The brilliant English scholar John Wycliffe is considered one of the leading figures of the early Reformation. It was Wycliffe who was most vocal in his condemnation of the Avignon Papacy’s corruption and greed. In his writings and sermons, John Wycliffe declared the Avignon Papacy as the antichrist. Because of his vocal opposition, Pope Gregory XI condemned John Wycliffe as a heretic. He was also forbidden to teach his beliefs to other people. The Council of Constance held between 1414 and 1418 issued a final condemnation of the English reformer. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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Before the end of the 13th century, a conflict flared up between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII. The pope issued a papal bull which excommunicated and deposed the king in 1303. To prevent the pope from issuing the bull, Philip ordered his men to kidnap the pope. Boniface was rescued by his friends, but he died before 1303 ended. He was succeeded briefly by Benedict XI, but he, too, died after several months.
The pope’s throne was vacant for several months before the College of Cardinals elected Philip IV’s nominee in 1305. The new pope was Archbishop Bertrand de Got, and he took the name Clement V. Unlike the previous popes, Clement V did not live in Rome. He stayed in France and became a puppet of Philip IV the Fair. He settled in Avignon in 1309, and the papal seat would remain in the quiet French town for 68 years.
The Italian poet and scholar Petrarch called the Avignon papacy “the Babylonian captivity”.
Clement’s six successors stayed in France, and there they lived in prosperity. They were able to expand the bishop’s residence into the magnificent Avignon Palace. The palace was a testament to their wealth, but it also came with a price. Rumors of popes’ scandalous behavior spread from France to different parts of Europe. They were also accused of simony (selling of church positions) and abuse of indulgences to fund their lavish lifestyle in Avignon. Other complaints included:
* The reduction of parish budgets while the popes maintained an extravagant life in Avignon.
* The imposition of heavy taxes on bishops.
* The high prices charged to the people whenever they requested certain church services.
* The corruption and greed of the Avignon popes and their clerics.
The English theologian and reformer John Wycliffe attacked the Avignon papacy and declared it as antichrist in his sermons and writings. The Italian poet and scholar Petrarch himself called it the “Babylonian captivity.” Wycliffe, for his part, persuaded the papacy and the clergy to control their greed and adopt apostolic poverty. The Avignon papacy rejected Wycliffe’s call and issued papal bulls that condemned his beliefs as heresies. He was forbidden from preaching about his “heretical” ideas again.
John Wycliffe, however, gained a lot of sympathizers and followers over the years. Some of them were called the Lollards, and they were the ones who preached his message all over England. His ideas also reached continental Europe. Wycliffe influenced a Czech priest called Jan Hus and he became one of the first reformers in the continent. Jan Hus and John Wycliffe were both condemned in the Council of Constance in 1415.
Gascoigne, Bamber. A Brief History of Christianity. London: Hachette UK, 2013.
Murray, Thomas. The Life of John Wycliffe. Edinburgh: J. Boyd, 1829.
Payton, James R. Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings. Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010.
Samworth, Herb. “The Work of John Wyclif and Its Impact.” Accessed January 18, 2017. http://www.solagroup.org/articles/historyofthebible/hotb_0006.html.
Stacey, John. “John Wycliffe.” Encyclop忙dia Britannica. September 18, 2008. Accessed January 18, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Wycliffe.
Stephen, Leslie. The Dictionary of National Biography: Wordsworth-Zuylestein. Edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. LXIII. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
Wycliffe, John. Writings of the Reverend and Learned John Wickliff. London: Printed for the Religious Tract Society, 1831.
Wycliffe, John, and Robert Vaughan. Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe: With Selections and Translations from His Manuscripts, and Latin Works. London: Printed for the Society by Blackburn and Pardon, 1845.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in 1816 in Philadelphia by a group of free blacks led by Reverend Richard Allen. Reverend Allen was a former slave who worked in a Delaware plantation. He converted to Christianity in 1777 and was able to purchase his freedom in the same year. Three years after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Allen left Delaware and traveled to Philadelphia, a known haven for free blacks and slaves who fled from their masters. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during this time period.
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Allen became a preacher in Philadelphia and worked odd jobs to support himself. He attended St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church but was soon disenchanted with the discrimination he and fellow blacks experienced inside the church. The blacks were segregated from the whites and were told to sit in the gallery instead. Allen and his companions were also harassed inside the church and were told by one of the trustees to get up from kneeling while in prayer. Allen, Absalom Jones, William Wilcher, William Gray, and their supporters finally left St. George’s and formed a support group they called Free African Society. The Society aided free blacks, as well as fugitive slaves who sought refuge in Philadelphia.
Reverend Richard Allen is credited with helping to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
During the early 1790s, Allen’s support group wanted to turn it into an official church. They debated whether to affiliate with the Episcopal Church (since many of them belonged to the denomination) or with the Methodists. The Episcopal faction eventually won, and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas was formally established in 1794. However, Allen also wanted to infuse Methodism, so the church was eventually renamed African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).
In 1799, Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) ordained Allen as a minister. The members of the AME multiplied over the years, and churches were eventually established in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. During its early years, the AME was under the supervision of white leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen and the members of the AME bucked at the discrimination they experienced under the leadership of the MEC, so they tried to sue for independence in 1807. Their efforts were unsuccessful, so they tried again in 1815. They were successful this time. In 1816, the AME became the first independent African institution in the United States.
References:
Picture by: Daniel A. Payne – Richard Allen, from the frontispiece of History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1891), Public Domain, Link
Allen, Richard. The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen: To Which is Annexed the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America: Containing a Narrative of the Yellow Fever in the Year of Our Lord, 1793: With an Address to the People of Color in the United States. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1880.
Earle, Jonathan. The Routledge Atlas of African American History. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Payne, Daniel Alexander. History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Edited by C. S. Smith. Vol. 1. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968.
