Even so, by the time of Marx’s death, his ideas and other forms of socialism were motivating labor organizers to form unions in which workers could negotiate for better wages and working conditions with owners, under threat of striking—stopping work at a factory and preventing others from replacing them at the machines.

Governments were quick to crack down on Luddites – a couple of executions quickly took the wind out of their sails.

Statewide, the German pluralities range from 11% in Florida to 43% in North Dakota, which explains why the capital is named after Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

The Spanish did not want to physically eliminate the indigenous, but they did advocate a cultural genocide of sorts, which was never complete due to native resistance. But this was, in the long run, less successful than the destruction of native culture in North America because despite the Columbian Exchange there were more natives left.

Many natives felt part of colonial society, and confidently challenged Spanish landowners in court.

Although the colonists found these taxes oppressive and obnoxious, to a great extent they were luxury taxes or excises on trade rather than direct taxes on personal income. Still, imposing new taxes on the colonists was a miscalculation by Parliament, because the merchants and the wealthy most affected by the taxes had the means and the motivation to organize a resistance movement.

Conditions were so harsh on sugar plantations that slaves generally died within about three years after their arrival.

In many of these countries, the ideas of divine monarchy and hereditary nobility had given way to a sharing of constitutional power between rulers and their subjects. Merchants gained influence and slowly acquired legislative powers in bodies like Britain’s House of Commons.

Those that arrived at these Islands from the remotest parts of Spain, and who pride themselves in the Name of Christians, steered Two courses principally, in order to the Extirpation, and Exterminating of this People from the face of the Earth.

As to the firm land, we are certainly satisfied, and assured, that the Spaniards by their barbarous and execrable Actions have absolutely depopulated Ten Kingdoms, of greater extent than all Spain

The Spaniards first assaulted the innocent Sheep, so qualified by the Almighty, like most cruel tigers, wolves, and lions, hunger-starved, studying nothing, for the space of Forty Years, after their first landing

The dancers and singers were completely unarmed. They brought only their embroidered cloaks, their turquoises, their lip plugs, their necklaces, their clusters of heron feathers, their trinkets made of deer hooves. Those who played the drums, the old men, had brought their gourds of snuff and their timbrels.The Spaniards attacked the musicians first, slashing a

The Spaniards hanged a chief from Acolhuacan named Nezahualquentzin. They also murdered the king of Nauhtla, Cohualpopocatzin, by wounding him with arrows and then burning him alive.

Then the Spaniards burst into the rooms of the temple to kill the others: those who were carrying water, or bringing fodder for the horses, or grinding meal, or sweeping, or standing watch over this work.

Karlsefni caused trees to be felled and to be hewed into timbers wherewith to load his ship, and the wood was placed upon a cliff to dry. They gathered somewhat of all of the valuable products of the land: grapes, and all kinds of game and fish, and other good things.

yet were they so anxious to go ashore that they could not wait until the tide should rise under their ship, but hastened to the land, where a certain river flows out from a lake.

The country thereabouts seemed to be possessed of such good qualities that cattle would need no fodder there during the winters. There was no frost there in the winters, and the grass withered but little.

Sailing became increasingly dangerous and the Greenland colony was abandoned in the early 1400s. Without a base in Greenland the Vikings were unable to sustain a North American colony. They also faced strenuous opposition from natives they called Skraelings, who according to the Viking sagas were fierce warriors.

Mayan religious beliefs included scraping down and redecorating their temples every sixty years.

By this time, the Catholic Church had prohibited the enslavement of Indians, but not of Africans.

The fisheries were originally a closely-guarded trade secret, but by the time Columbus made his famous journey they were well-known. And since cod was usually salted and dried on racks onshore before being carried back to Europe, Columbus and his crew were almost certainly not the first Europeans to make landfall in the Americas after the Viking settlements had been abandoned.

and so great, Sir, is the corruption and licentiousness that our country is being completely depopulated, and Your Highness should not agree with this nor accept it as in your service.

Because the pope crowns the emperor, it does not follow that the pope is superior to the emperor. Samuel, who crowned Saul and David, was not above these kings, nor Nathan above Solomon, whom he consecrated . . . Let the emperor then be a veritable emperor and no longer allow himself to be stripped of his sword or of his scepter!

They even imagine that a priest can never be anything but a priest--that is, he can never become a layman. All this is nothing but mere talk and a figment of human invention.

There has been a fiction by which the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the 'spiritual estate'; princes, lords, artisans, and peasants are the 'temporal estate.' This is an artful lie and hypocritical invention

Istanbul quickly became the largest Eurasian city outside China. Under Sultans like Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-1566), the Ottomans expanded into Europe and nearly captured Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683.

“If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.”

“By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.”

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

“The journey with a thousand miles begins with one step.”

The alarmed Chinese turned their full attention to their border defenses and rebuilt the crumbling Long Walls into a 1,550-mile long fortification with hundreds of guard towers. The Long Walls had existed since the beginning of the Chinese Empire, but had failed to hold off Mongol invaders.

Zheng He’s first expedition left China in July 1405 with 62 large ships, over 200 smaller ships, and 28,000 soldiers. The largest ships were 425 feet long, over six times the length of the 65-foot caravels the Spanish and Portuguese would use on their explorations nearly a century later.

Hume left this essay out of the first edition of his book, An Enquiry into Human Understanding, to avoid antagonizing the faithful.

Feudal lords squeezed their peasants for crops and labor, and states raised taxes. Several million died during the famine, and then about half of Europe’s population disappeared between the plague’s arrival in 1347 and 1353.

Russia became the largest kingdom in the world, stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean, but much of it was unoccupied and primitive. Peter I (Peter the Great, r. 1672-1725) visited Europe in disguise for 18 months to study shipbuilding and new administrative techniques that he used to modernize his realm and establish the Russian Empire.

Keep the immense population of China and the gravity exerted by its economy in mind as we move on to discuss events like the creation of a Spanish colonial empire in the Americas. Spanish-American mines produced the silver that accidentally became the world’s currency, filling not only the treasuries Europe, but also that of China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Among the places Zheng visited were Bangkok, Java, Melaka, Burma, the east and west coasts of India, Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, Jedda on the Red Sea, and Mogadishu and Mombasa on the east coast of Africa