Settled farming, trading and continuing migrations. Sumerian writing. Gods run the world by magic and conquer for their monarchs. Religious diffusions and oral stories are put into writing. Religions transform. Indic civilization. Zhou overruns Shang civilization. Persian and Greek civilizations. Philosophy. Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic world. The Mauryan and Roman empires. The Han dynasty fails politically. More divisions in Judaism and the rise of Christianity. Rome is swallowed by its empire and Christianized Rome fails – as empires always do.
German tribal conquests, barbarism, and monasteries. Cultural diffusion congeals into Islam. Trade and bloody competition between empires and family dynasties. Power stuggle among Muslims. Christians against the evils of heresy, Islam and Jews. Mongol and Turkish expansions. Greek philosophy returns to Europe. Bubonic plague. Hun- dred Years' War. Muslims take Constantinople. Savonaro-la. The Inca empire expands. Sailing ships out for religious conversions and trade.
Latin empire, bloody conflict, Christianity, death and African slaves to America. The Reformation, with the printing press helping Protestantism. In India, Japan and Europe, rulers extend their powers by force. Religious wars in France. Islam's imperial army to the gates of Vienna; then decline. Cannons have made castles and knights obsolete. Standing armies and Machiavellian diplomacy increase. Shakespeare.
Tokugawa Japan. The French, Dutch and English to the Americas and to Africa. The Dutch to Indonesia. In Europe the telescope and science, Galileo and the Inquisition. Religious conflict and the Thirty Years' War. Civil War in England. Discovery of micro-organisms. England's liberal "Glorious Revolution." Europe has learned religious toler-ation. Locke's political contract rather than a divine right of kings. Newton's physics. England's Bill of Rights.
More warfare over who should rule where. More slaves shipped to America in British ships, supplied by African emperors. Peter the Great. An encyclopedia created in China. Literacy on the rise. Voltaire admires England's liberties. In France the right to question and the new search for knowledge inspires "The Enlightenment." War in Europe extends to North America followed by the American Revolutionary War. French Revolutionaries struggle with enlightenment and reason, trial and error.
Napoleon, empire and nationalism. Slave emancipation. Technological change and cultural upheaval. Revolution in 1848. Serfdom declines in Europe. Humiliations and rebellions in Asia. The U.S. Civil War. Labor against factory and mine owners. Utopian socialists. Karl Marx. Science and public hygiene. The geologist Lyell and Charles Darwin. Tsarist Russia. Meiji Japan. Western secularism. Transportation revolution and trade surge. Empire sets the stage for conflict in the next century.
The most powerful and their admirers see virtue in empire – everybody's doing it. Ottoman empire and Habsburg empire. "Boxer" hostility to foreigners in China. Imperial competition leads to Russo-Japanese War. Franz Joseph annexes Serbian lands. Japan annexes Korea. World War, passions and narrow visions. Anti-war socialists and revolution in Russia. A victor's peace punishes Germany. British and French violent oppressions and colonialism in the Middle East. China's May 4 movement. Japan attempts to control China. The Great Depression and recoveries. From Lenin to Stalin. Hitler scapegoats Jews. Passivity allows German nationalists to undo treaties. War in Europe. Japan moves against West in Asia. Each side sees itself as righteous and the other as evil. Germany and Japan are overwhelmed by the manpower and indus-trial strength. Fifty-one nations sign the UN Charter.
Military occupations of former fascist states and of Korea. Stalin, Churchill and Truman. Peron in Argentina. Welfare politics in Britain. Civil war in Greece. Independence for the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Burma and Indonesia. Berlin airlift. France back in Vietnam. Stalinism in Eastern Europe. Communists win civil war in China. NATO, The Korean War. Eisenhower. Joe McCarthy. Rosenbergs executed. French end war in Vietnam. Soviet Union and West grant freedom to Austria. Summit in Geneva. Salk vaccine. Rosa Parks. Khrushchev denounces Stalin. Suez Crisis. Little Rock. Sputnik. Arms race. Vice President Nixon to Latin America. Fidel Castro. Ho Chi Minh vows to unite Vietnam. French-Algerian war ends. Dying colonial-ism and newly independent states in Africa.
4.3 million years ago to 12,000 BCE
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