A Short History of the World

by Christopher Lascelles

  Like his father, Charles I was a strong believer in the divine right of kings and for a time he refused to allow parliament to meet, recalling it only to raise money to fight the Scots, who had invaded England after Charles had imposed a new prayer book for their church services. Charles’ unsuccessful attempt, in 1642, to have five members of parliament arrested drove the country to civil war. The Civil War was not between Catholics and Protestants but rather between royalists, known as ‘cavaliers’, and the opposition who were known as ‘roundheads’, due to their short haircuts.

  Oliver Cromwell, a puritanical member of parliament, became leader of the anti-royalist forces and was instrumental in encouraging parliament to develop a professional army that he led to victory on numerous occasions both in England and Ireland. In 1649, having lost the Civil War, Charles I was executed, and four years later, Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Cromwell imposed military rule and led the country until he died in 1658. His son briefly replaced him, but Charles II, who had fled the country and spent his exile at the court of Louis XIV, was invited back in 1660 and reinstated as king of England, Scotland and Ireland. One of his first acts was to have Cromwell’s body dug up and posthumously beheaded.

  Charles II’s reign was to see both the Great Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666 which destroyed some 13,000 homes. When Charles died in 1685, he was succeeded by his brother, James II, who proceeded to appoint a number of Catholics to senior positions in the realm, enough at any rate to worry a predominantly Protestant parliament. As a result, parliament urged the Dutchman, William of Orange, husband of James’ daughter, Mary, to save the country from a Catholic takeover.

  When William landed in England in 1688 at the head of an army, James II, his father-in-law and the last Catholic monarch to rule England, fled the country and sought sanctuary in France. After this bloodless revolution, William and Mary acceded as co-rulers in 1689, and ruled the land together until Mary’s death in 1694, from which time William ruled alone until his own death in 1702. James II’s daughter, Anne, inherited the throne, but when she died in 1714, the Stuart royal line died with her. The crown passed to James I’s great-grandson, the Elector of Hanover, who was invited to rule England as George I. He spoke German, but no English.

  By copying the advanced banking system of the Netherlands, and by turning its attention west towards the Americas where the future lay, England gradually replaced the Netherlands as the world’s economic and military superpower.

  Japan Closes its Doors to the World (17th Century)

  While Europeans were busy exploring the world, the Japanese were being forbidden to travel outside their country unless accompanying an army. In the 16th century Japan had only just emerged from a lengthy period of anarchy and civil war in which military governors, or Shoguns, managed the country in the name of the emperor. A number of these had become so powerful that they had been able to unify Japan. Under the last and most powerful shogunate, started by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603, based in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo), Japan enjoyed some 250 years of peace.

  The Portuguese had been the first Europeans to visit Japan in 1543; the Japanese word for thank you, ‘arigato’, still bears a striking resemblance to the Portuguese word ‘obrigado’. They were followed by other Europeans who were successful in introducing trade and Christianity, not to mention firearms. However, fearing military conquest by the Europeans and considering them a potential threat, the Japanese expelled them in the early 17th century. By 1635, Japanese citizens were forbidden from leaving the country and those already abroad were not permitted back. In 1641, all trade with Europeans was limited to the port of Nagasaki, all foreign books were banned,78 and the country was effectively locked from foreign interference for the following 200 years.

  China Expands under the Manchus

  In neighbouring China, the Ming Dynasty eventually weakened thanks to a series of average emperors unable to deal with the growing threat of the rival Manchus from the north-east. In 1644 Beijing, the home of the emperor, fell to a rebel army79 and those loyal to the Mings invited the Manchus to help recover the Imperial City. It was the Manchus that established the last Chinese imperial dynasty, the Qing (or Ching, meaning pure), which would last for over 250 years, only coming to an end in 1911.

  The Manchus were a fraction of the size of the Chinese population and had a different culture, language and writing. They insisted that all non-Manchu men shave their heads, leaving a long pigtail at the back as a sign of submission. They were incredibly successful in expanding the empire, managing to conquer Mongolia and establish a protectorate over present-day Tibet. It took them only 30 years to complete the conquest of China, including that of the island of Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-Manchu resistance.

  Meanwhile in Russia…

  Shortly after Japan effectively closed its doors to foreign interference, Russia made its first attempts at westernisation. In the mid-1600s Russia was vast, remote and underdeveloped. The country had little external trade and a weak military; the Mongol yoke under which the country had been ruled for several hundred years had stifled the intellectual development that had been so predominant in European countries over the previous centuries. What’s more, ‘Russia had had no or little exposure to the defining historical phenomena of Western civilisation: Roman Catholicism, feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, overseas expansion and colonization80’. Despite this, the country had grown since the grand Duke of Moscow, Ivan III, had renounced his allegiance to the Mongol Khan in 1480 and assumed the title of tsar. Since that time Russian leaders had gradually moved eastwards, ruthlessly destroying any opposition.

