Project 500 Years

Without a doubt, the main development in 1644 CE was the ousting of the Ming Dynasty from Beijing and, after further turmoil there, the…

In 1643 CE I’ll look at England’s continuing King vs. Parliament civil war, and its many repercussions including on Ireland, the Anglo…

(Here were my earlier two communiques in this project: 1, 2.)

In 1642 CE, the main developments of geopolitical impact were the civil wars in both ultra-large China and tiny England. The significance…

Yes, 1640 CE was a big year for inter-imperial change and there will be more to come. So today I will try to sort out the two big threads…

1640 CE was a huge year in the continuing evolution of Western imperialism. Most of today’s bulletin will deal with the two items noted in…

In 1639 CE, without a doubt, the three main developments in Western imperialism were as noted in the headline, so more on each of these…

Here are the headlines of what was happening in (mainly) West-European imperialisms in 1638 CE:

1637 CE saw three significant developments in the history of empires, and two noteworthy but less significant ones. The significant…

The three most notable developments of 1636 CE all took place in Asia. They were: The adoption by the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan of the…

There were a number of significant-ish developments in world history in 1635 CE, of which I’ll spend some time looking at four:

In 1634 CE, the Dutch, English, and Spanish empires all expanded their colonial grip on distant lands to some extent. In the interior of…

In 1632 CE there were two notable developments in the story of the rise and maintenance of “the West”. Both featured contests among rival…

In 1632 CE, we see Portugal’s once large and robust-looking empire around the shores of the Indian Ocean continuing to crumble a little…

In 1631 CE, nearly all the significant conflicts in the emerging world system were being waged at sea. The Iberians were conducting…