France's financial backing of the American Revolution nearly bankrupted the French government. Louis took some advice from financial advisers that proved to be unpopular with his subjects. The king called a meeting of the largely powerless parliament, a group that had not convened in more than ...
Against the backdrop of the loss of the American colonies, the emergence of the anti-slavery movement and the French Revolution, the ‘India Question’ took on considerable political importance in Britain. The perceived immorality of EIC actions in India, the fear of private and institutionalised...
Laos after the Geneva Conference, 1954–75 TheGeneva Accordsof 1954 marked the end of French rule in Southeast Asia. The participating countries (including France, Great Britain, theUnited States, China, and theSoviet Union) at the Geneva Conference agreed that all of Laos should come under the...
The northern portion of Zanzibar Island and the adjacent Tumbatu Island have been occupied by another Bantu-speaking people known as the Tumbatu. These two groups represent the earliest arrivals in Zanzibar. Throughout the 19th century, and after, they were expropriated from the western and more...
except for two brief intervals (from 1494 to 1512 and from 1527 to 1530). It provided theRoman Catholic Churchwith four popes (Leo X,Clement VII,Pius IV, and Leon XI) and married into the royal families ofEurope(most notably inFrance, in the persons of QueensCatherine de MédiciandMarie...
Haitian Revolution, series of conflicts between 1791 and 1804 betweenHaitianslaves, colonists, the armies of theBritishand French colonizers, and a number of other parties. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won independence fromFranceand thereby became the first country to be founded...
of England andFrance. When John of Montfort began to win most of Brittany, Charles appealed to Philip, who had the peers of France recognize Charles as sole heir to the duchy; meanwhile, John had sought the aid ofEdward IIIof England. On Nov. 1, 1341, Charles seized the city of ...
By 1791 Gustav III aimed at forming a league of European monarchs to oppose the developingFrench Revolution. But the Swedish nobility remained implacably opposed to him, and an aristocraticconspiracysucceeded when Gustav was shot by CaptainJacob Johan Anckarström while attending the Stockholm opera...
Selim III was an Ottoman sultan from 1789 to 1807, who undertook a program of Westernization and whose reign felt the intellectual and political ferment created by the French Revolution. A poet and an accomplished composer of Ottoman classical music, Sel