istoryworld
Declaration of Independence
On July 9 the text of the Declaration of Independence is declaimed in public before George Washington's army, now defending New York. Taking this as the necessary act of public proclamation, the congress orders on July 19 that an appropriate document shall now be prepared. The text begins to be written on a large piece of parchment. By August 2 it is ready to be signed. The signing is fairly haphazard. Those who happen to be at the congress on that day sign it, though ...
Read More
Pharos at Alexandria
The sun god Helios features also in the last of the seven wonders. This is the lighthouse put up on the island of Pharos at Alexandria (as a result pharos becomes the Greek word for any lighthouse). It consists of a three-tier stone tower, said to be more than 120 metres high, which has within it a broad spiral ramp leading up to a platform where fires burn at night. They are reflected out to sea by metal mirrors. Above the fires is a huge ...
Read More
Donatello
The larger-than-lifesize St Mark stands in a completely relaxed pose, with his weight on one foot. Folds of loose drapery vividly suggest a projecting knee and jutting hip. The figure has the solid and uncompromising quality of Roman portrait sculpture, even though the beard and long robes seem to echo the saints on the façades of Gothic cathedrals. Donatello's next work for Orsanmichele, probably completed in 1417, has much more openly a classical quality. St George, a clean-shaven young man scantily clad in Roman armour, ...
Read More
Pottery of the Song dynasty
Of the many arts which thrive in China at this time, Song ceramics are outstanding. The simple shapes of the pottery and porcelain of this dynasty, and the elegance of the glazes (usually monochrome), have set standards of refinement admired in subsequent centuries throughout the world. Among the best known of these wares are the celadons, with their thick transparent green glazes, which are made at Longquan, near the southern Song capital of Hangzhou. Also influential are the black wares known as temmoku, popular with ...
Read More
Inca architecture
The Incas share with another much earlier civilization, that of Mycenaean Greece, a habit of building with massive blocks of masonry. But the precision of the Peruvian masons puts all others to shame. In their capital at Cuzco, or in subject cities where they wish to emphasize their presence, the Incas leave their trade mark in great slabs of stone, often of eccentric shape, fitting together with an uncanny and beautiful precision. The modern city of Cuzco has grown upon and around its Inca origins. ...
Read More
Moghul domes
The first dome of this kind surmounts the tomb of Humayun in Delhi, built between 1564 and 1573. The style is then overlooked for a while - no doubt because of Akbar's preference for Hindu architecture, as in Fatehpur Sikri - until Shah Jahan, the greatest builder of the dynasty, develops it in the 17th century with vigour and sophistication. His first attempt in this line is also his masterpiece - a building which has become the most famous in the world, for its beauty ...
Read More
Longships
A swift design of boat powered by oars is developed in northwest Europe, from the 5th century onwards, when the Germanic tribes begin raiding by sea. It is best known, in a later form, as the Viking longship. This type of boat features already in the 7th century in the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The shape of the Sutton Hoo ship is known only from the traces left by its timbers in the earth, but a smaller boat of similar kind was found at Nydam ...
Read More
Muslim North Africa
The Arabs continue rapidly westwards along the coast of North Africa, capturing Cyrenaica in 642 and Tripoli in 643. But these remain largely ineffective outposts. For nearly three decades the Arabs make little progress in subduing the indigenous Berber inhabitants of this coastal strip. The turning point comes in 670 with the founding of a new Arab garrison town at Kairouan, about sixty miles south of the Byzantine city of Carthage. From this secure base military control becomes possible. Carthage is destroyed (yet again) in ...
Read More
Reformation
Martin Luther, a man both solemn and passionate, is an Augustinian friar teaching theology at the university recently founded in Wittenberg by Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony. Obsessed by his own unworthiness, he comes to the conclusion that no amount of virtue or good behaviour can be the basis of salvation (as proposed in the doctrine known as justification by works). If the Christian life is not to be meaningless, he argues, a sinner's faith must be the only merit for which God's ...
Read More
The legacy of Francis I
The centre of French court life is Fontainebleau, a royal hunting lodge almost entirely rebuilt by Francis I from 1527. Here he brings the Italian artists Rosso Fiorentino (in 1530) and Primaticcio (in 1532), who together establish a French style of mannerist painting known as the school of Fontainebleau. They are joined in 1540 by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, whose famous golden salt cellar is made at Fontainebleau. Francis has earlier rebuilt Chambord, from 1519 - in name a castle on the Loire, ...
