European: Did you mean...?

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most...

The Plymouth Colony (1620-1691) was the first English settlement in the region of modern-day New England in the United States, settled by the religious Separatists known as the “pilgrims” who crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower in...

The consequences of the Second World War (1939-45) were many and varied. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and military-dominated Japan were all defeated. Many occupied countries were liberated and regained their freedom while others were obliged...

The search for the source of the Nile River was one of the last great geographical mysteries of 19th-century European exploration. Men like Livingstone, Burton, Speke, and Stanley launched multiple expeditions to reach the rumoured Great...

The Native American concept of land ownership differs significantly from that of the European settlers who colonized the Americas or their descendants in that land could not be owned, only stewarded and lived with. The Earth is understood...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes...

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 that the enslaved had done something...

European colonising powers sought to exploit Africa's resources from the 15th century onwards. Arab traders had been doing the same in North Africa and East Africa through the Middle Ages, but it was from the 17th century that European traders...

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...

The encomienda was a system where Spanish adventurers and settlers were granted the legal right to extract forced labour from indigenous tribal chiefs in the Americas colonies of the Spanish Empire. In return, the Europeans were expected...