Charles VI and the Pragmatic Sanction: AD 1720 The great issue dominating Austria in the years after the War of the Spanish Succession is again a problem of succession - this time relating to the remaining Habsburg territories, ruled from Vienna. The emperor Charles VI has a son, born in 1716, but the child dies before the year is out. A daughter, Maria Theresa, is born in 1717. Another daughter, Maria Anna ...

The creation of Wales: 8th - 9th century AD The digging of Offa's dyke in the 8th century, as the effective border between Anglo-Saxon England and Celtic Wales, formalizes a situation which has existed for a century and a half. Victories near Bath (in 577) and near Chester (in 613) have brought the Anglo-Saxons to the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea, restricting the Celtic tribes to the great western peni ...

Founding refugees: AD 568 When the Lombards invade Italy, in 568, one of the first cities in their path is Aquileia - a Christian town of long-standing importance, traditionally held to have been founded by St Mark. Many of its inhabitants, alarmed at the prospects of life under the rule of Germanic tribesmen, opt for the uncertain status of refugees. Fleeing southwards, some seek safety on a low-lying offs ...

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Buffer region: to AD 1828 For much of its early colonial history, when it is known as the Banda Oriental ('east bank' of the Uruguay river), the region of Uruguay functions mainly as an unsettled buffer zone between hostile neighbours - the Portuguese to the north in Brazil, the Spanish to the west and south in Argentina. The reason is the nature of the environment. The flat plains, covered in tall prairie ...

New Granada: AD 1740-1810 The modern nations of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador are grouped together, from 1740, as the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada with its capital at Bogotá. The second half of the 18th century is a time of considerable progress in the region. Spain relaxes the long-standing mercantilist restrictions on trade with its colonies, resulting in a rapid increase in prosperity. An educate ...

Buganda: 19th century AD Uganda, on the equator and surrounded by the great lakes of central Africa, is one of the last parts of the continent to be reached by outsiders. Arab traders in search of slaves and ivory arrive in the 1840s, soon followed by two British explorers. Speke is here in 1862. Stanley follows in 1875. The ruler visited by both Speke and Stanley is Mutesa, the king (or kabaka) of Buganda. ...

Turks and Mongols: 6th - 13th century AD The high plateau of Mongolia, east of the Altai mountains, is rivalled only by Scandinavia as a region from which successive waves of tribesmen have emerged to prey upon more sedentary neighbours. Mongolia is the original homeland of both Turks and Mongols, two groups much intermingled in history and loosely related in their languages. Mongolia is an ideal starting p ...

The Barbary coast: 16th - 20th century AD With the decline of the local Berber dynasties in the 15th and 16th centuries, the valuable coastal strip of north Africa (known because of the Berbers as the Barbary coast) attracts the attention of the two most powerful Mediterranean states of the time - Spain in the west, Turkey in the east. The Spanish-Turkish rivalry lasts for much of the 16th century, but it i ...

The sledge: 7000-4000 BC From the beginning of human history people have dragged any load too heavy to be carried. But large objects are often of awkward shape and texture, liable to snag on any roughness in the ground. The natural solution is to move them on a platform with smooth runners - a sledge. Wooden sledges are first known, by at least 7000 BC, among communities living by hunting and fishing in nor ...