Sublime

In the South China Sea or near Japan, the Portuguese were much more cautious. Here they found a niche as long-distance traders, convenient middlemen for a Ming Empire that disliked overseas activity by its own subjects and refused direct commercial relations with Japan.

Caesar also became part of the calendar, as well as rewriting it. It may not have been until after his assassination that the month Quintilis was renamed Julius, our July, after him;

The Battle of Manila Bay, as the resulting conflict was known, made an auspicious start to the war. “Nineteenth century civilization and fifteenth century medievalism lay confronting each other” is how Dewey’s aide described the scene. In just over six hours on May 1, 1898, Dewey sank or captured every Spanish ship. The captain of Spain’s flagship

That was Catiline’s position after he had been beaten in the annual elections for the consulship in both 64 and 63 BCE. Although the usual story is that he had been leaning in that direction before, he now had little option but to resort to ‘revolution’ or ‘direct action’ or ‘terrorism’, whichever you choose to call it.

In a world of rising empires, one was conspicuously faltering: Spain’s. Once a vast imperium extending from California to Buenos Aires, it had been reduced, in the Western Hemisphere, to Cuba and Puerto Rico and, in the Pacific, to the Philippines and a set of Micronesian islands. Even these, Spain could barely hold. The late nineteenth century had

The ebb and flow of pamphlet warfare mirrored closely the rhythms of the conflict. French campaigning in Italy produced a flurry of publications in 1516 and 1528–9. On the imperial side the interconnected events of 1527–9, with the coronation of Ferdinand I as King of Hungary closely followed by the renewal of the French War, produced a comparable

One of the few extant public acknowledgements of the Igorrote show is in Ghent, where an initiative to commemorate the city’s World Exhibition of 1913 lead to the naming of streets and tunnels after notable participants of this historical event, including Timicheg, one of the nine Igorrotes who died on Schneidewind’s European tour.

Pedro Albizu Campos’s faith in the United States was striking, but he had reason for it. Whatever empire fever had gripped the country in 1898 seemed to be subsiding. The scandals and sheer length of the Philippine War had wearied even the most ardent imperialists. In 1907 Theodore Roosevelt himself called the Philippines a “heel of Achilles” and s