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Caesarea Maritima's Role in the Roman Empire
Caesarea Maritima, the city Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE) built for Rome on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean served as the Roman Empire's powerbase of operations both commercially and militarily. With Rome's ultimate goal of adding...
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Herod's Harbor
Herod's Harbor was a giant port built between 22 and 15 BCE by Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE), Rome's client king. Situated on the lower eastern Mediterranean coast north of Alexandria and south of Tyre, with Rome's largess and building skills...
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Eyes on the East: Chronicles of the Indian Ocean Spice Trade
As the 15th century ended, Europeans were still mostly in the dark about the Eastern world. Early travelers like Marco Polo had given the West tidbits of information, but these accounts were too highly colored and fragmentary to provide a...
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Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is an ancient Indian epic where the main story revolves around two branches of a family - the Pandavas and Kauravas - who, in the Kurukshetra War, battle for the throne of Hastinapura. Interwoven into this narrative are several...
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Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire was established from the 15th century and eventually stretched from the Americas to Japan. Very often a string of coastal trading centres with defensive fortifications, there were larger territorial colonies like Brazil...
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East India Company
The English East India Company (EIC or EEIC), later to become the British East India Company, was founded in 1600 as a trading company. With a massive private army and the backing of the British government, the EIC looted the Indian subcontinent...
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Swahili Coast
The Swahili Coast on the shores of East Africa was a region where Africans and Arabs mixed to create a unique identity from the 8th century called Swahili Culture. Swahili is the name of their language and means 'people of the coast.' The...
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit is regarded as the ancient language in Hinduism, where it was used as a means of communication and dialogue by the Hindu Celestial Gods, and then by the Indo-Aryans. Sanskrit is also widely used in Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism...
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First Agricultural Revolution
The First Agricultural Revolution, beginning c. 12-20,000 years ago, was characterized by the emergence of different agricultural systems in different parts of the world, whose common trait was the use of native species. Although agriculture...
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Portuguese Goa
Goa, located on the west coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1510 to 1961. The small coastal area was conquered by Afonso de Albuquerque (c. 1453-1515) and became an important trade hub for the Eastern spice trade. Goa was the capital...