Colonial government: Did you mean...?

African slave life in Colonial British America was far worse than slavery practiced in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans. The indigenous tribes took people as slaves in raids, enslaved those convicted of crimes, and traded slaves...

The centre of Inca power was the capital Cuzco, considered the navel of the world. 40,000 Incas governed an empire of over 10 million subjects who spoke over 30 different languages. Consequently, the centralised government employed a vast...

Ancient Maya government was formed on the basis that rulers were thought to have been god-like, which to some might suggest one unified state. However, the consensus amongst anthropologists supports that each major Maya city remained its...

Early medieval Icelandic government, or Viking Iceland, has been termed an incipient form of democracy or democratic parliamentarism, however, the system was actually nothing like its European counterparts, be they medieval or contemporary...

The state created by Diocletian and Constantine used to be described as despotic and oppressive, extracting higher taxes and threatening its subjects with punishments for non-compliance. Recent research, however, paints a different picture...

The Sugar Act of 1764, also known as the American Revenue Act, was legislation passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on 5 April 1764 to crack down on molasses smuggling in the American colonies and to raise revenue to pay for the colonies'...

Professor Emeritus David Gitlitz is one of the world’s leading experts on Jewish-Catholic interactions in Iberia and the Americas. While initially drawn to the literature of the Spanish Golden Age as a student at Oberlin and Harvard, the...

The National Museum Zurich recently opened a comprehensive and multi perspectival exhibition on Switzerland’s colonial past: Colonial – Switzerland’s Global Entanglements. Based on the latest, original research and drawing on biographies...

The Bolshevik Revolution occurred on 7 November 1917 (old calendar 25 October) and established a new republic: Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks were radical socialists led by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), whose goal was a fairer society where...

Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all...