Read More
Amphibious war against Japan
A significant step in the slow move north towards Japan is the US assault, in February 1944, of a strong naval base in the volcanic cluster of the Truk Islands. Eleven Japanese warships and more than 300 planes are destroyed here, in the first radar-guided night attack. After this it is clear that the next target must be the Marianas, a group of islands which the Japanese rightly regard as a crucial line of defence. From here US planes will be within bombing range of ...
Read More
Assyrian reliefs
In about 645 BC Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, commissions a series of carved reliefs for his new palace at Nineveh. They include several scenes of a lion hunt - a sport reserved for the king himself. Many details of this famous relief are charged with high drama. Grooms struggle to harness the king's horses, a dog strains at the leash, a lion races out of the cage opened by an attendant and another leaps at the king's chariot, to be warded off just in time ...
Read More
The first farmers
The earliest place known to have lived mainly from the cultivation of crops is Jericho. By around 8000 BC this community, occupying a naturally well-watered region, is growing selected forms of wheat (emmer and einkorn are the two varieties), soon to be followed by barley. Though no longer gatherers, these people are still hunters. Their source of meat is wild gazelle, cattle, goat and boar. It is no accident that Jericho is also the first known town, with a population of 2000 or more. A ...
Read More
Magna Carta
Having accepted the document under duress, John immediately sends a request to the pope (now his ally) to have it annulled. Innocent III obliges in August of this same year, 1215. The result is a renewal of the civil war. The king's death in 1216, followed by the succession of his 9-year-old son as Henry III, brings a pause during which more moderate council prevails. When Henry comes of age, in 1225, archbishop Stephen Langton persuades him to reissue Magna Carta in a slightly modified ...
Read More
Act of Supremacy
The Act of Supremacy demands public consent to the king's newly assumed role as head of the Church of England. Prominent figures in public life are required to swear on oath their acceptance of this new doctrine. A few brave men refuse to do so, among them the bishop of Rochester (John Fisher) and Thomas More. Thomas More holds a position of particular significance. A scholar of distinction, friend of Erasmus, author of Utopia, he has also been a close friend of Henry VIII and ...
Read More
Waterloo
With about 124,000 men Napoleon advances towards Brussels, hoping to take a position between Wellington's and Blücher's armies - with the intention of containing or driving off one of them while defeating the other. The way north is blocked by Wellington at Quatre Bras. On June 16 Napoleon leaves marshal Ney to assault this position while he tackles Blücher a few miles to the east, at Ligny. The engagement at Quatre Bras is indecisive. But Napoleon wins convincingly at Ligny, causing the Prussians to retreat ...
Read More
Gold rushes
From the middle of the 19th century the nature of Australia's colonies is transformed by gold. The first mining boom has been in South Australia with the discovery of copper in 1845. But the real rush begins in 1851, just two years after the California gold rush has turned men's thoughts to instant fortunes. Gold is found at several sites in New South Wales and in Victoria. The richest finds are at Ballarat and Bendigo. These are fields rather than mines of gold. The nuggets ...
Read More
St Denis and Chartres
Fifty years later this pious effort at Chartres seems to be divinely rewarded. When the rest of the old cathedral is destroyed in a fire of 1194, the west façade - with its two great towers, and the triple entrance flanked by superb sculptures - miraculously survives (as does the Virgin's tunic). The cathedral authorities, gathering in the funds of the faithful, are inspired to build behind this façade an entire new cathedral in the Gothic style. The soaring interior, with its vertical lines unbroken ...
Read More
Glazed ceramics
In all the early civilizations, from Mesopotamia and Egypt onwards, pottery is a highly developed craft. An outstanding achievement is the Greek ceramic tradition of the 6th and 5th century BC. But technically all these pots suffer from a major disadvantage. Fired earthenware is tough but it is porous. Liquid will soak into it and eventually leak through it. This has some advantages with water (where evaporation from the surface cools the contents of the jug) but is less appropriate for storing wine or milk. ...
Read More
Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta
India is the country with the greatest tradition of rock-cut temples, and all the region's three indigenous religions are involved. The earliest site is Ajanta, where elaborate pillared halls are carved into the rock - from an almost vertical cliff face - from about the 1st century BC to the 8th century AD. The Ajanta caves are chiefly famous for their Buddhist murals, surviving from at least the 5th century AD. But the chaityas or meeting places are equally impressive, with their rows of carved ...
Read More