History Documentary: Teotihuacan, the Aztecs. Pyramids of Death: Teotihuacan, Mexico. Teotihuacan: the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon

 

Unravel the mysteries surrounding the rise and fall of one of the ancient world's most powerful and least understood civilizations, the Teotihuacan.

View of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Sun, from the Pyramid of the Moon.

Teotihuacan /teɪˌoʊtiːwəˈkɑːn/,[1] also written Teotihuacán (Spanish pronunciation: [teotiwa'kan] ( listen)), was an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, located in the State of Mexico 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of modern-day Mexico City, known today as the site of many of the most architecturally significant Mesoamerican pyramids built in the pre-Columbian Americas.

At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more, making it at least the sixth largest city in the world during its epoch.

Apart from the pyramids, Teotihuacan is also anthropologically significant for its complex, multi-family residential compounds; the Avenue of the Dead; and the small portion of its vibrant murals that have been exceptionally well-preserved. Additionally, Teotihuacan exported fine obsidian tools that garnered high prestige and widespread usage throughout Mesoamerica.

The city is thought to have been established around 100 BC, with major monuments continuously under construction until about 250 AD. The city may have lasted until sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries AD, but its major monuments were sacked and systematically burned around 550 AD.

Teotihuacan began as a new religious center in the Mexican Highlands around the first century AD. This city came to be the largest and most populated center in the pre-Columbian Americas. Teotihuacan was even home to multi-floor apartment compounds built to accommodate this large population. The term Teotihuacan (or Teotihuacano) is also used for the whole civilization and cultural complex associated with the site.

Although it is a subject of debate whether Teotihuacan was the center of a state empire, its influence throughout Mesoamerica is well documented; evidence of Teotihuacano presence can be seen at numerous sites in Veracruz and the Maya region. The later Aztecs saw these magnificent ruins and claimed a common ancestry with the Teotihuacanos, modifying and adopting aspects of their culture. The ethnicity of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan is also a subject of debate. Possible candidates are the Nahua, Otomi, or Totonac ethnic groups. Scholars have also suggested that Teotihuacan was a multi-ethnic state.

The city and the archaeological site are located in what is now the San Juan Teotihuacán municipality in the State of México, approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of Mexico City. The site covers a total surface area of 83 square kilometres (32 sq mi) and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. It is the most visited archaeological site in Mexico.

Hisotry Documentary: The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). The Russian-Japanese Conflict (1904-1905), Documentary

The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan and the Yellow Sea.

Japanese assault on the entrenched Russian forces, 1904

Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for their navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by China, was operational all year. Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, negotiations between Russia and Japan proved impractical. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy in the Siberian Far East from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Through threat of Russian expansion, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as being within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded Korea north of the 39th parallel to be a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan. The Japanese government perceived a Russian threat to its strategic interests and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur in a surprise attack.

Russia suffered numerous defeats by Japan, but Tsar Nicholas II was convinced that Russia would win and chose to remain engaged in the war; at first, to await the outcomes of certain naval battles, and later to preserve the dignity of Russia by averting a "humiliating peace". The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt. The complete victory of the Japanese military surprised world observers. The consequences transformed the balance of power in East Asia, resulting in a reassessment of Japan's recent entry onto the world stage.

Credits: Wikipedia

History Documentary: India-Pakistan Partition 1947, History of India and Pakistan, Partition of India, Full Documentary

History Documentary: India-Pakistan Partition 1947, History of India and Pakistan, Partition of India, Full Documentary.

The British Indian Empire, from the 1909 edition of The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Areas directly governed by the British are shaded pink; the princely states under British suzerainty are in yellow.

 

The Partition of India was the partition of the British Indian Empire that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (which later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later Republic of India) on 15 August 1947. "Partition" here refers not only to the division of the Bengal province of British India into East Pakistan and West Bengal (India), and the similar partition of the Punjab Province into West Punjab (West Pakistan) and East Punjab (now Punjab), but also to the respective divisions of other assets, including the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service and other administrative services, the railways, and the central treasury.

In the riots which preceded the partition in the Punjab Province, it is believed that between 200,000 and 2,000,000 people were killed in the retributive genocide between the religions.UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history.

The term partition of India does not cover the later secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, nor the earlier separation of Burma (now known as Myanmar) from the administration of British India, nor the separation of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The coastal area of Ceylon was part of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1795 until 1798, when it became a separate Crown Colony of the Empire. Burma, gradually annexed by the British during 1826–86 and governed as a part of the British Indian administration until 1937, was directly administered thereafter. Burma was granted independence on 4 January 1948 and Ceylon on 4 February 1948.

Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives, the remaining present-day countries of South Asia, were unaffected by the partition. The first two, Bhutan and Nepal, although earlier being regarded as de facto princely states, later signed treaties with the British designating them as independent states before partition, and therefore their borders were unaffected by the partition of India. The Maldives, which had become a protectorate of the British crown in 1887 and gained its independence in 1965, was also unaffected by the partition.

Credits: Wikipedia

History Documentary: Brazil, History of Brazil, Brazilian History, Full Documentary

The history of Brazil starts with indigenous people in Brazil. Europeans arrived in Brazil at the opening of the 16th century.

The first European to colonize Brazil was Pedro Álvares Cabral on April 22, 1500 under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Portugal. From the 16th to the early 19th century, Brazil was a colony and a part of the Portuguese Empire. The country expanded south along the coast and west along the Amazon and other inland rivers from the original 15 donatary captaincy colonies established on the northeast Atlantic coast east of the Tordesillas Line of 1494 (approximately the 46th meridian west) that divided the Portuguese domain to the east from the Spanish domain to the west. The country's borders were only finalized in the early 20th century.