The Republic of Haiti was founded in 1804 after a series of bloody revolts against the oppressive rule of the French colonists. The Haitian Revolution (1791) came close on the heels the French Revolution (1789) and was led by mulatto and black leaders. After a long and bloody struggle for freedom, the Haitians finally drove the French off the island and succeeded in establishing the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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The Taínos (Antillean Arawaks) were the first people Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered when they landed in Haiti in 1492. The Spaniards later renamed the island Hispaniola and established mines and farms in the area during the early 16th century. The colonists forced the Taíno people to provide cheap (in most cases, free) labor in their mines and fields.
The backbreaking work and their lack of immunity to Old World diseases, however, decimated the indigenous people. By the early 1500s, many of Hispaniola Taínos had died out and the Spanish authorities were faced with a serious labor shortage. The thriving transatlantic slave trade presented the Spaniards with a handy solution to this problem. Beginning in 1517, thousands of slaves were shipped from West Africa to Hispaniola to fill in the labor shortage.
The Spanish Empire, however, started to crumble during the early 17th century, resulting in the government authorities’ neglect of Hispaniola. This allowed the French to slowly encroach upon the island. They first landed on the island of Tortuga on Hispaniola’s northwest tip. In 1659, the French had established a permanent settlement on Tortuga. They then crossed to the northwest part of Hispaniola mainland during the latter part of the 1600s.
By the 1670s, the French colonists had already established Cap-Haïtien as its largest settlement on the island. These early colonists established coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, and indigo plantations. Like the Spaniards, the French used slave labor to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops.
Near the end of the Nine Years’ War in 1695, several European nations signed the Treaty of Ryswick which divided the island of Hispaniola between Spain and France. Spain received the eastern part of the island which it renamed Santo Domingo. France, meanwhile, received the western part which it renamed Saint Domingue.
Social Stratification and Slavery in Saint Domingue
In Saint Domingue, French plantation owners and other elites (grand blancs) claimed superiority above everyone else. A number of plantation owners sexually abused their black female slaves, and the result of these assaults (or in some cases, consensual liaisons) were the gens de couleur or mulattoes. Their white fathers often freed their mixed-race children, and sometimes granted them properties and sent them to France to study. Below the gens de couleur in status were the impoverished or convicted whites (petit blancs) who were sent to the colony as servants or laborers. The grand blancs looked down on the petit blancs and often treated them with contempt equal to the black slaves. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the noirs or black slaves who worked as domestic servants or laborers. They also made up the bulk of Saint Domingue’s population.
Life as a black slave in Saint Domingue was hellish. Healthier and able-bodied men and women bore the brunt of the hard tasks in the fields. Pregnant women, nursing mothers, and those who just arrived from the Middle Passage were given lighter tasks. Work started at 5 in the morning and was broken at intervals so the slaves could eat and rest. Work continued until the sun sets, and the slaves when they were sent to meager dinners. In some cases, sugarcane plantation owners forced their slaves to wear masks to prevent them from eating the cane they harvested. Some masters felt that they should not be responsible for feeding their workers, so they sometimes allocated small plots of land so that their slaves could grow their own food. Managers and foremen supervised the slaves and were ready to whip those who took a break from the grueling work. Some slaves fled to the mountains to escape the spirit-breaking work at the plantations. These escaped slaves (later called Maroons) often mixed with the few remaining Taínos in the mountains.
The mulattoes, too, had their grievances against the system. They initially enjoyed the freedom and privileges of the elites, but the whites later became worried that they might be overpowered when the number of gens de couleur increased. To this end, the whites slowly curtailed the freedom and privileges of the Saint Domingue mulattoes. Segregation in public spaces became a policy. Gens de couleur were forbidden marry white men and women, as well as insult or harm them. Carrying arms was also strictly prohibited.
The privileges enjoyed by the white elite caused great resentment among the poor whites, the mulattoes, and the African slaves. It was only a matter of time before this resentment would boil over and upend the French dominance in the island.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture had an important leadership role in the Haitian Revolution.
News of the success of the French Revolution during the spring of 1789 quickly reached Saint Domingue. The mulattoes, led by Vincent Ogé, hoped that the Revolution’s motto “liberty, equality, fraternity” also applied to them. The colonial government, however, thought otherwise. The French authorities knew that if they granted rights to the mulattoes, they would also be compelled to grant the same rights to the slaves. The prosperity of the island hinged on the exploitation of the black slaves, so setting them free was out of the question. Vincent Ogé led the disaffected mulattoes in a rebellion, but it was quickly crushed by the colonial authorities. His execution outraged both the National Assembly in France and the black slaves of Saint Domingue.
In 1791, a number of black slaves started attending meetings led by the Vodou priest Dutty Boukman. These night meetings were disguised as Vodou rituals to escape the notice of the French authorities. On August 22 of the same year, Dutty Boukman and his rebel forces launched brutal attacks against their white masters. They burned down plantations and massacred their white masters along with their wives and children. Thousands of French plantation owners died in 1791 alone, while those who survived fled Saint Domingue for France. Mulattoes soon joined the rebellion against the whites, but would sometimes turn against the blacks. Peace was finally restored when the French government sent reinforcements in 1792. In his eagerness to address the island’s problem, the colonial commissioner and abolitionist Léger-Félicité Sonthonax declared the abolishment of slavery in 1793 without the knowledge of the National Assembly.
Spain and Britain soon stepped in to take advantage of the chaos, and (along with the French) made separate alliances with black and mulatto rebel leaders. The black leader François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, however, successfully used the tangled alliances to his advantage beginning in 1793. His rival to the south, the mulatto rebel leader André Rigaud, also made alliances with colonial powers but was less popular because of his insistence to keep slavery the status quo. The French authorities, on the other hand, tried to weaken the rebel forces by pitting the blacks and the mulattoes against each other. This only served as kindling to the civil war that eventually engulfed the colony.
In 1799, the black forces led by Toussaint Louverture and the mulatto régiment led by Rigaud faced off in the War of the Knives. Toussaint Louverture’s troops were able to rout Rigaud’s. By the end of the war, around 10,000 mulatto lives were extinguished. Rigaud and other mulatto leaders fled to France upon their defeat.
