French and France’s Indian allies, including the Huron and Abenaki and Algonquian people of the Great Lakes region. Both groups of Indians inflicted and suffered terrible casualties; by 1701, the Iroquois were promising their people to remain neutral in future European conflicts.

By 1750, eastern and Great Lakes Indians of many tribes, displaced by white settlement, were seeking new lands in the Ohio Valley, on the frontier between British and French territorial claims and control.

The Iroquois, as well as Shawnee, Delaware, Cherokee, and Chickasaw, were all trying to use this no-man’s-land to enhance trade and perhaps prevent both the British and French from expanding even farther into the continent.

In 1749, Virginia awarded some of its favored citizens development rights to almost 8,000 square miles of the Ohio Valley. The ensuing French and Indian wars would set off a series of events that ultimately made hundreds of Native tribes—survivors of 258 years of warfare, land loss, and disease—strangers in their own land.

Council of Trent

Council of Trent

The Council of Trent was the longest, and one of the most significant, of the General Councils of the Catholic Church. It met at Trent in northern Italy between 1545 and 1563 (with significant interruptions).

While there had been calls on many sides for a reforming council of the church to meet since the 15th century, this call took on new urgency with the advent of the Protestant Reformation. The Emperor Charles V, in his negotiations with the Protestant princes of Germany, had promised to work for a council, which they demanded should be held in German territory.

The pope and many of the cardinals resisted holding such a meeting, arguing that the Protestants would not accede to its decisions. Moreover they tended to be suspicious of the whole idea of a council, seeing it as a threat to papal authority.


When Paul III (r. 1534–49) became pope, he began in earnest to prepare for a council. In 1536, he commissioned a group including Cardinals Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542), Reginald Pole (1500–58), Gian Pietro Carafa (1476–1559), and Jacopo Sadoleto (1477–1547) to study the problems confronting the church.

Their report, the Consilium de emendanda ecclesiae, presented in 1537, advised reform of the papal curia, better discipline for bishops, and reform of the religious orders. The pope proposed holding the council at Mantua, and issued a bull summoning it to meet there in 1537. This proved impossible, owing to objections by the duke of Mantua, and the council was summoned instead to Vicenza in 1538.

King Francis I of France, as well as the Protestant princes of Germany, objected to this proposal, and only six bishops traveled to Vicenza. The pope therefore postponed the council once again and entered into negotiations with the French king and the emperor.

Trent was selected as the location for the council because while it was in Italy and easily accessible to Rome, it was in Imperial territory, meeting the objections of both the French and German rulers to a council too much subject to papal influence.

War between France and the Empire delayed the opening of the council until after peace was concluded in 1544, when Francis I also promised to allow French bishops to attend the council. The bull Laetare Jerusalem, issued November 19, 1544, called the council to meet at Trent on March 15 (Laetare Sunday) 1545.

The opening was delayed, however, and the council was not actually opened until December 13, 1545 (Gaudete Sunday). Cardinal Pole was one of the three legates who served as presidents for the first sessions, together with Cardinal Gian Maria del Monte (1487–1555) and Cardinal Marcello Cervini (1501–55).

The first session of the council included about 40 bishops and heads of religious orders, who would be the voting members, and about 50 theologians. Most of the bishops were from Italy and Spain; in spite of the king’s earlier promise, French bishops were prevented from attending.

The delegates decided to deal with decrees concerning the reform of the church’s government and practices at the same time as those concerning doctrine. Although 25 formal sessions were held during the life of the council, only 12 of them produced substantive decrees, the rest being concerned only with procedure.

During the first period of the council, most of the influential theologians were members of the Dominican order, in particular Domingo de Soto (1494–1560), as well as the general of the Augustinians, Girolamo Seripando (1493–1563). The decrees issued during these sessions concerned the definition of the canon of Scripture, original sin, justification, and the sacraments, in particular baptism and confirmation.

The council defined the canon of Scripture as containing the Deuterocanonical books rejected by Protestants and declared that the church recognized both the written Scriptures and unwritten traditions.

With respect to justification, the council condemned both the semi-Pelagianism of some late medieval Scholastics and the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone, upholding the necessity for the cooperation of free will and charity.

Disciplinary decrees passed during this time mandated preaching by all bishops and other clergy with pastoral offices, demanded that bishops reside in their dioceses, and forbade the holding of more than one office involving pastoral care by the same person.

In early 1547, a plague broke out in Trent, and on March 8, the council voted to move to Bologna in the Papal States. The emperor and a number of bishops supporting him refused to agree to this move, and the sessions held in Bologna produced no decrees. The council was suspended on September 14, 1547, and was still awaiting disposition when Paul III died on November 10, 1549.

Cardinal Del Monte, who had presided over the council, was elected pope as Julius III, and on November 14, 1550, he issued a bull recalling the council. The council resumed at Trent on May 1, 1551. During the next two sessions, the council issued decrees concerning the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance, and extreme unction, and reform decrees dealing with the authority of bishops over the clergy in their dioceses.

Two Jesuit theologians, Diego Lainez (1512–65) and Francisco Salmerón (1515–85), who had begun to participate in the earlier sessions, were influential during this period. The council offered safe conduct to Protestants who desired to attend, but the Protestant ambassadors made demands the council would not agree to, including that it withdraw its earlier teaching.