On September 7, 1822, the country declared its independence from Portugal and became Empire of Brazil. A military coup in 1889 established the First Brazilian Republic. The country has seen a dictatorship during Vargas Era (1930–1934 and 1937–1945) and a period of military rule (1964–1985) under Brazilian military government.

Credits: Wikipedia 

Queen Maria I of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.

History Documentary: The History of the Luddite Movement, The Luddites, Documentary -- The Historian Channel

The Leader of the Luddites, engraving of 1812

Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers (or self-employed weavers who feared the end of their trade) who protested against newly developed labour-economising technologies, primarily between 1811 and 1816. The stocking frames, spinning frames and power looms introduced during the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace them with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work. The Luddite movement culminated in a region-wide rebellion in Northwestern England that required a massive deployment of military force to suppress.

The term has since developed a secondary meaning: a "Luddite" is one opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation or new technologies in general.

Although the origin of the name Luddite (/ˈlʌd.aɪt/) is uncertain, a popular belief is that the movement was named after Ned Ludd, a youth who allegedly smashed two stocking frames in 1779, and whose name had become emblematic of machine destroyers. The name evolved into the imaginary General Ludd or King Ludd, a figure who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest.

The movement can be seen as part of a rising tide of English working-class discontent in the late 18th and early 19th century. An agricultural variant of Luddism, centering on the breaking of threshing machines, occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England.[8] [b] The Luddites' goal was to gain a better bargaining position with their employers. They were not afraid of technology per se, but were "labour strategists".

Spasmodic rises in food prices provoked Keelmen in the port of Tyne to riot in 1710 and tin miners to plunder granaries at Falmouth in 1727. There was a rebellion in Northumberland and Durham in 1740, and manhandling of Quaker corn dealers in 1756. More peaceably, skilled artisans in the cloth, building, shipbuilding, printing and cutlery trades organised friendly societies to insure themselves against unemployment, sickness, and in some cases against intrusion of "foreign" labour into their trades, as was common among guilds.

The Luddite movement emerged during the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw a rise in difficult working conditions in the new textile factories. The movement began in Arnold, Nottingham on 11 March 1811 and spread rapidly throughout England over the following two years. Handloom weavers burned mills and pieces of factory machinery.

Textile workers destroyed industrial equipment during the late 18th century, prompting acts such as the Protection of Stocking Frames, etc. Act 1788.

The Luddites met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns, where they would practise drills and manoeuvres. Their main areas of operation were Nottinghamshire in November 1811, followed by the West Riding of Yorkshire in early 1812 and Lancashire by March 1813. Luddites battled the British Army at Burton's Mill in Middleton and at Westhoughton Mill, both in Lancashire. Rumours abounded at the time that local magistrates employed agents provocateurs to instigate the attacks.[citation needed] Using the pseudonym King Ludd, the Luddites and their supporters anonymously sent death threats to—and even attacked—magistrates and food merchants.

Activists smashed Heathcote's lacemaking machine in Loughborough in 1816. He and other industrialists had secret chambers constructed in their buildings that could be used as hiding places during an attack.

In 1817, an unemployed Nottingham stockinger and probable ex-Luddite named Jeremiah Brandreth led the Pentrich Rising, which was a general uprising unrelated to machinery, but which could be viewed as the last major Luddite act.[citation needed]

Government response

Later interpretation of machine breaking (1812), showing two men superimposed on an 1844 engraving from the Penny magazine which shows a post 1820s Jacquard loom.[d] Machine-breaking was criminalised by the Parliament of the United Kingdom as early as 1721, the penalty being penal transportation, but as a result of continued opposition to mechanisation the Frame Breaking Act 1812 made the death penalty available: see "criminal damage in English law".

The British Army clashed with the Luddites on several occasions. At one time, more British soldiers were fighting the Luddites than were fighting Napoleon on the Iberian Peninsula.Three Luddites, led by George Mellor, ambushed and assassinated a mill owner named William Horsfall from Ottiwells Mill in Marsden, West Yorkshire at Crosland Moor in Huddersfield. Horsfall had remarked that he would "Ride up to his saddle in Luddite blood." Mellor fired the fatal shot to Horsfall's groin, and all three men were arrested.

The British government sought to suppress the Luddite movement with a mass trial at York in January 1813, following the attack on Cartwrights mill at Rawfolds near Cleckheaton. The government charged over sixty men, including Mellor and his companions, with various crimes in connection with Luddite activities. While some of those charged were actual Luddites, many had no connection to the movement. These trials were not legitimate judicial reckonings of each defendant's guilt, but show trials intended to deter other Luddites from continuing their activities. By meting out harsh consequences, including, in many cases, execution and penal transportation, the trials quickly ended the movement.

Parliament subsequently made "machine breaking" (i.e. industrial sabotage) a capital crime with the Frame Breaking Act and the Malicious Damage Act. Lord Byron opposed this legislation, becoming one of the few prominent defenders of the Luddites after the treatment of the defendants at the York trials.

Several decades later, in 1867, Karl Marx referred to the Luddites in Capital, Volume I, noting that it would be some time before workers were able to distinguish between the machines and "the form of society which utilises these instruments" and their ideas "The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of a machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the work