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May 20 - September 20, 2018
Few people realize that the university was partly funded by the Sri Vijaya kings of Sumatra.
The cult of Mithras would become very widespread in the late Roman period and, for a while, would provide serious competition to early Christianity. The pagan Romans used to celebrate a big festival called Saturnalia that went on for a week from 17 December. At the end of the festival, on the 25 December, the Mithras cult would celebrate the feast of Sol Invictus or Unconquered Sun. Many scholars believe that when the Christians came to dominate the Roman empire, they simply took over the popular pagan festival (after all, the actual birth date of Jesus Christ is not known).29 Mind you, not
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Thus, one of the unintended consequences of early Iron Age migrations seems to be that the world has come to celebrate the birthday of an ancient god from Haryana!
In 1487, a captain called Bartholomew Diaz finally reached the southern tip of Africa.
So, it was the Sultan of Malindi who provided Vasco da Gama with an experienced pilot for the crossing to India.
After another unsuccessful raid on Calicut, it was decided that Goa would be a good place to build a base. Under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese attacked and took Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur in 1510.
There is evidence that the Ortas continued to practise Judaism in secret and even had secret Hebrew names. Garcia’s secret name was Abraham. This is the real reason that Garcia da Orta was living quietly in Mumbai (incidentally, he refers to the place both as Bombaim and Mombaim in his writings).
local Nayak, chieftain, ignored declining royal authority and named it after his father as Chennapatanam or Chennai, the city that we know today.
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Thus, more than black pepper, textiles were the reason that the EIC decided to build permanent establishments on the Indian mainland.
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Contemporary gossip had it that Day chose the site as it was close to the Portuguese settlement at San Thome where he kept a mistress. Thus, we must thank this unnamed lady for the location of one of India’s largest cities.5
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In 1690, the EIC’s agent Job Charnok returned to a site that he had identified on the westernmost channel of the Ganga and bought the rights to three villages from the local landlords, the Mazumdars, for Rs 1300.6 This is how Calcutta (now Kolkata) was founded.
This is how Elihu Yale, the Governor of Madras, amassed a large personal fortune before being removed from his post on suspicions of corruption. Part of this ill-gotten wealth was used to fund the university that bears his name. Thus, one of North America’s leading universities is built on money garnered through dodgy deals in the Indian Ocean.
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Thus, an Indian father’s determination to protect his beloved daughter led to the demise of the Portuguese in Oman.
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Napoleon would do little to rescue his ally but the siege of Srirangapatna would bolster the reputation of a thirty-year-old British colonel named Arthur Wellesley. Now remembered as the Duke of Wellington, he would defeat Napoleon sixteen years later at Waterloo.
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Robert Clive and his successor Warren Hastings would be accused of corruption.
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Raffles managed to gain control over the island in 1819. Crucially, he declared that Singapore would be a free port: ‘Our object is not territory, but trade; a great commercial emporium, and a fulcrum, whence we may extend our influence politically as circumstances may hereafter require.’
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the anti-slavery position of the British at least partly aimed at undermining rivals and was self-serving.
The Cape at the southern tip of Africa had long been a Dutch colony but it was taken over by the British during the Napoleonic wars.
The Zulu tribe had been converted into a military machine by the famous leader Shaka. Using a combination of spears and fast-moving, disciplined units, the Zulus were even capable of taking on guns on occasion.
Swaziland and Lesotho were both founded as a result of refugee groups banding together under powerful chiefs to defend themselves. The Xhosa (Nelson Mandela’s tribe of origin) were among the worst affected as they were being crushed between the Zulus and white settlers.
De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited was incorporated in 1888. The man behind this consolidation was Cecil Rhodes.
the conquered territory can be termed as Terra Nullius or Nobody’s Land, and the rights of the indigenous people can be denied. Indeed, the Terra Nullius argument was used in Australia till as recently as 1992 when the courts finally began to accept the land rights of the aborigines.
Ethiopia would be the only African country to successfully defend itself against the colonial onslaught.
The Dutch today take great pride in their liberal traditions but the history of their occupation of Indonesia tells a different story.
This was the first time that Asians had scored a decisive victory over a European power since Marthanda Varma’s victory over the Dutch.
Wilhelm Wassmuss slipped into the Persian Gulf to instigate the tribes of southern Iran to attack British interests in the region. He even spread rumours that the German Kaiser had converted to Islam and adopted the name ‘Haji’ Wilhelm Mohammad.5 I am not making this up!
Thus, a small mistake by a secret agent in the Persian Gulf had a big influence on the course of world history; the flapping of a butterfly’s wings had caused a hurricane.
Punjab and Bengal were the two main hubs of the revolutionary movement although there were several others scattered across the country, most notably Varanasi.
It is thought that the name ‘Andaman’ is derived from the Malay pronunciation of ‘Hanuman’, the Hindu monkey-god.
Even worse was the famine that killed 3 million people in Bengal in 1943. Crop failure and the disruption of rice supplies from Burma may have initially triggered the problem but the British colonial government did little to provide relief.
In other words, one cannot judge Netaji’s actions and the formation of the INA without taking into account the longer history of the revolutionary movement and its long-standing connections with Germany and Japan. This was not a case of developing a sudden love for Fascism.
Lacking political leadership, the sailors eventually surrendered. Despite various assurances, large numbers of sailors would be court-martialled and dismissed (note that none of the dismissed would be reinstated by the governments of Pakistan and India after Independence).
Amidst the chaos, a daredevil pilot from Odisha called Biju Patnaik flew secret missions into Java and rescued two key Indonesian rebel leaders from being captured (he would later go on to become the chief minister of Odisha).25
We saw how matrilineal customs were an important aspect of history in the eastern but not in the western Indian Ocean rim. Perhaps this explains why we have seen so many female leaders in countries ranging from the Philippines to the Indian subcontinent: Corazon Aquino, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Aung San
Suu Kyi, Indira Gandhi, Sheikh Hasina, Sirimavo Bandaranaike to name just a few. Notice