With the French colonialists and Rigaud out of the way, Toussaint Louverture was free to establish a new Saint Domingue government with him at the helm. His regime tried to modernize the island and improve its economy, but he and his cronies proved to be just as corrupt as the French. His military cronies became the new plantation owners. The implemented the fermage system which initially improved the condition of the workers but later proved to be slavery in all but name. To his people’s dismay, Toussaint Louverture’s regime became as oppressive and tyrannical. In response, disaffected blacks and mulattoes took up arms and launched an uprising in 1801. The uprising, however, was quickly crushed by Toussaint Louverture and his troops.
In February 1802, Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, Rigaud, and 21,000 French troops landed in Saint Domingue. They had been sent by Leclerc’s brother-in-law, Napoleon Bonaparte, to retake the island. Toussaint Louverture knew that his troops were no match for the French, so he retreated to the mountains with his forces. They burned fields and massacred white civilians as they made their retreat. Toussaint Louverture later tried to sue for peace, but he was arrested during a meeting and was soon shipped as a prisoner to France in exile. He died in France in 1803.
Nature was the blacks’ and mulattoes’ best ally against the French. One by one, Leclerc’s soldiers died of yellow fever until he himself succumbed to the disease in October 1802. He was succeeded by the tyrannical General de Rochambeau who wanted to reinstate the unequal system of the French colonial government. This united Toussaint Louverture’s black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Rigaud’s mulatto supporter Alexandre Sabès Pétion against Rochambeau. In 1803, their combined black and mulatto forces defeated the French and successfully drove them out of the island.
In January 1804, Dessalines declared Saint Domingue independent and soon reverted the island’s Taíno name Haiti. Haiti was the first independent black state in the Americas. Its constitution was ratified in the following year. Violence, however, continued as blacks and mulattoes took part in the massacre of the few remaining French settlers of the island.
References:
Picture by: Unknown – NYPL Digital Gallery, Public Domain, Link
Collier, Simon, Thomas E. Skidmore, and Harold Blakemore, eds. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Fagg, John Edwin. Cuba, Haïti, & the Dominican Republic. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Girard, Philippe. Haiti: The Tumultuous History – From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
In 1949, Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army drove Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists (Kuomintang or KMT) out of mainland China after nearly five years of civil war. The Kuomintang members fled the mainland and transferred the seat of government in the island of Taiwan. Although repressive at first, Chiang Kai-shek’s government turned Taiwan’s devastation around and transformed it into an economic powerhouse in Asia. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during that time period.
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Taiwan’s Early Inhabitants and the Island as a Dutch Colony
Austronesian aborigines were the first known inhabitants of the island of Taiwan. They remained isolated from mainland China for thousands of years, but this isolation was occasionally breached by a few Chinese merchants who braved the dangerous waters of the strait, evaded pirates, and defied the Ming sea ban to trade with aborigines. Portuguese sailors en route to Japan were the first to sight the island of Taiwan in 1542, naming it “Ilha Formosa” (“Beautiful Island”). Despite its beauty, the Portuguese did not find the island attractive and did not make attempts to colonize it.
The Ming and Qing Dynasties
It was the Dutch who colonized the Pescadores and Formosa during the early 1600s. They were driven out by the Ming rebel leader Koxinga who then ruled Formosa until it was completely folded into the Manchu domain as part of Fujian. For many years, the Qing rulers ignored this island as it was considered an insignificant outpost. Han Chinese, however, started to cross the Taiwan Strait and settle in the island. As Han migrants slowly trickled in, the aborigines were forced to retreat to the mountainous areas of the southwest.
The Japanese Occupation
The perception that Taiwan is a distant and unimportant territory would change during the late 19th century when the island (along with Penghu) was ceded to Japan during the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). Japan occupied Taiwan in 1895 and ruthlessly tamped down on any resistance by the Han Chinese.
Under Japan, Taiwan was spared from the upheavals that engulfed mainland China. It soon became industrialized, prosperous, and self-sufficient during Japan’s 50-year occupation. Ordinary Taiwanese benefited from the development of the territory, but there was no doubt as to who ruled the island. Taiwanese were often treated as second-class citizens, while Japanese migrants received most of the benefits. Universities were non-existent, and workers were limited to agriculture and industries. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Taiwan was largely spared from the devastation that the mainland suffered. Japanese troops and officials evacuated the island in 1945 and were soon replaced by Nationalist forces.
The Republic of China
Chiang Kai-shek helped establish Taiwan’s reputation as an economic powerhouse.
Nationalist leaders, however, treated the Taiwanese as Japanese collaborators and soon became repressive. Taiwan’s economy collapsed, and the crisis was soon followed by widespread protests. The Nationalists responded with violence, killing thousands of Taiwanese in 1947. This repression only fueled anti-mainland Chinese sentiment in Taiwan.
Post-World War II China was racked with a civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (KMT) and Mao Zedong’s Communists (CCP). Although the KMT had the better army and possessed modern arsenal, the Communists were able to capitalize on the people’s alienation from and resentment of the KMT to defeat them. By 1948, key cities north of the Yangtze were in the hands of the Communists. After realizing that he and his party had lost popular support, Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters left the mainland and fled to Taiwan in 1949. He transferred the Republic of China’s seat of government from Nanjing to Taipei and imposed a military dictatorship over the island.
This, however, was only the start of the 20th-century success story that is Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek was able to do in Taiwan what he could only dream of in mainland China. He invited liberal Chinese supporters from the mainland to work in the KMT government in the island. With American support, the Kuomintang revitalized industries and slowly resurrected the economy during the 1950s and 1960s. Chiang also supported the improvement of higher education, and it was not long before Taiwanese students were flocking to the United States to seek postgraduate degrees. Many of them came back to Taiwan to work and contribute to the economy.
As the world slid into the Cold War and China became increasingly hostile to the United States, the American government decided to transfer military aid and development assistance to Taiwan. American missionaries also pulled out of the mainland and established missions, hospitals, and schools in Taiwan. The United Nations also recognized the government in Taiwan as the legitimate representative of China, rather than the one led by Mao in the mainland.
By the 1960s, Taiwan had established a reputation as an economic powerhouse. The country became the home of American and Japanese electronic manufacturing facilities. Steelmaking and petrochemical facilities appeared in the 1970s. These industries were quickly followed by automobile production and computer hardware facilities in the 1980s.
Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975 and was succeeded by his son Chiang Ching-kuo as president of Taiwan and head of the KMT. Under Chiang Ching-kuo, Taiwan inched toward political liberalization. He also abolished the martial law his father imposed on the island when the Nationalists first arrived. During his presidency, Taiwanese were allowed to travel to the mainland for the first time since the Japanese occupation and the Chinese Civil War.
References:
Picture by: Unknown – Fu Runhua, Zhongguo Dangdai Mingren Zhuan, Shijie Wenhua Fuwu She, 1948, p.1., Public Domain, Link
Fairbank, John King. China: A New History. Cambridge (Mass.): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994.
Roberts, J.A.G. A Concise History of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Wright, David C. The History of China. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Kublai Khan was one of the world’s most ambitious and accomplished leaders. During his reign, the Mongols ruled a vast expanse of Asia, as well as some parts of Eastern Europe. After a struggle with his brother Ariq Boke, Kublai subdued the Southern Song Dynasty of China. The only kingdom that remained out of his reach was Japan, but the Mongols failed to subdue it in 1274 and 1281. Because of this failure, Kublai Khan and the Mongols did not seem as powerful as they were before. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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Between 1218 and 1233, Kublai Khan’s grandfather Genghis Khan and his uncle Ogedei subdued a large part of the Korean peninsula. Ogedei’s invasion in 1233 forced the Goryeo Dynasty king to flee to Ganghwa Island. Mongke, Kublai Khan’s brother, completely subdued the Koreans between 1253 and 1258.
When Kublai became the Khagan (Great Khan), the Crown Prince of Goryeo traveled to China and became a vassal to the Mongols. The Khagan accepted him in the royal court, and the Korean Crown Prince stayed in China for many years. When the king of Korea died, Kublai released the prince from the royal court and allowed him to return to his homeland. The Khagan supported the prince’s decision to claim his throne. But he was also prudent enough to send a Mongol administrator to Korea to ensure that the new king would behave. The prince became King Wonjong of Goryeo. His alliance with the Mongols was cemented further when the Khagan arranged the marriage of one of his daughters to the king.
The Mongols were masters of cavalry, but they had no experience in naval warfare. The Khagan knew this, so he enlisted the help of the Koreans in building a naval fleet. Korean sailors also played a large part in his campaigns against the Southern Song and Japan. They, however, paid dearly with their lives in Kublai’s disastrous Japan expeditions in 1274 and 1281.
Japan: The Isolated Kingdom
Kublai Khan shown in a portrait created shortly after his death in 1294.
Just like his grandfather and other relatives, Kublai Khan also wanted to extend his empire. It was only natural that he would look beyond the Korean Peninsula and try to bring the isolated kingdom of Japan to heel. Fresh from his victory against his brother Ariq Boke, the energetic Khagan sent his ambassadors to demand the submission of Japan.
The Korean crew knew that they would gain nothing from the deal, so they tried to dissuade the Mongol ambassadors by frightening them with stories of strong winds and turbulent seas. Unused to traveling by sea, the ambassadors became frightened and told the Korean sailors to return to the peninsula. Kublai Khan sent a harsh letter to King Wonjong when he heard what the sailors said to the envoys.
In 1268, Kublai sent another embassy to Japan. This time, however, the Korean sailors learned their lesson, and they transported the envoys all the way to the royal court in Kyoto. The Japanese were not excited with the arrival of the Mongols, to say the least. The head of the bakufu (military government) Hojo Tokimune refused to submit to the Khagan by sending the ambassadors back to China without any message.
Kublai dispatched ambassadors once again in 1271 with the same demand. The envoys were barred from entering the royal court when they arrived in Kyoto. They had no choice but to sail back to China and tell the Khagan that they were denied. Although Kublai Khan was humiliated with Japan’s refusal to submit, he still sent another ambassador to the islands in 1272. The bakufu refused the ambassadors’ request to see the Japanese emperor. The Japanese even responded harshly to the envoys’ demands. The envoy, Chao Liangpi, went home empty-handed in 1273.
It was the last straw for Kublai Khan. In 1274, he ordered the Koreans to build a naval fleet that they could use in bringing Japan under submission. Thousands of Mongol, Jurchen, and Chinese men joined the army. The Korean soldiers and sailors also joined the expedition because of the Korean king’s alliance with Kublai Khan.
When all the warships were done, Kublai Khan’s navy sailed from a port near Busan to the islands of Iki and Tsushima. They easily defeated the Japanese defenders of the islands, so they sailed to Kyushu on November 19, 1274. The Mongol fleet initially overpowered the samurais, but luck was on the side of the Japanese. As soon as night came, a strong typhoon swept in. The Koreans convinced the Mongol overlords to retreat into the open sea so that their ships would not be swept into the rocky coast and be destroyed. The Mongols agreed to sail away from the coast, but they suffered heavy casualties after many of their ships sank.
The Mongol, Chinese, and Korean troops returned to North China in humiliation. Kublai was furious, but he could not strike back immediately as he was occupied with the war against the Southern Song. For some reason, he sent ambassadors once again to Japan in 1275. The ambassadors, however, reached a grim end when the Japanese executed them. Enraged with his ambassadors’ death but still busy with the Southern Song, Kublai allowed the Japanese a break. It was not until 1281 that he was free to launch another expedition to Japan.
Personal Tragedy and Decline
The years between 1280 and 1290, however, were marked with personal losses for Kublai Khan. His beloved consort, Chabi, died in 1281, and her death was followed by his son and heir, Zhenjin, in 1286. He became depressed when Chabi died. He also gorged himself on food and alcohol which worsened his gout and obesity. He even started the 1280s with the second expedition to Japan which quickly turned into a disaster.
The Second Invasion of Japan and the Kamikaze
The Japanese government knew that the Mongols would invade again, so the bakufu ordered their samurais to occupy the coast of Kyushu. They also built a long stone wall (genko borui) along the Hakata Bay.