On April 28, 1552, as the war between Elector Maurice of Saxony and the emperor threatened to engulf the city of Trent, the council voted to suspend for two years.

Before Julius III could recall the council, he died on March 23, 1555. His successor was another former president of the council, Cardinal Cervini, who took the name Marcellus II. He died, however, after a reign of only 22 days. Cardinal Carafa was elected to succeed him and reigned as Pope Paul IV from 1555 to 1559 but did not recall the council. His successor, Pius IV, issued a bull recalling the council on November 29, 1560.

To bring about an actual meeting required careful diplomatic negotiations with Emperor Ferdinand I and other monarchs, which were carried out by the pope’s nephew and secretary of state, Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538–84), later renowned for implementing the council’s reforms as archbishop of Milan.

Council Reopened

The council finally reopened April 28, 1562, and the simpulan sessions included many more bishops than had attended earlier, including a number of French bishops who had been previously forbidden to attend by their monarch.

Seripando, now a cardinal, was one of the legates, and the theologians Salmerón and Lainez continued to be influential, along with a younger Jesuit, Peter Canisius (1521–97), who was particularly concerned with the church in Germany. During the last period of the council, decrees were issued concerning the celebration of Mass, the sacraments of holy orders and matrimony, purgatory, the use of images and relics, indulgences, and fasting.

As with earlier sessions, these decrees mostly upheld traditional teaching that had been attacked by Protestants. The decrees concerning marriage embodied the most significant change in the church’s teaching, holding that marriage contracted without at least two witnesses was invalid, and that families could not force couples to marry or invalidate their marriages.

Reforming Decrees

Among the reforming decrees of this period was the requirement that bishops establish seminaries for the training of priests. The application of this provision had far-reaching implications for the shape of the Catholic Church as it entered the modern period.

Other decrees regulated the lives of monks, friars, and nuns; provided for the establishment of an Index of Forbidden Books; called on the pope to issue a catechism and revisions of liturgical books; forbade dueling; and abolished the preaching of indulgences for the collection of alms, the practice that had occasioned Luther’s protest in 1517.

The council held its simpulan session over two days, December 3–4, 1563. The simpulan acts were signed by 255 bishops and heads of orders. Pope Pius IV confirmed the acts of the council in the bull Benedictus Deus, January 26, 1564.

The council’s disciplinary reforms were implemented only slowly, since they involved overcoming the resistance of many entrenched institutions and required the cooperation of secular rulers, many of whom saw the provisions of the council as threats to their own power and influence over the church. Over the next century, however, the application of the decrees of the Council of Trent led to a radical transformation of the Catholic Church.

Area 51

Area 51 map

Made famous yesteryear the film Independence Day, Area 51 is a classified armed services base of operations inward Nevada close Groom Lake that is the abode to the most advanced aircraft together with weapons testing yesteryear the United States. It is an irony that this highly “secret” base of operations is wellknown plenty that tourists know where it is— although the tight safety provided yesteryear the Wackenhut company ensures that few larn unopen plenty to run across much.

Area 51 (also called “Dreamland,” for Data Repository together with Electronic Amassing Management) covers 38,500 acres of province northwest of Las Vegas close Rachel, Nevada, together with unopen to the former Nellis, Nevada, seek out range. It is nestled inside several mount ranges that render nevertheless to a greater extent than privacy together with security.

Nevertheless, television set intelligence shows such equally Sightings together with Strange Universe cause got produced features on Area 51. Up to 5,000 personnel per solar daytime are flown inward on chartered aircraft; the lands surrounding the base of operations characteristic motion sensors, safety cameras, together with constant patrols yesteryear the Wackenhut guards.


In 1955, the authorities gave Lockheed Aircraft’s designer of the U-2 spy airplane the chore of finding a seek out base, together with after looking at 3 locations, he selected Groom Lake. Operations commenced afterwards that yr nether the lift “Paradise Ranch” or merely “The Ranch.”

It was officially designated Area 51 inward 1958 yesteryear the Atomic Energy Commission, but inward 1970 the USA Air Force (USAF) took over operations at Groom Lake, together with it is currently administered yesteryear the Air Force Flight Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base. The USAF is known to cause got tested the F-117 Stealth fighter there, together with probable the B-2 Spirit bomber was also tested at Area 51. In the 1970s, Soviet MiG aircraft were taken at that spot together with examined.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 discover of programs that eventually did non create working aircraft or weapons also were tested there, including cruise missile variants, the Lockheed Darkstar unmanned vehicle, stealth helicopters, together with the Osprey. Lights inward the heaven cause got been seen from a distance on many nights, which some observers attribute to proton beam systems.

Somewhere inward expanse 51

Some claim to a greater extent than than U.S. aircraft are tested there. Robert Lazar, a videotape producer who claims to cause got worked at Area 51, tells lecture audiences that the facility tests alien spaceships together with “reverse-engineers” extraterrestrial technology nether the supervision of the mysterious authorities trunk “Majestic 12.”

One of the to a greater extent than extravagant claims is that the authorities is asset aliens—either living or dead—at the base. (A similar claim is made virtually Hangar eighteen at Wright Patterson Air Force Base inward Dayton, Ohio.) In some cases, these aliens deal humans decipher together with decode the technology, from which, it is alleged, nosotros cause got reverse-engineered microwave ovens, cellular phones, together with computers.

