The Convenient Tyranny of Judar and Mahmud
In 1590 the Saadi Sultanate in Morocco invaded the Songhai Empire in what is today Mali and Niger. The man the sultan sent to oversee the conquest and occupation did a good job, but had the temerity to question one of the sultan’s decisions and was replaced by a new guy. These two successive Saadian […]
Six Political Power Players from the Pangani Revolt
Last week we looked at a really complicated (and interesting!) revolt against the Zanzibar Sultanate in 1888 Pangani, Tanzania. The revolt featured three different factions: the independents, who wanted total separation from the Sultanate; the autonomy faction, which wanted to reduce Zanzibari authority over Pangani and restore the privileges of the local elites; and the […]
Pangani: A Pile of Conflicts Exploding in Revolt
In 1888, the Swahili coast of what is today Tanzania rose up in revolt against the Sultanate of Zanzibar, triggered by the arrogance of the sultan’s new German ‘friends’. The revolt was particularly memorable at the trading town of Pangani. But while German shortsightedness may have provided the instigating incident, Pangani had been moving towards […]
The Chinese Legation to the Paris Commune
In 1870, the government of China had to send an emergency legation to Paris in response to an incident in a Chinese port. It was an unusual circumstance; this was only the third formal diplomatic mission sent by the Qing dynasty to the Western world. A translator with the 1870 mission, Zhang Deyi, had served […]
The Pettiest County Seat War in Frontier Indiana
Between 1811 and 1873, Wayne County, Indiana had three different capitals and six different courthouses. Each time the county seat moved, it was incredibly contentious, involved lots of guns, and one time a cannon. The stakes were high – these events led to one town’s irrelevance and another’s outright dissolution. Yet the stakes were also trivial. […]
By Order of General Ludd and His Luddites
The Luddites were a British labor movement active roughly between 1811 and 1817. They opposed the growing mechanization of the British textile industry by smashing machines, burning buildings, and threatening – and sometimes killing – business leaders and magistrates. They had a secret, probably fictional, leader. And they’re more relevant now than ever. Let’s look at what […]
Palace Intrigue with a Teenage King
The great conquerer Babur (1483-1530) is best known as the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, but he got his start a thousand miles away. He was born in what is today Uzbekistan, and at the age of eleven was thrust into the snake pit that was Central Asian geopolitics. His time as a […]
Earnest Pleas in Early Muslim Poetry
Khalifa ibn Khayyat was an Arab historian and religious scholar active in the 800s A.D. His history of the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates is one of the oldest to have survived. It records a lot more poetry than you see in Western histories. Most of these poems are put in the mouths of people […]
Post-Pirate Politics in a Mughal Port
It was 1695 in Surat, a large seaport city in what is today northwest India and was at the time the Mughal Empire. Every year, ships from Surat sailed west across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. They carried goods to trade in Yemen and Muslim pilgrims on the hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca […]
The Pirate Mutiny that Made the ‘Fancy’
In 1694, a mutiny occurred aboard a British ship moored in a Spanish harbor. A group of sailors, led by the first mate, overpowered the captain and those loyal to him. The mutineers set their enemies adrift and, with the rest of the crew apparently behind them, set off to become pirates! Their ship, rechristened […]
The Fall of Caliph Uthman
Uthman was the third caliph: the third religious and political successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Uthman’s rule was contentious, his downfall ugly. It’s a fascinating case study and a terrible tragedy. The last months of his reign saw at least three factions battling for control of his empire, but all the politics was done on […]
Ibn Battuta’s Maldivian Coup Plot
We’ve talked twice before about Ibn Battuta, the medieval Moroccan traveler. This time, we’re going to talk about his adventures in the Maldives, a paradisiacal tropical archipelago south of India. In the Maldives, Ibn Battuta got pressed into service as an Islamic judge, let his bad attitude get him into political trouble, and plotted a […]
The Secret History of the Mountain Folk
This post starts out slow, but it goes to some awfully interesting places. I hope you enjoy it! In the late 19th century, Japan underwent a period of rapid change. Emperor Meiji seized control of the country from the military dictators who’d ruled it for centuries. He dragged the whole of Japan from feudalism into […]
David Alroy, the Wizard-Messiah
The tale of the false Messiah David Alroy (dead circa 1160) is a wondrous one, full of magic and miracles, international politics, and abstruse scholarship. The appearance of a self-styled Chosen One is an amazing plot hook that works in most settings, and Alroy’s story is one of the better ones. Let’s dive in! This […]
The Scheming Landlord of Magomero
W.J. Livingstone operated a plantation in Malawi in the early 20th century. He was ruthless, capricious, exploitative, and cruel. He worked within the system, leaning on the letter of the law when he could and enforcing the spirit of the law when he couldn’t. His schemes make him a fantastic villain, and he can be […]