Kublai would not give up on Japan, so he sent envoys once again but they, too, were executed by the Japanese. The killing of his envoys only solidified his decision to invade Japan for the second time. Preparations were already in full swing in 1280. Again, he ordered the unhappy Koreans and Chinese to build his ships. Kublai placed the Korean admiral Hong Tagu in charge of his fellow Korean sailors. Meanwhile, General Fan Wanhu led his fellow Chinese soldiers. The Mongol division, on the other hand, was led by Shintu.
As much as 40,000 Korean, Mongol, and Chinese troops sailed from Korea to Japan in mid-1281. The Chinese troops reached as many as 100,000. They sailed from Quanzhou in Fujian Province later to meet up with the Northern troops at Iki island in Nagasaki. Bad omens plagued the expedition from the start, while disagreements between the commanders made the journey more difficult.
On June 10, 1281, the troops from the north went right ahead and attacked Iki without waiting for the fleet from Quanzhou. They also sailed off to Kyushu where the fleet from Quanzhou finally caught up with them. Kublai’s combined fleet then attacked Kyushu in August 1281. It was bound to fail as the stone wall that the Japanese defenders constructed was effective in keeping the invaders out. From the start, the Chinese and Korean troops were unhappy about the expedition because they had nothing to gain from it. Their lack of enthusiasm in fighting the Japanese also made the expedition a failure.
In a case of extraordinary bad luck for Kublai’s troops, a typhoon swept in again and battered the Mongol fleet off Hakata Bay on the 15th and 16th of August. The Korean sailors tried to escape to the open sea, but the move came too late. Thousands of Korean, Mongol, and Chinese soldiers and sailors drowned when their ships sank. Those who were trapped on the coast were killed by the samurais.
The typhoon was a godsend and a morale booster for the Japanese. The “kamikaze” or “divine wind” saved them from the Mongols twice, and it reinforced their belief that they were favored by the gods. For Kublai Khan, however, it was a humiliating and shocking defeat. However, he stubbornly insisted on a third expedition, and the Mongols made preparations between 1283 and 1284. The third expedition was an unpopular idea among his advisers after their devastating loss in 1274 and 1281. He finally accepted his loss only when they vehemently objected to his plan.
References:
Picture by: Araniko – Artdaily.org, Public Domain, Link
Henthorn, William E. Korea: The Mongol invasions. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963.
Kuehn, John T. A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014.
May, Timothy Michael. The Mongol Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2017.
Robinson, David M. Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia under the Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2009.
Rossabi, Morris. Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times.
Berkeley: University of California Press, c1988 1988.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6g5006zc/
The Hohokam people were descendants of the Paleoamericans who migrated from Asia to North America via the Bering Land Bridge. Others remained in Alaska or migrated eastward into the forests of present-day Canada. The Hohokam people continued south into Mexico. Thousands of years after their migration south into Mexico, they traveled northward to Arizona into the Salt and Gila Rivers area (Hohokam Heartland). Other Hohokam people later ventured southeast of Arizona into the Tucson Basin near the banks of the Santa Cruz and Rillito Rivers. The Hohokam culture in Arizona and New Mexico is recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History between 900 – 1150 AD.
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The Hohokam people who lived in the Heartland inhabited a harsh environment in the Sonoran desert, but the area became habitable because it received higher rainfall than the neighboring regions. It also had relatively stable water supplies that came from rivers and streams. From Mexico, the Hohokam brought with them the knowledge of irrigation and they built a canal system that reached a thousand miles in their new settlements. The canals channeled water from the river to irrigate fields they planted with the Native American staple food of beans, corn, and squash.
Over at the Tucson Basin settlements, the Hohokam people adapted to their environment and used floodwater farming to water their crops. They planted crops in nearby fields that usually flooded when the river overflowed after a storm. Sometimes, they cultivated crops near the mouth of creeks to take advantage of the natural irrigation. They also carved terraces on the hillsides and check dams to catch rainfall runoff. The Hohokam people built these canals, dams, and terraces with basic tools such as sticks and ceramic hoes.
Hohokam Pit-houses
They were initially hunter-gatherers who relied on mammoths, bisons, and plants during the Pioneer Period. The Hohokam people transitioned from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle in 900 AD. They started to live in houses separated by spaces from each other within a village. Just like their neighbors, the Anasazi and the Mogollon people, the Hohokam also constructed shallow pit houses built from brush and then covered with dirt. Pine and mesquite served as posts for these rectangular, square, or oval-shaped pit-houses. Rows of smaller posts were then installed as the framework of the house. Wooden beams were mounted on the posts before these were covered with brush that served as the house’s roof.
“They were initially hunter-gatherers who relied on mammoths, bisons, and plants during the Pioneer Period.”
The walls were made of brush, arrow weeds, and reeds which were then covered with mud plaster (wattle and daub). The Hohokam also used mud plaster as flooring, then finished the house with a hearth and a roasting pit. The Hohokam liked to put spaces between their houses and did not cluster them together like the neighboring Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloans).
Trade
Artifacts recovered from their settlements show that the Hohokam people traded with the inhabitants of New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Northern Mexico. From the Gulf of Mexico came seashells, while exotic birds such as parrots and macaws (their feathers were used as accessories during Hohokam ceremonies) came from west-central Mexico. The people who lived in the Hohokam heartland produced pottery, jewelry, cotton fabrics, and food in exchange for products brought in from the Mogollon Rim in Arizona and Mohave Basin in California.
Mesoamerican Influence
Before the Hohokam came to present-day Arizona, they first lived in Mexico and brought with them the Mesoamerican ballgame when they migrated north. They adapted the game to the environment and instead of one long I-shaped court, the Hohokam people constructed an oblong one. They also built platform mounds for ceremonies which were similar to the ceremonial platforms found in Teotihuacan and other Mesoamerican cities. They cremated their dead and placed the bones in ceramic urns which were then buried in a cemetery along with the deceased’s personal possessions and other funerary objects.
After conquering Thrace and Bulgaria, the Turks turned north and crossed the Danube into Wallachia. It had become independent of neighboring Hungary some years before and was ruled by its own governor Mircea cel Batran. After years of war with the Turks, the Ottomans finally made Wallachia a tributary in 1417. This is recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History at 1416.