More exotic technologies are also tested there, according to Lazar together with others. The “Pumpkin Seed” together with Aurora aircraft cause got supposedly been operating out of Area 51 for years. But the difficulties associated amongst reverse-engineering fifty-fifty earthly technologies are substantial.

Even the Soviet Union institute it hard to move backward from captured U.S. aircraft. The notion that humans could exercise useful weapons or equipment from the debris of an alien vessel is based on the presumption that it would non endure together with therefore advanced equally to defeat whatsoever attempts to empathise it.

Still others hold that non solely cause got the aliens helped us reverse-engineer technology, but they genuinely cause got taken upwardly residence inward the towns surrounding Area 51, such equally Rachel together with Little A’Le’Inn. According to this view, the aliens human activeness equally extraterrestrial flying instructors for humans, maybe inward telephone substitution for access to human subjects upon whom they ship tests.

More recently, an offshoot of this theory claims that conflict broke out betwixt the humans together with aliens, which resulted inward consummate alien say-so of the base of operations at Area 51. Thus, the base of operations together with others similar it (the supposed alien hideouts at Laguna Cartagena, Puerto Rico, together with Archuleta Mesa inward New Mexico) cause got move alien enclaves that humans may non enter. This was to render the foundation for a worldwide takeover of all humans.

The portion or together with therefore Area 51 is abode to “Ufomindand Aliens on Earth,” a small-scale society that specializes inward “investigating” the Groom Lake facility. Regardless of the size of the facility together with the known operations, the U.S. authorities refuses to admit the being of the base.

Latin American Politics

Latin American Politics

On a December day in 1956 a small band of armed men pushed off from the shores of eastern Mexico with their eyes on Cuba. Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara were among this group of revolutionaries, and they dreamt of a new Cuba free from social classes, capitalism, and American imperialism.

After two years of guerrilla warfare, Castro and his band succeeded in overthrowing the Cuban government and seized power. Almost immediately their new vision of a socially just society unfolded as the new regime expropriated foreign holdings, transferred industries to state ownership, and “volunteered” Cuban citizens to work on state-run farms.

This new vision of Cuba stemmed from the growing tide of Latin American nationalists turning toward Marxist theories in the decades after World War II. This brand of Marxism centered on erasing centuries of inequity and poverty with far-reaching change aimed at dismantling capitalism and promoting social justice for all.


The struggle between rich and poor dominated the rhetoric of Latin American Marxism, but with a unique spin that included U.S. multinational corporations among the rich. The Cuban revolution presented a new political paradigm to Latin America, one driven by Marxis ideology and armed revolution. It would influence Latin American politics for the rest of the 20th century.

As the economic boom of World War II faded in the 1950s, international demand for Latin American exports—chiefly agricultural—waned. High machinery costs driven by postwar rebuilding in Europe held back industrialization and economic growth in Latin America.

Economic hard times fused with the legacy of conquest and colonialism incited demands for sweeping, fundamental change. Some Latin Americans, including Fidel Castro, explored and then embraced Marxist ideology as a viable solution to ending the region’s poverty and economic dependency on industrialized nations.

The cold war wore heavily on U.S.–Latin American relations, and the Cuban Revolution signaled an alarming turn to an American government in the throes of the “red scare.” Even more distressing to American policy-makers was Castro’s involvement in the launching of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) in 1967 to encourage Marxist revolutions throughout the region.

Leftist revolutionaries such as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador, the Montoneros and People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) in Argentina, and the Nicaraguan Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) are some of the armed Marxist guerrilla movements supported by Castro and OLAS. The United States sponsored a military alliance with anticommunist governments throughout Latin America.

This national security doctrine increased the power of the military in Latin American societies as the United States encouraged military involvement in cracking down on Marxist guerrillas and their supporters.

Soon some military leaders viewed civilian democratic governments as corrupt and a hindrance to social and economic change. These generals believed that the solution to Latin American problems lie in rapid social and economic development. During the 1970s almost every Latin American country succumbed to military rule.

Many of these authoritarian governments looked to a free market economy as the means to change and seized upon low interest rates to borrow heavily to finance development. Any protests or cries for change, which increasingly came from urban residents-turned-guerrillas, were vehemently suppressed.

In Argentina, scholars estimate that as many as 20,000 people “disappeared” at the hands of the military. The El Salvadoran military massacred peasants thought to be aiding leftist guerrillas, and in Guatemala, tens of thousands of indigenous people suspected of similar actions were killed by the military.

By the 1980s government deficit spending coupled with a wavering global economy resulted in skyrocketing inflation and foreign debts. This economic crisis provoked criticism of the status quo from citizens and accusations that military leadership represented incompetent government. One by one, Latin America’s military regimes retreated to the barracks and handed leadership back to civilians.

The 1990s saw many democratic, civilian leaders embracing neoliberalism, a philosophy centered on making Latin America competitive on the global market. State-owned industry was privatized, protective tariffs reduced, military budgets cut, foreign investment encouraged, and social programs and bureaucratic structure streamlined.

