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Peter III’s conquest of Sicily, where he reigned as Peter I, was the second major step in the Mediterranean expansion of Catalonia, marking the beginning of a long international struggle with serious domestic complications.

Alfonso III (1285–91), who inherited the mainland dominions, and his younger brother James, who received Sicily, valiantly tried to overcome the formidable opposition of the pope, the king of France, and the house of Plantagenet (Anjou). Alfonso seized Majorca because his uncle James had aided the French during their Crusade against Aragon. Once again the Aragonese nobles challenged the king, forcing him in 1287 to confirm his father’s General Privilege and to permit the nobles to control the appointment of certain royal councillors. After succeeding his brother as king of Aragon, James II (1291–1327) tried to secure an unchallenged title to that kingdom by yielding his rights to Sicily in 1295 and returning Majorca to his uncle James.

After securing a favourable alteration of his frontier with Murcia, James II occupied Sardinia in 1325. As Genoa disputed Aragonese rights there, his successors, Alfonso IV (1327–36) and Peter IV (the Ceremonious; 1336–87), were forced to wage a series of wars. Accusing his cousin, the king of Majorca, of disloyalty, Peter IV annexed Majorca permanently to the Crown of Aragon in 1343. In 1347 Peter provoked a constitutional crisis by naming his daughter as heir to the throne rather than his brother, the count of Urgel, who argued that women were excluded from the succession.

Pedro de Toledo (viceroy 1532–53) reorganized the Kingdom of Naples and placed it firmly within the Spanish monarchical orbit dominated by Castile.

The most important ruling body in the kingdom was the Collateral Council, comprising five regents presided over by the viceroy, with a judicial council and a financial council exercising their respective competencies at its side.

Sicily’s administration had existed apart from that of the mainland since 1282, when the island had revolted against Angevin rule and come under the Aragonese crown. In the 16th century Sicily remained the cornerstone of the Spanish Mediterranean policy against the Ottomans,

concluding the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

France concluded treaties of peace at Utrecht with Britain, the Dutch republic, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy

By the treaty with Britain (April 11), France recognized Queen Anne as the British sovereign and undertook to cease supporting James Edward, the son of the deposed king James II.

War of the Polish Succession, (1733–38), general European conflict waged ostensibly to determine the successor of the king of Poland, Augustus II the Strong

The war resulted mainly in a redistribution of Italian territory and an increase in Russian influence over Polish affairs

After Augustus died (Feb. 1, 1733), Austria and Russia supported the election of his son Frederick Augustus II of Saxony as king of Poland

there is one man who stands out from the general level of mediocrity, a King who tried with some success to arrest the decadence—Charles III, King of Spain, 1759-1788

This zeal for the general welfare of his people brought him into rough conflict with the two main powers in the land; the nobility and the clergy

Philip had to withdraw his abdication; but the bouts of insanity continued, and Isabella Farnese became de facto ruler of the country

Spain thus established complete hegemony over all the Italian states except Venice, which alone maintained its independence.

Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia (which had all been dependencies of Aragon), as well as Milan, came under direct Spanish rule and owed their allegiance to the sovereign according to their own laws and traditions.

From the beginning of Philip II’s reign, Italian affairs, which had originally been administered by the Council of Aragon, were coordinated by a Council of Italy in Madrid. At this council, the three major states—Naples, Sicily, and Milan—were each represented by two regents, one Castilian and one native. Sardinia remained a dependency of Aragon.

Britain’s existential threat is not simply the result of poor governance—an undeniable reality—but of something much deeper: the manifestation of something close to a spiritual crisis.

no other major power is quite as conflicted about whether it is even a nation to begin with, let alone what it takes to act like one.

it is now one of the rare states in the Western world whose name is not simply the nation it represents: The United Kingdom is more than Britain and the British. Some of its citizens believe themselves to be British, while others say they are not British at all; others say they are British and another nationality—Scottish or Welsh, say. In Northern Ireland it is even more complicated, with some describing themselves as only British while others say they are only Irish.

royal German family

of Europe from the 15th to the 20th century

The name Habsburg is derived from the castle of Habsburg

the ruling house of Italy from 1861 to 1946

acquired considerable territory in the western Alps where France, Italy, and Switzerland now converge

raised to ducal status within the Holy Roman Empire, and in the 18th century it attained the royal title (first of the kingdom of Sicily, then of Sardinia). Having contributed to the movement for Italian unification, the family became the ruling house of Italy in the mid-19th century and remained so until overthrown with the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946

statesman of the Carignan line of the House of Savoy, who, in the service of the Austrian Holy Roman emperor, made his name as one of the greatest soldiers of his generation

against the Turks in central Europe and the Balkans (1683–88, 1697, 1715–18) and against France in the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) and in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14)

His paternal ancestors were the dukes of Savoy, who later became kings of Sardinia, Sicily, and eventually of all Italy, while on his mother’s side the family included not only Roman patricians

king of Aragon from January 1336, son of Alfonso IV.