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The region of Wallachia in present-day Romania was first settled by a group of people called the Vlachs. During the early 1200s, the neighboring Hungarian rulers extended their influence deeper into Wallachia and the coast of the Black Sea. The voivode (governor) Radu Negru (Radu the Black) founded Wallachia in 1290. It was a tributary of Hungary during its early years.
“Hungarian rulers extended their influence deeper into Wallachia and the coast of the Black Sea.”
Wallachia became independent of Hungary under voivode Basarab I around 1330. Mircea the Elder (cel Batran) then became Wallachia’s voivode in 1386. Because of Mircea, Wallachian and Hungarian relations improved. Ten years later, Mircea joined forces with the Hungarians and the French against the Ottomans in the ill-fated Battle of Nicopolis. Mircea survived, and he returned to Wallachia in safety. Upon his return, he found that he had become unpopular among his people because of the disaster in the Battle of Nicopolis.
The Wallachians under Mircea continued the fight against the Ottomans between 1397 and 1400. Bayezid, the Turkish sultan who led the Turks to victory in the Battle of Nicopolis, was captured by Timur in 1402. Some of his sons were also captured but were later set free except for a prince named Musa. A civil war then flared among Bayezid’s sons after their father died in captivity. Timur had set Musa free in 1403, and he immediately came back to Anatolia. Musa also joined the civil war, and he later sought an alliance with Mircea when he fled to Wallachia.
Mehmed, one of Bayezid’s sons, eventually won against his brothers and started his reign in 1413. The Ottoman Empire has just emerged from a civil war, so it was far from stable at that time. Still, Mehmed managed to seize Wallachia and Mircea was forced to submit to him as a tributary. Mircea died in 1418. His son, Vlad II Dracul, became the voivode of Wallachia in 1436 but was forced to flee to the Ottomans after he was deposed by his rivals. During his reign, Wallachia continued to be a tributary of the powerful Ottoman Empire. As a vassal of the Ottomans, Vlad also needed to send his sons Radu and Vlad III (later known as the Impaler) to the Turkish court as hostages.
References:
Picture By Alexander Vovchenko – http://500px.com/photo/61284774, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Fleet, Kate. The New Cambridge History of Islam: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries. Edited by Maribel Fierro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Mikaberidze, Alexander. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO Interactive, 2011.
Alexius I Komnenos reigned as the Byzantine emperor from 1081 until AD 1118, which is where he is recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History. Throughout his reign, the former general and scion of a powerful Byzantine family had to contend with the formidable Seljuk Empire during the First Crusade. He had to be content with a greatly reduced empire when the European noblemen refused to return the former Byzantine cities that they had captured from the Seljuks. Alexius, however, brought a sense of stability to his domain during his 37-year reign.
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Alexius I Komnenos was the son of the powerful Domestic of the Schools, John Komnenos, by his wife, Anna Dalassena. He was born around 1048 or 1058. He descended from an influential Byzantine family. His uncle Isaac I Komnenos served as an emperor from 1057 to 1059. A mention of Alexius I Komnenos is incomplete without the mention of his brilliant daughter, the biographer and physician Anna Komnene. She chronicled much of her father’s life and the challenges he faced in her book ‘The Alexiad.’ According to his daughter, Alexius started his service for the Byzantine Empire at a very young age during the reign of Emperor Romanos Diogenes and Emperor Michael Doukas.
Alexius proved himself as a promising warrior at the age of fourteen when he accompanied Romanos Diogenes to the war against the Persians. However, he was sent home after the death of his older brother. Alexius was promoted as a young lieutenant during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Michael Doukas. He promptly defeated the Norman rebel leader Roussell de Bailleul in 1078. He was appointed as a military commander under Nikephoros III Botaneiates when he defeated the rebels Nikephoros Bryennios the Elder and Nikephoros Basilakes.
“Portrait of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos”
Rebellion Against Nikephoros III Botaneiates and Accession as Byzantine Emperor
Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates was hard-pressed on all sides during the last year of his reign. The Byzantine Empire had lost territories in Southern Italy to the land-hungry Normans, and a great part of the eastern side of Anatolia was now under Seljuk rule through its vassal, the Sultan of Rum. A rebellion was also brewing in his own palace after he made the mistake of removing the previous emperor’s son, Constantine Doukas, in line for succession as emperor and broke off his engagement to Robert Guiscard’s daughter. Maria of Alania, Constantine’s mother, was angered by the emperor’s deposition of her son. She started a plot to depose her husband with the help of the powerful Doukas family and Alexius’ mother Anna Dalassena.
The plot was successful, and Nikephoros was forced to abdicate in 1081 in favor of Alexius I Komnenos who kept his promise of keeping Maria of Alania’s son Constantine as his co-emperor. Maria of Alania planned to marry Alexius to keep her place as Byzantine empress, but this was intercepted by Alexius’ mother Anna Dalassena who had arranged the emperor’s marriage to Irene Doukaina (from the Doukas family). The young Constantine remained as Alexius’ co-emperor despite his marriage to another woman. He compensated by arranging the prince’s engagement to his own daughter, Anna Komnena. In 1087, however, Alexius’s son, John II Komnenos was born, and to Maria’s dismay, the emperor was forced to break off the engagement of his daughter to Constantine. Maria of Alania retired to a monastery soon after this, and the sickly Constantine died in 1095 which cleared the way for John II Komnenos’ succession.
The First Crusade
Alexius overcame the Norman, Pecheneg, and Tzacha threats to his empire during the early years of his reign. However, the greatest threat to the Byzantine territories were the formidable Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks had conquered most of Western Asia in the mid-eleventh century. Alexius knew that it would be impossible to stop them unless he sought the help of a powerful ally. He first requested the help of Pope Urban II by offering to unite the Greek and Latin churches. The negotiations failed when the pope insisted on the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church.