More benefits of modernity came to Latin America, especially technology, yet most Latin Americans remained too poor to participate in free market capitalism as consumers. A few guerrilla movements continued to flourish, like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru, violently working toward their goal of revolution.

Latin American politics from the 1950s represents tumultuous decades, marred by the violence of “dirty wars” perpetuated by U.S.-backed military regimes. Marxist guerrillas throughout this time period sought revolutionary change of Latin American society.

By the 2000s the move to the left in Latin American politics saw Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva winning the presidential elections in Brazil in December 2002, Evo Morales being elected as president of Bolivia in December 2005, an, in the following month, Michelle Bachelet won the second round of the presidential elections in Chile, becoming the first woman president of Chile and the first left-wing president since the overthrow of Salvador Allende.

Moreover, the move by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, a socialist, toward a national referendum in 2007 to reelect him to the presidency despite constitutional limits, foretold a continuing left-wing power center in Latin America.

Society Of The Cincinnati

Society of the Cincinnati

The Society of the Cincinnati was founded inwards May 1783 every bit an association of veteran Revolutionary War officers; it apace became the focus of a conspiracy theory inwards which the social club was defendant of trying to constitute a hereditary aristocracy inwards the United States.

In trammel 1783, the concluding months of the being of the Continental Army, a grouping of officers surrounding Major General Henry Knox in addition to Major General Friedrich von Steuben planned a means to move along the friendship in addition to solidarity of Revolutionary War commanders inwards peacetime.

The aim was twofold: foremost of all, Knox in addition to the others envisioned a mutual assistance in addition to produce goodness association, which could aid impoverished members every bit good every bit the widows in addition to orphans of deceased comrades.


Second, the officeholder corps had of import political interests inwards common: Congress had promised to convert officers’ pensions into a lump total equal to v years’ pay, a policy known every bit commutation. However, the precarious fiscal province of affairs of the the States made the payment of substitution dubious, a work that had already figured prominently inwards the so-called Newburgh conspiracy.

Many officers supported the formation of a stronger national authorities that was to a greater extent than probable to hold upward able to honour its obligations. As a result, the planned association of veteran officers could also business office every bit a political pressure level group.

Knox in addition to the others chose every bit their patron Cincinnatus, a Roman full general who had briefly assumed dictatorial ability entirely to provide to his plough every bit apace every bit possible. They planned a Society of the Cincinnati on the federal bird every bit good every bit the world societies, annual meetings, a badge of honor, the possibility of admitting unusual in addition to honorary members, in addition to the continuation of membership through the oldest manful someone descendant.

In its early on months, the social club was virtually unknown to the full general populace, only officers joined inwards large numbers in addition to the world societies were founded, including a French society. George Washington, although uninvolved amongst the organisation of the society, was elected its president.

On the the world level, typically the highest-ranking officeholder from the the world business became the society’s leader. On the whole, the Cincinnati were quite successful at organizing veteran officers from the diverse states, making the social club 1 of the real few associations existing inwards the entire United States.

Both the political in addition to the organizational aspects of the social club came nether assail throughout the 1780s. American tradition, particularly inwards the wake of the Revolution, included a deep distrust of standing armies, special privilege, in addition to aristocracy; the Cincinnati seemed to include elements of all three. In New England, extralegal conventions protested substitution every bit a policy designed to privilege a specific bird of citizens over others; the social club became the focal betoken of these accusations.

In South Carolina, Judge Aedanus Burke published a widely read pamphlet that described the social club every bit a nascent nobility. While Burke acknowledged the heroism of the veteran officers, he feared that their descendants would hold upward less virtuous in addition to eventually constitute an aristocracy that would doom republican government.

H5N1 conspiracy theory emerged that saw the Cincinnati every bit a grouping bent on gaining special fiscal privileges through commutation; forming an aristocracy through the dominion of descent, connected to the nobility of Europe through the membership of unusual officers similar Steuben in addition to the French society; coming together annually to brand political decisions, in addition to therefore enforcing those decisions through political influence in addition to implicit armed services power. In short, the Cincinnati were seen every bit the nucleus of a hugger-mugger government, operating exterior republican rules, to the produce goodness of the few in addition to the detriment of the many.

The Cincinnati in addition to the Constitution

To fighting these allegations, Washington—spurred on past times criticism from Thomas Jefferson in addition to John Adams—convinced the social club to drib the hereditary clause in addition to honorary memberships, in addition to pose their funds nether the command of the the world legislatures inwards 1784.

This mensurate temporarily quieted criticism, only the theme shortly flared upward again. In 1787, the Cincinnati were suspected of fomenting Shays’ Rebellion entirely to pose it down, inwards monastic enjoin to print upon the world the involve for a stronger national government.

That same year, the annual coming together of the social club took house inwards Philadelphia, at the same fourth dimension in addition to metropolis every bit the Federal Convention that drafted the Constitution. Given Washington’s seat every bit president of the Cincinnati in addition to chairman of the Federal Convention, in addition to the fact that several delegates were also members of the society, in that place was ample room for suspicions.

During the debates nearly the ratification of the Constitution, radical Anti-Federalists repeatedly charged that the novel political scheme was the run of the Cincinnati, a novel campaign to constitute an aristocracy inwards the United States, amongst the presidency every bit a transitional establishment that would eventually atomic number 82 to monarchy.

