East Indies: Did you mean...?

Christopher Columbus (l. 1451-1506 CE, also known as Cristoffa Corombo in Ligurian and Cristoforo Colombo in Italian) was a Genoese explorer (identified as Italian) who became famous in his own time as the man who discovered...

Agriculture arose independently at several locations across the world, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The first crops and livestock were domesticated in six rather diffuse areas including the Near East, China, Southeast...

The 1789 mutiny on the Bounty is an infamous tale of sailors being lured by the easy charms of the South Seas into casting adrift their commander and living out their days as fugitives from the Royal...

Slavery was practiced by the Native Americans before any Europeans arrived in the region. People of one tribe could be taken by another for a variety of reasons but, whatever the reason, it was understood...

The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204 CE) was called by Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216 CE) to retake Jerusalem from its current Muslim overlords. However, in a bizarre combination of cock-ups, financial constraints, and Venetian trading...

The Third Crusade (1189-1192 CE) was launched to retake Jerusalem after its fall to the Muslim leader Saladin in 1187 CE. The Crusade was led by three European monarchs, hence its other name of 'the Kings' Crusade'. The three leaders...

Marco Polo (1254-1324 CE) was a Venetian merchant and explorer who travelled to China and served the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan (l. 1214-1294 CE) between c. 1275 and 1292 CE. Polo's adventures are recounted in his own writings, The...

The Kingdom of Mitanni, known to the people of the land, and the Assyrians, as Hanigalbat and to the Egyptians as Naharin and Metani, once stretched from present-day northern Iraq, down through Syria and into Turkey and was among the...

One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle...

The African kingdom of Axum (also Aksum) was located on the northern edge of the highland zone of the Red Sea coast, just above the horn of Africa. It was founded in the 1st century CE, flourished from the 3rd to 6th century CE...