In the past few months I have, I confess, fallen very seriously off the writing wagon atop which, back in 2019, I had vowed to ride into the future. My only defense is that I keep getting carried away by other kinds of broadly educational projects that seem at the time to be both urgent … Continue reading The 500-year project
Key developments of 1520 The best listing I’ve found of the events of 1520 is this one, on Wikipedia. There is also one on the New Zealand/Aotearoa-based website On This Day. Both lists are fairly Euro/Atlantico-centric, leaving out what I’m sure were significant developments in East Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. But the Wikipedia one … Continue reading 500 years ago this year
The main actors I’d identified in my 1520 post all remained active in 1521: Martin Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms, which had been convened by the “Holy Roman Emperor” to examine his heretical beliefs. Luther refused to recant and made a speedy getaway before May 25, when the HRE declared him … Continue reading Key developments of 1521
So, in 1522 CE, our story of the development of Western imperialism continues to focus on many of the same actors as we were tracing the past two years: In January, and on behalf of “Spain” (more precisely, perhaps, the union of Castile and Aragon inaugurated by the 1469 marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella), the … Continue reading Key developments of 1522 (and notes on the Portuguese Empire)
There was not as much happening in 1523 CE in the key areas I’m tracking, as there had been the preceding years. (To be honest, things going on in Scandinavia at that time leave me yawning.) But here’s what I have picked up: Martin Luther published his translation into German of the Pentateuch (the first … Continue reading Key developments of 1523, and notes on the pre-Portuguese Indian Ocean
Here’s a list of key events of 1524 CE that I culled from Wikipedia– and from the online Encyclopedia Britannica: In January, the French king Francis I entered the transatlantic exploration game by sending Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verazzano on an expedition to “the New World”, apparently seeking a western sea route to the Pacific … Continue reading Key developments of 1524
By this point, in terms of European projects at world domination and all the plunder, destruction, and genocide that they entailed, Spain was clearly stepping into the number-one role. (See the orange-daubed parts of the world, above. Yellow was Portugal.) The Spanish state was also still actively throwing its weight around inside Europe, whereas the … Continue reading Key developments of 1525
Here are the main things that happened in 1526 CE, that affected the continuing story of the European-origined imperialisms that would soon enough come to dominate world affairs: In January French King Francis I, who had been battling Spain in the European homeland, reached a peace agreement with Spain’s King Charles (who was also the … Continue reading Key developments of 1526
In today’s listings, which cover 1527 CE, we’ll look primarily at the events swirling across the “Western” world’s European heartland since if we can’t understand those we can’t understand the explosion of European-origined power projection, plunder, looting, and land-grabbing on a global scale that was already well underway in 1527 and continued for 400-plus years … Continue reading Key developments of 1527
For these daily/yearly posts, I’ve been relying on English Wikipedia’s annual listings, supplemented by various timelines (of the Ming Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Portuguese Empire, etc.) Today’s pickings, relating to 1528 CE, have been pretty thin. So after giving a few bullet-points I shall look a little more broadly at the whole phenomenon of … Continue reading Key developments of 1528
