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Since the beginnings of recorded history, more than 5000 years ago, the great majority of civilised people have lived under the rule of monarchs.' Only in the fatal decade 1912-1922, in China, Russia, Germany, Austria and Turkey did 'half humanity over- throw its monarchs

The rulers of Russia were originally Vikings, Arab dynasties ruled as far as Indonesia, the Welfs of Hanover and Great Britain were from the same family as the Estes of Modena, the Kings of Poland in the seventeenth century were Vasas from Sweden

the most successful and international of all dynasties is the House of Oldenburg. Since it began to rule the region of Oldenburg in north-west Germany in the thirteenth century it has provided monarchs for Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Norway and Greece. Through Prince Philip a branch of the House of Oldenburg will one day occupy the throne of the United Kingdom

Largely sympathetic to the Lithuanian desire for autonomy and determined to create a strong, central royal power, Casimir clashed with the Polish magnates, large landowners who had dominated the earlier Jagiellon reigns, by granting extensive and exclusive rights and privileges to the gentry in order to gain their political and financial support for his active foreign policy. As a result, Casimir was able not only to engage successfully in the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–66) against the Teutonic Knights, by which he acquired a large portion of their territory, but also to place his son Władysław on the thrones of Bohemia (as Vladislav II; 1471) and Hungary (as Ulászló II; 1490) and to fight the Turks (1485–89), who had disrupted his kingdom’s trade by seizing control of the mouths of the Dniester and Danube rivers.

When Sigismund I the Old succeeded his brother Alexander in 1506, the Polish–Lithuanian federation was seriously threatened by foreign invasion as well as by internal decay.

Sigismund’s nephew Louis II succeeded Władysław as king of Bohemia and Hungary in 1516, but his death at the Battle of Mohács (at which the Turks destroyed the Hungarian monarchy; 1526) brought an end to Jagiellon rule there. Sigismund, on the other hand, improved the political stability of Poland and Lithuania, incorporated Mazovia into his realm (1526), and also promoted the development of Renaissance culture in Poland.

According to ancient Chinese historical sources, a court eunuch named Ts'ai Lun (or Cai Lun) presented newly-invented paper to the Emperor Hedi of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 105 CE.

The historian Fan Hua (398-445 CE) recorded this version of events, but archaeological finds from western China and Tibet suggest that paper was invented centuries earlier.

proving that ink too was invented much earlier than historians had supposed.

For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world

Neolithic (late Stone Age) communities in northeastern Africa exchanged hunting for agriculture and made early advances that paved the way for the later development of Egyptian arts and crafts, technology, politics and religion (including a great reverence for the dead and possibly a belief in life after death).

agriculture (largely wheat and barley) formed the economic base of the Egyptian state. The annual flooding of the great Nile River provided the necessary irrigation and fertilization each year; farmers sowed the wheat after the flooding receded and harvested it before the season of high temperatures and drought returned.

a wide array of figures whose own commitments seemed incompatible with Trumpism decided that he was worth defending and eventually supporting.

These figures, strikingly, came from both sides of the pre-existing civil war

Early in the campaign, when it seemed as if Jeb Bush had a chance to coast to the nomination as the standard-bearer of the establishment, it was mostly voices from the professional base — talk-radio voices, Fox News voices and for a time Cruz himself — who worked to build up Trump as a populist alternative

History is lauded in China. Ordinary people will tell you every chance they get that they have 5,000 years of culture: wuqiannian de wenhua.

or the government, it is the benchmark for legitimacy in the present. But it is also a beast that lurks in the shadows.

It is hard to overstate history’s role in a Chinese society run by a communist party. Communism itself is based on historical determinism: one of Marx’s points was that the world was moving inexorably towards communism, an argument that regime-builders such as Lenin and Mao used to justify their violent rises to power. In China, Marxism is layered on top of much older ideas about the role of history. Each succeeding dynasty wrote its predecessor’s history, and the dominant political ideology – what is now generically called Confucianism – was based on the concept that ideals for ruling were to be found in the past, with the virtuous ruler emulating them. Performance mattered, but mainly as proof of history’s judgment.

it is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, making it the bloodiest civil war in history, suggests caution for those who hope for a popular uprising — a Chinese Spring — today.

The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt; the Beijing government was so distant as to barely seem to exist. The uprising was set off by bloody ethnic feuds between Cantonese-speaking Chinese and the minority Hakkas over land rights.

Beijing has learned its lessons from the past. We see this in the swift and ruthless suppression of Falun Gong and other religious sects that resemble the Taiping before they became militarized. We can see it in the numbers of today’s “mass incidents.” One estimate, 180,000 in 2010, sounds ominous indeed, but in fact the sheer number shows that the dissent is not organized and has not (yet) coalesced into something that can threaten the state

A child’s prospects are actually more fluid elsewhere, not just in the most equal countries, like Denmark or Sweden, but even in countries like Canada that have moderate levels of inequality, as I demonstrate in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

More than one-quarter of sons raised by fathers in the top 10 percent stay in the top 10 percent as adults, and another quarter fall no further than the top third. Meanwhile, half of those raised by fathers in the bottom 10 percent remain at the bottom or rise no further than the bottom third. In Canada there is less stickiness at the top, and children raised in the bottom are more likely to rise to the top half in earnings.

The difference is that Danes, Swedes and even Canadians are able to promote mobility for the majority while continuing to live with a dynasty at the top. It is the lack of a cleareyed focus on the top, free from rhetoric about talent and the pursuit of dreams, that is keeping Americans from effectively promoting upward mobility.