Similar accusations were voiced when members of the social club became involved inwards settling the Ohio territory (and the subsequent founding of the small town Cincinnati); critics saw this every bit the genesis of a novel nation ruled past times the society.

On the whole, the accusations against the Cincinnati were largely unfounded. During the tempestuous 1780s, radical members mightiness good convey wished for a monarchy, mayhap amongst Washington every bit king, to impose political order.

However, the social club never pursued whatever such policies, particularly every bit Washington himself was adamantly opposed to anything that mightiness threaten civilian, republican government. While most Cincinnati strongly supported the novel Constitution, in that place were also members amidst AntiFederalist leaders, most notably governor George Clinton of New York.

Similarly, during the foremost political party system, most Cincinnati tended toward the Federalists, only in that place were also many amidst the Jeffersonian Republicans. If the social club furnished the largest component division of the novel national army’s officeholder corps, this was entirely to hold upward expected in addition to had piffling political effect.

Even when Congress debated the fate of substitution certificates inwards 1790, the social club did non brand a rigid lobbying campaign on behalf of its members. Consequently, the accusations against the social club largely faded away at the start of the nineteenth century, fifty-fifty though past times that fourth dimension most the world societies had reverted to the formerly controversial succession past times heredity.

The Society of the Cincinnati nearly faded during the foremost one-half of the nineteenth century, only experienced a revival subsequently 1854 in addition to exists to the present. The conspiracy theory tin turn over the sack yet hold upward encountered, only unremarkably every bit a chip of conspiracy trivia rather than a full-fledged theory.

Kamakura Shogunate

Minamoto Yoritomo

The Kamakura Shogunate was a government established by Kamakura Shogunate at the end of the Gempei War, which had lasted from 1180 until 1185. The shogunate lasted from 1185 (or 1192, when it was formally recognized by the emperor) until 1333. Because the Minamoto family lived at Kamakura, the new order was called the Kamakura Shogunate, although many sources refer to the period as the Minamoto Shogunate, after the founder’s surname.

Minamoto Clan

The Minamoto clan emerged during the 12th century as a challenge to the Taira clan, who controlled Japanese politics. After a series of wars, the Minamoto clan had been defeated, and when the Gempei War broke out, the Taira were certain of their eventual victory.

They launched a series of preemptive strikes against the Minamoto and easily defeated them. However because of their easy victory, the Taira did not follow up all their military advantages and this allowed the Minamoto to rally their depleted forces.


They also managed to get other smaller clans to support them, and, worried that the Taira were about to become too powerful, the Minamoto gradually gained support, which allowed them to defeat the Taira. At the naval battle of Dannoura on April 25, 1185, the Minamoto attacked their outnumbered opponents and killed the six-year-old emperor, whose grandmother was a member of the Taira clan.

This selesai victory over the Taira ensured that Minamoto Yoritomo, the leader of the Minamoto clan, and the victor of the Battle of Dannoura, would take control of Japan. He created shogun (general who subdues barbarians), which established a military rule over Japan called bakufu (tent government) whereby the emperor and regents held civil authority, but military affairs were conducted by the shogun under the authority of the emperor. This made Minamoto Yoritomo dictator of the country.

The Minamoto clan descended from Saga, the 52nd emperor (r. 809–829). As with their rivals, the Taira, sections of the imperial family were cut off from the imperial line and took surnames. The Minamoto include descendants of the younger children of Saga, but most of them were descendants of Prince Sadazumi, the son of Seiwa, the 56th emperor (r. 858–876).

Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–99) was the great-grandson times 7 of Prince Sadazumi. In January 1160 his father had taken part in an unsuccessful coup attempt against the Taira and was then exiled to eastern Japan, where he stayed with Hojo Tokimasa, head of the Hojo clan, allies of the Taira.

While there he married Hojo Masako, a daughter of Tokimasa, who tied the Minamoto to the Hojo. During the Gempei War the Hojo provided much support for the Minamoto, and when Yoritomo became the shogun, the Hojos were the second most important family.

Minamoto Yoritomo made his supporter Kujo Kanezane (1149–1207) the sessho (imperial regent) and soon faced challenges from his family. He began to feel threatened by his brothers, especially Yoshitune. Yoshitune fled to the north of Japan where he took refuge with Fujiwara no Hidehira.

Yoritomo threatened to attack Hidehira, who decided that the easiest solution was to get Yoshitune to commit suicide. This death did not, however, prevent Yoritomo from attacking Hidehira’s lands, which were destroyed. On his return south, Yoritomo officially became shogun and established the system of government that was to dominate Japan until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

Minamoto No Yoriie and Sanetomo

The stability that Yoritomo brought to Japan was brief. He was shrewd, but ruthless, and was responsible for the deaths of two additional half brothers, Yoshiie and Yoshinaka. When Yoritomo died in 1199, his eldest son was only 17. In 1202 when Minamoto Yoriie was 20, he became shogun.

However the Hojo clan usurped his power in the following year when they established the head of the Hojo clan as the shikken (hereditary regent), a system that operated until 1333. In 1203 Yoriie became ill and his lands were divided between his infant son Ichiman and his brother Sanetomo.