  Peter the Great, who ruled Russia between 1682 and 1725, is credited with a series of reforms that transformed Russia into a powerful modern state. A brush with the Ottoman Turks early in his reign encouraged Peter to seek support from various European powers that were also weary of Ottoman influence. As part of this endeavour, in 1697, Peter undertook a 17-month tour of Europe during which he visited Germany, the Netherlands and England among other countries.

  During his trip Peter learned how western European countries had used new technology and trade to gain power and wealth and he was determined to do the same in Russia. On his return, he established a ship-building industry, modernised the army, reorganised the government, banned ancient dress, simplified the Russian alphabet, promoted education, and even put a tax on beards – all in an effort to make Russians adopt Western ways and to drag the country out of the Middle Ages. Yet Peter also had many faults; alongside his progressive vision, he was a ruthless leader who had his son tortured and murdered and caused the death of thousands of workers in his stubborn efforts to build the city of St Petersburg on marshland.

  One of Peter's main goals was to gain access to the Baltic Sea and to its trade through the establishment of a warm water port, which Russia lacked. In 1700, after making a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland, he marched into the Baltic region, thereby inciting war with Sweden under its young king, Charles XII. Charles initially won a series of battles, which gave him a reputation as a great military man, but eventually lost the ‘Great Northern War’ that lasted 21 years. When the war ended, Russia kept the new land it had gained and Peter was declared ‘Peter the Great and Emperor of all Russia’ as well as tsar. Under Peter’s orders, the capital of Russia was moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Sweden lost its supremacy as the leading power in the Baltic region and Russia’s growth ‘alerted other powers to the fact that the hitherto distant and somewhat barbarous Muscovite state was intent upon playing a role in European affairs.’81

  After Peter I’s death in 1725, with the exception of a few short interludes, Russia was ruled for the next 70 years by women, including Catherine the Great, the German wife of Peter’s grandson. During this time, Russia continued to expand, extending its borders well into central Europe, but failed to keep up with the rapidly developing West. Following Peter’s lead, Cather
ine flirted with reform, but changed her mind when Louis XVI of France was executed during the French Revolution. The lack of reform in Russia would lead to ever-increasing discontent and, with time, to revolution.

  The Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1871)

  West of Russia, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had divided the Holy Roman Empire into 300 different principalities. One of these, Prussia, became its own kingdom in 1701 and grew in power under its first king, Frederick I. When his son, Frederick II (Frederick the Great), inherited the crown in 1740, he also inherited the most advanced army in Europe. Wishing his Hohenzollern Dynasty to become as great as that of the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs, whose rivalry dominated European politics in the 18th century, he took the opportunity to put his army to the test in two major conflicts. One was over the succession of the Austrian Habsburg emperor, Charles VI, and turned into an expensive stalemate. Another came in 1756 after he occupied land that lay between Austria and Prussia.

  The result of these wars was that Prussia and Russia now overtook Spain and the Netherlands as great powers. Poland had the misfortune of being sandwiched between them and was eventually partitioned by them both, ceasing to exist as an independent country and only re-emerging after the First World War.

  Little did Frederick II know, however, that his land grab would instigate a major war that would involve all the leading European powers and spill over into America. The consequences of the war in America between the French and the British that followed would, thanks to its huge costs, ultimately lead to the American War of Independence and to the French Revolution.

  The Seven Years War (1756–1763)

  Since 1754 there had been open hostilities between the French and the British over the possession of territories in America and over control of the lucrative fur trade. With the eruption of war in Europe, open war also finally broke out in America in 1756. With major support from the native Indians, who had been alienated and badly treated by the British, the French initially seized the advantage, but the tide turned in 1758 under William Pitt, the new Secretary of State and future Prime Minister, who had been assigned responsibility for war. A great orator, and confident of his own abilities, he stated, ‘I know that I can save this country, and that no-one else can.’

  Through its mastery of the seas, the British navy destroyed the French fleet in 1759, thereby hampering France’s ability to supply its troops in America. The writing on the wall for the French came when Montreal and Quebec fell to the British. By 1760 the whole of French Canada was in British hands and the war was effectively won, although a peace treaty to end the war was not signed until 1763. Concerned about the balance of power, the Spanish had finally supported the French in 1762, but their support came too late and all they had to show for it was the loss of Cuba to the British.

  The consequences of the war in America were enormous: Britain gained all of northern America east of the Mississippi, including Canada from the French and Florida from the Spanish82 and, with a vastly increased empire, emerged as the greatest colonial power. France, on the other hand, was defeated on all fronts, ceding all its territory in mainland America, with the exception of New Orleans and a few sugar islands in the Caribbean. This saw not only the end of France’s American empire, but also the end of France’s political and cultural influence in the region.

  Any joy felt by the thirteen British colonies at having rid themselves of the French threat was dampened by a royal proclamation in 1763, forbidding settlers on the continent to colonise Indian lands to the west of the Appalachian Mountains. The increasing dissatisfaction with British rule felt by frontiersmen, land speculators, and colonists in general, and the inability of the British to quell this dissatisfaction, became a tinderbox which would require very little to ignite it.

