War in the air Part III: the Pacific
/ pacificwar.org.au The carrier-based Japanese air force began the war in the air over the Pacific Ocean by attacking without prior warning the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The damage to American...
View ArticleThe Treaty of Nerchinsk
The Treaty is signed / epicworldhistory,blogspot.com Before the seventeenth century China had been almost a myth; a legendary giant land in the Far East, barely visited by Europeans, a subject for...
View ArticleThe Taiping Revolt
/ mason.gmu.edu This uprising, which started in 1850 and ended fourteen years later, was the greatest peasant rebellion in China in the 19th century. The 18th had seen a rise in China’s population from...
View Article20th century Chinese warlords
/ history.cultural-china.com These provincial military self-appointed rulers were one of the collateral results of the Taipan Revolt (q.v.). Their power base was a private army, which each lord raised...
View ArticleCommodore Perry & the ‘Unequal Treaties’
The Commodore meets the Shogunate / mickmc.tripod.com Matthew Galbraith Perry was born into the American ruling class in 1794. He entered the Navy in his teens and was soon a naval officer. It was as a...
View ArticleWhat was the British ‘Raj’?
Last splendours of the ‘Raj’; Mountbatten after his swearing-in as Viceroy / en wikipedia.org Raj is Hindi for ‘rule’. The East India Company (always known as The Company) had opened up this vast Asian...
View ArticleKashmir
This trouble spot is naturally one of the most beautiful places on earth / sticholidays.com 1947/48 saw the biggest break-up in the disgraceful dismemberment of the British Empire, whose most important...
View ArticleMore thoughts on that Yalta Conference
The ‘Big Three’ from l. to r. ‘Exhausted’, ‘Dying’, and ‘Exuberant’ / spartacus.educational.com In February, 1945, the second ‘Big Three’ conference took place at Yalta in the Crimea. The first had...
View ArticleThe importance of being Okinawa
Yamato goes to war! / tamiya.com In April, 1945, the 2nd World War was very far from over. A huge invasion of the French mainland was planned for June. Japan, however, was seen by the Americans as...
View ArticleFurther thoughts on the Khmer Rouge
In 1970, serious trouble boiled up again when the Prince Sihanouk was knocked off the throne by a Cambodian communist guerilla force called Khmer Rouge. This brutal, well-organised group was inevitably...
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