Angered by the power of the Hojo clan, in spite of his mother’s being Hojo Masako, Minamoto Yoriie tried to reassert himself. He started conspiring with Hiki Yoshikazu, who was, in fact, the adopted son of Minamoto Yoritomo, making him Yoriie’s brother by adoption, as well as being his father-in-law. Unfortunately the plot between Yoriie and Yoshikazu was discovered, the Hojos attacked, and Yoshikazu was assassinated.

Yoriie’s son, Ichiman, was murdered and Yoriie was replaced by his more compliant brother, who acquiesced in the domination of the political scene by the Hojo. Yoriie was confined at Shuzenji on the Izu Peninsula and was murdered in the following year by his grandfather.

Minamoto Sanetomo (1192–1219) became the third shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate. He was aged 11 and because of the nature of his coming to power, he would never wield any real power. Instead he devoted himself to cultural matters. He had started writing poetry from the age of 14, and when he was 17 he sent 30 of these poems to Fujiwara no Teika, one of the well-known court poets of the period.

Teika disliked them as they were too close to the Japanese poems of the seventh and eighth centuries, but some were included in an anthology, now held in the Imperial Collection in Tokyo. Sanetomo was also involved in promoting kemari (kickball), a game involving eight players who kick a deerskin ball around a court, ensuring that it never touches the ground. In 1219 Kugyo, the son of Yoriie and nephew of Sanetomo, assassinated the shogun.

Hojo Clan and the Shikkens

In spite of the political problems that ensued from the death of Minamoto Yoritomo, the Kamakura Shogunate resulted in a shift of political power away from Kyoto to Kamakura. In spite of the Hojo regency, by the middle of the shogunate, the importance of Kyoto had waned, although it retained its reputation as a place of sophisticated culture and the location of the residences of most of the nobles.

In contrast, Kamakura, farther north, was a center that revolved around the Minamoto clan, even if not the actual nominal head of it. The fishing port, which had existed when Yoritomo was young, had become an important city where some 2,000 gokenin (housemen) swore fealty to the clan. As a result many of the emerging Buddhist sects of the period started erecting temples in the town.

For the rest of the Kamakura Shogunate, the Hojo clan curiously chose not to take up the shogunate but operated the regency with the head of the Hojo clan being the shikken. In 1221 Emperor Go-Toba decided to use the demise of the Minamoto family as an opportunity to try to restore direct imperial rule. In 1221 he issued a message to ask warriors loyal to him to rally and attack the Hojo clan.

However few were willing to take on the Hojos and very few supporters made an appearance in what became known as the Jokyu disturbance. On those who did, the wrath of the Hojo clan descended with a large Hojo-financed army taking over Kyoto and arresting Go-Toba.

He was exiled to the island of Oki, and the Hojo, in the name of the shogunate, moved their headquarters to Kyoto, which became the legal and administrative center until the end of the shogunate in 1333. The lands of the nobles who answered the call of Go-Toba were seized and redistributed to supporters of the Hojos, who emerged as the unchallenged rulers of the whole of Japan.

With all of the killings in 1219, the line of Minamoto Yoritomo was extinct and therefore the Hojos decided to appoint Kujo Yoritsune in 1226, a scion of the Fujiwara clan, and a distant relative of Yoritomo, as the next shogun, with Hojo Yoshitoki actually controlling the government. Kujo Yoritsune (1218–56) was eight years old at the time of his appointment and was deposed when he was 26. Kujo Yoritsugu (1239–56), who was only five years old, replaced him, and was deposed seven years later.

For the next shoguns the Hojo clan chose members of the Japanese imperial family with Prince Munetaka (1242–74) as shogun from 1252 until 1266, Prince Koreyasu (1264–1326) as shogun from 1266 until 1289, Prince Hisaki (1276–1328) as shogun from 1289 until 1308, and Prince Morikuni (1301–33) as shogun from 1308 until his death. All were appointed shoguns when they were children, and most were deposed as young men. They were all puppets of the Hojos and were chosen only out of regard for their lineage.

In 1232 the shikken, Hojo Yasutoki, drew up the Joei Shikimoku (Joei Formulary), which laid down 51 articles defining, for the first time, the legal powers of the shogunate that ruled through the Hyojo-shu (Council of State). Some 17 years later a judicial court was established to allow legal decisions to be made more quickly and with greater fairness.

With the Kamakura Shogunate effectively controlled by the Hojos, and with the very easy quelling of the Jokyu disturbance, the greatest challenge to the whole system of government in Japan was not any internal force but the emerging threat of a Mongol invasion, which took place in 1274.

Mongol Invasions and Society During the Kamakura Shogunate

The Japanese managed to prevent the Mongols from encroaching too far inland and were saved when a storm destroyed many of the Mongol ships, forcing them to retreat. The invasion in 1281 was more serious, with the Mongols sending two fleets to Japan. However these faced not only a much stronger Japanese force behind entrenched positions at Hakata Bay, but also a typhoon, which destroyed much of the Mongol fleet, again forcing them to quickly withdraw.

The defeat of both Mongol invasions did show the military supremacy of the Japanese, but also the intervention of the weather on both occasions was seen as a divine message. However concern about future invasion resulted in vast expenditures on weaponry and defensive positions, as well as a move to isolate Japan from China and Korea, from which the invading Mongol navies had sailed.

