The first king of this tiny country, washed by the Atlantic, and blessed with fine seamen, navigators and harbours, was Alfonso I, in 1139, but the Portuguese Empire…
Category: South American History
Second thoughts on General Pinochet
He was another military dictator who was and is still hated by almost everybody, even after his death, except a substantial portion of the Latin American population. He…
US President Monroe & his Doctrine
James Monroe was born in Virginia in 1758, and became the 5th President of the United States. He did not shine as a diplomat but he did manage…
Latin American revolutionaries: Zapata & Villa
Emiliano Zapata was a Mexican revolutionary, son of a peasant of mixed (meztizo) blood. At around twelve he became an agricultural worker, then entered politics by arousing the…
Colonization
These days the word strikes a sour note, arousing images of rough settlements, starving ‘piccaninies’, whips, shackles, thoughtless government from a distance of thousdands of miles etc. If…
The Inquisition
This was a Catholic tribunal founded on a temporary basis in France and Germany. Its purpose was to seek out heresy, prosecute and punish it. In the thirteenth…
The Condor Squadron
This formed part of Adolf Hitler’s contribution to the Nationalist or rebel side during the Spanish Civil War (q.v.). The pilots came mostly from the German middle and…
The Tudors
I do not refer to the hideous filmed television series of the same name, designed more as pornography for sexually deprived viewers than students of England’s history. I…
The royal Portuguese House of Braganza
This traditional Iberian Duchy assumed royalty in 1442 but only when one of the interminable rows with neighbouring Spain impressed John IV enough to actually sit on the…
The Barbary Coast, and Wars
It is difficult to find any time since the Byzantine Empire when the North African coast from Morocco to Libya was not infamous for piracy. The worst period…