South America
-
The Valiant Ladies of Potosí
When the Spanish “discovered” South America, they were thrilled to find a plethora of precious metals to take. The heart of the silver boom was the town of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia. At the time it was part of the Viceroyalty of Peru and was known as Alto Peru. There was so much money there that the theory is that the mint mark of Potosí, which was the letters “PTSI” all written over each other, is the origin of the dollar sign. The very name meant money, and a common Spanish expression is “vale un Potosí”, which is literally translated to “to be worth a Potosí” and means…
-
Treaty of Tordesillas
So if you watched the US presidential debate last night, you would have heard one of the candidates make mention that the Iran arms deal is the “worst in history”. This got me thinking. No matter what your political persuasion, I think we can all agree this is hyperbole. All of history is a very, very long time and there have been some ridiculously bad deals signed. One that comes to mind is the Treaty of Tordesillas. In the 15th century, both Spain and Portugal were two of the world’s superpowers. Both countries were sending out explorers and divvying up the New World (that’s another set of terrible treaties that…
-
Manco Inca Yupanqui
The Inca had a great empire in what is now Peru, parts of Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, north and Chile and a small part of southern Colombia. They were the Roman Empires of the Americas. However, they when the Spanish explorers first encountered them the Inca were coming off a debilitating civil war and in the middle of a smallpox epidemic. 160 Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Peru with Francisco Pizarro, and they took full advantage of the destabilizing political situation. The civil war was between two brothers who both claimed the throne- Atahuallpa and Huascar. The war was only ended when Atahuallpa killed his brother, however,…
-
The Role of Religion in Empire Building
Although Empires began and subsequently expanded for a variety of reasons, religion and culture played an important part, both as a catalyst and subsequently in the shaping of newly established Empires regardless of the initial motive for conquer. Examples of trade, security, lack of resources in the core nation, financial gain, religion and exploration demonstrate this, from various periods of their history covering expansion in similar areas, I will show how these motives affected the conquered nations as well as the settlers and associated parties involved. I have chosen to concentrate on non-contiguous Empires for my examples. Spain’s successful overthrowing of their Moorish conquerors from the eleventh century onwards gave…
-
Zombies
“When there’s no more room in Hell the dead will walk the earth” – Dawn of the Dead Whats more terrifying than imagining the dead coming back to life? In truth they are fictional undead creatures created through the reanimation of human corpses. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. They are mindless creatures whose only desire is to eat the living. What could be frightening than that right? Actually there are legends about real zombies in Haiti (another post). The term comes from Haitian folklore where a zombie is a dead body animated by magic. Modern depictions of zombies do not necessarily involve magic but…