The importance of the Kamakura Shogunate was certainly not in the political power that was wielded by the shoguns—for most of the time they were puppets—but in the societal changes, or to some extent the lack of them, that occurred in Japan.

The Japanese feudal system was entrenched with warriors—the samurai class—ruling unchallenged, spending their time in training, military exercises, occasional fighting, and for a small number, in learning and the arts. The samurai ruled unquestioned over villages where peasants labored in the fields to produce the crops, and a small number of skilled artisans made the implements necessary for agriculture and war.

Any move to create a large middle class in Japan was quashed, and there was no real incentive for innovation. Samurai were occasionally rewarded with extra land, but as the fighting ceased, less and less land was redistributed by the shikken.

It was only in times such as the Jokyu disturbance that the shikken managed to confiscate enough land to placate ambitious samurai. There were regular disputes between the samurai and the farmers and hence the legal codifications of the Hojos during the 1230s and 1240s managed to establish rules for dealing with these problems.

The only other development from the Kamakura Shogunate was the increase in the belief in Zen (or Ch’an) Buddhism and also Neo-Confucianism ideas that had come from China. These led to great changes in religion and the emergence of a large number of Buddhist sects, some of which preached extreme asceticism.

Voyages of Discovery

The first voyage of Spanish exploration

Since ancient times, mariners have traveled large distances, usually in search of opportunities for trade or military expansion. The Phoenicians are believed to have sailed from modern-day Lebanon to England for tin, and accounts by the Romans and later the Vikings show the great skills in seamanship.

The adventurer Thor Heyerdahl showed that it was possible to sail in relatively simple vessels across the Pacific in his epic voyage in the raft Kon-Tiki. A later expedition on the Tigris grew from a stone carving of Queen Hatshepsut, who commissioned the first visual record of a voyage of discovery in 1493 b.c.e.

However the voyages of discovery from the 15th century were a concerted effort by European powers to map as much of the world as possible, as well as expand trade, make Christian converts, and carve out an empire.


Although the most well documented, the European voyages were not the first with some of these objects in mind. In 1421, the great Chinese admiral Zheng He headed one of the largest fleets ever when he set out from China to travel around Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

There is also the possibility that some of his ships reached New Zealand and even the American continent. When he returned owing to palace machinations Zheng He was never able to repeat his voyage, and China entered a period of self-isolation, never again sending a large fleet to sea.

the great Chinese admiral Zheng He

Curiously this change in Chinese policy coincided with a move by European countries to begin journeys of exploration. The Portuguese were the first to take up this challenge. Under Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), following the Portuguese capture of the Moroccan city of Ceuta, Henry encouraged seafarers to travel around the coasts of Africa.

The Italian Marco Polo in 1271–95 and a few other intrepid adventurers had reached China by land, but with the Ottoman Turks in control of much of the Middle East and Central Asia, the cost of importing spices into Europe was very high and Henry was in the position to encourage many people to embark on great voyages, even if he himself never traveled farther than Morocco.

Dias and Columbus

A replica of one of the caravelles Bartolomeu Dias sailed round the tip of Africa

In 1434, Portuguese ships reached Cape Bojador in West Africa, and it was another 26 years before they reached modern-day Senegal. Some 22 years after that, Portuguese mariners were off the coast of modern-day Angola, and in 1488 the navigator Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450–1500) passed the Cape of Good Hope and found a route to the Indian Ocean.

Being on the westernmost part of the European mainland had put the Portuguese in an ideal position to begin the European age of voyages of discovery, but other mariners from other countries had already achieved some enormous feats. English ships sailed regularly to Scandinavia and the Baltic.

There are also references in English court records to a ship returning from “Brazil” in the 1470s. This does not necessarily mean the country of that name, but scholars have conjectured, more plausibly, that this might be Newfoundland, where some English sailors probably went in search of fish. Arab sailors were also involved in voyages down the east coast of Africa and around the Indian Ocean.

Many settled in places like Zanzibar, the Maldives, and Sumatra. One of the great Arab travelers of the period was Ibn Batuta, who, between 1325 and 1353, traveled around north Africa, into Mali, down the east coast of Africa, throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, into parts of Russia, and around the coasts of India, and modern-day Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia, and Vietnam to China, keeping a detailed record of the voyages.

When Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), an Italian in the service of Spain, set sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 and returned in the following year, news of his voyage and discovery of the Americas swept across the capitals of Europe like wildfire. By this period, most people accepted that the world was a sphere, and some had even worked out, correctly, its size.

For this reason it was thought that a voyage from Europe to China, India, or Japan would be far too long and it would be impossible to equip a ship for that voyage. Columbus believed that the world was smaller, and hence it was possible to reach China or Japan, and this idea gave him enough confidence to lead his men on their first voyage.

Christopher Columbus voyage

One of the results of the first voyage of Columbus was that the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 was signed between Portugal and Spain by which they divided the world at a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The land to the west went to Spain, and that to the east to Portugal.

As a result, Portuguese seafarers limited themselves to Africa, to the Indian Ocean, and to establishing of the Portuguese Empire in Africa and Asia. It was only later that Brazil was discovered and found to be in the Portuguese sphere. Spain, on the other hand, sent ships to the Americas.