When Alexius felt that the Seljuk threat had completely overwhelmed the Byzantines, he requested once again for Pope Urban to send some troops to reinforce his own. Alexius’ letter reached Urban when he was on tour in France. The pope agreed to help, but added a religious undertone to the emperor’s simple request for reinforcements in his sermon in the French city of Clermont. The result was not what Alexius had envisioned after hundreds of leaderless troops poured into Byzantine territory in the Balkans. The emperor was forced to send these dangerous men into the Asian side to prevent them from camping too near the city of Constantinople. Upon reaching the Asian side, the Byzantine’s supposed allies promptly attacked a city held by the Sultan of Rum. These men were then killed by Seljuk troops. Alexius had to order his own troops to rescue some of the misguided soldiers.
Alexius breathed a sigh of relief when more disciplined troops under European noblemen arrived in 1096. Before the official start of the Crusade, the Emperor compelled them to swear an oath that they would return any city they conquered to the Byzantines. Several of the European noblemen who joined the Crusade never took it seriously as they were also hungry for land and wealth. Despite the challenges the Crusaders faced, the First Crusade was a success. Jerusalem was back in Christian hands by AD 1099. The European noblemen, however, occupied the territories they conquered as their own. Many were never returned to Byzantine hands (much to Alexius’ dismay). He scored a major victory against the Seljuks in 1116 and 1117 but died in 1118 after a long illness.
References:
Picture By Alexios1komnenos.jpg: Unknownderivative work: Constantine✍ – Alexios1komnenos.jpg, Public Domain, Link
Anna Comnena (Komnene). The Alexiad. Edited and translated by Elizabeth A. Dawes. London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1928.
Kazhdan, A. P., Alice-Mary Maffry Talbot, Anthony Cutler, Timothy E. Gregory, and Nancy Patterson Sﾌ憩vcﾌ憩nko, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Shepard, Jonathan, ed. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire C. 500-1492. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997. Print.
Alexis Mikhailovich (born March 9, 1629) was the eldest son of Tsar Michael I of Russia and Tsarina Eudoxia Streshneva. He inherited the throne at the age of sixteen upon his father’s death on July 13, 1645, and suffered another devastating loss five weeks later when Eudoxia herself died. Young Alexis, however, had little time to indulge his grief as Russia’s borders were threatened by Tatars and Poles. He was crowned tsar at Moscow’s Cathedral of Dormition on the 28th of September, 1645. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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Alexis was reputed to be athletic, energetic, and imposing. Raised in affluence, Prince Alexis received the best education possible for a man of his status. Unlike his father, this young king could hold his own and did not hesitate to use cruelty against any minister who dared oppose him.
Alexis received the epithet “Young Monk” because of his religious devotion that sometimes bordered on fanatical. When he was not holding court or hunting with his hawks, he could be found praying at church—often for hours on end.
Even a powerful tsar needed an ally, so he promoted a former tutor named Boris Morozov as his chief minister soon after his coronation. Two years later, Alexis asked his courtiers to organize a bride-show so he could choose for himself a tsarina. He chose Euphemia Vsevolozhskaya as his bride, but the wedding was called off when the young lady fainted after the too-tight crown was placed on her head. The audience thought that she was probably unhealthy or bewitched which made her unfit as a queen. She and her family were soon sent into exile.
Morozov used this incident to elevate another maiden named Maria Miloslavskaya as Alexis’s possible wife. She was the elder daughter of Ilya Miloslavsky, a close friend of Morozov. Alexis found her to his liking, and they were married on January 16, 1647. The crafty Morozov then bound himself to Alexis by marrying Maria’s younger sister Anna several days later. Morozov used his role as the Tsar’s brother-in-law and closest adviser to become one of the richest boyars in Moscow.
Morozov then earned the anger of the people when he cut the government spending on services but continued raising the salt tax. The people finally had enough, and they vented their anger on Alexis on the 1st of June, 1648. The Tsar was on his way back from a pilgrimage, but he was stopped by an angry mob as he was about to enter the city. They presented their grievances to the tsar, and he promised to investigate, but some of his guards swooped in on the crowd and arrested some of their leaders.
Another mob formed the morning after the confrontation and demanded that their leaders be released. They also demanded that Morozov and other corrupt officials be removed from their positions. The crowd then went to Morozov’s home (as well as the homes of other government officials) and started to riot. Morozov secretly fled Kremlin, but other boyars were not as lucky and were beaten by the crowd when they were caught. A senior official named Leonid Pleshcheev was beaten to death by the crowd when Alexis finally gave him up.
The tsar had no choice but to promise that he would remove Morozov from power and reform the government. He then appointed his cousin, the popular Nikita Romanov, to replace Morozov as his adviser. He also addressed the people the next day, but tearfully told them that he could not bring himself to hand his ex-tutor over to them. The people were moved, and they agreed to let the tsar send him to exile to a distant monastery instead.
The Tsar then summoned the Zemskii Sobor (Assembly of the Land) so they could come up with the reforms he promised to the crowd. Alexis and the Zemskii Sobor came up with some reforms, but those were not in the best interest of the peasants. instead was the Sobornoye Ulozheniye, a legal code with clauses that bound the peasants and slaves to serfdom.
Religious Reforms and Russian Expansion
Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich ruled Russia from 1645-1676.
Alexis then made another fatal mistake when he appointed a popular monk named Nikon (a member of his clique of holy men, the Zealots of Piety) as Patriarch of Moscow. Soon it was not the Tsar who signed his own decrees but the Patriarch himself. He turned on German migrants (mostly merchants) and confined them in their own quarters where they were free to “commit sins.” He also decreed that the sign of the cross should be made with three fingers instead of two. Those who refused to follow his instructions would then be executed.
Alexis declared war against Poland on April 23, 1654,with the encouragement of the Ukrainian Cossack warlord Bogdan Khmelnitsky and the blessing of Patriarch Nikon. The Tsar himself led his troops to Smolensk and besieged it until it fell to the Russians five months later. Nikon, meanwhile, was in charge of Moscow while Alexis and the Russian troops were busy taking some parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. This alarmed the Swedes who then sent troops to check Russia’s advance.