Bush and Clinton have something more in common: a long history of collecting millions of dollars from powerful interests, both individual and corporate, and deep roots in political dynasties. Their fund-raising success threatens to be a significant liability in the current climate.

The Republican primary process, of all places, has become a test of the balance of power between elites and the affluent on the one hand, and middle- and working-class voters on the other.

A growing number of scholars believe that the ecological transformation set off by Columbus's voyages was one of the establishing events of the modern world. Why did Europe rise to predominance? Why did China, once the richest, most advanced society on earth, fall to its knees? Why did chattel slavery take hold in the Americas? Why was it the United Kingdom that launched the Industrial Revolution? All of these questions are tied in crucial ways to the Columbian Exchange.

the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm, creatures that did not exist in North America before 1492.

Intoxicating and addictive, tobacco became the subject of the first truly global commodity craze.

one tradition has remained firmly in place: China will not confront its own history. The museum is less the product of extensive research, discovery or creativity than the most prominent symbol of the Communist Party’s efforts to control the narrative of history and suppress alternative points of view, even those that exist within the governing elite

Officials rejected proposals for a permanent historical exhibition that would have discussed the disasters of early Communist rule — especially the Great Leap Forward, a political campaign and resulting famine that killed more than 20 million. Some organizers also wanted a candid appraisal of the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long attack on traditional culture and learning, but that effort was squashed.

Instead, the authorities decided that the exhibition on contemporary China should focus, as did the museum before its extensive makeover, on the party’s triumphs.

these midterms mean nothing? That can’t be right either. They seem to me to be reflecting at the very least a sour and dyspeptic mood in the country at large, a well of deepening discontent and concern, and a national funk that remains very potent as a narrative, even if it has become, in my view, close to circular and more than a little hysterical.

what is the reason for this mood – and why has Obama taken the biggest dive because of it?

Even though the economic signals in the US are stronger than anywhere else in the developed world, even as unemployment has fallen, and as energy independence has come closer than anyone recently expected, the underlying structure of the economy remains punishing for the middle class. This, in some ways, can be just as dispiriting as lower levels of growth – because it appears that even when we have a recovery, it will not make things any better for most people.

I am here, my puzzled readers, to help interpret the latest Oedipal somersaults of our royally messed up Republican royal family.

Like many uptight, upper-class families, the Bushes seem oddly unable to directly confront tensions and resentments and talk to each other candidly. With other families, the unsaid and circuitous end up rupturing relationships. In the case of the Bushes, it ended up rupturing the globe.

Opposition candidate Mauricio Macri is poised to become Argentina's next President after a runoff vote that marks the end of a political dynasty.

Macri spoke shortly after Daniel Scioli, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's hand-picked successor, conceded defeat.

With more than 98% of votes counted, Macri of the Let's Change coalition had won 51.4% of votes, while Scioli had garnered nearly 48.6%, elections officials said.

Canada voted in its first new leader in nearly a decade in a general election that handed Justin Trudeau's Liberal party an absolute majority -- and dealt a stunning blow to incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The victory denied a fourth term to Harper and his Conservative party. Harper has held the position since February 2006.

Liberal candidates have secured 184 seats -- or "ridings," the Canadian term for federal electoral districts -- putting them over the line for forming a majority government. A total of 170 seats are needed for a majority.

But President Xi Jinping, in a private meeting with President Obama at Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, warned against putting too much pressure on Kim Jong-un, the North’s young, volcanic leader.

Since coming to power in 2012, Mr. Xi has pushed the limits of Chinese foreign policy, challenging America’s influence in the Pacific and using China’s financial heft to win allies across the globe

After North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test last week, world leaders escalated pressure on Mr. Xi, whom many see as the best hope of reining in Mr. Kim. South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, who has cultivated closer ties to Mr. Xi, called on China this week to match its disapproving words about the North’s nuclear ambitions with “necessary measures.”

Speaking to the New York-based broadcaster New Tang Dynasty (NTD), two European politicians expressed hopes that Chinese leader Xi Jinping bring genuine political reform by giving up the regime’s Marxist ideology

“When you decide one day, that all the media will be free, then the communist system will fall apart, because the communist system is a lie in itself,” said Malosse, who has interest in Eastern Europe and learned the German, Polish, and Russian languages as a youth.

Batten, a member of the UK Independence Party, spoke positively of Xi’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign. But he believes that greater political reform is being held back by entrenched vested interests in the Communist Party.

IPS, details how the nation’s 15 wealthiest families—some with household names (Walton, Koch, Mars), some perhaps less-known (Duncan, Bass, Stryker)—are worth a combined $618 billion. Overwhelmingly, this is inherited money; the companies from which these families derive their wealth were all started at least a generation ago.

The report takes 1982—the first year the Reagan tax cuts on the rich took effect, and the year that Reagan’s Security and Exchange Commission legalized stock buybacks—as its point of departure. In that year, a person needed $75 million to qualify for the Forbes 400. A nice pile of money for sure, but today a person needs at least $2.1 billion, meaning that in the past 36 years, the bar for entry has risen by 2,800 percent. 

The three richest families—the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Marses—saw their wealth grow by almost 6,000 percent since 1982, when the Forbes 400 was first published

ruled Portugal from 1385 until 1580

The Aviz dynasty

the throne was inherited by his great uncle, Cardinal Henrique