An Italian in the service of Spain, Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), sailed to modern-day Brazil in the late 1490s and had the honor of America’s being named after him. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475–1519) was the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean and realize that Columbus was wrong in his estimation of the size of the world.

Cortés and Pizarro

Hernán Cortés sacked the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán

As well as voyages purely of discovery, the Portuguese were able to trade extensively and their ships brought back large quantities of spices, and also slaves. The initial Spanish voyages found very little in the way of gold or silver until 1521, when Hernán Cortés (1484–1547) sacked the Aztec capital of Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475–1541) plundered and destroyed the Inca Empire.

This wealth suddenly made Spain the richest country in Europe. Many of the early explorers also found much agricultural land, and in August 1535, one of the largest expeditions to leave Spain for the New World during that century sailed from Cádiz. Led by Pedro de Mendoza, it had 11 ships, more than 1,000 men, 100 horses, pigs, and cattle. The voyages of discovery had led to a desire to colonize the Americas.

This expedition sailed up the river Plate and then the Río Paraguay in search of the Inca kingdoms. In a bend in the river they established the city of Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay). Within 50 years of Columbus’s first voyage, the kings of Spain had carved out an empire nearly 23 times the size of Spain itself.

The Portuguese had also embarked on more ambitious voyages, and their great navigator Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1525) was able to take a fleet on a two year voyage the 13,000 miles to Calicut in India, from which he was able to take back spices.

The next of the great explorers was Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) from Portugal, who sailed in the service of the king of Portugal from 1505 until 1512 and then in the service of the king of Spain from 1519. He sailed down the eastern coast of South America until he found what were later named the Straits of Magellan. Sailing through them, he was able to reach the Pacific.

His voyage was the first to circumnavigate the world, although he was killed in the Philippines, halfway through the journey. By this time the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) had started to carve out a colonial empire in Asia taking the cities of Ormuz, Goa, and Malacca.

The English had tried to embark on a few voyages but never had much success. With Italian-born John Cabot (c. 1450–98) and later his son, Sebastian Cabot (c. 1476–1557), the English had tried to find the North-west Passage—a route to the Pacific north of the Americas.

They found no gold, although they did discover areas rich in fish, and eventually Sebastian Cabot joined the service of Spain. The next major English effort was through the Muscovy Company sailing to Russia. This had more success and led to the mapping of north coast of Scandinavia and some of the Russian coastline.

However there was great interest in these voyages in England with Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616), a lawyer to the Muscovy Company, publishing a large number of accounts of the early voyages in his Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589).

Drake and La Salle

When England and Spain went to war, many English privateers set to sea. These were privately owned ships with the queen of England’s authority to attack Spanish possessions and ships around the world. The Spanish viewed them as pirates, the English as heroes.

One of these, Sir Francis Drake (ca. 1540–96), in 1577 set out in his ship Pelican (later renamed Golden Hind), which, in the next three years, circumnavigated the world. He was able to map out parts of the coast of Chile, reaching modern-day California, before heading across the Pacific.

His return not only was a feat of seamanship, but carrying many spices, a massive financial windfall for investors. The fortunes to be made encouraged further English voyages including Henry Hudson’s making another attempt for the Northwest Passage.

The French had not been involved in the earlier voyages of discovery but with Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635) managed to map the St. Lawrence River in modern-day Canada and founded Quebec in 1608. He became lieutenant-governor of New France from 1613 until 1625.

Another French voyager, trained in a Jesuit seminary, René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle (1643–87), sailed to the Americas several times, navigating the St. Lawrence and Ohio Rivers, and later the Mississippi River. With settlers he founded what became French Louisiana.

During the 17th century, the Dutch became particularly active and took control of a part of Java, in modern-day Indonesia. Their military skills in the 1630s and 1640s ensured that they were able to capture a number of the Portuguese settlements and establish their own colonial empire.

By this time, Portuguese power had waned and the Dutch took Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Malacca from them. Some early Dutch seamen also mapped parts of modern-day Australia and New Zealand.

By the early 18th century, the Russians were beginning to fund explorers. The Bering expedition in 1728, led by a Danish mariner, Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741), was the first to include a number of scientists.

After traveling across Siberia, a feat in itself, he sailed from Russia to modern-day Alaska, with the Bering Sea named after him. Bering died during the voyages, and only many years later was good use made of the reports by scientists from his voyages.

The last part of the world to be explored by ship was the Pacific. Englishman William Dampier (1652–1715) and Abel Tasman (c. 1603–59) had mapped some of the coast of modern-day Australia. Louis de Bougainville sailed the Pacific and his book, when published back in France, became an immediate bestseller.

Captain James Cook ship, HMS Endeavour

When Captain James Cook (1728–79) sailed the Pacific, using better instruments than Dampier and Tasman, he was able to map the coastline of Australia more accurately. He kept a very detailed journal and did not allow his crew to keep a journal so that his book, when published, would be the only accurate account of the voyage.

Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779, but his example was followed by several other mariners including one of his former officers, William Bligh (1754–1817), who tried to sail to the Pacific via Cape Horn but was forced to turn back, unable to fulfill his ambition of circumnavigating the world. He was also subject to a mutiny in 1789, which he managed to survive.