  The Europeans Dominate India

  The Seven Years War had also extended into India where the British expelled the French. The Mughals – a Persian rendering of the word Mongols – had ruled much of India since 1526, when the Muslim prince, Babur, who had descended from both Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, conquered northern India and defeated the Delhi Sultan at the Battle of Panipat. The Mughal Empire had seen its height under Babur’s grandson, Akbar, who through his enlightened views and religious tolerance became known as Akbar the Great.

  The English had taken advantage of the stability of Akbar’s rule through the East India Company (EIC), a trading company founded in 1600 under Elizabeth I, that had been assigned a monopoly on all trade with Asia. The EIC rapidly focused on India after it became apparent that its attempts to gain a foothold in trade with the Spice Islands would be unsuccessful due to Dutch pre-eminence in the region. Why wage a spice war that they would probably lose when plenty of trade was to be had in India? This happened to coincide with a huge increase in European demand for cotton cloth made by Indian weavers, as it was inexpensive, washable and lightweight compared to the itchy wool that was ubiquitous in Europe at the time. Before long, the EIC had established trading posts along the Indian coast, with the main ones – Bombay, Madras and Calcutta - eventually developing into major cities in their own right.

  When the Mughal overlords introduced a less tolerant form of Islam in the mid-18th century, they alienated many of the indigenous and majority Hindus. A number of regional states rose up and sought support from the British and the French, both of whom were richly rewarded for providing aid. It was the rivalry between the French and the English that allowed the EIC to extend its control over more and more of India.

  The Hindu Religion

  Hinduism is the world’s oldest existing religion. Although its origins are unclear, it is believed to have originated in or near the Indus Valley in northern India some 4,000 years ago and the vast majority of people confessing the faith are still found in India to this day.83 Unlike other major religions, Hinduism has no founder or prophets. Its adherents believe in a supreme God called Brahman who takes on many qualities and forms, represented by a number of deities that all emanate from him.

  Hindus believe in reincarnation, an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth, driven by how one lived one’s previous life. According to Hindu belief, at some point mankind will learn from its mistakes and bring an end to suffering. This, in turn, will bring final salvation. For thousands of years Hinduism enforced a hierarchical and discriminatory caste system driven by superstition, tradition and religious beliefs, and this still lingers on today. It has even been suggested that the focus of fate within the caste system throttled initiative, and this may have played a part in the ease with which both the Mughals and the British managed to dominate India.

  The French and the British fought each other several times in the 1740s and 1750s until the British, under Clive of India, decisively beat the French at the Battle of Plassey84 in 1757. The battle was important in that it allowed the EIC to gain dominance over the French in India. As a result of the war the Bengali treasury was forced to pay huge compensation, which further financed British expansion in India and allowed the British to put their own candidate on the Mughal throne. For the next hundred years, the EIC invested in the infrastructure of India, in the hope that such investment would facilitate trade.

  The American War of Independence (1775-1783)

  Despite the money flowing in from India, Britain nevertheless struggled with the huge war bills that came about as a result of the Seven Years War and the defence of its colonies in America became a burden. The British government sought various ways of getting its colonies to contribute to their own defence, from taxing sugar to requiring all legal documents to be stamped for a price, but it was forced to repeal several of these acts as the American colonies rejected taxes from a government in which they had no representation.

  Ironically, it was the repeal of a tax, not its imposition, that caused the greatest conflagration. The EIC owed the British government taxes, but smugglers competing with the EIC to import tea into America caused the sales of tea sold through the proper channels t
o decrease. If the EIC were able to export tea direct to America, thereby avoiding the taxes it was paying in London, its price would diminish and sales of tea by the EIC would increase, subsequently decreasing the time it took for the EIC to pay its back taxes.

  Concerned with how this would affect their business, the smugglers, with the popular participation of those opposed to British rule, dumped 340 chests of EIC tea into Boston Harbour in December 1773 as a sign of protest. The ‘Boston Tea Party’, as it became known, engendered a vigorous response from London, including the closing of the harbour and the dispatch of British troops to impose order and enforce obedience to parliament – a highly significant act for a population used to relying on the army for its defence.

  In April 1775 the British army went to seize a cache of arms in Concorde, a small town near Boston, on the north-east coast of America. Shots were fired and the American Revolution began. Nobody had any idea that it would take eight years of brutal battle before Britain would recognise the independence that the American colonists declared on 4th July 1776.

  The war lasted so long because neither side was willing to submit. In the end the British were defeated by a mixture of a 3,000 mile-long supply line, terrible winters to which they were unaccustomed, and sheer bad luck. The Americans on their side had been fortunate to have the brilliant leadership of George Washington, who went on to become the first president of the United States of America in 1789. To make matters worse, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch all declared war on Britain. Little did the British know that they would not see peace until 1815; little did the French know that their aid to a people at war with its monarchy would come back to bite them.