History
Empires, wars, revolutions and the turning points that shaped the modern world.
Featured in History
Start with these, then follow the links inside each article wherever they lead.
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in the eastern part of North Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150 BC, when Upper and Lower Egypt were united by Menes, who is believed by the majority of Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer.
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was a state that dominated the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa during the classical period. The Roman Republic had previously conquered most of these territories, which later came under permanent single-person rule following Octavian's rise to power and the establishment of the Augustan Principate in 27 BC. By the late 3rd century AD, the empire had been divided many times.
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history. Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia, the medieval empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe, extending northward into Siberia and east and southward into the Indian subcontinent, mounting invasions of Southeast Asia, and conquering the Iranian plateau; and reaching westward as far as the Levant and the Carpathian Mountains.
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a European period of history and cultural movement taking place at the end of the Late Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern era. It is variously defined as covering the 15th and 16th centuries or, more broadly, as lasting from the 14th century to the 17th.
Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism.
Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was part of the early modern period and overlapped with the Age of Sail. It was a period from approximately the 15th to the 17th century, during which seafarers from European countries explored, colonized, and conquered regions across the globe.
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes called the First Industrial Revolution in contrast to the subsequent Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succeeding the Second Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840.
French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the Coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799. Many of the revolution's ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, and its values remain central to modern French political discourse.
American Revolution
The American Revolution was a political movement in the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain. It began as a rebellion and turned into a revolution eventually creating the sovereign United States, which was the outcome of the associated American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).
World War I
World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, including those in war crimes and genocides.
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale.
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, historically also known as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China established by Liu Bang, and preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) and the interregnum known as the Chu-Han Contention (206-202 BC). It was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD) and also briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9-23 AD) established by the usurping regent Wang Mang.
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
Aztec Empire
The Aztec Empire, also known as the Triple Alliance or historiographically as the Tenochca Empire but most accurately known as the Mexica, was an alliance of three Nahua city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan. These three city-states ruled that area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until the combined forces of the Spanish conquistadores and their native allies who ruled under Hernán Cortés defeated them in 1521.
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco.
Mali Empire
The Mali Empire was an empire in West Africa from c. 1235 to 1610.
Viking Age
The Viking Age was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia but also to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period.
Black Death
The Black Death was a plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history, leading to the death of up to 50 million people, around 30% to 60% of the European population and approximately 33% of the Middle Eastern population.
Meiji Restoration
The Meiji Restoration, referred to at the time as the Honorable Restoration (御維新／御一新, Goi(s)shin), was a political event that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji and led to the westernisation of Japan. Although there were ruling emperors before the Meiji Restoration, the events restored practical power to, and consolidated the political system under, the Emperor of Japan.
Decolonization
Decolonization is the ending of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed.
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989 during the Peaceful Revolution, marking the beginning of the destruction of the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded. Sections of the wall were breached, and planned deconstruction began the following June.
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns launched by the papacy between 1095 and 1291 against Muslim rulers for the recovery and defence of the Holy Land, as part of a wider crusading movement. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in November 1095, a call to arms for Christians to reconquer Jerusalem from the Muslims, with promises of spiritual reward.
Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts between the kingdoms of England and France and a civil war in France during the late Middle Ages. It emerged from feudal disputes over the Duchy of Aquitaine and was triggered by a claim to the French throne made by Edward III of England.
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social change in Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a civil war.
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China.
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity comprising and controlling much of Central Europe and Western Europe, headed by the Holy Roman Emperor and characterized by a decentralized political structure. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
Partition of India
The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. This trade was operated by slave ships from both Europe and the New World.
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was marked by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and business failures around the world.
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was fought in Spain from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalist rebels. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists, supported by the Soviet Union.
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, also known as the Qing Empire or Qing China, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia which existed from 1636/1644 to 1912. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China.
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803-04) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804-1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) and produced a period of French domination over continental Europe.
Guides in History
Ancient Egypt: three thousand years on the Nile
How a river, a calendar and a god-king produced one of the longest lasting states in history.
The Middle Ages in Europe
Lords, monasteries, towns and plague: what a thousand years between Rome and the Renaissance actually looked like.
The Islamic Golden Age
How Baghdad, Córdoba and Cairo became centres of translation, science and scholarship between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.
The Mongol Empire
How nomads from the steppe built the largest contiguous land empire in history, and what it did to Eurasia.
The Age of Exploration
Why European ships crossed the oceans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and how the exchange that followed changed every continent.
The Industrial Revolution
Coal, cotton and steam: how production moved from hands and homes to machines and factories, starting in eighteenth-century Britain.
The First World War
How an assassination in Sarajevo became a four-year war of trenches and industry that destroyed empires.
The Second World War
The deadliest conflict in history, from the rise of fascism to the atomic bomb, and the world order it left behind.
The Cold War
Forty-five years of rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, fought with nuclear threats, proxy wars and propaganda.
Decolonization and the new nations
How most of Asia and Africa won independence from European empires in the three decades after 1945.
The agricultural revolution and the first cities
Why settled farming appeared, what it cost, and how it produced writing, law and inequality.
Greece and Rome: the political inheritance
Athenian democracy, the Roman republic and empire, and the institutional ideas that outlived both.
Trade routes and the exchange of ideas
The Silk Roads, Indian Ocean monsoon trade and trans-Saharan caravans, and what travelled besides goods.
Revolutions and the making of the modern state
How the political and industrial revolutions produced constitutions, nations and mass politics.