Peter had to contend with revolt in Sardinia throughout his reign; but he succeeded, by political and military means, in preparing the future reunion of Sicily to the Aragonese crown and was recognized by the Catalan Almogávares as duke of Athens and Neopatras in 1380.

Although the mercenaries succeeded in briefly installing Henry of Trastámara on the Castilian throne, Henry failed to honour any of his promises to Peter, and after 1369 Charles V of France took no trouble to conceal that he preferred his alliance with Castile to that with Aragon. As a result, Peter now pursued a complicatedly neutral approach to the Hundred Years’ War, with some bias in favour of the English.

Philip, the second son of Louis IX of France (Saint Louis), became heir to the throne on the death of his elder brother Louis (1260). Accompanying his father’s crusade against Tunis in 1270, he was in Africa when Louis IX died. He was anointed king at Reims in 1271.

Philip was less successful militarily. In 1276 he declared war to support the claims of his nephews as heirs in Castile but soon abandoned the venture. In 1284, at the instigation of Pope Martin IV, Philip launched a campaign against Peter III of Aragon, as part of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, in which the Aragonese opposed the Angevin rulers of Sicily. Philip crossed the Pyrenees with his army in May 1285, but the atrocities perpetrated by his forces provoked a guerrilla uprising. After a meaningless victory at Gerona and the destruction of his fleet at Las Hormigas, Philip was forced to retreat. He died of fever on the way home.

Islam arose as a religious and socio-political force in Arabia in the 7th century CE (610 CE onwards).

The Islamic Prophet Muhammad (l. 570-632 CE), despite facing resistance and persecution, amassed a huge following and started building an empire

After he died in 632 CE, his friend Abu Bakr (l. 573-634 CE) laid the foundation of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE), which continued the imperial expansion.

Motivated in part by economic stress, and in part by what some call crass opportunism, the idyllic island 50 miles south of Sicily is selling citizenship for $880,000 in cash and $677,000 in property and investments to applicants 18 or older willing to pay the price.

the program, which is aimed at attracting well-heeled residents from abroad, could bring in $1.35 billion in the next five years, providing welcome financing for schools, health care and jobs.

Being a citizen of Malta, which is part of the European Union’s passport-free zone, will confer the right to travel among the union’s 27 other member states without border formalities. A newly minted Maltese citizen will also be able to live and work in another European Union country, and will gain the right to visa-free travel to 69 non-European Union countries, including the United States.

The new edition, co-written with Eugenio F. Biagini, Reader in Modern British and European History at the University of Cambridge, covers a much wider range of relevant issues for the unification of Italy. New chapters have been devoted to questions such as the Italian language and the role of women in the process of unification, as well as to a series of relevant issues after 1861, such as the Venetian situation from 1862, and the problem of brigandage in the south once the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia. This much enforces the original project, as a complete unification of Italy had, of course, not yet been reached in 1861. Moreover, Beales's original chapters have been completely overhauled to include recent historical scholarship on the subject. The original set-up of the Historical Problems series has been maintained in this new edition. All the original primary material is reprinted, while the new topics are illustrated by further documents, which now grow from sixteen to twenty-three. A brief chronology of events between 1748 and 1876 has also been added.

As Allied Forces fought the Nazis for control of Europe, an unlikely unit of American and British art experts waged a shadow campaign

It was the fall of 1943. A couple of months earlier, the Sicilian landings of July 10 had marked the beginning of the Allied Italian campaign.

The idea of safeguarding European art from damage was unprecedented in modern warfare.

“Trump is a fascist,”

“We are here faced by fascists,” Hilary Benn, the Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesman, declares to the House of Commons,

That was George Orwell, in 1944. He had heard the epithet “fascist” applied, he said, to fox-hunting, Kipling, Gandhi, homosexuality, “astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”

through his diplomacy became the first king of Sardinia-Piedmont and thus established the foundation for the future Italian national state

When the War of the Grand Alliance broke out, Victor Amadeus in 1690 joined the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs against Louis

The French defeat at Turin (1706) secured his position in Italy; and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave him the royal title as king of Sicily

The Spanish Inquisition is commonly associated with torture, cruelty and oppression

The concept of inquisitions to root out religious heretics was not novel when, in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV authorised the creation of a Spanish inquisition

These newly united kingdoms, under joint monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, decided to set up such a body

Philip II was a loyal son of the Catholic Church

Philip's sense of religious mission crucially shaped foreign and imperial policy

It was the 1590s before the Inquisition managed to extend its control over printed materials beyond Castile to the rest of Spain, and any resourceful person with a taste for suspect literature could obtain prohibited texts from Italy, France, and the Low Countries