Complaints of Nikon’s high-handedness soon reached the Tsar and forced him to return to Moscow. A confrontation between the two men descended into a shouting match when the Tsar blamed the patriarch for the wars that they were facing. This was the start of the end for Nikon. In 1658, the Patriarch finally left Moscow and returned to a life as an ordinary monk.
Alexis became bolder in his newfound independence and began to modernize the government and the military. The Russian army, however, suffered a major defeat in 1659 at the hands of the allied Poles, Tatars, and Swedes. The Russian minister Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin was forced to sue for peace with Sweden and consider an alliance with Poland.
Later Years
The tsar had promoted his father-in-law Ilya Miloslavsky as head of treasury, but he was unaware of his corrupt dealings while in office. Miloslavsky had debased the currency by substituting silver coins with less valuable copper ones which then resulted in a surge of prices of goods. An angry mob stormed the Kolomenskoye Palace on July 25, 1662, and demanded that the Tsar’s father-in-law be put to death. The Tsar tried to reason with the people but it did not work. He prepared to travel back to the Kremlin on horseback to deal with the matter but was forced to stop when the mob met him. The overwhelmed Tsar commanded his soldiers to protect him and they obeyed. Protesters were then arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and sentenced to death for angering the Tsar.
The episode deeply affected Alexis and made him more intolerant and despotic. He was still religious, and despite Nikon’s fall from grace, Alexis was determined to continue his reforms. Those who refused to fall in line were tortured, exiled, or executed. He also managed to crush the Cossack rebellions led by Stepan Razin and False Simon during his reign.
Tsarina Maria died on March 3, 1669, and this tragedy was soon followed by the death of another son, Simon. His courtiers organized another bride-show, but this was cut short by the death of the Tsar’s heir, Alexis. The bride-show resumed, and this time, Alexis chose Natalya Naryshkina as his new bride. They married on January 22, 1671, and the bride gave birth to their son, Peter, on May 30th of the following year.
The forty-seven-year-old Tsar fell ill on January 22, 1676. He was taken to bed, but his condition continued to worsen despite the skills of his doctors. Alexis, the man who ushered Russia into a period of rapid growth, died on January 29, 1676, and succeeded by his sickly son, Feodor.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. The Romanovs: 1613-1918. New York, Vintage Books, 2017.
Perrie, Maureen, ed. The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 1. The Cambridge History of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812276.
The Khoi and San peoples were some of Cape Peninsula’s earliest settlers. During the early years of the Age of Discovery, European ships used the Cape as a way-station to replenish their supplies. Europeans (mostly Dutch and English) often docked near the Cape, and traded iron, copper, and other products for cattle owned by the Khoi. During the mid-1600s, the Dutch East India Company finally decided to colonize the Cape Peninsula to make the replenishment of Asia-bound ships easier. In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck led the earliest Dutch settlers to colonize the Cape Peninsula. This event is recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History.
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Cape Peninsula’s Earliest Settlers and the Arrival of the Europeans
For thousands of years, the Khoi and San peoples lived side by side in South Africa’s Cape Peninsula. The Khoi were herders while the San people were hunter-gatherers, so there was conflict between them from time to time. The fate of these people soon changed with the appearance of Bartolomeu Dias’s ships in the waters of Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
By the early 16th century, Portuguese trade ships bound for Asia were constant sights for Cape Peninsula natives. English, Dutch, and the occasional French ships joined them in the latter part of the 16th century. Starting in 1590, Asia-bound English and Dutch trade ships began to use the Cape of Good Hope as a stopover to replenish their food supplies. European servants would then venture on land and trade with the Khoi herders for cattle and vegetables. In exchange, the Khoi people received copper, iron, beads, alcohol, and tobacco. The trade between the Khoi people and the Europeans prospered as the years passed, but it began to falter when the Khoi stopped trading their cattle for low-quality European products.
The Cape as a Dutch Colony
Jan van Riebeeck founded Cape Town in 1652.
The Dutch government granted the East India Company a trade monopoly in 1602. They had long used the Cape of Good Hope as a way-station to replenish their supplies, but the sheer number of ships that passed through meant that demand for meat and vegetables had also risen. In 1652, the Company decided to send Jan van Riebeeck and 125 men to the Cape to buy cattle and vegetables. However, the directors soon changed their minds and released the men (with some reluctance) so they could farm the land and raise cattle in the peninsula.
It was supposed to be a temporary solution for the directors of the Company but the Cape soon turned into a settlement. In 1657, the Company gave away plots of land along the banks of Liesbeek River to the men who came with Riebeeck. There was a shortage of workers, but the Dutch Boers (“farmers”) were forbidden at the onset by the Company to enslave the Khoi. Slaves from Indonesia, Malaysia, and other parts of Africa were then brought to the Cape colony as an answer to the labor shortage.
The fact that the Khoi were sidelined in the cattle trade and that foreign slaves were working in their homeland became a source of tension between them and the Dutch settlers. The tension sometimes broke out in violence, but this did not stop the Boers from pushing further inland. The Dutch encroachment on the lands on the north and east of the Cape displaced not only the Khoi but also other tribes who lived near the Cape.
Dutch men sometimes had children with Khoi women, but they were often considered as half-castes, so the European population remained small for many years. It was not until 1685 that the Dutch population swelled when the Company sent additional settlers as laborers and soldiers. French Huguenots, Walloons, Germans, Swedes, and Danes also added to the colony’s immigrant population. Many of the new settlers were members of the Dutch Reformed Church, but a small portion were Catholics. Many of the immigrants intermarried, and soon produced a new generation of people called Afrikaners.
Boonzaier, Emile. The Cape Herders: A History of the Khoikhoi of Southern Africa. Cape Town: New Africa Books, 1996.
Gray, Richard, ed. The Cambridge History of Africa. Vol. 4. The Cambridge History of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521204132.
Hunt, John. Dutch South Africa: Early Settlers at the Cape, 1652-1708. Edited by Heather-Ann Campbell. Leicester: Matador, 2005.
Marks, Shula. The Cambridge History of Africa: From c. 1600 to 1790. Edited by Richard Gray. Vol. IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
